Two frequently recurring questions come up by beginners or those new to the global money-trading game:
1. Can I trade forex?
2. Can I make money trading foreign currencies?
Being self-taught, and having started with no knowledge whatsoever about trading money online I can speak, thus answer, only from my own experience.
1. Sure, you can trade money. People have found ways to do just about anything conceivable on earth. Using a mouse to click buy and sell is not that difficult.
Stats say there are over 13,000,000 people who trade forex online.
I doubt they are all mentally equivalent to Einstein. I know
I'm not.
2. Can YOU make money?
Ah, this is the better question. The answer is twofold. Yes, you
can make money, but you can
lose money.
Especially in the open forex market.
It doesn't take much common sense to figure that out, yet I guess most people don't have even enough common sense to understand the loss part of trading forex. So they either 100% avoid currency trading as a "sin" in the sight of Heaven, or go in and get bagged.
If you do decide to open a forex trading account, you should know, going in, that you can
and will most likely lose money.
I'm not saying you'll lose
all your money.
You just must know going in that forex trading is risky.
The "risky" part means there is a
risk of losing.
That's all it means.
It's not a guarantee that you WILL lose some or all of your money, it is just the reality that, if you do anything with your money, other than put it in a bank account, you're taking on "risk."
I like to think of a common CD as the first tier of risk for people new to the "investing" or trading game.
Why is opening a CD risky? Because of the
other money you are 100% guaranteed to LOSE by locking up your money for a
year (for example).
Typically nowadays you can find a CD that will pay you 4% on your money by your opening a one-year CD.
The lady who cuts my hair and I were discussing trading money the other day and she said she's opening an CD with $100,000 at 4% "to do the sure thing."
She would do this to get $4,000 back on her $100,000 deposit at the end of the year.
I got home and ran the numbers on her $100,000, afterward I picked up the phone to call her... then hung up before I dialed.
I was going to say to her,
"Look, you can open a trade on such and such currency pair exposing only
$1700 to the market and without making a single other trade you'll earn $7,000 in one year.
"If you made only
minor and light trades on it, you'd make well over $12,000.
"If you put it into substantial (but NOT high-aggressive risk) trade, you'd stand to make well over $20,000 in a year."
And, if she were willing to increase risk to what I would call "reasonable limit" (though, high-aggressive) she'd be able to gain over 50% on the $100,000 she opened the forex trading account with.
That's
over $50,000 earned on the SAME initial deposit money that she is going to earn $4,000.
Now then, what does she stand to lose on her $100,000 within one year?
Up to $46,000 in missed gains and profits. Where is the real risk then?
Tell me, what is the difference between taking $100,000 and starting a business, knowing that 95% of all new business fail, experiencing catastrophic loss within the first 3 years?
Where are you getting?
The only alternative is to work
the rest of your life for meager wages, living check to check as the cost of living skyrockets around you.
Oh, don't think you're not losing substantially in that scenario, you
are. If fact, you're being wreckless taking that route.
Traded right, forex is a simple, effective and
perfect instrument for
super-compounding your money by using money, in trade, with which to do so.
Getting back to a better re-wording of the original question,
Is there risk of you losing money by trading forex?
The right answer is, What is your
risk of loss by NOT trading global currencies?
The answer?
More substantial than you may think.
Have a good week trading.
Sam