Posts Tagged ‘broker’

What broker would you recommend for trading options?

Question by Dude man: What broker would you recommend for trading options?
I recently took a course in trading options and have placed a few contracts. I use Fidelity investments Active Trader Pro but would like to know if there are better platforms than this one and if the brokers are reputable with good support assistance. Thanks!
Thanks for all your help everyone!

Best answer:

Answer by Spike Lee
I use OptionsXpress for trading options as they have some very nice tools for evaluating their worth.

Additionally their virtual trading is very strong so you can practice while you are learning to make trades.

Give your answer to this question below!

Online Broker TradeKing Announces Schedule of July Free Educational Webinars

Online Broker TradeKing Announces Schedule of July Free Educational Webinars

Fort Lauderdale, FL (PRWEB) June 22, 2011

Online broker-dealer TradeKing (http://www.tradeking.com) today announced the lineup for its July 2011 free webinar series, designed for traders of all experience levels. The July webinars will feature topics including a primer on the importance of keeping the details in mind when trading options; a discussion of whether options trading is really a zero sum game; what investors need to understand regarding weekly options; and an overview of charting for “rookie” investors.

The July 2011 webinars will feature the following sessions: “Are You Really Prepared to Trade Options” with Mark Wolfinger of MDWoptions.com; “Option Myths Revealed: Options are a Zero Sum Game” with Mark Sebastian of OptionPit.com; “Understanding Weekly Options” with Jim Bittman of the Chicago Board Options Exchange; and a Rookie’s Corner on “Charting Close-Ups: The Pieces of the Puzzle” with Toni Turner, popular trading educator and author of the best-selling book, A Beginner’s Guide to Short-Term Trading.

TradeKing’s webinars are free and open to all investors. For a complete list of TradeKing webinars or to register, visit http://webinars.tradeking.com. The August 2011 webinar schedule will be available starting July 22.

July 2011 Webinar Schedule:

Tuesday, July 12 at 5 p.m. ET

Are You Really Prepared to Trade Options?

with Mark Wolfinger of MDWoptions.com

Tuesday, July 19 at 5 p.m. ET

Option Myths Revealed: Options are a Zero Sum Game

with Mark Sebastian of OptionPit.com

Tuesday, July 26 at 5 p.m. ET

Understanding Weekly Options

with Jim Bittman of the CBOE

Thursday, July 28 at 5 p.m. ET

Rookies Corner: Charting Close-Ups: The Pieces of the Puzzle

with Toni Turner of ToniTurner.com

About TradeKing

TradeKing (http://www.tradeking.com) is a nationally licensed online stock and options broker offering simple, low cost online trading fees ($ 4.95 per trade plus $ .65 per option contract, $ 8.95 per trade plus $ .15 per options contract for nine or more contracts) with no hidden costs or account minimums.1 A pioneer in integrating new financial social media as part of its innovative online equities, options trading and fixed-income trading platform, TradeKing has received multiple discount broker awards from top industry sources and was rated best in customer service by SmartMoney2 Magazine, ahead of OptionsXpress, Scottrade, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade. (June 2011 SmartMoney Broker Survey).

Follow TradeKing on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TradeKing,

Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/tradeking,

YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/tradeking,

LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/tradeking.

Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. For more information, please review the Characteristics and Risks of Standard Options brochure before you begin trading options. Options investors may lose the entire amount of their investment in a relatively short period of time.

TradeKing provides self-directed investors with discount brokerage services, and does not make recommendations or offer investment, financial, legal or tax advice. The content of this press release is provided for educational and informational purposes only, does not constitute a recommendation to enter in any of the securities transactions or to engage in any of the investment strategies presented herein, and does not represent the opinions of TradeKing or its employees.

Online trading has inherent risks due to system response and access times that vary due to market conditions, system performance and other factors. An investor should understand these and additional risks before trading.

Multiple leg options strategies involve additional risks and multiple commissions, and may result in complex tax treatments. Please consult a tax professional prior to implementing these strategies.

Member FINRA/SIPC.

(1)    $ 4.95 for equity and option trades, add 65 cents per option contract. Trade more than 8 contracts, and we’ll automatically lower your cost to $ 8.95 per trade plus 15 cents per contract. TradeKing charges an additional $ 0.35 per contract on certain index products where the exchange charges fees. TradeKing adds $ 0.01 per share on the entire order for stocks priced less than $ 1.00. See our Commissions + Fees page at http://www.tradeking.com/fees for details on commissions on low-priced stocks, option spreads, and other securities.

