If you have knowledge of forex, enter.

I have some newbie questions. Forex has scared me off for a long time, I'm all about safe, more auto pilot ways to make lots of money online. Forex seems as shady as gambling your life away in Vegas.

1. If you mess up, could you end up in debt? Or does it stop after you run out of money?

2. It seems that you need a large starting pot to even do Forex trading. Could you make a decent amount of money with $500 or less? Could you, with $200 realistically quintriple that in a year with Forex trading?

3. Those "mock" forex websites. Can you give yourself an amount of money and play around with it, testing out strategies? Do the websites try to trick you by making it so that in your mock trials, you do super well, so that when you do it for real, you get screwed over?

1.) If you run out of margin, your broker will close your positions so you don't end up in debt. Don't worry.


2.) Yes it is possible, however, you will fail - adding an extra few hundreds dollars purely to protect against draw down or to hedge against can be useful.


3.) "Slippage" is the key thing to look out for; on practice servers, everything is instant. On live servers, there's a 15-20 second "gap" sometimes between order place and execution. If you trade fundamentals, don't even think about it until you can afford a ECN at $50,000 or you'll piss money away! Plus the spreads are different and closing orders may take a few seconds so if your scalping pips, you'll get whipsawed and your profit wont exist when it closes. Broker will blame market liquidity and theres nothing you can do.

Agreed, it is like gambling. In the UK there are many licensed gambling bodies who "speculate" on forex; its the same as trading but the earnings are tax free as it's technically gambling.

My advice; save your money for another 2 years and wait for the economy to recover and go back to its old habits. I was making consistent return month on month of 20%. Then the economic downturn came in and wiped my strategy out - there's literally no way anyone could have known (look at how much the banks and stock lost!)

Good luck whatever you decide!

get a practice account at oanda, they are honest. what you practice with is what you get. I have turned $500 into $2000 in a few days but is just pure gambling for me. I have lost more than I made

if you have a plan, maybe you can do better

April. no get rich quick. get demo acct. free from most brokers. e.g. Oanda, axi trader, and go to babypips .com and learn at their free online forex school. Good site too. Do lots of reading and get educated.

jammie said:

1.) If you run out of margin, your broker will close your positions so you don't end up in debt. Don't worry.


2.) Yes it is possible, however, you will fail - adding an extra few hundreds dollars purely to protect against draw down or to hedge against can be useful.


3.) "Slippage" is the key thing to look out for; on practice servers, everything is instant. On live servers, there's a 15-20 second "gap" sometimes between order place and execution. If you trade fundamentals, don't even think about it until you can afford a ECN at $50,000 or you'll piss money away! Plus the spreads are different and closing orders may take a few seconds so if your scalping pips, you'll get whipsawed and your profit wont exist when it closes. Broker will blame market liquidity and theres nothing you can do.

Agreed, it is like gambling. In the UK there are many licensed gambling bodies who "speculate" on forex; its the same as trading but the earnings are tax free as it's technically gambling.

My advice; save your money for another 2 years and wait for the economy to recover and go back to its old habits. I was making consistent return month on month of 20%. Then the economic downturn came in and wiped my strategy out - there's literally no way anyone could have known (look at how much the banks and stock lost!)

Good luck whatever you decide!

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Wow! I take my hat out for you. Your answers are superb, concise and made with simplicity. I could not pass your post by without appreciating it. In fact with this he does not need anything further, if he does apply your reply then he would do well. You deserve a thanks!

My advice would be to look at your appetite for risk, if you are hoping to use it from a standing start to make a living think again, it is very stressful unless you are doing it for fun.

Some good replies above so I don't need to go over old ground. But here is a couple of useful tips.

Choose a strategy and stick to it. Set yourself parameters and don't step outside them don't be tempted to just jump in. Discipline is key to success.

Never Chase a loss. You will lose at sometime or other, mostly because of human error, you might lose concentration or accidentally go long when you wanted to go short, or just old fashioned getting it wrong. Accept it and move on, and return to the plan.

Don't trust other people's judgement. Once you understand how a marketplace works how buy and sell pressure creates and changes trends you will realise that as many people's opinions are wrong as are right, as such the only decision that matters is your own. Trusting someone else could lead to many a folly. An all too common mistake is to have built up so much faith that you go in deeper than you normally would because the tips have always been right. Sooner or later this will lose you everything.

And for my own personal opinion (this can get religious so take from it what you will) technical analysis is the way to go. Elliott wave theory coupled with fibbonacci work together like clockwork, you just have to find a profitable way to employ it.

This is another great tip too and very paramount to stick to. One has to be realistic when trading forex, as there might be bumps in the way to deal with, in fact the way you react to loss will determine how long you will last in the market.
Just know that loses happens every now and then like every other area of life, so learn to see the positive side from your loss and keep thriving.

Is there any good Forex Guides ?

1. Yes, you can go into a debt. It is quite rare, but there is still a chance. For example EUR/CHF... lost 12% with no time for margin call. Leverage on 1st tier currency pairs is 1:200... so it could be quite painful for you.

2. No, that is not realistic. More realistic is that you are going to go from 200$ to 50$ if you are lucky. Bear in mind i know nothing about Forex trading, but if you really think you can beat Ivy League and incredibly witted portfolio managers, that consider 20% p.a. a good year, than you are nothing but a looser. Forex is highly liquid, that means it would be great for portfolio managers... 90% of the moves are affected by current economic state or affected by actions of National Bank/ECB/FED, you would have no chance to see them coming with your Bollinger Bands lol

3. idk

If you want to keep your money, stay away from Forex, and come up with your own creative ways to make money.

If you say you know nothing about forex, how come you are offering this resounding advice?...This sounds more like someone who has been there and had some tough times in forex. Anyways there are folks earning good in forex, it's all about knowing and having a proper plan and doing things right. But it is definitely not for everyone, that'a a fact. just try to identify what you will be good at and follow it.

Basically what serpico1 said babypips is a great site, also XM offer micro accounts in which you can invest a smaller amount of money also as a beginner AVOID high leverage stick to 1:1 or 2:1

Check the broker you are planning on working with on scam websites before you deposit money.

Forex is definitely do able as an income source.
I have been working on trading and how to become profitable, for just over a year.. with real money.. not demo anymore.. and for the last 4 months i have consistently made money..
!0% increase on my account/ per month .. and i compound it as well.. and yes.. that's a very good return.. I could probably save myself a lot more stress if i just wanted 5% a month.. but i am building capital and want to move forward
I doubled my initial amount which wasn't a lot ( starting amount of $1,600) and now i have increased my account size to $18,000 and so far have made 5.1% in the last 2 week.. so still on target for a 10% month...
Plan is to inject some more money.. another say 10 - 15K... so trading of around a 30K account...
Sorry for the ramble.. but i see this as a nice income stream... but.. i still want more streams.. so i am still looking at IM.. funnily enough.. a Forex Site is now on my list

Get familiar with MACD & Stochastic & Relative Streght Index (oscillators), Parabolic SAR & median or crocodile (indicators), fibonacci(indicator). Identify trends. Learn to draw triangles analyzing from 1year to 1day timespan.

That way I did more than 30 succesful operations in a row.

You must read a lot, and learn about pips, leverage, slippage, gaps, news, money management and do not risk more than 2% - 5% of your balance.

This thread is 107 years old.

Shit, didn't noticed it xd It was replied as "Today" ! xd