Although currency market is the largest financial market in the world, it is relatively unfamiliar terrain for retail traders. Currency market is the most widely traded market in the world, with more than $4 trillion being bought and sold every single day. You can speculate on the future direction of currencies, taking either a long or short position depending on whether you think the currency’s value will go up or down.
If you have been thinking of ways to trade the falling euro (EUR), or any other currency, you might consider the foreign exchange market. Forex, which is open 24 hours a day and five days a week, is the world's most traded financial market and also the most liquid. This means you can quickly get into and out of a trade. However, to successfully trade you will need to have good knowledge of foreign exchange, leverage, volatility and the conditions of each country whose currency you are trading.
You will also need to predict how these conditions affect the relative value of those currencies. This is extremely difficult as so many factors come into play, including politics, economics and market confidence, and these are unexpected, random events. As with any international investment, currency value will bear some correlation to the internal conditions of a given nation, where the monetary policies set by central banks have a direct correlation to how currencies perform.
It is widely agreed that to become a successful forex trader you need to work hard over many years to develop the skills. Whilst it is true that you can have a particularly effective system, the discipline to implement it and be very successful, it is also true that as the currencies’ values change, so do the pressures and the best-laid plans go out the window. The training and hard work you put in for the many years becomes a critical pool of experience from which to draw skills that you can apply once you do start your professional career.
Good training will expose you to the market, how to place trades, technical and fundamental trading techniques, which methods are the best, risk management, etc. It is up to you to expand on this learning through discussion, self-education, forums, most of which can be done online. After a while you will figure out the good advice from the not-so-good advice, as your education grows and you become a discerning trader. Before you start trading currencies, experts suggest you get an education, although with some caveats.