(2)    TradeKing was ranked #1 in Customer Service in the SmartMoney June 2011 Broker Survey based on the following categories: Commissions and Fees, Mutual Funds & Investment Products, Banking Services, Trading Tools, Research, and Customer Service. SmartMoney is a registered trademark of SmartMoney, a joint publishing venture between Dow Jones & Company, Inc. and Hearst Partnership. Supporting documentation for any claims, comparison, statistics, or other technical data, will be supplied upon request by calling 877-495-5464 or via email at service(at)tradeking(dot)com.

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Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

Related Options Trading Strategies Press Releases

Selecting Your Broker

www.freetradingsystems.org – Most markets require that all traders must place their trades through a broker. Fortunately this choice is easy… there really are only 2 types of brokers the full service broker and the discount broker.

Selecting A Right Forex Broker – Broker Practices And Others

BROKER PRACTICES

In this section, we will look into the sources of revenue that a forex broker makes in order to understand their motivation and behaviors behind their practices. Certainly, source(s) of revenue will impact on their bottom lines, which in turn affect you as their client.

As far as a forex trader is concerned, there are three basic practices of brokers in the market that we need to look at below:

Market Maker or Dealing Desk Brokers
STP (Straight Through Processing) Brokers
ECN (Electronic Communication Network) Brokers

Figure 1 below depicts the above three basic practices of brokers and their relationships with clients and the interbank market.

(For the figure please visit my website for the complete version)

Market Maker Brokers: make money via spreads and trading against their clients (or sometimes called hedging against their clients).

All client orders are received and routed through their firms’ internal dealing desks.  At this point, spreads are manipulated and provided back to clients with fixed different amounts for different currency pairs.  Clients never see the real market quotes.  For example, taking the EURUSD pair shown in the table below, what a client sees on their broker’s trading platform are quotes already manipulated, in this case ‘bid’ 1.3952 and ‘ask’ 1.3955. So the spread is 3 PIPs. The real market spread could just be 1 PIP. So the brokerpockets 2 PIPs.

When you buy, for example, EURUSD, your broker has to hedge against your order.  That means the broker has to sell the same size of order for EURUSD.  If you make money on this transaction the broker has to lose and vice versa.  So your broker will do anything in their power to your disadvantage, otherwise they will be out of business. In reality, if your orders are small enough compared to the overall value of their book you might be under their radar.  Some big dealing desk brokers out there are handling matters more professionally, so there is still room for you to make money through this type of broker practices.

Having said above, it does not mean all traders avoid market maker brokers altogether. The advantages of these brokers are that they require less fund to open an account (minimum 0 to a couple of hundreds dollars) and usually provide user-friendly trading platforms.

This is useful when you just start out a trading career and probably do not have more than 5,000 USD for trading.  The trick is that you should not be too successful with these brokers. Otherwise you will be under their radar and they will do anything intheir power to stop you biting into their revenues. There are several creative ways that you can be a profitable trader, protect your capital and profits, and under their radar all together.

In short, there is a conflict of interest between you and your broker.  And there is nothing illegal about this practice. This is the game and most risks are resting with you: understanding the rules of the game and implement creative solutions to your benefits.

STP Brokers: make money via markups on spreads quoted from the interbank market, and not trading against their clients.

Client orders are received then marked up a few PIPs before being routed straight through to liquidity providers – banks and hedge funds. Banks trade with one another on the interbank market.  A STP broker may have one or several liquidity providers. The more liquidity providers your broker has the better their client orders are filled.

So STP brokers help you access to the true market and no manipulations on prices against you. Their interest is to make you successful so that they can make money on markups from the spreads.

ECN Brokers: make money via commissions charged on a transaction, not on spreads and trading against their clients.

Client orders are received and internally bidding up and offering with banks, market markers and individual traders. In effect, all these participants trade against each other. Your broker does not trade against you.

By providing a marketplace above, these brokers charge commissions on your transactions. So their best interest is to make you trade as long as you can, so their commissions.
One of the key variables is the commission rate.  You’ve got to shop around for the best rates and figure out if you your trading system has any chance of making money with these commission charges.  Everyone has a different trading system that suits to his/her traits. Please refer to my other eBooks about this for details.

The drawbacks for most ECN brokers are that: their trading platforms are not user-friendly. You need to invest time to get used to them. If you trade the market long enough, this issue should not be a problem for you; they require higher minimum fund deposits, in range from 2,000 USD to 50,000 USD.

