Best Online Trading Platforms for Investing 2022 in The UK
If you plan to invest in the Forex, CFDs, futures trading, or cryptocurrencies market a trading platform plays a pivotal role in your investing and trading journey. Trading platforms and online stock brokerage firms play a very important role in today’s society; this is why we will tell you what you should know about them in this post. Let’s start by looking at foundational topics like what stockbrokers do in the world of trading and online trading.
What do stockbrokers do?
Stock brokers are the ones who facilitate and enable trading in the global investment market.
In a nutshell, stock brokers are intermediaries and their main job is to keep an eye and make purchases through the exchange. Why do we go to them? Simple, in the case of online stock brokers, they are the only ones who have the permission to intervene and buy and sell stocks through an exchange of which they charge a commission to do so. The actual stock broker & stock exchanges should be licensed and regulated firms.
How do you know which is the ideal online broker?
It is not easy to find the ideal trading platform or online broker. So now, we’ll look at what you need to know to make it work.
- Experience: experience is one of the main things to find a good stockbroker. Without experience it doesn’t work. The stock market is a complex business that not everyone understands and understanding how it moves takes time.
- Credibility: before doing business, find out about the person, analyse how their trading platform operates, if they have a good reputation and more detail on commission and how they go about executing trades in your behalf.
- Good reputation: On the internet you can find out about many things and if you have doubts about a broker, search for him and find out about his reputation, studies and so on.
- Commission: Although they say that the more expensive the more it is worth it, keep in mind that many of them have varied commission structures. You should look for a broker that has consistent prices and commission structure.
As a last tip, we will tell you that a good online broker will also have contact information and some even offer an account management service for retail investors.
The best online brokerage platforms
As we mentioned above, stockbrokers are people in charge of advising various investors. However, the million-dollar question is, which are the best stockbrokers? We will now mention some of them.
Plus500
It is one of the best online stock brokers and CFD providers. It is based in Israel and has a good international reputation. It has been offering services to millions of traders or investors since 2008.
This company known as Plus500, is among those listed on the London Stock Exchange market and has the permissions by the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom. Among its offerings are:
- Cryptocurrency
- Commodities
- Forex
XTB Online Broker
If you want to invest in commodities, XTB is one to consider. XTB is active in over 1,455 global markets and has several platforms such as xStation and Metal Trader4. These platforms were designed for your convenience and so that you could have the latest technology at your fingertips.
XTB is considered by far one of the best stock brokers online due to its diversity and ease of use. Without a doubt the opportunities it offers are not to be missed.
Ava Trade
In today’s market, investing in profitable businesses or ideas is necessary. Ava Trade offers the opportunity to make these investments similar to the other platforms but with a different interface. In case you were wondering, Ava Trade has more than 5 licenses in 5 continents with its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. Among the agencies it regulates are:
- The European Union by the Central Bank of Ireland.
- In Australia by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).
- In the British Virgin Islands by the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission.
- In South Africa by the Financial Services Board (FSB).
- In Japan by the Financial Services Agency (FSA), the Financial Futures Association and the Futures Exchange Association.
This online broker is undoubtedly one of the best and is very secure. In addition, the features it has and the ease with which it handles the world market are impeccable.
Trading in Different Asset Classes
In CFDs
Investing in this way called CFDs or Contract for Difference in Spanish, means that you are buying a right to buy or sell some asset. How does it work to buy an asset? Instead of buying the whole asset, you are paying for the right to buy and sell it.
Of course, by buying a part of the asset, it will cost much less but it is a kind of leverage or an ace up your sleeve that you can sell later. If you are lucky and the price of such assets will go up and you will be able to earn much more than with your initial purchase.
Investing in binary options
Binary options are another way of investing. It works as follows: you have to predict whether the price of that stock will go up or down over a period of time. If it goes up, you earn a total of 80%, but if it goes down, you lose everything.
Many people make this type of investment because you do not need large sums of money to make investments of this type. Of course, as you can see, it is a risky method.
Social trading investing
Some stock market investors allow the use of social trading investments. This type of investment is based on copying the operations of other traders who are demonstrating high profitability which you would benefit from.
Apps for investing in stocks
If you want to have everything at your fingertips and prefer to make investments from your phone, we will tell you which applications you should consider.
eToro: Social Trading
It is an App that allows you to invest in various stocks or in the main stock exchanges around the world. The best thing is that with eToro you don’t have to pay commissions and you can open an account for free.
However, you must keep in mind that this App only applies to leveraged investments that follow short sell orders. On the other hand, if you want to create your own portfolio, eToro also has a tool that works for this.
And if you don’t feel able to start investing right away, eToro has its own investment simulator where they give you $100,000 of virtual capital.
Trading212
Trading212 is based in London and is one of the most secure online trading apps. It was created in Bulgaria and its funding technology is one of the best and most advanced. Because of the latter, it is one of the world’s most popular and widely used traders.
One of the things that make Trading212 different is that it included free and easy to use applications, which makes it possible for anyone to use this App. Without a doubt it is the perfect online trading app for beginners.
In Trading212 you will have quality information and active stock trading with low commission rates. Although the App’s specialisation is Forex trading, it also allows CFD trading.
Fidelity
Fidelity has many funds that have risen in performance in recent years. It is one of the most renowned investment sites. So far this year, this company has risen 21% in its funds.
Undoubtedly, in Fidelity you will find the opportunity to make your investments in the hands of the best professionals. In addition, the platform is very simple. You can sell your bank funds while they are on offer.
Advantages of investing with an online broker
The main advantage is the opportunity to make all these movements from home. You can look for the financial platform of your liking and that suits your needs. However, apart from this, investing in online platforms has other advantages:
- You will not have to worry about very high commissions since online platforms have a very low charge per transaction.
- You can trade on the upside or downside.
- You will always be able to invest and fund your account, at any time and at any hour
- Most of these online brokerage platforms allow you to set risk management options like stop orders, stop limit orders and trailing stop orders which execute a trade when a price falls and you wish to cash out!
Although cliché, knowledge is truly power. With so many online trading platforms available one must research before truly committing to a platform. In some cases, investors opt to have two platforms funded to take advantage of the best functions on each platform or because some stocks/cryptos are available on one platform over the other. We hope you found this blog useful. Visit the YouTube channel www.youtube.com/soambitiousdom for more content on the best online trading platforms.
