Today, we live in a global economy. As technology advances, the geographical boundaries are fast disappearing. We can now talk to anyone across the world right away by punching their phone number into our smartphones, send letters over the internet which get delivered instantly and even leverage upon various global financial markets by trading on international exchanges.
Trading is a two-way street where traders contribute liquidity to the global financial markets while making profits in the process. Both institutions and individuals can trade tradable financial assets in the market. Depending upon the buyer and seller, there are different forms of trading. Most of the trading fall under one of these three categories. Agency Trading, Market Making and Proprietary Trading.
Investment banks and institutional traders have direct access to the market. Then there are brokerage platforms acting as middlemen between individuals and the market or institutional traders. Brokerages make it easier for individuals to access, invest in trade instruments. They take a small margin of the investment as their fees for the service rendered.
Most of the trading is distributed among five financial products. They include Forex, Indices, Stocks, Commodities and CFDs.
Forex
It is well known that the value of any currency against other currencies keep fluctuating. Their fluctuations in the value are directly related to the strength of the country’s economy. The currency of a stronger economy always gains against those of weaker economies. In forex trading, these fluctuating value of currencies is leveraged by traders. They trade different currency pairs by buying one currency and selling other at the same time based on the possibility of making maximum gains.
Stocks
Stock trading was one of the most favorable financial product in the early days. Even though people still trade stocks, it is less compared to other financial products. Equities belonging to various companies are speculated upon by traders and they invest in these stocks with the hope that its value will increase. On trading platforms, traders generally do not buy the actual stock belonging to a company. The value of stocks is directly proportional to the performance of the company.
Indices
While stocks are related to individual companies, indices contain a group of stocks making up a list of companies. These indices or stock market indices belong to well-known stock markets. Examples of stock market indices include Dow Jones and NASDAQ.
Commodities
Commodities are tangible physical goods or assets like petroleum, iron, precious metals etc. Commodities traders speculate on the market price of commodities as futures and not actually buy them. These are short term speculations which are not held till maturity.
CFDs
CFDs are the type of derivative products that are traded on the live market. However, the traders do not actually own the instrument being traded. CFDs are among the popularly traded instruments.
Almost all online trading platforms offer these five popular financial products. Financika is one of the best examples of such online trading platforms. In order to start trading on such platforms, users have to first sign up with their details. Some of these trading platforms require the individuals to submit KYC details after verifying their email address and phone number. After registering, they have to deposit some funds into their trading account and start trading various financial products available on the platform.
Financika is operated by Vanuatu based Sharp Trading Ltd. The trading platform offers a wide range of trading tools for its users. These tools can be used by professionals as well as novice traders alike. The financial products offered by Financika includes Forex, Indices, Stocks, Commodities and CFDs.
Traders on Financika can trade over 40 currency pairs, 7 different market indices – CAC 40, DAX INDEX, DOW JONES, FTSE 100, NASDAQ, NIKKEI and S&P 500, Some of the leading stocks, Commodities like Oil, Precious metals and more. One can also take a look at the long list of CFD options offered by Financika at the following link.
Security
It is important for trading platforms to ensure adequate security on their platform to safeguard user data and payment information. Platforms like Financika uses Data and Privacy protection services like eTrust, which ensures the website’s compliance to highest international standards. Apart from that, there are additional SSL data encryption standards that add an additional layer of security to digital transactions happening over the platform.
Payments
Individuals can trade on online trading platforms irrespective of their geographical location. When people from different countries are using the platform, they will be making transactions in different currencies. In order to be user-friendly, the platforms should be capable of handling multiple currencies. In order to offer a good user experience, it is preferable for the platforms to have multiple payment options. Even though wire transfer is a universal payment option, which can be used by anyone, the processing time for such transactions ranges from days to weeks. To overcome such issues, it is advisable to include multiple third-party payment processors capable of handling all major credit and debit cards.
Traders, both experienced and newbies prefer easy to use, flexible platforms capable of executing transactions with a minimum number of clicks. Also, it is essential to include detailed instructions and tutorials on the platform to reduce the learning curve for new users. These education materials will help them understand trading concepts and also the platform.
Traders and online trading are there to stay. Any platform offering flexible services that can suit the needs of individual traders is bound to emerge as the market leader.