Today, there are ‘hybrid’ brokers who are both ECN and STP or sometimes called ECN+STP brokers. Both ECN and ECN+STP have basically no dealing desk.

YOUR TRADING STYLES

Knowing your trading style(s) is an indicator that you are serious about the trading business. You may have several trading styles implemented at the same time.  Each style will require a different setup that should be supported by your broker(s).

Day Trading:

Day trading style is that you open and close a trade within a market day. No open position is left overnight.

An open position could be left for seconds or minutes or hours but closing the same position should be completed by the end of the market day.

For this style of trading, you do not bother about overnight interest rates (called SWAPs or Carry Trade Interest Rates) credited or debited from your account. Detailed explanation will be provided in the CarryTrade sections below.

Scalping:

Scalping style is usually for traders who look for a few pip profits from movement of a currency pair taking place in a few seconds or even million seconds.

News Trading:

News trading is a special style that captures the usually gigantic movement of a currency pair when an economic news related to one of that currency pair is released.

This style of trading can be categorized as a day trading.  However, due to the possibility of a gigantic move taking place in million seconds, finding an appropriate broker for this strategy is sometimes a difficult task.  The reason is that your broker is not able to hedge your open position quickly enough, and therefore have to pay for your gain from their own money. So for this strategy, it is recommended to keep your position small enough to keep yourself under the radar. Otherwise, when detected they will do anything in their power to stop you playing this lucrative game for some traders.

Carry Trade:

Carry traders attempt to capture a POSITIVE interbank overnight interest rate difference between individual currencies in a currency pair.

For example, at this time of writing in October 2010, the interbank interest rates for AUD and USD are 4.5% and 0.25% per annum, respectively. So the difference is +4.25%. If you hold a BUY position for this currency pair AUD/USD overnight, your account should be credited with an interest rate payment calculated on a daily basis. In contrast, with the same currency pair, if you hold a SELL position rather than BUY overnight, your account is debited because the difference is NEGATIVE.

Note that credit and debit are not in the same rate because brokers internally calculate them after taking out ‘a piece of the pie’ for themselves!  Even some brokers debit your account regardless of POSITIVE or NEGATIVE interest rate difference! I’d stumbled on this type of broker, so run for life if your strategy is to leave an open position overnight.

So thoroughly digging in details about their carry trade conditions if you want to use this strategy.

Swing Trading:

This trading style is where your positions are held for a few days.  For this style, you would have many choices of brokers because slippage and delay are a less serious problem for you as would be with day trading or scalping.

Pay attention to pros and cons of a fixed spread and variable spread brokers. Fixed spread brokers make you feel certainty about the spread cost at any time during a market day, even at news release moments. While variable spread costs could be lower at market stable times and more expensive at news releases. So knowing what time frame during a market day you trade is crucial to selecting the most appropriate broker.

Position Trading:

For this style of trading, you hold open positions for weeks or months. You should have no problems of various brokers to choose from. However, the most important thing that who are the liquidity providersto your broker.

TRADING PLATFORMS

When it comes to selecting a trading platform, every single trade has to decide one or more of the following criteria:

Charting
Ease of use (look and feel of a platform)
Execution of orders (one-click trading, off-the-chart trading, re-quotes, allowable distances for stops & limits, hedging, slippage)
Security (secured data exchange over the Internet against hacking and theft)
Platform stability and reliability (how regular the platform is disconnected)
Order types (Stop loss, Limit Order, Buy Stop, Sell Stop, OCO)
Mobile trading
Reporting

Most brokers offer decent charting which is free while others charge a small monthly fee. Depending on your trading strategies and style, fee-based charting includes some advanced features. But free charts have sufficient features for a fair share of traders out there. I personally use free charting as part of my brokers’ platforms and still profitable because my trading strategies are simple and does not require advanced features.

Ease of use on a platform is another factor that some brokers out there strive to do for their clients in order to differentiate them the crowd. Some traders get used to MT4 platform interface, which is popular among traders and built from an independent vendor MetaQuotes Corporation. However, in my opinion, most platforms’ look and feel in the market today are good enough for most traders.

Fast execution of orders is crucial for day trading and scalping styles. For other styles it might not be that important. Some brokers set minimum distances (usually around 10 PIPs) from the current price for stops and limits. So be careful if they impact on your trading style.
Because trading online is basically exchanging data over the Internet, so security of data such as your personal information is of important. As a general rule, the larger and longer around a broker firm is the more money they spent so the better the security.

