You’ve heard about other people making a full time income from investing in the Forex but you’re just not sure if it is for you. If you’re in this position, we’ll take you on a quick tour of the concept of Forex foreign exchange rates, the benefits and the risk involved.

The Forex market revolves around the buying and selling of money – specifically the various currencies around the globe. The market is huge. To give you an idea of its size, the volume traded is 3 times that of the stock market and futures market combined.

When you start trading the Forex you simultaneously buy one currency and sell another currency. A Forex quote will look something like USD/EUR = 1.2. This can sometimes be a bit daunting to the beginner, but it essentially means that one US dollar can be sold for 1.2 Euros. The 2 currencies listed are known as currency pairs, and there are various pairs that are commonly quoted including USD/GBP (US dollar and British Pound), USD/CAD (US dollar and Canadian dollar), and USD/JAY (US dollar and Japanese Yen).

Trading the Forex has a number of benefits over the stock market. The first of these is the ability to trade 24 hours. Unlike the stock market, there is no physical location that the Forex is traded from. It is a global trading network that runs continuously. This means that you can trade at a time to suit you even if you have other commitments in your life.

Another benefit is the ability to be able to use leverage. This allows you to control large sums of money using only limited funds. If you have a broker that allows you 200:1 leverage, you can control $20,000 with only $100 of your own money. This means that you can increase your profits many-fold. But the downside is that if you do not correctly predict the market, your subsequent losses will also be much higher. Using leverage wisely is something that comes with experience.

A way of building up your experience with Forex is to trade a demo account first. This is a facility that is provided by many of the online Forex brokers. You get an account with ‘virtual money’ in it. You can then start trading without fear of losing any real money. You’ll get to feel comfortable using the trading software and you can even test out trading systems to see if they actually work.

There is a wealth of information available on the Internet about Forex trading. Much of it is free. It is advisable that you start out by getting an understanding of the basics such as Forex foreign Exchange rates, pips, trading signals and trading software. Then if you want to take things further, you can look into buying a trading course.

By: Paul Elms