Best Forex Broker 2024 Table of Contents
How to choose the best trading account in a broker?
The stock market can seem mysterious and to many people who are just starting to invest in the financial markets, it still seems like a space reserved exclusively for wealthy businessmen or brokers dressed in suits and white shirts.
However, in the current era of technological progress and wide access to information, investing in stocks is now available to almost everyone.
The first step to start investing in the stock market involves choosing to open an account with a broker.
In this section, we will discuss in detail what a broker account is and how it works, as well as what we should pay attention to when choosing it.
What is a trading account of a broker?
An account in a broker is a financial account opened with an investment company (we call it a broker).
It is a special type of account that is used to store and operate securities, and the financial institution with which you have said account is the intermediary between you (the investor) and the market (the Stock Exchange).
In addition to the possibility of investing in stocks, investment firms often offer access to more complex and risky investment instruments such as CFDs, futures, or ETFs.
See Forex Brokers Ranking of 2024
How to open a trading account at XTB?
Just a few years ago, opening an account required a visit to the investment firm’s offices, or submitting an online application and signing a paper version of the contract (sent via courier).
Currently, the opening procedure is much easier because some investment companies, such as XTB, allow the creation of an online account without unnecessary formalities, and the entire process, from registration to receiving the access data to your account Trading takes no more than fifteen minutes.
To open an account with XTB, you just have to follow these three steps:
- Fill in an online form available at this link.
- Attach scans or photographs of the requested documents, confirming your identity and your residence address (for example, scan your ID, and your driving license on both sides). In a few minutes XTB should have verified your documents.
- Then you will be able to access the investment platform, where you will find the quotes and trading panel.
To start investing, you just need to make a deposit into your account, either through a transfer from your bank to XTB (where you will find several free deposit options) or through Paypal and Blue Media.
After depositing into your account, you can start investing!
At XTB you can manage your online trading account using the Client’s Account, from where you can open new accounts (including a free demo account), make free deposits, withdrawals, or transfers between accounts.
How to choose the best type of account?
Choosing the best account can seem problematic or complicated at first, if only because of the preferences that each investor has.
However, we can make this process much easier by checking several key points that a trading account should have:
- Instruments available
- Costs
- Deposits and withdrawals
- Trading platform
- Quality of service
- Safety
Let’s examine these points in more detail:
1. Instruments available
At XTB, the broker havs more than 4000 instruments available, which we can also divide into two main categories:
- CFDs on currencies, indices, commodities, cryptocurrencies, stocks and ETFs from around the world.
- Spot stocks from a dozen of the world’s largest and largest markets, including WSE, NYSE, EURONEXT, as well as units of ETFs.
All the instruments available in XTB can be found in the Instrument Specification Table.
Check out available markets on XTB
2. Costs
In the case of a broker account, there are usually several types of costs: transactional, account opening and closing, and account maintenance (we will discuss deposit and withdrawal costs in the next section).
The opening and closing of an account in XTB have no cost, as well as the maintenance of the account, as long as you are an active investor (that is, you have shares or have executed at least one transaction in the last 365 days).
XTB offers low transaction costs, which can vary depending on the market in which they operate.
You can find more detailed information about the quantities in the Instrument Specification Table.
See the cost and fee pf XTB’s service
3. Deposits and withdrawals
We can make deposits and withdrawals from the account in various ways: by bank transfer, credit card or instant online payments.
We can make withdrawals from the broker account only through bank transfers, and the estimated time of transfer of funds should not exceed one business day.
All withdrawals of funds above 200 euros are free.
See available funding methods of XTB
4. Quality of service
At XTB, you have access to a professional multilingual team available 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday.
If you have any questions regarding your trading account, please contact XTB’s Customer Service by phone, by email or even through the chat available on the XTB website and the xStation investment platform.
5. Availability of educational material
At XTB, they place great emphasis on investor education and building their investment awareness.
To this end, XTB has prepared video courses, ebooks, and numerous introductory materials regarding investing.
XTB conducts daily online seminars with XTB analysts, thanks to which you will be up to date with the most important events affecting the markets, which have also turned out to be an extremely useful tool.
6. Trading Platform
The extremely intuitive trading platform, xStation 5, is a professional tool not only for trading but also for advanced market analysis.
Its quality and reliability are confirmed by the fact that it has been awarded “Best Trading Platform of 2016” by the Online Personal Wealth Awards, and also the “Product of the Year” award in the FxCuffs 2017 competition.
