Forex Trading Platforms
Some market makers require that you download a Forex trading software to participate in Forex trades. Other platforms are Web-Based, and are ready immediately as you are approved to trade. The benefit of Web-Based platforms is that no matter what computer you are at, including public computers at Internet cafes and public libraries, you can reach your account and trade. One could assume that a Blackberry or an iPhone would be capable of reaching the Web-Based platform also, although they don't state that.
No matter how you connect to your Forex trading platform, the platform will most often display several trading tools. One of the more popular is a quote window which shows real-time quotes for both "buy" and "sell" of most popular pairs of currencies. These should be constantly updated, and agreed on as binding quotes by the platform.
Once you see the quotes you may select a pair in the manner prescribed by your platform and decide either to buy or sell at that price. At this point you also must state a quantity. If you are working on a modern Forex platform, the trade should be executed immediately, and you should receive a confirmation of the trade. At this point you have either purchased or sold a specified amount of a specified currency at a guaranteed price. If you are indeed in the Forex market for speculative purposes, you must now find an "offsetting trade" at a favorable exchange rate to make a profit.
Be aware that the liquidity of trading platforms varies. Not all trading platforms can cover large trades without negotiating with backers, (usually banks). One important test of the Forex trading platform you select is to check if they guarantee instantaneous transactions. Even today with most all transactions being executed in real time, some trading platforms indicate in their literature that there may be situations in which the platform cannot trade immediately, and that you may be bound to "cover" the difference in price between the quote and the actual cost at the time of the transaction, totally or partially. This is explained by some trading platforms as times that the trading platform is closed. We recommend that you do not trade with market makers (on trading platforms) that do not trade immediately 24/7/365 even if you never plan to do so yourself.
Stop-loss or timed sell or buy orders are possible in Forex, so that you can either time your sale/purchase or key your sale/purchase to an expected exchange rate (quote). Each Forex trading platform may vary slightly in how it handles these orders, so read the terms and conditions of the platform you choose to use.