Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Forex Market Basics

By Frank M. Rivera

One of the most popular trading venues for investors is the Foreign Exchange or Forex market. This market works from the principle that currencies have an exchange rate that varies from day to day - even hour by hour. Buying currencies and working the trades (whether a short-sell or a buy-and hold position) can turn a nice profit. The forex markets are worth roughly three trillion dollars of action each day.

The forex market is accessible; and it's accessible 24 hours a day, nearly six days a week, because it's global. While a broker is useful, they're often much more accessible than they are for stocks or bonds. They're automatable, with trading programs that can be run on your laptop to handle most of the routine swings. Lots of small investors use the power of the forex markets to work from home.

Forex trading is global; it isn't tied to a single physical location. Trades are handled completely electronically, which is why this market didn't open up for small investors until the mid '90s - the technology wasn't there. The Forex market pretty much runs from the start of the business day in London on Monday to the end of the business day in Hong Kong on Friday, which is nearly six days a week of 24 hour action.



Forex trading is all about changes in the price of a currency pair; these are denominated in ten thousandths of a unit of currency, and shifts of even one or two ten thousandths can result in large profits. Getting that small of a currency swing to turn into a profit requires leverage, where you're borrowing money to make the size of your bets larger. Leverage has its risks - just ask anyone who lost money in the last nine months on the financial markets. Used wisely, it's a sensible tool. Used poorly, it's like shaving with a chainsaw.

Forex trading can be lucrative, if you're willing to be wired in to be a constantly shifting day trader. You're playing the swings in volatility, and with leverage, even shifts of a thousandth of a unit of currency can create (or lose) large sums of money quickly. With forex trading, it's very unlikely that your investment will become utterly worthless - it's still currency at the end of the day.

Forex traders can make a lot of money; most forex traders make a decent to fairly high income, but at a cost in personal time. The down side of this market being open 24 hours a day from London open to Hong Kong close is that you can't really afford to NOT pay attention to swings, especially if you're playing a volatility strategy on the markets. Strict money management is a critical skill, as is being able to absorb risks and losses and move on.

Forex has a lot of strategies that can be used; the one most Internet marketers are trying to sell is some variant of day trading, promising automatic profits while you sleep through some top secret automated program. If such a program actually existed, there wouldn't be any forex traders left; it's still coming down to judgment calls and making good decisions. Other strategies are position trading - you buy currency and hold it for a long term trend, then sell it. You won't make as much money as quickly, but you're likelier to end up with a profit at the end of a month, and you'll have the freedom to get up and go to the bathroom without feeling like you're losing money.

Forex is a good way to get a high paying job you can do from home. Make no bones about it - it IS a job. One that you have to pay attention to to do well. It is NOT a system where a computer program will make you money while you sleep; if there were any kind of automated way to beat the market, with trillions of dollars at stake, there is no way that the big trading houses wouldn't be using it; anyone who did have such a secret would be using it to make hundreds of millions of dollars per year, not selling it on the internet for $99.

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