Order types are important and dependent on your trading style. Most platforms today offer market order, stop order (for stop-loss setting) and limit order (for profit taking setting), GTC (Good Till Cancel) and GFD (Good For Day). OCO (One Cancels the Other) is for advanced strategies and not offered by all brokers.

Mobile trading is increasing becoming a popular offer among brokers because it accommodates traders frequently on the move. At this point of writing, smart phones, iPhone and iPad are mobile devices that support forex mobile trading platforms. What you need to do is download Java based applicationsoftware and follow instructions from your broker’s website. Minimum bandwidth requirement of your mobile device is GPRS or 3G up.

Keep in mind that information presented on a mobile trading platform is just afraction of what you get on your desktop or laptop based platform. Most traders use mobile trading platform for monitoring trades or opportunities due to limitations of such devices such as small screen, internet accessspeed.

My recommendation is to download demo platforms offered by almost brokers’ websites and test them thoroughly. If you have any specific questions you can chat online with brokers to get answers straight away. Also be careful, some dishonest brokers give you the answers that are just to lure you open a live account with them. Another best solution is to consult with a trustworthy Introducing Broker (IB) to discuss and to get a clear understanding what you need. The IBs can help you best match your needs with various suitable platforms. By right, you should get free consultations from IBs because they are compensated by the broker firms that they are doing business with. So the key is to consult with reputable and trustworthyIBs only, in which their best interest is to add values to their clients on a long-term business relationship. As long as their clients are happy with recommended brokers so their compensated fees.

In short, it can be categorizes two basic platforms below:

Broker Specific Platform:

Most brokers offer their own trading platform, which could be a standalone application or a web-based or a mobile trading terminal.

Only large brokers have internal resources to develop the trading platforms themselves. Smaller brokers usually purchase licenses from software developing companies offering customized platforms for theirclients.

MetaTrader Platform (MT4 and MT5):

MT4 or recently MT5 under beta test is a broker-independent trading platform developed by MetaQuotes Software Corporation for forex, options and futures markets.

Forex brokers purchase licenses from MetaQuotes and customize their own versions. However, the back-end processing are still managed by MetaQuotes. The distinct features of MT4 are its support for a wide range of technical capability and enable traders to automate trading via programming language. In recent years, a new breed of automatic trading has been introduced and called Expert Advisors (EA) or simply ‘trading robots’.

LEVERAGE

The prevailing leverage for most forex brokers is 100:1. Some brokers outside U.S offer 200:1, 400:1 or even 500:1. But be careful, it seems that the higher leverages offered by brokers are to lure amateurs and gamblers in the market. And as a result, these people will lose money faster. Please see the section ‘Broker Practices’ above for further insights. The professional traders normally use leverage of 100:1 or even 50:1.

New ruling in U.S imposed a revised leverage of 50:1 from 100:1, effective on October 18, 2010, to all U.S. based forex brokers will certainly impact on traders who trade through U.S based brokers.

In my own experience, the leverage of 100: 1 should be enough for most successful traders to make consistent profits while keeping risks sufficiently low.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Today most small and large brokerage firms provide the following channels for customer support:

Telephone call (fixed line, mobile and Skype)
Email
Online chat

However, again the larger firms the most likely that they have money to spent on fine-tuning their customer support process. It’s nothing more frustrating than if you need help, for example, about technical issues ordeposit or withdrawal of fund, there is no one there immediately to take your queries or give you answers. Some forex firms differentiate themselves by customer service quality.

One of the solutions is that you can consult with your trusted and experienced IB who has gone through the same problems. By this way, you can avoid lots of frustration and importantly your precious time. Your IB isworthwhile if they play a role of your first frontline consultant before contacting your broker. Again, your IB is compensated by your broker therefore they should provide you services free.

FOR FOREX MANAGERS

Successful forex traders are an elite group of the trading community. Remember that only 5% of traders are winners while the remaining 95% is losers no matter how time has passed and advances in technology.Some of the successful forex traders above move up to running their own forex funds. The greatest benefit of running such a fund is that you can leverage on money pool from investors who are busy with their work or passions with your trading expertise.

In this section, we’ll look into services provided by brokerage firms catered specifically for fund mangers.

Multiple Accounts:

Trading multiple accounts for your individual clients is probably an ideal proposition regarding your clients’ concern about misappropriation of their money in a traditional pooled fund. Bernard Madoff’s fraud case is a typical and biggest example in the financial market frauds history.

