Trading Foreign Exchange - a Profitable Alternative to Trading Futures and Stocks

Foreign Exchange (or Forex) trading is an alternative to the more common trading instruments, such as futures and stocks. The many advantages of FOREX trading are what makes this type of trading so popular. What follows is a brief summary of the 6 key advantages:

1. Lower Margin Just like with futures and stock speculation, a forex trader has the ability to control a large amount of the currency basically by putting up a small amount of margin. However, the margin needs for trading futures are usually around 5% of the full value of the holding.

What this means is that trading forex, a currency trader's money can play with 5-times as much value of product as a futures trader's, or 50 times more than a stock trader's. When you are trading on margin, this can be a very profitable way to create an investment strategy, but it's important that you take the time to understand the risks that are involved as well.

2. No Commission and No Exchange Fees When you trade in futures, you have to pay exchange and brokerage fees. Trading forex has the advantage of being commission free. This is far better for you. Currency trading is a worldwide inter-bank market that lets buyers to be matched with sellers in an instant. You are going to have to compare both online forex and your specific futures commission charge to see which commission is the bigger one. 3. Limited Risk When you are trading futures, your risk can be unlimited. For example, if you thought that the prices for orange juice were going to continue their upward trend, just before the Florida Hurricanes. The price for it after that fell dramatically, which moved the limit down several days in a row. You would not have been able to leave your position and this could have wiped out the entire equity in your account as a result. Because the price just kept on falling, you would have been obligated to find even more money to make up the deficit in your account.

4. Position Rollover When futures contracts expire, you have to plan ahead if you are going to rollover your trades. Forex positions expire every two days and you need to rollover each trade just so that you can stay in your position.

5. 24-Hour Marketplace With futures, you are generally limited to trading only during the few hours that each market is open in any one day. Forex, on the other hand, is a 24/5 market. The day begins in New York, and follows the sun around the globe through Europe, Asia, Australasia and back to the US again. You can trade any time you like Monday-Friday.

6. Free market place Foreign exchange is perhaps the largest market in the world with an average daily volume of US$1.4 trillion. That is 46 times as large as all the futures markets put together! With the huge number of people trading forex around the globe, it is very hard for even governments to control the price of their own currency.