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Is Forex trading hard?
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elitesystem
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Question Is Forex trading hard? - 06-04-2008

I love it when, after outlining a challenge (such as building an amphibious car) Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear) looks into the camera and says "I mean, how hard can it be????"

Its always harder than it looks, and this is a roundabout way of saying FX is harder than it looks too.

One thing to be careful of is that, when coming from a stock trading background, it is often possible to come up with a valuation for that stock ("How hard can it be????") and then analyse the price in reference to that valuation. Doing such a thing in FX is much more difficult. There are plenty of theories of exchange rate valuation, but there is much more disagreement on each ones accuracy/usefulness.

any good books worth reading to learn forex trading??
There are probably some good introductory texts on FX around, but there is good info on various websites (ForexFactory my favourite - but a good intro is the FX forum right here on ASF) too (I am not talking about 'how to trade FX" info, just info on how the market functions, theories of exhange rate valuation and so forth).

Some general observations on how FX differs to stocks:
There is no central exchange, prices can vary between brokers (held in check somewhat by arbitrage opportunities but discrepencies can and do occur, all the time). Thus you may get set on an order in one broker and not in another.
Regulation of FX is nowhere near as tight as that of stocks. Investigate your broker thoroughly. US or UK/Western Europe-based is usually best. Different brokers have different access to liquidity channels too.
Most newcomers trade with WAY too much leverage.
Prices can gap, liquidity can disappear ... this can happen more than you think (does happen more than you think). Be especially wary around releases of significant economic reports. London timezone is generally the most reliable for ensuring liquidity (but will vary with currency pair).

Thats all I can think of for now. Hope the info helped cheers!
   
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