This type of managing your clients’ money offers many benefits as individual accounts are held under individual client names. Deposits or withdrawals are done through individual clients only. As a fund manager, you are not allowed to deposit or withdraw funds in their accounts. However, you are allowed totrade their accounts via a legal mechanism called Power of Attorney (POA). Most large forex brokers today offer this facility for institutional traders like you. Specifically, there are two type of modules for trading multiple accounts in the market today: Percentage Allocation Management Module (PAMM) andLot Allocation Management Module (LAMM).

PAMM enables a forex manager to distribute proportional profits/losses and fees among individual client accounts based on the whole portfolio structure. In effect, all accounts have the same percentage of returns regardless of account size.

LAMM allows the manager to allocate different trading lots to different client accounts. This mechanism essentially facilitates the implementation of different leverages on different client accounts, depending on the requirement or need of a particular client.

(Please visit my website at the end of this article for a pictorial explanation)

INTRODUCING BROKERS (IB)

Introducing broker (IB) is a client services arm to a forex brokerage firm. An IB drives clients to the brokerage firm that he or she has a relationship with; and provides value-added services to the clients for FREE. Well, it’s not actually FREE because the IB is compensated by his/her brokerage firm by a percentage of spreads on each trade made from clients for market maker brokers; or revenue sharing in the case of ECN brokers.

(Please visit my website at the end of this article for a pictorial explanation)

Many traders are reluctant to deal with IBs because they think that they have to go through middle men. This is not always true. There is a couple of good IBs out there providing many benefits to an individual trader that he or she cannot get if dealing with a brokerage firm directly. The section below explains why.

Value Added Services:

Most IBs provide value added services for FREE because they are compensated by their brokerage firm. The added services could be training, charting software, trading signal, so on.

Be careful with many dishonest IBs out there providing clients with “free” strategies or products that require frequent trades, and thus boosting IBs’ revenues.

Leverage of IB:

When you open a live account with any forex broker as an individual in the range of 1,000 USD – 10,000 USD, you are most likely put under the bottom line of their services such as higher spreads, customer support, etc.

In contrast, the same broker treats your IB as an aggregate client with, for example 20 clients with 5,000 USD-account each, a total account value of 100,000 USD. Well, this is a different story that your broker will do anything in his power to take care of the IB’s clients. Otherwise, your IB will take his/her clients away to somewhere else.

Rebates:

A few IBs offer rebates on trading costs (spreads) back to their clients. This is really beneficial to clients since clients’ trading costs are in effect reduced. But be careful, I had ever opened a live account through an IBs website with the promise of rebates that never comes! As usual, do as much due diligence as you can on a particular IB, specially web-based IBs if you have no chance to contact them face to face.

CONCLUSION

Managing your forex broker is one of essential risk management activities every successful trader does, and should be done early and thoroughly. As long as picking up a right forex broker is concerned, there are two options available to you right now:

Option 1: Go for regulated MM Brokers if your trading capital is less than 5,000 USD

Your trading capital is less than 5,000 USD and you intend to test the market. A market maker broker could be your choice at this stage. But remember that there always exists a conflict of interest between you andyour broker. This does not mean that you have to be a loser. You can be a winner provided that your trading style and strategies should be under their radar and winning big is not recommended!

As your circumstance changes, for example, you have accumulated more than 5,000 USD for trading capital, you can always switch to an ECN broker as described in option 2 below.

Option 2: Go for regulated ECN/STP Brokers if your trading capital is from 5,000 USD up ( ideally 10,000 USD up or equivalent)

If you have from 5,000 USD up to trade, it is recommended that you go for an ECN/STP broker. By doing business with an ECN/STP broker, it sets you free from the grey area of conflict of interest.

Some good ECN/STP brokers out there requires a minimum capital of 10,000 USD or even 50,000 USD.

Note that the above options mainly focus on initial trading capital amount, other factors should also be considered like below:

Leverage level (50:1 / 100:1 / 200:1 / 400:1)
Risk percentage of each trade on overall portfolio
Trading style
Country where a forex broker is domiciled for the tax implications
So on

Experience luck everyday toward your fortune.

Your Success,

Timothy Truong

Related Forex Hedging Articles

FXDD Wins 6 Traders’ Choice Awards, Including Best Overall FX Broker

FXDD Wins 6 Traders’ Choice Awards, Including Best Overall FX Broker

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 1, 2010

FXDD, a leading online Forex broker, has received six 2010 FX Traders’ Choice Awards, including the Eagle Award for top honors in the Global FX Broker – Best Overall category. FXDD also took the Falcon Award in each of the following categories:

Best Overall, Trading Platform
Customer Service Department
Accounts Department
Funding Department.

