Choosing The Best Currency Trading Software System For Your Forex Needs

Those new to forex (fx) trading often get overwhelmed by the number of currency trading system software packages available to choose from. There are thousands of features available, and newcomers often wonder whether they need all those extra bells and whistles. A few terms are worth learning in this regard.

A forex feed is a continuous stream of quotes for any currency pair from data providers. It is used by a charting package to draw charts which are being constantly updated. We can apply technical indicators ( i.e. MACD, Stochastic, RSI, Bollinger Bands, etc…) in charting packages for generating Buy or Sell signals, which is called technical analysis.

A currency trading software on the other hand, continually updates the quotes for a given currency pair, and allows us to put buy or sell orders in various ways ( i.e. market orders, limit orders, stop loss orders etc.). It is important that the software package we choose must not lag behind the actual worldwide market rates. If it does, we are at risk of slippage and could lose money because by the time we place an order based on the price displayed on the screen, the market has actually moved quite a bit in the opposite direction.

Forex traders have to learn the art of using technical analysis charts, and based on their criteria, determine the exact points of entry and exit for any trade. In many instances, traders also use economic news that are known to influence currency pairs to make these decisions. Some currency trading software packages contain technical charts as well as a ‘news squawk box’ or links to websites and pages that deliver currency related news.

Finally, the currency trading software that you choose might have software bugs or slow down your computer. In some instances, they have been known to crash the computer. If this happens at a very critical moment in your day trading, particularly when economic announcements are being released, it might mean that you can miss some vital currency movements, or worse yet, lose money.

Be prepared for outages. We recommend that you have your broker’s phone number and server address written down on a piece of paper and stick it to your computer. You never know when you will have power off. It is also wise to have your account number and password written down on paper in case your software or computer break down for any reason. You need to be able to contact the trading support to exit your trade or any other help. It pays to know your software well. Spend time before you make your final decision before you buy it.

The firms selling these software packages spend $1000 on marketing them, and this kind of marketing can be highly misleading as it only highlights the pros of the product but downplays its cons, so you must only consider buying a product after reading an independent and impartial review, from people who are already using it.

The important thing is to buy the software that best matches your strategy's objectives and helps you with the hard work, personally speaking I have used various charting software packages for watching the markets, I do use various forex brokers, their platforms are excellent for trading, but their free charts are appalling, and impossible to use. What seems to be a margin of 100 pips on the free charting facility looks so certain and real, but when you check with a good charting software you see that the market has already moved and there's no margin at all, the market has already hit that resistance or support you had seen!