One of the most important thing when starting forex trading is testing various forex trading platforms at the internet to select the the one that can fulfill your needs. You can't skip this even if you have an automated trading system ready because your system will need a tool to access the market.

A trading platform is software that connects a trader and the forex market by providing basic features such as live price, execute orders, and account management. The other capabilities ranged widely depend on the creator and the purpose; a few of them are built solely for certain market, the other can handle foreign exchange, futures, and CFD markets.

Usually, forex trading platforms are given free by the brokers when you use their services. This can be in software form that you must install in your computer or an online platform. Nowadays, these broker’s trading platform provides quite comprehensive features; at the very least they are all support basic charting which is the bread and butter of forex market analysis.

Using a free trading platform from your broker is not always available option though; for example: if you are using Expert Advisor (EA)/forex robot, usually it can’t run at the broker’s trading platform, so you have to use another popular platform: Meta Trader (widely known as MT4).

So, exactly what do you require from these forex trading platforms? These are some things that a platform should have:

1. Quick access to your account information and also orders summary. One of the important feature is it must display real time value of your account by calculating current price and your open positions. Example: if you close your position at the current price, your account will get profit/loss by 20 pips.

2. User friendly interface to get to your preferable currency pair. It must provide you with real time accurate updates on the market movement and live chart to support your analysis.

3. Easy to execute orders. When the market has hit the right price, you don’t have time to clicking various button and link across the screen just to make an entry. It should be easily found everywhere.

4. Quick and accurate to execute order. Some forex trading platforms can't fulfill these requirements on a steady basis. Typically, the issue is the trading platform won’t execute the order that you have given; it will display the ‘waiting’ status while the market price keep moving and make you lose potential profits.

This can be due to connection issues which can also be experienced by a credible broker, but there is also other probability: your account is in a scam brokerage. These brokers are designing their forex trading platforms so it will make it hard for you to have a winning trade or proper risk management. Sometimes it will not execute your stop loss order with various excuses afterwards. If you have encountered this repeatedly, just withdraw your fund and get another broker.

Scam brokerage aside, there are a bunch of good forex trading platforms available from honest forex brokers; just do your reasearch when selecting a broker and you will be okay. The user interface of the platforms may different for every broker, but so long as it is fulfill the 4 requirements that I’ve mentioned above, it ought to serve you well.