For a beginner forex currency trading may seem to be a whole new world but in fact the basics are quite easy to learn. You just need to understand the buzz words and trading terms and grasp a basic understanding of how the markets work.

Making big money in a short time is what forex currency trading is all about! It is possible for investors to make a lot of money very fast because the rates of exchange on the foreign market can rise and fall quickly. This means of course that it is risky and there is also a chance of losing a lot, just like most things in life that have the potential of big returns.

As you will know if you have ever exchanged currency for a vacation, the rates are constantly changing. For example you may change $100 into another currency planning to travel, and then find that you do not need it and change it back. The rate will probably have changed in the meantime and you may even have made a profit.

Forex traders deal in currencies hoping to make a profit all of the time, but instead of changing money at the bank they use a broker. Most transactions these days are handled online. In many ways it is not so different from stock trading. There is the same potential to trade in margins where a small balance held by your broker can control much larger deals.

One difference from stock exchange trading is that forex traders are not limited to dealing in their own country. You can trade any two currencies regardless of where you live. This also means that the market is international. Because of time zone differences, it is open 24 hours a day from Monday morning in Australia to Friday afternoon in New York.

Each currency is represented by 3 letters: USD for the US dollar, GBP for the British pound, EUR for the Euro, JPY for the Japanese Yen, CHF for the Swiss franc, CAD for the Canadian dollar, AUD for the Australian dollar etc. The exchange rate between two currencies may be expressed like this: USD/CHF 1.14. This means that to buy one US dollar you will need 1.14 Swiss francs.

If you want to start out in forex trading you will need to look for a broker or investment management company that you trust. It is worth shopping around and checking online forums for recommendations. Check out how long the company has been in business and what your rights and liabilities will be. Read all of the fine print.

You will probably also want to use a bot to do your trading for you. This is automated forex trading software that can trade 24 hours a day according to rules that you set for it. There is usually a demo option so that you can test out the whole system for a while before you let it trade with real money. There are many forex robots on the market and most of them come with full instructions for beginner forex currency trading.

Forex Margin Trading: Make More Money With Less

Forex margin trading is a way of applying leverage to increase the purchasing power of your money. Leverage simply means using a small sum to control a much larger sum. This is possible because it is unlikely that the value of a currency will change by more than a certain percentage over a short time. So you can place a few hundred dollars in your brokerage account to trade on the margin – the amount that you think the price will fall. Your broker will in effect lend you the balance.

Trading on margins is also known in stock and futures trading, but because of the special nature of currencies, you can get a lot more leverage in the forex market. Depending on your broker’s terms, you may be able to control 50, 100 or even 200 times your account balance.

This can lead to big profits if you are successful, but it can also mean big losses if not. In general, the more leverage you use, the more risky your trading is.

We can understand leverage and margins if we consider an example.

Imagine that the current rate on the British pound to US dollar forex market is shown as GBP/USD 1.7100. So to buy one British pound you would need $1.71. If you expected the value of the dollar to rise against the pound you might decide to sell enough pounds to buy $100,000. If your broker used lots of $10,000 each, this would be 10 lots. Then you would sit back and wait for the price to go up.

A few days later you might find that the price had moved to GBP/USD 1.6600. Sure enough, the dollar has risen and the pound is now worth only $1.66. If you sell your dollars now and buy back into pounds, you will have made a profit of 2.9% less the spread. 2.9% of $100,000 is $2,900, so that would be an excellent trade.

But most of us do not have $100,000 spare cash that we want to trade on the currency exchange market. So here is where the principle of forex margins comes into play.

Since you are buying and selling different currencies at the same time, your own money only has to cover any loss that you might make if the dollar falls instead of rising. And you would put a stop loss into place to limit that loss, so $1,000 might be all you needed to have in your account to make this $100,000 purchase. Your broker guarantees the other $99,000.

In fact many brokers now operate limited risk amounts where the account will automatically close out the trade if whatever funds you have in your account are lost. This prevents margin calls which can be disastrous for a trader because they mean that you can lose more than you have. But with a forex limited risk account that is not a possibility. The broker’s software that you use to control your account will not let you lose more than your account balance.

Using leverage in this way is so common in currency trading that you will soon do it without even thinking about it.