If you have heard anything about the forex market, it’s possibly that it’s the biggest monetary market in the world, at least in terms of daily trading volumes. To be completely sure, the forex market is unique in numerous respects. The volumes are, indeed, massive, which implies that liquidity is ever present. It also operates fulltime 6 days a week, giving traders access to the market any time they want it.
Few trading restrictions exist – no daily trading limits up or down, no restrictions on position sizes, and no wants on selling a currency pair short.
Selling a currency pair short means you’re expecting the price to decline. Because of the way currencies are quoted and because currency rates move up and down all the time, going short is as common as being long.
The majority of the action occurs in the major currency pairs, which pit the U.S. Dollar (USD) against the currencies of the Eurozone (the Western european countries that have adopted the EU Dollar as their currency), Japan, Great Britain, and Switzerland. There’s also lots of trading prospects in the minor pairs, which see the U.S. Greenback traded against the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand dollars. On top of that, there’s cross-currency trading, which directly pits 2 non-USD currencies against one another, such as the Swiss franc against the Japanese yen. Altogether, there are anywhere from 15 to 20 different currency pairs, depending on which forex brokerage you deal with.
Most individual traders trade currencies through the Internet thru an agent. Online fx trading is generally done on a margin basis, which permits individual traders to trade in bigger amounts by taking advantage of the quantity of margin on deposit.
The leverage, or margin trading proportions, can be terribly high, infrequently as much as 200:1 or larger, meaning a margin deposit of $1,000 could control a position size of $200,000. But trading on margin carries its own rules and wants and is the backdrop against which all of your trading will occur. Leverage is a two-edged sword, increasing gains and losses similarly, which makes risk administration the key to any successful trading methodology.
Before you ever begin to trade, in any market, make sure you’re only risking money you can stand to lose, what’s ordinarily called risk capital. Risk management is the key to any profitable trading plan. Without a risk-aware strategy, margin trading can be an extremely short-lived endeavour. With a correct risk plan in effect you stand a much better chance of surviving losing trades and making winning ones.
Felix Richman is an FX trader and columnist on subjects like forex robots, and well-liked FX software programs like FAP Turbo.