Forex is the knowledge and business of making money through exchanging foreign currencies. Forex is not a new business and its history is as old as the history of money.
There are people who have been making money through Forex from many years ago. Fortunately, with the help of computer and internet, Forex trading has become much easier. You can sit at your personal computer and trade from home without having to make any phone call or referring to any bank.
How is it possible?
There are broker companies that enable you to buy and sell different currencies through the Internet and some simple softwares. For any trade that you make, you pay a small commission to the broker company that you are trading through it.
You need to find a good, reliable and well-known broker company and sign up for an account with it. Then you have to fund your account. You use the money you have in your account to trade. Any profit that you make, will be added to your account and vise versa. Then you can withdraw the money you have made.
What currencies can you trade?
In Forex, you deal with currency pairs. There are four main currency pairs: British Pound and USD (GBP/USD), Euro and USD (EUR/USD), USD and Japanese Yen (USD/JPY), USD and Swiss Frank (USD/CHF).
In each currency pair, the first currency works as the commodity and the second one works as the money. For example when you choose the GBP/USD to trade, if you buy, you buy British Pound against USD and if you sell, you sell British Pound against USD. It doesn’t matter what currency you have in your account. The trading software makes the exchanges automatically.
How can you make money?
Buying cheap and selling expensive or selling expensive and buying cheap is the base of making money in Forex. For example If you buy GBP against USD when each GBP is equal to 1.9554USD and then sell it when it is 2.0235USD, you have made a profit. I don’t want to focus on more details in this article and explain how the profits and the money you make will be calculated. I will talk about these issues in other articles.
But the big question is that how you can know the best time to buy and how you can know that if you buy, the price will go up and you will make a profit. This is the most important question that makes you a successful trader.
There are two methods to know the optimum time to buy and sell: Technical and Fundamental analysis.
In technical analysis, you can predict the direction of the price using the analysis you make on the price chart and also with the help of some special tools that are called Indicators.
GBP/JPY price chart with three indicators: Stochastic, MACD and CCI
Technical Analysis is a science and if you want to start working on Forex, you have to learn it properly especially if you want to work as an intraday trader. It is not too hard to learn the technical analysis. If you are a focused and serious person, you can learn technical analysis in a few months. There are a lot of free resources over the web that you can use to learn. There are some expensive training courses but those who sign up for them are not happy and believe that they have learnt nothing. So don’t waste your money. If you are serious to learn, there are a lot of free resources over the Internet. You can also visit this weblog every now and then or subscribe for my RSS feed. I will try to share my experiences with you.
The other method is the Fundamental Analysis. This method is used to predict the future of currencies prices according to the economic and even political situation of the world and important developed countries like USA, UK, Germany, Japan and … . Fundamental analysis has a long term usage but good traders can predict the sudden changes that happen after releasing an important news about economic situation of an important country. For example when the news says that economic situation of USA is improved for 5% in comparison to the last month, USD will become stronger and people start buying it. So the value of USD will go up because of the sudden increase of demand. If you know the effect of the news on the price, you can take the proper position and make money. Of course there are two sides in this story which means if you take the wrong position, you will lose.
Good and experienced traders take the advantage of both technical and fundamental analysis whereas 99% of traders are dependent on the technical analysis.
Some good things about Forex:
1- Forex is an online home based business that doesn’t need referring, recruiting and advertising. You only deal with the currencies through the Internet. So you will not have to reply any email, make any phone call and spend any money on advertising.
2- If you learn the Forex properly, you can make a lot of money. Forex can be your full time job that makes thousands of dollars for you every month. I have to emphasize again that if you start working on Forex before you learn it properly, it can be risky and you will lose your money. It is like the driving. If you drive a car before you know how to drive, you will hurt yourself and others but if you learn it properly first, it will be pleasant and funny.
3- You can make a lot of money by spending a small amount of money. Unlike other investments like stock market that you have to invest a lot of money to make a reasonable profit, you can make a good income through investing small amount of money. For example, with a $5000 account, you can make about $5000 per month. Of course it highly depends on the way that you trade and the strategy that you follow but good and experienced traders can double their money every month.
4- Forex - and of course stock market - are the only businesses that competition has positive effect on them. It is amazing, isn’t it? Competition is the biggest problem in all other businesses but in Forex, it helps the traders to make more money. Why?
Supply and demand are the factors that determine the price in any market. When there are too many buyer and sellers, the price volatility will be much higher and the market will be more dynamic. The price will go up and down more frequently and this is what we need to make money. When the price goes up we buy and when it goes down we sell and make profit.
