Trading the global forex market attracts many people due to the possibility of a flexible lifestyle and earnings potential. However, becoming successful as a forex trader requires a lot of effort – learning about the markets, time to develop your own trading strategy and style – time and dedication.
Having access to a wide range of educational materials that can enhance your trading knowledge is critical if you want to be successful in forex trading.
Take advantage of available trading education materials to develop your own trading strategies, trading plan and methodology. Access trading videos, tutorials and webinars that focus on trading the different markets.
Starting with a Demo Account, you can practice and enhance your trading skills, familiarise yourself with the trading platform and test different trading systems. This will give you more confidence before you trade a live account.
When you're ready and confident, activate a real trading account and start trading according to your trading plan and goals.
Open and fund a live trading account. Download the MT4 trading software and you will be ready to start trading.
The global forex market is recognised as the world's largest and most liquid financial market with an estimated US$5 trillion in daily transactions.
With millions of participants and massive volume of transactions every day, the FX market provides ongoing trade opportunities to traders across the globe.
With long trading hours – FX trading is open 24 hours 5 days a week – across multiple FX centres around the world, traders can place trades in different time zones.
Given the large volume of online trading resources including videos, you need to be careful and selective. Make sure you are only using or accessing information from reliable sources that are licensed and regulated by recognised regulatory authorities.
A big part of success in trading is learning how to manage risk. There are internal and external factors that can affect the level of risk. Learning about these factors and putting in place strict risk management systems are vital to your trading success. Here are some of the risks you need to be aware of:
One of the fundamental rules in forex risk management is to not risk more than what you can afford to lose. Often, traders try to leverage their trading position to allow them to trade amounts exceeding their actual funds. This may have adverse results if a trade goes in the opposite direction, which can result in loses exceeding the value of the account.
When news hits the market relating to important economic announcements or political updates, connected forex markets can be adversely affected. Having access to current and scheduled news events can help you pre-plan a trading approach during those events. It could be as simple as choosing not to trade, but at least you're not caught unawares.
Another critical element of forex risk is interest rate changes. Central banks are responsible for driving monetary policy within their countries which includes the setting of interest rates. It's important to know when these decisions are scheduled as they usually have an immediate effect on foreign exchange rates.
Volatility risk describes the size and speed of fluctuations within the market. All markets have volatility, but in some instances the volatility can be extreme and unexpected. Usually during important news events we can see sharp and large movements in the market. Being aware of what causes these can help with your trading strategy.
