레슨
- 01How to choose a forex broker.To choose a forex broker, check four things before you deposit. Confirm the licence on the regulator's own register, work out the full cost of a trade from spread, commission and swap, test how orders are filled, and make a small withdrawal to see how payouts work. A broker that fails the licence check needs no further study.
- 02What does a forex broker actually do?A forex broker opens your trading account, streams buy and sell prices, accepts your orders and fills them, either with outside liquidity providers or by taking the other side itself. It also holds your deposit, sets aside margin while trades are open, applies leverage, charges or pays swap and closes positions at stop out.
- 03Is your forex broker regulated? How to check a licence.A regulated forex broker holds a licence from a government authority such as the UK's FCA or Australia's ASIC. To check it, find the legal company name and licence number on the broker's site, then search them on the regulator's own register and confirm the website and contact details match.
- 04Red flags of a fake or unsafe forex broker.A fake or unsafe forex broker usually shows itself in a few ways: no licence or a cloned one, promises of guaranteed profit, pressure to deposit, payments to personal or unrelated accounts, bonus terms that lock your money, and withdrawals that stall or need a fee paid first. Check the regulator's register and test a small withdrawal.
- 05Who is on the other side of your forex trade?In retail forex, the other side of your trade is usually your broker. Spot forex has no central exchange, so deals are made over the counter, and your trade is most often a cash-settled CFD with the broker. The broker may keep that risk, hedge it with a liquidity provider, or match it against other clients.
- 06How forex brokers make money.Forex brokers earn from the spread, the gap between the buy and sell price, often widened by a markup they keep. Many also charge commission per lot and add a margin to overnight swap. A broker that takes the other side of your trade can also profit when you lose.
- 07A-book and B-book brokers explained.An A-book broker passes your trade to an outside liquidity provider and earns from a markup or commission, so your win or loss does not change its income. A B-book broker takes the other side itself, so it gains when you lose and pays when you win. Many brokers use both.
- 08How A-book brokers earn, and what limits them.A pure A-book broker passes each client trade to a liquidity provider, so it earns nothing from your losses. Its income is a markup on the spread, a commission per lot, swap markups and fees. Income per lot is small after routing costs, so the broker needs high volume, and it can only offer the prices its providers quote.
- 09STP and ECN execution explained.STP, straight-through processing, means your broker passes your order automatically to outside liquidity providers and usually earns by widening the spread. ECN, electronic communication network, means your order meets prices from many participants in a shared order book, usually with a raw spread plus a commission. Both are labels, so check how your broker actually routes orders.
- 10Internalisation: how brokers net client orders.Internalisation is when a broker offsets client buy orders against client sell orders inside its own books. Opposite trades cancel, so only the leftover net position is left to hedge or keep. This cuts the broker's outside costs and risk, while each client's contract stays with the broker, who remains the counterparty.
- 11Hybrid brokers and the C-book.A hybrid broker sends some client trades to liquidity providers (A-book) and keeps others in house, taking the other side itself (B-book). Routing usually depends on account results, trade size, style and total exposure. C-book has no fixed definition; it most often means splitting one trade, hedging part and keeping the rest.
- 12Your broker's hedging policy and why it matters.A broker's hedging policy decides whether you can hold a buy and a sell on the same pair in one account, and how much margin that pair uses. Hedging accounts keep both positions open; netting accounts close or shrink the first one. Margin on a hedged pair can be full, one leg or zero.
- 13Where your broker's prices come from.Your broker's prices start as quotes streamed by liquidity providers, mostly banks and non-bank trading firms. An aggregator keeps the highest bid and lowest ask from these streams, and the broker usually adds a markup before the price reaches your platform. Different providers, markups and timing mean two brokers can show different prices at the same moment.
- 14How to judge a broker's order execution.Good order execution means your trades fill quickly, close to the price you asked for, with few requotes or rejections. To judge it, log the requested and filled price of every market order over dozens of trades. Slippage should run in both directions, with some fills better than requested, and news-time orders kept separate.