Out of 100 international brokers, an elite group of 13 were qualified as Global FX Brokers. The 2010 FX Traders’ Choice Awards evaluated trader satisfaction by continent; FX traders in the Americas rated close to 100 brokers, and identified FXDD as one of the top three firms in Client Satisfaction. Both Forex Datasource and IBTimesFX , organizers of the FX Traders’ Choice Awards, were proud to present the Falcon Award to FXDD for High Broker Satisfaction in the Americas.

“The performance of FXDD during this year’s FX Traders’ Choice award is nothing less than stellar,” says Javier Paz, creator of the Awards and CEO of Forex Datasource. “The results of these awards are free of commercial interests and are more sophisticated than any broker awards out there. FXDD demonstrated that it is one of the most recognized broker names in Forex, and that it serves its clients extremely well.”

Sonny Kwon, co-organizer of the Awards and Head of Development at IBTimes, added: “The International Business Times family is proud to be associated with the 2010 FX Traders’ Choice Awards, and congratulates FXDD on winning such a high number of awards this year.”

Accepting the awards on behalf of FXDD, Tom O’Reilly-Senior Vice-President of Sales, stated, “We are honored at this major accomplishment. It is a testament of the fact that the vision of our CEO, Joseph Botkier, of putting the client first was 100% accurate. In today’s very competitive FX broker market, many offers are similar, but we are pleased to be the ones who take the time to listen and help clients when we talk to them.”

For additional information regarding the 2010 FX Traders’ Choice Awards and to view footage from the Awards ceremony, visitors are encouraged to visit http://www.ibtimes.com/awards/fx-traders-choice-2010/.

About FX Traders’ Choice Awards

The FX Traders’ Choice Awards are the result of a partnership between Forex Datasource and International Business Times (IBTimes) over the course of two years. In this partnership, IBTimes employs its vast global readership to gather votes, while Forex Datasource uses its market research expertise to analyze the results independently of commercial considerations. The Awards are generated using the input of thousands of retail Forex traders from over 110 nations. The high integrity, scientific approach to data analysis, and vast geographic scope of the results make the FX Traders’ Choice Awards the most reliable broker distinctions in the retail Forex industry.

About FXDD

FXDD, a registered Foreign Exchange Dealer and member of the National Futures Association, headquartered in New York City, is a leader in online Forex trading dedicated to providing superior customer service, powerful trading technology, and reliable streaming liquidity. FXDD provides services to individual and institutional traders, hedge funds, commercial entities, brokerage firms and money managers around the world. FXDD offers 24-hour Forex trading by way of its trading platforms, which include: Metatrader, FXDDTrader, PowerTrader and FXDDAuto. The Company’s services currently provide competitive interbank pricing, no-interest accounts, and fully-automated execution. FXDD also provides 100:1 leverage as well as competitive bid-to-ask spreads (2-3-wide on most majors).

For a free demo, please visit http://www.fxdd.com or call toll-free in the U.S. at 1.866.FOR.FXDD

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©Copyright 1997-

, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

Related Forex Hedging Press Releases

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Online Broker TradeKing Launches its Probability Calculator to Help Investors Estimate the Potential for Volatile Share Price Movements

Online Broker TradeKing Launches its Probability Calculator to Help Investors Estimate the Potential for Volatile Share Price Movements

Boca Raton, Fla., (PRWEB) February 9, 2006

Equity investors and options traders looking for an edge on how stock prices might react to anticipated events now have access to a new online stock trading calculator that draws on the predictive power of options trading to gauge the probability of future share price movements.

Using real-time option pricing data and a bell-curve distribution, the TradeKing™ Probability Calculator, available at http://www.tradeking.com, calculates the likelihood of a stock or index moving above or below a chosen target price at a future date. Equity traders or options traders, for example, can estimate the probability of a given stock touching a target price by a selected date.

“Taking the stock price of Google as an example, the TradeKing probability calculator today says that the probability of Google shares touching $ 400.00 by February 28, 2006 is 68.8% and the probability of Google touching $ 350.00 by the end of the month is 31.3%,” said Donato A. Montanaro, Jr., TradeKing’s co-founder and CEO. “With Google shares trading around $ 368, this is a very useful tool.”

