Why should I choose you as my broker?

Why should I choose you as my broker?

Over the last two weeks, I attended two talks on futures trading.  Apparently Bursa Malaysia is trying to get more people to trade in Derivatives and these two companies are actively promoting their brokerage services.  So why should I choose one over the other as my broker?

From what I observed, they organized talks to get people to sign up.  Usually the talks are on topics like what is futures?  Where is gold (or some other commodity or indices) headed?  How are the economies of the various countries performing?  The inflows and outflows of foreign funds.  Getting people to sign up as clients does not equate to making commissions.  Most people sign up but never trade.

So how will these knowledge lead me to making better trading decisions? 

Obviously a potential client will look for low commission and better service which should include reports, recommendations and a good trading platform.  To me a good trading platform will enable me to make better trading decisions since it is the timing of the entries that is important to making better trades. 

Unfortunately the talks usually give importance to economic and fundamental topics but left out their trading platforms.  Why don’t they give more emphasis on their trading platforms?  Is it because they are so poorly set up that they are afraid to show them to potential clients? Or are they afraid we will trade through the US companies?

The first talk I attended two weeks back did present their trading platform but the poor guy was given so little time he had to rush through his presentation like a bullet train.  Because of this we ended up where we started from, not knowing much about the trading platform.  The talk I attended last night was organized by a company which had collaboration with E-Signals one or two years back.  I don’t know whether they still have this with E-Signals.  The talk concentrated on what is a Futures contract and the economy of different countries.  This is like a tripod missing one leg.  At the end of the talk I overheard a man (not an employee of the company) at the back of the room telling an elderly couple that this brokerage house does not offer training on how to trade. 

I checked out my old copies of TASC and found that most of the advertisements proclaim the ability of their trading platforms to offer, amongst other things, technical charts to enable their clients to make better trading decisions with ease.

These speakers will tell you where the market is going but the market don’t travel in a straight line.  Hopefully the margin calls will not destroy you.

Even if they bring in a Technical Analyst to speak on Technical Analysis, they will only touch on the very basic.  I once tried to ask an “expert” analyst on some aspects of T.A and he clammed up so fast, faster than a clam would.  Reminds me of the clams you see in the wet market?  Normally they open their shells and you can see the fleshy part but once you touch them, they close very quickly. Funny, they also exist in the financial markets.