The Pitfalls of Forex Trading
Posted on October 29th, 2008 in Finance | No Comments »
One of the reason why Forex trading has surged in popularity is because of the claims that it is extremely profitable. The majority of these new traders enter the fore market with nothing more but just the notion of easy profits. However in fact this misconception had also caused many to hold back and on some occasion quit altogether out of pure frustrations.
Before you start trading, here are some things you should know.
The Forex market is not like the stock market
A lot of newer traders and even some experienced ones decide to get involved in Forex trading because they assume it’s more or less like the stock market, but potentially more profitable. Unfortunately, going into the Forex market planning to use your knowledge of stock trading is like planning to become a shoemaker because you know how to knit socks. They’re similar, but definitely not the same and they require different knowledge and skills sets.
Regardless of the timezone, trading is available anytime
Although the forex market is essentially 24 hours, this does not mean that you are able to trade 24 hours. For you to make any profit on your trading, you need to see price fluctuations. And for fluctuations to occur, you will need trading activities. But when everyone is asleep, there are no trading activities. So bear in mind that the currency pairs fluctuations depends on the type of currency and on which market the currency is being traded in.
Trading on the Forex has no commission payable.
In respect of commissions in the forex markets, there is indeed no commissions payable. However most people neglect to mention that there is the spread. The principle of the spread works the same way as the commission based system. The more you trade, the more you will pay in terms of spread.
You’ll profit only if you can predict what the markets will do
Even with a crystal ball no one can predict which way the forex market will go. What one can do is just to make an educated guess. Most of these guessing is done through technical charts analysis. Why people keep thinking about market prediction is that they want to try to keep one step ahead of the market. All this does at the end of the day is to make a person mentally exhausted. The best approach is to just follow market sentiments. When the markets conditions changes, just response accordingly. You will be able to know how to react to the market if you have the proper experiences.
Simple strategies are not plausible
There is the assumption that the more complex the trading strategy is, the better it is. They think this way because they thought that the strategy is complex because it takes into every consideration about factors which affects the market. At times, this fallacy is wrong because the complexity may be just a diversion from a simple strategy which can accomplish the task equally well
All these misconceptions occurs because of misleading advertisements. These advertisements lead to people making the wrong conclusion about Forex trading. So before you starts to trade in forex, learn the truth about the forex market if you wish to profit from your trading.









