Broker to Trading

What is the best broker can depend on a range of factors such as the trading platform offered and type of trading available on these platforms, however in the table above are regulated brokers offering Stocks CFD trading on a range of platforms. When day trading any market, a trader is aiming to trade a market in a short time frame, that is to open and close trades within a trading session. For the stock market the session is defined as the opening hours of the particular stock market being traded. With a CFD the trader can trade a market on a short time frame.

When trading a Stock CFD the trader does not own any Stocks, rather trades with the CFD provider based on the price movement of the Stocks to which the CFD is referenced. CFDs allow leverage (increasing leverage increases risk) and the capacity to go long or short. It might be expected when trading any market that the trader may wish to go long or short given the way the day trading time frame can fluctuate. When day trading the trader is speculating on movement in the price of a market in a short time frame, thus factors such as fundamental data affecting price and technical analysis can come into play.

Some brokers may offer a large number of Stocks CFDs, these are typically available on the trading platform, such as a web trader or downloadable platform. Others may offer Stocks on MT4 and MT5, which are third party platforms. These will tend to be less in number than the large bulk offered by some on their web traders. This said a trader may wish to use a platform supporting automated trading such as MT4, MT5 or JForex.

Day trading can evidence complex patterns which a trader may find difficult to cope with day after day, thus they may wish to let robots trade on their behalf, as computer programs do not tire and remain accurate and precise within the parameters of their programming. However the trader may also find that they need to use their discretion as well, as trading robots can create drawdown or losses in the trader's account as they execute trading strategies.

A Stocks CFD trader may wish to focus on a market such as the UK or US market and all these brokers will have Stocks CFD based on these markets. It should be noted that any broker which reports a large number of CFDs, will typically have a great bulk of these as Stocks CFDs. The number of markets within other categories tends to be limited, but there are many stocks out there.

Thus a stocks day trader may choose to specialise in a market or a few stocks, but may also wish to explore others across the world and a CFD broker provides this facility. Brokers will tend to report a maximum leverage for Forex as a headline figure, but this will not be for stocks, which will have lower leverage available.

Best Online Stock Broker For Day Trading

The pick of best stock broker for day trader comes down to City Index vs Pepperstone, with the caveat that other brokers could be chosen, depending on a wide range of factors some of which may be related to the way a trader trades. City Index is chosen for traders who execute their own trades, Pepperstone is chosen for traders who want to use features offered by an ECN broker.

City Index has many more Stocks CFDs than Pepperstone (4,500+ vs 1000+), however Pepperstone offers Stocks CFDs on MT5 and is an ECN broker with fast order processing. MT5 is a platform which is the successor to MT4. MT4 was developed partly for day trading, specifically Forex. MT5 itself was developed partly to support a wider range of markets to trade, in particular Stocks CFDs. MT5 has a wide range of features including support for automated trading. City Index offers a user friendly web trader (called Web Trader) to trade Stocks CFDs.