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Tuesday, July 7, 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.

Unlike a traditional stock exchange, the market doesn't actually take place in one location. You're trading online with a virtual trading platform. You put your order in and it goes to a trading desk at whatever broker you have. From there it goes directly into the market. The forex market can be traded anytime except for the weekends. It is open 24 hours a day for 5 days a week.

Like lots of investment opportunities, forex markets allow you to use leverage to magnify the size of your buy and sell orders; most times, this needs to be used cautiously. While leverage can magnify your profits on a trade, it can also magnify your losses. Start out slow and work it carefully until you get a rhythm. Gambling with other people's money is a great way to get into lots of trouble if you're not careful.

Besides the ease of trading the forex market, you can realize huge gains in this form of trading. Unlike stocks where a stock raises based on an individual companies performance, these securities are rising and falling drastically at all times of the day. It is based on a lot of different factors and has a huge potential for profit.

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 beyond day trading. One of the saner ones, for people who don't want to be glued to the Internet for 100 hours a week, is position trading. There are longer term trends in forex trading and this is a lot less stressful (and time intensive) than trying to run the volatile day by day swings.

Forex trading is appealing because of its accessibility and lure of 'fast profits'. Just remember that a gold rush mentality doesn't change the reality that it's a job, and one that requires constant attention to do well - and anyone who has a system that could actually beat the markets sure as hell wouldn't be selling it for $99 on the Internet. Go into this with your eyes open and you'll have a good paying job that works from home. - 23212

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