So if you choose Forex as your business, you will not have to be worried about competition.
Bottom line:
If you are looking for a professional work at home business to make money full time or part time, Forex is the best option. It can make reasonable money for you and on the other hand, you will not have to be worried about the issues like marketing, advertising, referring and recruiting and even you will not have to be worried about competition.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
An overview of the Forex market
The Forex market is a non-stop cash market where currencies of nations are traded, typically via brokers. Foreign currencies are constantly and simultaneously bought and sold across local and global markets and traders' investments increase or decrease in value based upon currency movements. Foreign exchange market conditions can change at any time in response to real-time events.
The main enticements of currency dealing to private investors and attractions for short-term Forex trading are:
24-hour trading, 5 days a week with non-stop access to global Forex dealers. An enormous liquid market making it easy to trade most currencies. Volatile markets offering profit opportunities. Standard instruments for controlling risk exposure. The ability to profit in rising or falling markets. Leveraged trading with low margin requirements. Many options for zero commission trading.
Forex tradingThe investor's goal in Forex trading is to profit from foreign currency movements. Forex trading or currency trading is always done in currency pairs. For example, the exchange rate of EUR/USD on Aug 26th, 2003 was 1.0857. This number is also referred to as a "Forex rate" or just "rate" for short. If the investor had bought 1000 euros on that date, he would have paid 1085.70 U.S. dollars. One year later, the Forex rate was 1.2083, which means that the value of the euro (the numerator of the EUR/USD ratio) increased in relation to the U.S. dollar. The investor could now sell the 1000 euros in order to receive 1208.30 dollars. Therefore, the investor would have USD 122.60 more than what he had started one year earlier. However, to know if the investor made a good investment, one needs to compare this investment option to alternative investments. At the very minimum, the return on investment (ROI) should be compared to the return on a "risk-free" investment. One example of a risk-free investment is long-term U.S. government bonds since there is practically no chance for a default, i.e. the U.S. government going bankrupt or being unable or unwilling to pay its debt obligation. When trading currencies, trade only when you expect the currency you are buying to increase in value relative to the currency you are selling. If the currency you are buying does increase in value, you must sell back the other currency in order to lock in a profit. An open trade (also called an open position) is a trade in which a trader has bought or sold a particular currency pair and has not yet sold or bought back the equivalent amount to close the position.
However, it is estimated that anywhere from 70%-90% of the FX market is speculative. In other words, the person or institution that bought or sold the currency has no plan to actually take delivery of the currency in the end; rather, they were solely speculating on the movement of that particular currency.
The main enticements of currency dealing to private investors and attractions for short-term Forex trading are:
24-hour trading, 5 days a week with non-stop access to global Forex dealers. An enormous liquid market making it easy to trade most currencies. Volatile markets offering profit opportunities. Standard instruments for controlling risk exposure. The ability to profit in rising or falling markets. Leveraged trading with low margin requirements. Many options for zero commission trading.
Forex tradingThe investor's goal in Forex trading is to profit from foreign currency movements. Forex trading or currency trading is always done in currency pairs. For example, the exchange rate of EUR/USD on Aug 26th, 2003 was 1.0857. This number is also referred to as a "Forex rate" or just "rate" for short. If the investor had bought 1000 euros on that date, he would have paid 1085.70 U.S. dollars. One year later, the Forex rate was 1.2083, which means that the value of the euro (the numerator of the EUR/USD ratio) increased in relation to the U.S. dollar. The investor could now sell the 1000 euros in order to receive 1208.30 dollars. Therefore, the investor would have USD 122.60 more than what he had started one year earlier. However, to know if the investor made a good investment, one needs to compare this investment option to alternative investments. At the very minimum, the return on investment (ROI) should be compared to the return on a "risk-free" investment. One example of a risk-free investment is long-term U.S. government bonds since there is practically no chance for a default, i.e. the U.S. government going bankrupt or being unable or unwilling to pay its debt obligation. When trading currencies, trade only when you expect the currency you are buying to increase in value relative to the currency you are selling. If the currency you are buying does increase in value, you must sell back the other currency in order to lock in a profit. An open trade (also called an open position) is a trade in which a trader has bought or sold a particular currency pair and has not yet sold or bought back the equivalent amount to close the position.
However, it is estimated that anywhere from 70%-90% of the FX market is speculative. In other words, the person or institution that bought or sold the currency has no plan to actually take delivery of the currency in the end; rather, they were solely speculating on the movement of that particular currency.
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