As my readers of my blog know, I am all about passive investing. When it comes to putting money away for the long-term, a good plan is needed that included low cost investments. But even with my main investment accounts invested this way, I still have an investment account where I buy individual stocks and play around.

My success in playing around is what I would call average. I’ve owned some stocks that have had nice, big returns and others that did nothing but drop like a rock. I’ve even ridden a few into bankruptcy, falling victim to inertia.

Getting Started in Forex Trading

Over the past few years, I have entered into the world of Forex trading. Forex trading is simply the trading of currencies. I was introduced to Forex trading in my graduate international finance course. My professor gave us all $100,000 and access to a Forex account. Up until this point, I knew what Forex was, but I never used currencies as an investment.

It was very interesting getting started in Forex trading. It made me to look at the news in a different way. Before, I would just read the news. But trading currencies, I would read stories with the thought of “I wonder how this impacts the currency between two countries” in the back of my mind.

When I started trading, it was easy to see when bad news was coming out of Europe, I was to short the euro against the dollar. As time went on, I realized that more money could be made trading currencies other than the dollar and the euro. I began to trade in other currencies.

When the course ended, I turned my $100,000 into $120,000. Others in my class had done the same. One classmate lost almost everything because his first trade was for a large amount of money and he reversed the trade. Because of this, it’s important that you understand what you are doing. I suggest looking into an easy guide to setup trading in Forex. You don’t want to be like my classmate and lose everything by making a mistake.

Final Thoughts

I don’t trade in Forex as much as I did after that class. Getting started in Forex trading takes some time and education. Working a full-time job, writing for a few blogs and hanging out with friends hasn’t left me with enough free time that I would want in order to be successful at Forex trading. I would suggest to others that have some free time to look into trading in Forex in their “play” account. As I pointed out above, it helps you to think and see the news in different ways and can be a fun, new way to trade.

Readers, are you interested in getting started in Forex trading?

Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net