A Personal Watershed – Is Forex For You?
One of the biggest markets for investors to open up in recent years is forex trading. A lot of people use it as an alternative to the stock market, and after the bloodletting on Wall Street last fall, who can blame them? Doing forex trading requires a lot of soul searching, and a lot of time to do well. Asking if it’s right for you means knowing the following things.
In a nutshell, forex trading is about taking a pair of currencies and their exchange rate; and playing off how that exchange rate varies on a day by day (or month to month) basis. You’re not betting on the performance of a company, you’re betting on the fiscal reputations of countries. There’s less research involved, and you have the advantage that it’s very difficult for currency values to plummet as rapidly as stocks can and do (and have, recently).
Forex offers a lot of opportunities, largely because forex trading happens worldwide, nearly 24 hours a day, from Monday morning in London to Friday night in Hong Kong. It’s a constant bustle, and lots of chances to make your play on a currency swing, and you can trade as often as you like. The flip side is that it’s easy to become afraid to leave your desk for fear of missing a trade. There are plenty of trading plans, ranging from day trader volatility plays to longer term position plays.
While there is a potential to make a lot of money in forex trading, that potential is only seemingly boundless. You’re still going to be constrained by the usual trading range in basis point pips between a currency pair, and if you spot a trend, it’s odds on that others have as well; like any kind of volatility based trading, you’re always running on five minute old information. You can make (or lose) thousands of dollars in a handful of minutes.
A lot of traders try to automate the grind it out aspects of forex trading; these are automated trades that are programmed with ranges of acceptable values and buy and sell orders queued up if a condition is met. This is no experience for doing accurate research on your own, but can let you have the freedom of mind to, say, get out of your chair and use the bathroom without panicking that a market shift will wipe you out. There are some who take the (decidedly unwise) view of not even learning much about forex markets and letting the computer software do this for them.
Forex is a great way to make a lot of money from home; doing it on a day trading strategy requires constant attention. Don’t think that this is something that will rake in the bucks while you practice your golf swing. This is a job, and if you don’t treat it as such, it’s going to bite you in the ass, and hard. That said, it lets you work from home without anyone lurking over your shoulder. You are at the mercy of the trading desks schedules, so keep that in mind. Day trading forex is sometimes called a lifestyle choice.
You can make more than some doctors and lawyers without having to go to college for eight years. You can really make as much or as little as you want. If you just need enough to get by, there are a number of safe, conservative strategies that are available. If you want to ride the trends and rake in huge profits, there are also a lot of methods for that.
If you’re the sort of person who lives for being wired on coffee, staying inside for a 14 hour trading day, and staring at a computer screen, forex trading may be for you – even if only temporarily. The real secret of forex day traders is that the successful ones get out of it and retire, and retire early.
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