Forex trading has drawn a lot of attention over the years, gaining popularity amongst the financially savvy. However, as more people try to find ways to make money from home or in their spare time, many inexperienced traders are exploring it as a way to earn extra income.
Thus, forex trading for beginners is gaining a lot of attention. Unfortunately, most don’t understand the complexities, while others take huge risks in the hopes of making large profits quickly.
If you’re looking at forex trading for beginners as a potential opportunity, consider it carefully. Here are five simple ways to get started without taking unnecessary risks.
What Is the Forex Market?
The foreign exchange market is where currencies are traded. Currencies are important because they allow us to purchase goods and services locally and across borders. International currencies need to be exchanged to conduct foreign trade and business.
If you are living in the United States and want to buy cheese from France, then either you or the company from which you buy the cheese has to pay the French for the cheese in euros (EUR). This means that the U.S. importer would have to exchange the equivalent value of U.S. dollars (USD) for euros.
The same goes for traveling. A French tourist in Egypt can’t pay in euros to see the pyramids because it’s not the locally accepted currency. The tourist has to exchange the euros for the local currency, in this case the Egyptian pound, at the current exchange rate.
One unique aspect of this international market is that there is no central marketplace for foreign exchange. Rather, currency trading is conducted electronically over the counter (OTC), which means that all transactions occur via computer networks among traders around the world, rather than on one centralized exchange. The market is open 24 hours a day, five and a half days a week, and currencies are traded worldwide in the major financial centers of Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Zurich—across almost every time zone. This means that when the U.S. trading day ends, the forex market begins anew in Tokyo and Hong Kong. As such, the forex market can be extremely active anytime, with price quotes changing constantly.
Pick A Good Platform
The platform you choose to do trading on will help you realize your goals much easier. There are a ton of platforms you can choose to trade on, which is why it’s very important that you sift through the top ones to check which of them is going to do wonders for you. Here are a few tips when picking a break.
- It would be good for a broker to have various means of withdrawing and cashing in your funds. Most platforms accept bank cards, remittance centers, digital wallets, and most recently, crypto.
- Always look for reviews before you try out a platform. These will be readily available for you online.
- Customer service is a must. Ideally, you’d want a broker that you can contact 24/7. They must also be available to talk to through various platforms such as email, chat, and calls.
- Check out the minimums first. These include the account minimums for depositing money, as well as the account minimums for withdrawing. You wouldn’t want to trade on platforms with high minimums and fees.
How to Start Trading Forex
Trading forex is similar to equity trading. Here are some steps to get yourself started on the forex trading journey.
1. Learn about forex: While it is not complicated, forex trading is a project of its own and requires specialized knowledge. For example, the leverage ratio for forex trades is higher than for equities, and the drivers for currency price movement are different from those for equity markets. There are several online courses available for beginners that teach the ins and outs of forex trading.
2. Set up a brokerage account: You will need a forex trading account at a brokerage to get started with forex trading. Forex brokers do not charge commissions. Instead, they make money through spreads (also known as pips) between the buying and selling prices.
For beginner traders, it is a good idea to set up a micro forex trading account with low capital requirements. Such accounts have variable trading limits and allow brokers to limit their trades to amounts as low as 1,000 units of a currency. For context, a standard account lot is equal to 100,000 currency units. A micro forex account will help you become more comfortable with forex trading and determine your trading style.
3. Develop a trading strategy: While it is not always possible to predict and time market movement, having a trading strategy will help you set broad guidelines and a road map for trading. A good trading strategy is based on the reality of your situation and finances. It takes into account the amount of cash that you are willing to put up for trading and, correspondingly, the amount of risk that you can tolerate without getting burned out of your position. Remember, forex trading is mostly a high-leverage environment. But it also offers more rewards to those who are willing to take the risk.
4. Always be on top of your numbers: Once you begin trading, always check your positions at the end of the day. Most trading software already provides a daily accounting of trades. Make sure that you do not have any pending positions to be filled out and that you have sufficient cash in your account to make future trades.
5. Cultivate emotional equilibrium: Beginner forex trading is fraught with emotional roller coasters and unanswered questions. Should you have held onto your position a bit longer for more profits? How did you miss that report about low gross domestic product (GDP) numbers that led to a decline in overall value of your portfolio? Obsessing over such unanswered questions can lead you down a path of confusion. That is why it is important to not get carried away by your trading positions and cultivate emotional equilibrium across profits and losses. Be disciplined about closing out your positions when necessary.
Pros and Cons of Trading Forex
Pros and Cons of Trading Forex
Pros
- Forex markets are the largest in terms of daily trading volume in the world and therefore offer the most liquidity. This makes it easy to enter and exit a position in any of the major currencies within a fraction of a second for a small spread in most market conditions.
- The forex market is traded 24 hours a day, five and a half days a week—starting each day in Australia and ending in New York. The broad time horizon and coverage offer traders several opportunities to make profits or cover losses. The major forex market centers are Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Zurich.
- The extensive use of leverage in forex trading means that you can start with little capital and multiply your profits.Automation of forex markets lends itself well to rapid execution of trading strategies.
- Forex trading generally follows the same rules as regular trading and requires much less initial capital; therefore, it is easier to start trading forex compared to stocks.
- The forex market is more decentralized than traditional stock or bond markets. There is no centralized exchange that dominates currency trade operations, and the potential for manipulation—through insider information about a company or stock—is lower.
Cons
- Even though they are the most liquid markets in the world, forex trades are much more volatile than regular markets.
- Extreme amounts of leverage have led to many dealers becoming insolvent unexpectedly.
- Banks, brokers, and dealers in the forex markets allow a high amount of leverage, which means that traders can control large positions with relatively little money of their own. Leverage in the range of 100:1 is not uncommon in forex. A trader must understand the use of leverage and the risks that leverage introduces in an account.
- Trading currencies productively requires an understanding of economic fundamentals and indicators. A currency trader needs to have a big-picture understanding of the economies of the various countries and their interconnectedness to grasp the fundamentals that drive currency values.
- The decentralized nature of forex markets means that it is less accountable to regulation than other financial markets. The extent and nature of regulation in forex markets depend on the jurisdiction of trading.
- Forex markets lack instruments that provide regular income, such as regular dividend payments, which might make them attractive to investors who are not interested in exponential returns.
