Forex Guide: Things That Every Beginner Traders Should Know Before They Start Trading in Forex

It's a fact that forex trading became a highly preferable investment method in the last decade. Combined with the internet as a global 24/7 network forex is reachable to everyone. I'll not give you about the basic explanation of forex trading in this article. I'm sure that i don't have to tell what forex trading is. People which familiar or have an interest in an investment know forex already. Don't they?
Forex trading is basically just an investment
As any other investment, there are always benefits and risks beyond forex trading. Many people/organization, especially forex brokers, its affiliate and those who earn their income by providing some forex related services says that forex trading have so much advantages compared to other investments; Forex is easy, with its non-stop 24 hours market, its wide range adjustable leverage, its automated trading platform, its offered better opportunity for income resource, and many more -- you name it as much as you want to...
Blinded by its 'beautiful dream imagination', many small/personal traders, especially for the new ones forgot that forex trading is basically still an investment program. Traders should never have a thought that forex trading is an income resource.
Common Beginner Traders Scenario
Beginner forex traders are usually follow the trend of forex trading without preparing and providing them self with an adequate understanding about what's inside forex trading. Their common scenarios are:
1. Know about forex trading
2. Have an interest in forex trading
3. Looking for an easy and profitable forex services
(Usually by looking for some services with less margin, high leverage, automated trading platform, and less risk? - which is too good to be true)
4. Start gambling with their trades
5. Unable to achieve profits as what their imagination
6. Repeating scenarios 3, 4 and 5
7. Repeating scenarios 3, 4 and 5 again... and again...
8. Realizing that they are loosing too much or that their imagination along these days/weeks/months is wrong (i doubt that it would reach years)
9. Give up and quit their trading for good.
Where did they do wrong in above scenario? Is that wrong to always searching for a better service to back up our trade? In my point of view, there are no mistakes in that scenario at all. But it's just incomplete, and that's the most dangerous mistakes made by most beginner traders.
How to Overcome Traders Mistakes and Begin to Make Some Profits in Forex
The facts are, there are just 5% of forex traders which successes with their trading. To become as they are, we should insert step 2.5 in scenario above. This step will simplify above scenarios by eliminating the fourth and eighth and changing ninth step became TRADERS GOAL ACHIEVED.
2.5 Preparing yourself with a solid basic knowledge of forex trading
- Know about the fundamental of forex trading
- Learn about what and how forex market really is
- Train yourself to getting familiar with the technical analysis in forex trading
- Learn how psychological factor affecting in the trading and define our best trading personality
- Be aware in our risk and money management
- Develop your most effective unique trading system based on your knowledge.
We should keep in mind deeply that forex trading is an investment. There is no way that we could be a master in some investment that we've just dive in to for days or weeks. We have to do it by the right way, and don't forget to eliminate your rush in the goal achievement. You will surely find your best trading system that suits you, I guarantee that. But it would cost you some time for several trial and error system testing while you developing your experience in forex trading.
By using an analogical approach as a computer, forex broker is the application programs and operating system. We do need them to make sure that all we need its done, served and executed properly. But, how good the computerization execution speed and its performance are depends on the basic computer specification, which analogically as you.
How to Get Yourself Completely Forex Prepared
Learning and education materials are world widely spreading around us.
1. The first and the most value added a resource of forex trading is through book reading. Forex and investing categorized books are availabe in countless numbers in many bookstore and online bookstore. You should pick some of them to educate yourself with valuable knowledge of the theory beyond forex trading.
2. Try to get into some traders forum to know more about forex trading and the markets. Forex forum also a place to give you an information for forecasting the crowd psychological factor to forecast the currency price movement by examining on how do other traders react in some financial forex related world events.
3. Get a forex course. An expert forex traders or forex broker are offering this kind of forex educational method. The course are usually about the basic knowledge of forex, technical analysis technique usage and its tools, an expert trading advice or maybe in how to develop a particular tested forex trading system which profitable (if done right and backed by your forex basic knowledge).
4. Forex magazine subscription. Some forex magazines are published weekly, monthly and others might be yearly. These materials usually give you information about the updated forex market behavior overview and analysis which can be use for the input of the fundamental analysis of your forex trading.



Octa is a private investor, an online writer and the owner of a forex trading blog [http://forexocta.blogspot.com]. She owns an online bookstore with a numerous collection of investment related books. Octa also a contributor in some finance categorized blogs.

How Much Money Should You Invest?

Many first time investors think that they should invest all of their savings. This isn’t necessarily true. To determine how much money you should invest, you must first determine how much you actually can afford to invest, and what your financial goals are.

First, let’s take a look at how much money you can currently afford to invest. Do you have savings that you can use? If so, great! However, you don’t want to cut yourself short when you tie your money up in an investment. What were your savings originally for?

It is important to keep three to six months of living expenses in a readily accessible savings account – don’t invest that money! Don’t invest any money that you may need to lay your hands on in a hurry in the future.

So, begin by determining how much of your savings should remain in your savings account, and how much can be used for investments. Unless you have funds from another source, such as an inheritance that you’ve recently received, this will probably be all that you currently have to invest.

Next, determine how much you can add to your investments in the future. If you are employed, you will continue to receive an income, and you can plan to use a portion of that income to build your investment portfolio over time. Speak with a qualified financial planner to set up a budget and determine how much of your future income you will be able to invest.

With the help of a financial planner, you can be sure that you are not investing more than you should – or less than you should in order to reach your investment goals.

For many types of investments, a certain initial investment amount will be required. Hopefully, you’ve done your research, and you have found an investment that will prove to be sound. If this is the case, you probably already know what the required initial investment is.

If the money that you have available for investments does not meet the required initial investment, you may have to look at other investments. Never borrow money to invest, and never use money that you have not set aside for investing!

Why You Should Invest

Investing has become increasingly important over the years, as the future of social security benefits becomes unknown.

People want to insure their futures, and they know that if they are depending on Social Security benefits, and in some cases retirement plans, that they may be in for a rude awakening when they no longer have the ability to earn a steady income. Investing is the answer to the unknowns of the future.

You may have been saving money in a low interest savings account over the years. Now, you want to see that money grow at a faster pace. Perhaps you’ve inherited money or realized some other type of windfall, and you need a way to make that money grow. Again, investing is the answer.

Investing is also a way of attaining the things that you want, such as a new home, a college education for your children, or expensive ‘toys.’ Of course, your financial goals will determine what type of investing you do.

If you want or need to make a lot of money fast, you would be more interested in higher risk investing, which will give you a larger return in a shorter amount of time. If you are saving for something in the far off future, such as retirement, you would want to make safer investments that grow over a longer period of time.

The overall purpose in investing is to create wealth and security, over a period of time. It is important to remember that you will not always be able to earn an income… you will eventually want to retire.

You also cannot count on the social security system to do what you expect it to do. As we have seen with Enron, you also cannot necessarily depend on your company’s retirement plan either. So, again, investing is the key to insuring your own financial future, but you must make smart investments!