customer support...

Ok, I was considering opening a very small trading account (something like 300) and I always thought about going with Oanda because of their flexibility about position size. Now, it has come to my attention that not all brokers offer support in different languages, and I wanted to know how important is for you (in case you think it is important at all) to have a broker who provides tech. support in your native language (mine is spanish).
Maybe I'm just being a little paranoid here, but I'm afraid that the rep. could play the "sorry, I don't understand you" card: in case there's some trouble of any kind...what do you think about this?

Oanda doesn't seem to have customer support in any language other than English. The FXsol website has a couple of versions in different languages, although the Spanish translation is not the best I've seen. Well, FXCM has customer support but no way I'm sending my precious money to those guys...anyway I can only trade with brokers offering micro-lots, so...any ideas?

Thanks!

if you think FXCM has the customer support you need then go with them. dont believe all the hype you hear...as long as you first understand how a market order works, you will be just fine with FXCM or any of the other large firms.

That's really a personal decision. I speak English, so don't have the same issue, but you're right about the FXCM thing. I'd definitely rather use Oanda or FX Sol than FXCM if it can be avoided. More important (to me) by far than customer service is knowing that the money isn't going to be taken right out of my account.

I understand what you say (I've seen that thread named "market orders complains for those who don't understand market orders", I think the title was something like that). This will be a very small account to "test the waters" and I'm only risking what I can afford to lose. So I don't expect to double my account in a couple of days, my first goal will be keeping my $ 300 and then I'll try to start growing little by little. I know what you mean about FXCM and all the hype around it, I wont be looking/trading the intraday charts or the news. I'll trade the daily charts so I know that I should be just fine with any major retail broker.

Anyway, I plan to use some "medium" or "large" stops, so that leaves me no other choice but to go with Oanda even if they don't have spanish customer support. If i place a trade with a 100 pips stop loss risking only 1 % of my account (300 dollars) then my largest possible lose would be 3 dollars so I would be trading at 1 pip= 0.03 dollars, and I understand that Oanda is the only one who will allow me to trade these kind of sizes. At regular brokers offering micro-lots like FXsol I would have to trade at 1 pip= 0.10 dollars as minimum, so a 100 pips loss would cost me 10 dollars = 3 % of my account...please correct me if I'm wrong about something (I made all the backtesting assuming I was going to risk only 1 % of my account, maybe I should do it again and see what would happen risking more than 1 % of my account on every trade...).

So I guess I'm just a little step away from opening my first live account. I'll keep a journal here in FF also.

I agree...even when I'm following the rules and risking only what I can afford to lose, I certainly don't want to waste my $ 300. I understand that for most people around here (at least the succesful ones) $ 300 is nothing...and I'm aware that I'm probably not going to get anywhere with such a small account, but I still want to make everything right...who knows?...maybe the magic of compounding will give me a little help hehe.

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