“At TradeKing, we don’t believe investing should be a solitary experience, which is why we created a tool to help investors tap the collective wisdom of the market to help them make buy, sell or hold decisions,” added Montanaro. “Our probability calculator can illustrate, in real-time, exactly how the option market is handicapping the price outcome for a particular stock, which is valuable data for any kind of investor or investment strategy.” The probability calculator – an everyday tool used by market makers, floor traders and hedge funds – is available free to TradeKing customers.

The TradeKing Probability Calculator filters complex pricing and statistical data into a cleanly designed, easy-to-use web page with pre-populated data fields, informative charts and straightforward tools to explore stock price outcomes.

“Our goal is to offer simple, yet sophisticated tools that help investors truly understand the risks and rewards in the marketplace,” added Montanaro. “We want our retail investors to benefit from the same trading tools available to professional investors. Tools like this online stock trading calculator demystify the investing experience and make it more engaging and effective for everyone.”

TradeKing, at http://www.tradeking.com, is a nationally licensed online broker dealer offering a flat

fee of $ 4.95 for both equity and option trades, plus 65 cents per contract for options, with no hidden fees or account minimums. The TradeKing Web-based platform features powerful online equity and options trading tools including real-time portfolio information, advanced order entry, customized charting and alerts, free research and integrated news, stock, option and mutual fund screeners, volatility charts, a pricing probability calculator, enhanced option chains and interactive educational information.

TradeKing provides self-directed investors with discount brokerage services, and does not make recommendations or offer investment advice. Online trading system response and access times may vary due to market conditions, system performance, and other factors. Non-U.S. residents may be subject to country-specific restrictions. Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options available at http://www.tradeking.com. $ 4.95 commission rate applies to equity and option trades. See http://www.tradeking.com for more details on trade commissions for low priced stock, bonds, mutual funds and other securities. Add 1 cent per share for the entire order for stocks priced $ 2.00 or less.

For more information, please contact:

Peter Seed                        

TradeKing                    

561-988-0171

Stewart Lewack

The Hubbell Group, Inc.

781-878-8882

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Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

What university/college program do I take to become a stock broker?

Question by Alden Smith: What university/college program do I take to become a stock broker?
I want to trade stocks professionally and one day hopefully open my own “john & funds” or “john and co.” or whatever..

I am 19 years old right now and have been trading stocks,bonds,forex,options for the last 4 years so i know the market.

What program should i take? bach of comm? or mba? or what? are there even any programs that are directly catered towards the stock market area???

Best answer:

Answer by In Science we trust
You don’t actually need a college degree to become a stock broker although it will help getting a job a the more reputable and established brokerage firms. You have to pass a broker’s license test even if you have a college degree. Many firms will hire you while you study and take the test. In general, a finance degree is probably the best preparation. Many colleges offer finance majors a part of their business programs.

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FXOpen Investments Inc. Crowned Broker of the Year 2009 at the Moscow Forex Expo

FXOpen Investments Inc. Crowned Broker of the Year 2009 at the Moscow Forex Expo

Moscow, Russia (PRWEB) November 26, 2009

FXOpen Investments Inc. (http://www.fxopen.com), one of the world’s leading Forex brokers and Metatrader technology innovators, was awarded the prestigious Broker of the Year 2009 award in Moscow’s Forex Expo. FXOpen was also awarded with the Best Broker in the Middle East and Asia 2009 award.

The award finalists were announced in an official ceremony during the first day of the Moscow Expo on November 20th at the Radission SAS Slavyanskaya Hotel.

The award couldn’t come at a better time, as FXOpen has only recently opened up its first Russian office in the prestigious Federation Tower in Moscow. FXOpen has also introduced the first ever MT4 ECN trading platform coupled with PAMM accounts and decimal lots trading.

“FXOpen Investments Inc. is extremely pleased to have received these two prestigious awards especially since this is the first ever Moscow Expo for FXOpen. We are equally thrilled with the new Moscow office opening recently,” said Elena Issaeva, FXOpen’s Moscow General Manager.

“These awards signal to our Russian clients that FXOpen is a globally leading brand. We are leaders in client service and in trading technology and innovation. With our new MT4 ECN we provide even better service and conditions to retail clients who are keen to trade on ECN as well as to money managers who are able to easily offer their trading services to new clients via our PAMM accounts.”

For more information about FXOpen Investments Inc. and its trading services or to open a free demo account, please visit: http://www.fxopen.com or http://www.fxopen.ru for the new Moscow office.

