1. Costs
Costs can be quite different from broker to broker. They may charge fees per transaction or they may operate only on spread, or a mixture of the 2. Spread is the difference between the buy price and the sell cost. Check the costs for the currency pairs that you are most certain to trade, since this is what will impact you most.
2. Lots
The broker will have a minimum lot size which is related to the minimum investment level. Generally, a standard lot is 100,000 currency units, a mini lot is ten thousand and a micro lot 1,000. It can be helpful to be able to trade smaller lots for some systems so you can take a few lots per trade change the quantity of each trade, close out half of your profits, etc . Otherwise, some brokers allow fractional lots so you could trade half a lot, for example.
3. Leverage
Leverage means that you don’t need anywhere near the real lot size in your account. Most traders doubtless operate with 100 times leverage, so $10 controls $1,000, $100 controls $10,000 etc . some brokers offer two hundred times or maybe 400 times. This gives you the chance to earn more cash with less, but also carries more risk.
4. Support
There may be times when you want tech support fast. All brokers offer some kind of service, but it is worth testing speed and style of reply by asking a technical question after you have signed up to a demo account with your shortlisted currency exchange broker.