Reasons to Trade Forex

In my first article “Why I Trade Forex and You Should Too,” I listed six reasons why the Forex market has great potential for traders. In case In case you weren’t convinced, here’s seven more reasons I trade Forex and you should too:

• • Although volatile, currencies tend to show strong trending characteristics which lend themselves to successful short- to medium-term trading
• • Great way to make money in down markets
• • Currencies not connected to stock market. Thus they may go up while stocks go down
• • Can play both up and downtrends
• • Faster profit potential than is often possible in options
• • Currency market immune to the kind of market manipulation that can occur in the stock market
• • Overall, more accurate analytic tools available and better risk management possible

So there ya have it – Seven more reasons to trade Forex. Wanna know more? Click on the free ebook in the sidebar for a free Guide to Forex Basics. Then, open a paper account, practice for a while, and see what ya think.

Evaluating Online Brokers

What online broker you use depends greatly on what you want to trade. I know many options guys who like Think or Swim or Options Express. For swing trading stocks and ETF’s, I like Interactive Brokers. At only a dollar per trade, you can trade all you want without being eaten alive by fees. Now that’s what I call a discount broker! Unfortunately, no one broker does everything well and finding a good Forex broker can be a real challenge. First, you have to make sure the broker is legit. After that, it completely depends on how much money you have to deposit and what kind of terms you want. The more money you can deposit, the better the spread you may receive.

Since most of us don’t have truckloads of cash, this post will focus on discount brokers who accept small deposits. One that I have found that makes it easy to get started is, aptly named, Easy Forex. The good features of this broker include:

1. Initial deposit as low as $100. (Hard to believe but true!)
2. Easy deposit via credit card or Paypal
3. “Freeze rate” for best price while market is moving. (See “Forex Pairs: How to Read Price Quotes” for more on this.)
4. Guaranteed stop-loss rate. (This is as good as it gets.)
5. No software download. This means you can trade online from anywhere and are not limited by your CPU speed or hard drive size.

Online Broker Rating

There are many Forex brokers out there. Some better than others; some outright scams. So I’ve developed a Squidoo lens to allow traders to vote for the brokers they like and to leave comments on those they don’t. My hope is that eventually this will be a great consumer resource for traders. So come on over and get pro-active,