Living As a Trader

Living As a Trader

As the name suggests, a trader trades securities in place of the assets being handled by a company. They buy, sell, and trade through working under bigger investment management companies or firms.

Thanks to price variations, traders don’t usually hold their stocks for long periods of time; they continuously buy and sell stocks.

Traders do not really interact with their investment assets. Instead, they place selling or purchasing orders for their brokerages to execute without them having to worry about it.

If you are interested about partaking in this way of living, then you’ve come to the right place to get an idea on how it works.

The financial market

The financial market is the working place for traders. Here, people trade financial securities and derivatives.

It is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks and shares. They often represent ownership claims on businesses which tend to be listed securities on a public exchange.

This market can span many different industries like Forex, contracts for difference, stocks, and even cryptocurrencies.

Brokerage Firms.

They are more commonly known as brokers. Brokers are experts in the financial market area, having more financial expertise that let them guide their consumers and execute transactions faster and efficiently.

For a trader to buy and sell or trade successfully, they often go looking for a brokerage firm, or brokerage, which are financial institutions that simplify the process of buying and selling financial securities between a buyer and a seller.

Brokers are not just a man between the trader and the exchange; there’s much more to them. They facilitate the flow of trading and gives a trading platform to buy and sell on the exchange.

By charging a commission for their service, the broker takes the role of a firm acting as an agent for a customer, executing buy and sell orders submitted by an investor and charging a fee for it.

Using a Broker.

Making use of a brokerage agency is a lot simpler than you may think.

All you need to do is choosing a reputable broker that has good reviews. If you are knowledgeable on the subject, you can also look for features like low spreads, leverage amount, and financial instruments available.

Once you have chosen a broker, you gain access to their trading platform, which may be a standard–like MetaTrader–or one developed by them.

In these platforms, you are usually shown a graph with price movement data, where you can then proceed to place your orders. To better visualise the data, you may use indicators that simplify the graph.

Finally, placing an order only requires you to define whether you want to buy or sell, but you may place additional instructions such as when to exit a trade to avoid losses or take specific profits.

Available for everyone

Before discount brokers became a thing, accessing the financial markets through a broker was something that only the wealthy could afford. Internet then came in, triggering an explosive opportunity with discount brokers or online brokers.

Online brokers are firms that charge a relatively small commission by performing automated trades from their clients. Instead of using an actual broker assistant, online brokers make use of computerised trading platforms to make possible its trades.

Their commission goes in a range of $5 to $20 per trade. This low fee structured is based on volume and lower costs. These small fees allow investors to trade at lower cost, and the only thing is that they don’t provide personalised advice like Full-service brokers, but they still give an opportunity that lets anybody afford to invest in any market.

Do I need to use a broker for trading?

Well, yes; investing in financial market without the right amount of knowledge can be quite risky, especially if you don’t know when and how to invest in the market. This problem or inconvenience is the main reason for traders to go for a broker.

They help you make investments move in the right moment. Brokers come in handy when it comes to money and investment management. Where traders have months or years trading, brokers have decades doing it, which is excellent when it comes to finding a path for your inversions.

Making use of a broker is also helpful when it comes to build a portfolio and manage it for such an affordable price.