Everyone’s dream is to work from home and become wealthy independently…or not have to work at all. For many, the lure of trading Forex seems very appealing and might seem like the answer to the question of ‘how to work from home’. However, I will tell you that more people lose money investing in the Forex market than they win. This is a simple matter of economics… for every winner… for every dollar you could win, someone has lost a dollar. The money has to come from somewhere, right?
So you may ask, does anyone make money investing in the Forex market and if they do, do they make a living doing this? The answer to that question is definitely “yes.” There are many small hobby investors who can make a living trading the Forex market.
I know… your next question is “how do they do it?” The answer is varied and ranges from those who have risen through the ranks as traders to those who seem to have a knack for numbers and chart reading to those hobbyists who have spent time learning about the market found a system. who works for them and amassed his fortune. Simple enough, huh? Maybe not, so let’s break it down…
Learn about the Forex market – There are many resources on the Internet that will give you an overview of how the Forex market works. For me trying to educate you properly in this article would be useless. Most Forex brokers also have resources to help you educate yourself and are very helpful in that regard. They want you to be successful as they make money on every trade you make in the form of a “spread”.
Find a profitable system – Once you have the basics and understand how the market works… how the trades are placed, the hours the market is open which is 24 hours a day as the world rotates (except weekends). weekdays and holidays), you will be ready to try to find a “system” that makes sense to you and with which you can make profitable trades. This system can be a manual system with which you keep an eye on different indicators and execute trades once all the criteria have been met according to your system. Your system may be based on breaking news such as quarterly reports or other financial news that you may know is hitting the media and therefore influencing a certain currency pair. Your system may be a favorite Expert Advisor or a “Forex Robot” that has proven to be profitable and runs off of an algorithm, much like the system referenced above where you look at different indicators…with a Expert Advisor or Forex Robot, the software does all of this for you. That’s “Expert Advisors” or “Forex Robots” in a nutshell.
demo account – Once you have a profitable system that works for you and makes sense to you, I suggest running it on a demo account or “paper trading” with it for a few months. Demo accounts are available through all major brokerages and this is a must for any new trader. There’s no point wasting your start-up capital while you’re still learning. Once you find that you are consistently making profitable trades without emotion and while using your trading system exclusively, it will be time to move on to a live account.
live account – Here it is where it gets interesting. It’s one thing to trade paper, but I’ll tell you, there’s nothing like trading your own money. The hardest part of live trading is staying unmoved about your trading and sticking to your trading system. This is what separates successful traders from those who end up giving their money to successful traders and this is the hardest part of trading… sticking to your system through thick and thin.
Now that you have a thousand foot view of what Forex Trading is all about, I encourage you to educate yourself and jump in there with a demo account as soon as you feel comfortable. Trading the Forex market can be very exciting and, for some, very profitable. Just remember where all that money comes from and make the decision to become a smart trader who only trades with their system and not one of the many who give away their money to the few who make money in the market.
