If you have ever travelled to another country and exchanged your home currency for the currency of the country you’re visiting, then you’ve participated in the FOREX market. You’ve sold one currency and bought another.
FOREX means “Foreign Exchange” and the different exchange rates during the trading day are what allow you to make money in the FOREX market. It is the largest financial market in the world, and has a trading volume of a whopping $5 Trillion a day! Compare that to the $22.4 billion of the New York Stock Exchange.
Before getting too excited about making money with FOREX, you must have a FOREX trading education to fully understand how to make money.
FOREX Trading Education
There are many courses online that you can enroll in to gain a better understanding of what FOREX is, how to trade, what exactly gets traded, and how to predict which way a certain currency will move (up or down.)
FOREX trading is not as difficult as say, trading commodities or stocks, but it does take time, skill and patience. There are technical and strategic aspects to trading that you will have to learn before making any trades with real money.
Fortunately, many online trading platforms allow traders to use a practice account. It simulates the real world of trading, but you don’t use real money. Think of it as ‘paper trading.’ This is a great way to get your feet wet and learn how the market moves throughout the day, the signs to look for and learn how to strategically place your orders.
What gets traded?
The first thing you will learn in a FOREX trading education course is what exactly gets traded. This is quite simple – money. Trading is always done in pairs, and the most popular currency pairs are called ‘major pairs.’ These include but are not limited to:
EUR/USD – Euro Zone/U.S. Dollar
USD/CAD – U.S. Dollar/Canadian Dollar
USD/JPY – U.S. Dollar/Japanese Yen
Your education will also include a segment on how to read and analyze charts. There are several different types, including bar charts, Japanese Candlestick charts and line charts. Each one has its pros and cons, and you will have to experiment with each of them in order to find the one that best suits you.
Taking the course and reading books on the subject are just the beginning. Each time you make a trade you will learn more about currency, the world’s economy and how you can benefit.
