Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The man who will teach you how to buy money and sell it for more money


No, this isn’t a joke, neither is it a manual to pulling of a bank heist or a con job.  This is an introduction to the art of investing in and trading currencies. Now, before you switch off or go away in boredom, let me just tell you that it is a market in which over $4 trillion goes through each day. Got your attention? Thought so…..
Before you pull up your socks, and get ready to claim your piece of the foreign exchange pie, let me just tell you, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. I hate to play the party pooper and tell you that you need to be careful. But, it took me a long time to reach where I am right now, and I’ll tell you that if you jump without looking you can fall really hard. That being said, I’ll try my best to give you an idea as to how you can march into this world and claim the future that you deserve.

Only you can determine how bad or how well you will do this, and off course it does depend to some extent on your “luck” as well.  There is an element of skill, knowledge, hard work and luck in this effort. I’ll try to get you up to speed in the knowledge department, and with practice and hard work, you’ll have the skill bit down soon enough. In the famous words of Samuel Goldwyn, hopefully the maxim “The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get” will hold true for all of us. It certainly does seem to be for me.

There is an element of risk in this. My suggestion: only risk what you can spare (over and above what you need to daily purposes and a comfortable safety net).

Now, what is the purpose dabbling in this market? Like any other transaction in business, you try to get greater amounts of value for what you trade in. Specifically, in the foreign exchange market, if you trade in X US dollars for Y Euros. You’ll be betting that the value of the Euro will rise, so that in some time  you can trade it in for more US dollars. So in a hypothetical example:

I’ll trade 7 US dollars for 6 Euros. (So I “sold” 7 US dollars and “bought” 6 Euros)  

Tomorrow if 6 Euros is worth 8 US dollars and I “sold” the 6 Euros I have for 8 US dollars. I just made 1 US Dollar worth of profit from the initial 7 US dollars I had.

This is the basic premise of foreign exchange trading. Now, this is an overly simplistic model, usually the amounts of trading are larger, when taking profits into account you’ll also consider expenses (trading fees, money to research, personal expenses etc), inflation etc.  In due time you’ll come to know more about this if you stay with us.

The foreign exchange market tends to be open around the clock, on all days but weekends. So giving meaning to the line money never sleeps.. (except on weekends, money too needs a break ;) ) So this is yet another grand advantage of foreign exchange trading. You can do it on your time.

Again I’d like to mention, this isn’t for everyone. If you don’t think it’s for you don’t push yourself to it. But if you think you are up to it, buckle up, and get ready for the ride of your life. I’ll try to put up reasonably regular posts on this fine art. On the way you’ll win money, lose money, but the effort will be to end up and well into the green (if you do it right, you should). I hope you learn a lot along the way, and above all, have fun on this journey.

Yours truly,

The forex scholar.

P.S. Feel free leave any ideas, questions you have, or anything you'd like me to talk about in the comments. Or feedback or whatever, point is: if you have something to say, don't hesitate. Look forward to hear from you.