In previous post, I have explained about reliable VPS. After choosing the right one, then we are going to the next step. This time we will select some good forex broker companies that suitable for Automated Forex Trading. Why do I choose this topic? That’s because not all forex brokerage are using a same trading platform. There are Meta Trader 4, Ninja Trader, Virtual Trader (VT), Trading Station, Trade Decision, etc. Not all of them can be setting for automated trading. One of platform that supports automated trading is Meta Trader 4 from Metaquotes.net

So, now we know that platform is important thing in automated trading. The reason why we choose Meta Trader 4 is almost 90% of retail brokers use this platform. Most traders develop their automated trading robots in MQL, computer language that is developed by Metaquotes exclusively for Meta Trader 4 Automated Trading. Robot that is developed in MQL is called Expert Advisor (EA).

Many retail brokers use Meta Trader 4 as their trading platform. Help me, I am confused because there are a lot of…. How I can find the right one? Yes, there are some requirements that should be provided by the broker for automated trading. I will list that below :

1. Allow Automated Trading. Broker should activates the automated trading menu in MetaTrader 4 Platform. Yes, not all broker accept trading by robots. Even MetaTrader 4 support that function, broker still can choose to activate it or not. So, you must confirm this issue to your broker before using Expert Advisor.
2. Fast Execution. Many brokers don’t support this criteria. Delay for opening or closing trades can make our profit become smaller and causing problems for Expert Advisor. So, we can make deposit for a very little money to try the execution speed of the broker.
3. Use Filtering Price. Price data (or tick data) is sent by broker to our computer every time if there is any changes in the market. Some broker don’t use filter for this data, so tick data that comes to our computer is moving so fast. This can makes a problem for manual even for automated trading. Smooth price moving is good for Expert Advisor.
4. Have Micro Account. Let say we have a profitable Expert Advisor, so we want this EA to trade in our live account. But we don’t know the capability of this EA exactly before placing it at live trading for real money. Some of us may think to try EA in demo account to test it. What I can say is the result won’t be same as live account using real money. Why? Because the tick data for demo account is different from live. So, we want to test this EA in live account but don’t want to loss a lot of money. The solution is using in micro account where 1 points = $0.01. Just for a little money to deposit and we can test EA in live account.
5. Non Dealing Desk. This is an additional criteria to select good broker for automated trading. In Non Dealing Desk feature, orders are handled by computer so they will be executed very fast. This won’t be seen in manual handling by human operators. So, if broker has this feature, it will be an added value for them.
6. Support High Leverage. If we try with a little money, then we must consider to use high leverage. This will reduce our deposit and margin use.
7. Support Many Payment Processor. If we want to deposit for a little money, actually we don’t want to pay for expensive transfer fees, right? So, try to find a broker that support many payment processor because that will reduce the transfer fees.

That are some requirements for selecting suitable brokers for implementing automated trading. One of forex brokers that supports all of them that I have found is LiteForex. They have some trading account types that support for testing and using Expert Advisor for real trading. You can check it at their website.

If you have any suggestions for improving this article, please don’t hesitate to write your comment in this post. Thanks for reading my blog and please visit often because you will find a lot of good article about automated forex trading in here.