The popularity and easy accessibility of the ForEx, or foreign exchange market, makes many people choose it as their financial stepping stone. Together with its indisputable popularity come some extras. The extras include computer programs, trading systems, videos, books and most of all, third party signal providers. Now, I will discuss some points when searching for a good third party signal provider.

Before we get into choosing a provider we need to have a good understanding of what a third party signal provider is. A signal provider is a trader or analyst that generates trades that in turn get placed on your account. You can have several signal providers trading your forex account or just one.

You have to be careful when choosing your forex signal providers. At a glance a trader may look like he or she has a really good track record. If you take a better look, though, you may find that the trader isn’t quite as good as you thought. To help to make sure that you always choose quality providers to trade your forex account we have to set some ground rules.

1. First, I make sure that the trader is a winner. This is a little bit obvious already but I could always see losers with 50 to 100 people trading their signals.

2. The next thing to look at is how long the trader has traded profitably. You don’t want a brand new trader without a track record trading your real money account.

3. Have a look at the amount of draw down the account has generated in the past. This is the furthest that their equity has dropped from their high water mark. Some traders cannot stand to book a loser. This means that they will hold onto trades indefinitely when they are in the red. They often close out trades for a very small profit but tend to accumulate massive draw downs. These are not traders that you want trading your account.

4. The first few are fairly easy to keep an eye out for. They should all be displayed on the main screen and you may even be able to sort by each of them. Once you find several signal providers that you are considering, you should think about looking a little closer.

a. Look at their actual trades. Do they have a good win rate because they have opened a ton of trades all at the same time on the same currency pair? They may have 20 winners in a row. This looks great, but if you look a bit deeper you will see that its really only 1 winning trade places 20 times. Not as impressive is it?

b. Have a look at how far they let their trades get away from them. Is your signal provider letting trades get 300 pips or more against them at times? Do they close trades the minute they turn into profit? If so this is a trader who does not understand risk and reward and should not be considered to trade real money.

c. Does your trader add to losing positions? Generally someone who is doing this is trying to average down their entry point and is setting themselves up for failure. Make sure when they do fail that your money is not on the line.

5. Make sure that the signal provider that you choose is suitable for your risk tolerance. Choosing a very aggressive trader will not work for a very conservative investor no matter what the win rate.

These are just a few things to look for when choosing a third party signal provider to trade your forex account. You should always trade a demo account before opening a live account with real money. Remember it’s your account. In the end you choose the signal providers, and you are responsible for what happens.

To learn more about Forex Trading Systems visit Automated Forex Trading Systems.