Why do you trade FX?

M

MarketsMove

I am interested to find out why there are so many retail FX traders. It seems to be the most popular market for short term private account traders in America.

Is it because of the liquidity? The way it works with technical analysis? The number of factory having an impact? The automated strategies you can easily use?

If you could trade other markets with similar leverage, would you be tempted to switch? Is it mainly the leverage?

Asking because I am trying to decide between learning FX or Futures for day trading full time.
 
I think the FX market is a great place to learn because you can trade very small size without commission. You can start with a 200 USD account and learn to read price action.

Try to trade CL and you will blow up your account immediately :)
 
Volatility, large moves.
24/5. So you are not always late to the party like the stocks opening at 9:30.
Diversity of currencies with low to high correlation.
Responds to macroeconomic events.
Open your view all around the globe VS a single specific market (I know in the end all affects everything but...).
Liquidity.
Less prone to manipulation BS and insider trading (even if this is not really true).
Not dependant on the US rules (sorry guys, no offence).
 
With futures you have more than enough leverage and you can trade FX among plenty of other instruments, so leverage is not a valid argument comparing the two.

My impression is that there is an incredible amount of scam artists that makes money on selling dreams to people in the world of FX. You see the same in other markets, but FX seems to be the worst. That may explain why so many people choose FX.

In my opinion, if you are just starting out, you don`t need to choose a market yet.

Learn technical analysis, psychology, money management and start to develop an idea of how you want to trade.

Choosing a market comes later, but I would recommend you to start following a few markets and study end of day charts as soon as possible. You could for example choose an index, a stock and a forex market.

Good luck! :)

LF
 
Thing is you need to trade something into which you have interest in.
I like to travel therefore currencies is cool to me. I could not really trade pork bellies cuz I just dont give a .
I have a friend who is making good calls into tech stocks because he is into tech gizmos like Iphones and the like.
 
I have been swing trading for a while. Lot's of different markets with no real focus. Shares, commodities, index futures, fx, STIRs etc.. depending on where I see the opportunities, based on news mainly and no real charting

Thinking about changing to day trading and am just trying to find out which route to take in terms of markets to learn inside out... I am perhaps most interested in commodity futures so that may be the best market for me to day trade

I started this thread becuase I started looking on the internet and there are so many FX traders about, As another trader here has said.. you can open an account with $200 and this probably has a lot to do with it. That and the get rich quick scams :D
 
Quote from total_keops:

Volatility, large moves.
24/5. So you are not always late to the party like the stocks opening at 9:30.
Diversity of currencies with low to high correlation.
Responds to macroeconomic events.
Open your view all around the globe VS a single specific market (I know in the end all affects everything but...).
Liquidity.
Less prone to manipulation BS and insider trading (even if this is not really true).
Not dependant on the US rules (sorry guys, no offence).
More...
non taken, we're a fucking joke when it comes to regulation. We have a damn rule for everything.
 
Futures are great to day trade but IMO you are way too much leveraged for a beginner.
Don't forget you can't trade less than 1 contract and the next step is 2 contracts, there's no in between.

With FX you can start with smaller size can and increase it gradually, which I find more relaxing psychologically :)

There is NO get rich quick thing, it takes A LOT of time, practice and perseverance and your 1st goal is to preserve your capital.
 
retail forex is a real child of the pc and www
the cost for a charting program and realtime data feed is zero compared to several
hundreds of dollars for programs such as eSignal, CQG etc, demo trading also free
many fx user charts are quite seductive from an eye candy pov and with all the indi-
cators etc available particularly with MetaTrader, some screenshots seem to repre-
sent 'no loss' trading
an account can be opened and traded with $1 at Oanda, and the CME/Globex now
has mini and micro futures contracts, tho the volume is still quite low
there's no increase in margin when Day-to-Days trading; and the Customer Service
I've experienced with various brokers is excellent - free phone calls, online chat
then there's the product, over one hundred pairs at some brokers, no fraud or bank-
ruptcy etc occurs, simple fundamentals, Lots of trading advice
so I think there's an 'ease of use' associated with fx that also makes it attractive
and considering retail fx has only been around for 10 years, here's a stat:
Google search results:
forex: 175,000,000
futures: 72,300,000
stocks: 214,000,000
and the winner is -
options: 2,930,000,000 - who'd have thought !
 
Because EUR/USD currency pair is the best instrument to day trade during the European hours, which suit my timezone the best.

If I lived in the USA I would likely trade CL or maybe some stocks like RIMM...

But for hours between 6-10AM GMT Euro is the best. European stocks you can't day trade, Eurex futures are not volatile enough (FESX, FGBL etc.) or too jumpy (FDAX)...

So there's simply nothing better, if there was, I would trade that. :D
 
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