As with many facets of life the financial markets have very little consideration for loyalty – neither should you.

Your relationship with your broker should never be one of monogamy. Instead be ready, willing and able to enter into a relationship either alongside or instead of your present broker.

Whilst the idea is not to jump from one broker to another on an on going basis, you should not be placing all of your eggs in one basket. Remember both you and your broker have one common goal – that is to make money. The broker has a distinct advantage in that even if you lose money the broker makes a commission or fee on your trade.

In ever competitive market places brokers will and should be seeking to maintain existing, whilst winning new, clients through research and development – be it from reducing bid / offer spreads through to adding new order types and platform features. Accordingly, whilst your broker may have platform enhancements blue prints at the desks of their programmers, you should not rely on your broker eventually catching up with the market place. If a new feature launched by another broker in the market place is going to aid and assist your trading then test out the service and see if it’s for you. Nothing is stopping you for holding two accounts simultaneously - this actually a conservative decision (see Broker A and Broker B)