On the platform, you will find technical analysis tools (specialized indicators or various chart drawing tools), fundamental analysis (such as economic calendar, dividend calendar, company scanner), and integrated services with access to the latest news and market analysis.
The company scanner available on the xStation 5 platform, which provides information on each company available in the offering, is a very useful tool for investors in the stock market.
The xStation 5 platform is accessible from your computer through the website, and in its mobile version for smartphones, tablets and even smartwatches.
Security – in the next section you will find more information about this very important point.
Check out XTB’s trading platforms
7. Are the funds within the broker’s account safe?
The funds in the broker’s account are safe , as long as you have opened the trading account in a properly supervised institution.
XTB is one of these institutions because it is a financial company regulated by the CNMV (National Securities Market Commission).
The deposits in the broker accounts of each client of the entity are safe because:
- Clients’ funds are held in segregated bank accounts.
- Clients’ funds are covered by the Stock Compensation Fund (KDPW), which means that up to € 22,500 90% of the funds are reimbursed, and up to the amount of € 3,000 100% per person is reimbursed in the unlikely event of insolvency.
XTB is a global investment company and therefore is subject to various supervisory institutions around the world.
Apart from the CNMV, also before the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), the CySEC (Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission) and the IFSC (International Financial Services Commission).
XTB is also part of the Warsaw Stock Market.
Why trade Forex with XTB?
- Access to approximately 4,000 instruments.
- Real stocks from nearly a dozen countries, including Poland, the United States, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
- Supervision of renowned institutions (CNMV, FCA, CySEC and IFSC).
- Complete education, including completely free daily online seminars.
- Innovative and reliable trading platform.
- XTB is trusted by more than 140,000 customers around the world.
What is forex trading?
Forex – also known as FX or foreign exchange market – is the exchange of one currency for another at an agreed price.
Suppose you plan a vacation to the United States and you need to change the money you will spend from British pounds (GBP) to US dollars (USD).
On Monday, you will look at your local currency exchange and see that the exchange rate for GBP / USD is $ 1.45.
This means that for every pound you change, you will receive $ 1.45.
You spend £ 100 to get $ 145.
On the other hand, you go through the same currency exchange a few weeks later and find that the latest exchange rate for GBP / USD is now $ 1.60.
Your £ 100 will now fetch $ 160 – an extra $ 15 – Currency exchange rates constantly fluctuate due to a variety of factors, such as the strength of a country’s economy.
What forex traders aim to do is profit from these fluctuations by speculating when they will rise or fall.
Forex is a market that works 24 hours a day.
Basically, forex trading is the action of speculating on the movement of the exchange price by buying one currency at the same time as selling the other.
Currency values rise (appreciate) and fall (depreciate) with each other due to a number of economic, geopolitical, and technical factors.
Forex is a global market, open 24 hours a day, five days a week (Monday to Friday).
Follow the sun around the earth, opening Monday morning from Wellington, New Zealand, then moving on to Asian markets in Tokyo and Singapore.
Later, it moves to London before closing on Friday night in New York.
In contrast to many other markets, the forex market is over-the-counter (OTC), which means that there is no physical location or a central location and operations are carried out 24 hours a day through a global business network.
When is the Best Time (Hours) to trade Forex?
Liquidity and Leverage of Forex
Forex is the market with the highest volume of operations in the world with an average turnover that exceeds $ 5 trillion every day.
It means that currency pairs are in constant fluctuating movement of values between them, creating trading opportunities for those investors who exploit it.
In addition, forex is a leveraged product, which means that you can access more exposure to currency movement than you could get when you physically buy currencies.
What is Margin? What is Leverage?
What makes forex trading so volatile?
Forex rates are one of the most important factors in determining the level of economic well-being of a country, which is why they are constantly observed and analyzed against a multitude of different indicators.
This is what makes forex trading so fast and exciting – high market liquidity means that prices can change rapidly in reaction to short-term news and events, political conditions, international trading, central bank policies.
Some of the key determinants that influence forex prices are:
- Political and economic stability.
- Inflation rates.
- Money policies.
- Government debt.
- Natural disasters.
For more information on forex, visit XTB’s forex page or learn how to trade forex.
Please check XTB official website or contact the customer support with regard to the latest information and more accurate details.
XTB official website is here.
Please click "Introduction of XTB", if you want to know the details and the company information of XTB.
IronFX
Comment by Diletta
March 26, 2024
Awesome bonuses, good leverage. A few hiccups, but support rocks!