About FXOpen Investments Inc.

FXOpen Investments Inc. is one of the largest Forex brokers in the world enjoying unprecedented growth with more than 200,000 active accounts and over $ 60 billion in traded volume passing through its platform on a monthly basis.

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, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

UFX Bank, the Leading Online Forex Broker, Receives Praise for Their New Promotions

UFX Bank, the Leading Online Forex Broker, Receives Praise for Their New Promotions

London, UK (PRWEB) July 24, 2009

The results are interesting and fairly unexpected; most traders prefer receiving education resources like training courses over receiving cash bonuses. This changes the perception of Online Brokerage firms who have historically offered cash bonuses in return for deposits.

UFX Bank (http://www.ufxbank.com) have also discovered, that the majority of their traders use the charts and currency quotes which they are provided with on the site regularly. Other important resources for traders are fundamental trading tools like an accurate economic calendar. While, not all traders use fundamental data to execute their trades, for others referring to the economic calendar forms an important part of their trading strategy.

UFX Bank also run an ongoing promotion for depositing clients, as a value added signal service whereby they send signals out 3-5 times a day. This has proven to be an extremely popular service amongst traders because of the relevancy and timing of the signals.

UFX Bank have for a long time believed that education is the most vital ingredient to the success of any trader. The learning curve is steep and the most successful traders are those who are keen to learn about trading. UFX Bank supply traders with Forex education and trading tools aswell as a personal account manager to talk them through their first trades.

About Us:

UFX Bank, who have already become a brand name amongst Forex traders both at a beginner and expert level, have built their brand on a very simple and quick execution turnaround. It is this simplicity that has shot this brokerage firm to the hearts and minds of traders across the globe. UFX Bank offer instant execution on dozens of currency pairs, as well as Silver and Gold and Oil. UFX Bank give their customers full support and all the resources they need to make educated trades.

Contact:

Kate Leaman

UFX Bank

00442081500608 x204

http://www.ufxbank.com

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©Copyright 1997-

, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

EGAR Technology Provides Custom Options Tools, Calculators and Volatility Data for Innovative On?Line Broker ?TradeKing?

EGAR Technology Provides Custom Options Tools, Calculators and Volatility Data for Innovative On–Line Broker “TradeKing”

(PRWEB) February 3, 2006

“TradeKing”, a nationally licensed broker dealer with powerful online equity and option trading tools, has selected the services provided by a well-known on-line financial resource IVolatility.com, supported by EGAR Technology. The partnership offers TradeKing customers access to powerful option pricing and screening tools previously available only to professionals.

The services, supplied by IVolatility.com, one of the leading providers of options implied volatility data and analytical tools for options traders, include Historical and Implied Volatility Charts, Calculator Content, RT Options Scanner and the RT Strategy Scanner and Probability Calculator.

TradeKing’s CEO, Don Montanaro, said that “while launching TradeKing, we closely evaluated many data and services providers and IVolatility.com rose to the top in the options segment of the market. Their services, data and analytical tools for stock and index options are extremely powerful and easy-to- use. Their tools fit nicely into our online trading platform and provide market-leading capabilities for TradeKing customers who want to trade options. We’re very pleased to partner with them.”

Gena Ioffe, Chairman and CEO of EGAR, continues: “We think TradeKing is a very promising company, and are pleased to have them as a new client. We have wide experience in financial data field and many market-leaders among our clients, so we expect, that using the data and services that we are providing, TradeKing will take a strong position on the on-line trading market.”

About Trade King

TradeKing, is a nationally licensed broker dealer with powerful online equity and option trading tools including real-time portfolio information, advanced order entry, customized charting and alerts, free research and integrated news, stock, option and mutual fund screeners, volatility charts, a pricing probability calculator, enhanced option chains and interactive educational information. TradeKing offers among the lowest trading commissions on the Internet and enables its customers to trade and manage a full suite of investments, including stocks, traditional options, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, bonds and Treasuries.

About IVolatility.com

IVolatility.com is an award-winning, revolutionary data service that provides all the information required by equity options traders for pre-trade analysis, post-trade decision support and risk management. IVolatility.com’s database represents the most complete and accurate source of historical implied volatility (IV) and correlation data ever developed and can be accessed with a simple web browser or a direct data feed. The technology partner for IVolatility.com is EGAR Technology, Inc (http://www.egartech.com) a provider of trading, risk management, and custom development solutions for financial institutions.

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©Copyright 1997-

, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

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