Forex crew: I am a total noob to Forex. Get in here and help me (please :) )

I want a practice Forex account with a good trading platform with a good brokerage that won't rape me on spreads or take positions against me if I decide to use real money.

1. Where do I go to get this?

2. Is there anywhere I can get a practice account without actually having to deposit money into a real account while I practice?

Oh, also, how are taxes on forex profits different from stocks? I'm assuming there's no wash sale rule and no PDT rule. Just a high level, one or two sentence answer will suffice.

Thanks.

 

Also, I found this broker comparison. Is Oanda the best broker? I like their small minimum trade amounts ($1) as opposed to some that have a minimum trade size of $10k (wtf?).

http://www.goforex.net/forex-broker-comparison.htm

 

stay away from ECNs (IB)

 

Hi IronFist - For spot trading, most of the platforms will offer demos. I've tried quite a few of the dealing desks (CMC, GFT, FXCM, FXSol) and of these, I preferred CMC. But if you ask 100 people and you'll get a 100 different answers. I no longer use any of these - I've settled in with IB.

As for taxes, spot forex is kind of the wild west. Check out http://www.greencompany.com/EducationCenter/GTTRecCurrency.shtml for details.

Why do you say this Paliz?

 

Oanda is a very good choice. Tight spreads..trade as low as 1$..easy to use platform.

 

I would recommend that the op do a search for other threads on Oanda feedback. IIRC, there are those who were less than happy ....

R

 

https://fxtrade.oanda.com/

 

So I'm reading MBTrading's faq, and it says you can open an account with $400 and the minimum trade size is 1 lot which it says is $10,000. So does that mean if you opened an account with $400 you would have to use margin in order to make a trade because you'd have to open a $10,000 position?

 

Thanks, that addresses all my questions

 

I got an Oanda demo. I don't like the java interface, or the fact that the candlestick charts are not even colored by default and you have to choose the colors.

I was playing around last night with EUR/USD. I was up a little bit, then down a lot, and then down a little.

Is EUR/USD a good pair to study for a beginner? I want one of the main currency pairs with higher liquidity (even tho there's no volume in forex, which seems strange).

I have a question about pips, tho. A pip is the smallest unit of movement, right? So like .0001 would be a pip, but if it's one of the currencies that only goes to two decimal places, then .01 would be a pip for that pair, right?

Most of the trades I was doing last night were for 1-4 pips and were open for 5-10 min. Is that bad? Cuz I'm reading things about 30 pip slippages... one slippage like that would negate my last 10 positive trades...