Discovery Forex

Want to learn forex? There are lots of ways.

It isnt hard to learn forex, but it does take time and dedication. The principles involved are fairly easy from a mathematical standpoint, and the basic way that the system works is straightforward enough once its been explained to you. But the details and nuances of the market can make it daunting.

The first step as you set out to learn forex should be to do some basic reading on how the foreign exchange market works. The foreign exchange Wikipedia article is good basic reading, and there are plenty of Web sites that offer overviews to help you learn the fundamentals.

Plenty of books have been written on the topic, some of which will help you and some of which just want your money. Try the public library first: Books are free, and if theyre in the library, they were probably published by legitimate publishing houses with legitimate editors and researchers. The information will be more reliable than something you get from a Web site where a guy wants you to buy his e-book.

After that, you have a number of options, all of which will help in different ways. You can make your choice depending on what your own learning process is usually like, whether youre a visual learner or prefer written instruction, for example.

There are many forex seminars held in major cities, sometimes for free. In these, experienced traders offer tips and strategies to new traders trying to learn forex for the first time.

There are also online courses available, which you can take at your own pace over the course of several weeks. These almost always cost money, and the quality varies. (Remember, you usually get what you pay for.) Some of these courses come from brokers who want you to learn the system so you can start trading with their companies, so its in their own best interest to train you well.

You should also consider a demo account, which can help you practice through a realistic simulation of currency trading. You get the full experience of trading without any of the financial risk.

Many firms also offer mini forex accounts, which are real accounts with real money, only with much smaller amounts. For example, instead of a minimum starting investment of $1,000, the minimum might be only $100. This lets you learn forex through actual hands-on practice, but with a risk that is much smaller than usual. You can quickly see if youre cut out for trading or if its just not in your constitution to handle the emotional roller coaster.

Once you learn, forex can be fun and exciting, not to mention financially lucrative. It is necessary to learn, though, and not just jump in blindly.

Trading Flexibility In The Forex Market

How does a trader test hisher strategies and abilities without paying (or paying too much) for hisher mistakes ?
I would say there are three possible answers.

One first answer, of course, is by paper trading. Paper trading means that you do not actually execute your orders, but you only “bookkeep” them, testing on paper what their results would be.

At the next level you can trade in a simulated account. This is similar to paper trading, as you are not trading with real money, but just testing the result of your strategies; on the other side with a simulated account you are really using you Broker platform so you are at the same time training yourself in dealing with order execution issues.
Simulated accounts are nowadays offered by many Brokers; in the Forex market it is common to get this feature.

Say you trade your strategy for some time with a simulated account, and everything goes fine; you would expect that real trading should go fine as well. Still, there is an issue you did not deal with: your emotions. These will come into the game only when you trade with your real money. Emotions can do a big difference. They often explain differencies in results between traders that can be absolutely comparable in terms of market know-how and strategy. Why ? because they often force you not to follow the rules of your trading plan. Emotions can make you a hard life in keeping the necessary discipline.

So, how to deal with the emotional issue of trading ? There are ways to learn also in this topic, of course, but in this case your own direct experience is more difficult to replace, in my opinion. However, the experience can be expensive, of course. A possible solution is to trade with real money, but in a very small size. This is always a good idea at the beginning. Start small, gain experience and then increase gradually your trading size.

So the third answer to our first question is: by trading small. You might object that, if the trading size is too small, your emotional involvement will also be small, so the aim of putting emotions into the game is missed. Partly, this is true. However, the difference between using real money and just playing with numbers is there. And the decision about how big the size should be, is just yours.

The forex market gives you big flexibiliy about your trading size.
First, because the minimum required to open an account can be really small, in the order of 300. Trading size of course can be small too. The Forex market offers you a great leverage possibility, but again, how much of it to use is something that only you can decide.
Second, because in the forex market it is common for Brokers not to charge a fix commission to trades. The cost of the trade is generally represented only by the bid-ask spread. This means that small trades are not penalized by fix commissions.
This flexibility can offer an advantage for traders who want to gain experience before moving forward.

Good trading,
Roberto Zarotti