Your broker sets your costs, your execution and — most importantly — the legal protections that apply to your money. This is the checklist to work through before you deposit anything, with anyone.
Traders spend months refining entries and almost no time on the counterparty holding their capital. That is the wrong way round. A poor strategy at a sound broker loses money slowly and recoverably. A sound strategy at a poor broker can lose everything at once — through withdrawal problems, unexpected fees, execution that never matches the quoted price, or an entity with no meaningful regulatory oversight.
The checks below are not exotic. They take an afternoon, they apply to every broker including ours, and skipping them is how most avoidable losses in retail forex actually happen.
Run every one of these yourself, using the broker’s own official documentation and the regulator’s public register — not a review site, and not us.
Large brokers operate several entities in different jurisdictions, and the protections differ enormously between them. Find out which specific company your account will be opened with — it is stated in the client agreement — and confirm that entity’s licence number directly on the regulator’s public register. A licence held by a sister company in another country does not protect you.
Spread is only the visible part. Add commission per lot, overnight swap on positions held past rollover, currency conversion charges if your deposit currency differs, inactivity fees, and withdrawal fees. Model what a realistic month of your trading would actually cost, not the headline spread on their marketing page.
Ask whether client money is segregated from company operating funds, at which bank, and whether any compensation scheme applies to you specifically as a resident of your country. Answers vary by entity and by your own jurisdiction — assumptions here are expensive.
Before scaling up, deposit a small amount, trade briefly, and withdraw it. Note how long it takes, what verification is demanded, and whether the funds return by the same route. Withdrawal friction is the single most common complaint against problem brokers, and it is far cheaper to discover with a small balance.
Open a demo, then a small live account — demo execution is often better than live. Watch spread behaviour during the London–New York overlap and around a scheduled high-impact release. Check whether stops fill near your level or slip badly, and whether the platform stays responsive when it matters.
Find the stop-out level, the margin call level, and whether negative balance protection applies to your entity. High advertised leverage is a marketing feature, not a benefit — what matters is knowing exactly at what point positions are force-closed.
Send a specific technical question — about swap calculation, or stop-out policy — and judge the answer. Vague, scripted or evasive responses on a straightforward question tell you what to expect during an actual dispute.
Any promise of a fixed or guaranteed profit from trading is either a misunderstanding or a fraud. There are no exceptions to this.
Account managers who call urging larger deposits, or who discourage withdrawals, are a serious warning sign regardless of how helpful they seem.
If you cannot find the licence number on the regulator’s own register, treat the claim as false, however professional the website looks.
Deposit bonuses frequently carry volume requirements that make withdrawing your own money conditional on trading a large amount first.
A broker unwilling to put its complete fee structure in writing is telling you something important about its fee structure.
Brokers steering you into trades or third-party managed accounts introduce a conflict of interest between their revenue and your capital.
Doctor Forex Global operates as an introducing broker for Mexatlantic, our featured partner. If you open an account through our referral link, we may receive compensation from the broker. That is how this site is funded.
We are telling you this here, in the body of the page, because you should factor it in. A commercial relationship is not automatically disqualifying — but it is information you are entitled to have before you read our partner page, not after.
What it does not change: the checklist above applies to Mexatlantic exactly as it applies to any other broker. We would rather you run those checks and decide against it than open an account because we suggested it.
Trading foreign exchange and other leveraged products carries a high level of risk and can result in the loss of all of your invested capital. Doctor Forex Global may receive compensation through its introducing broker relationship with Mexatlantic. This page provides general educational information only and is not financial, investment or trading advice, nor a recommendation of any particular broker. Always verify a broker’s regulatory status independently and read its client agreement in full before depositing. Please read our full Risk Disclaimer.
