After January 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, most people switched to working remotely and started thinking about starting their own online business that could become an additional income and later grow into their main occupation.
Online forex trading is one of the areas I would recommend considering. It is not an easy way to make money as it may seem at first sight, and it also involves certain risks and requires initial investment just like any other business.
This business requires some knowledge and before you start it you will need time to educate yourself and look for information.
With what to start forex trading?
The most important thing in online Forex trading is a strategy and unconditional adherence to it, whether it’s a strategy for manual trading or a fully automated trading strategy – a forex robot. Let’s start by explaining what a strategy is.
A strategy is a set of rules or even an algorithm that describes the trader’s actions in any situation. Usually, such an algorithm contains the following parts:
- The rules of “entering the market” – i.e. under what conditions a trader must open an order, whether it must be a buy or sell order, the order volume, as well as its type.
- Rules for order accompaniment. This refers to whether a stop loss or a take profit is necessary and what rules are used to calculate the level of these orders. If a trailing stop is applied, from which level and with what step?
- The rules for the closing of a position.
- The number of open positions simultaneously.
So, after reading the above, a beginner should have a lot of questions, such as what is a stop loss or profit. That’s why you should start by studying the basics of Forex trading. You can find a lot of articles on the internet on this subject, so I will only give you a list of topics for you to learn about.
Forex trading online list of topics to study:
- Basic concepts. What are an order and what types of orders exist in the forex market? What is SWAP and when is it charged? The start and end times of trading sessions.
- The basic economic indicators and their influence on the currency
- The basic technical indicators for technical analysis of the forex market and how to interpret them
- What is money management and what you may encounter when trading online?
Studying the aforementioned topics may take you anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months, you should never stop studying, and depending on which strategy you decide to choose for your trading, you can delve deeper into studying technical or economic indicators and perfect your strategy to infinity.
How to choose an online forex trading platform
There are many platforms for online forex trading and it can be a web platform or a standard program for PS, MAC, or Mobile. I would recommend starting with standard forex trading platforms as they have more possibilities compared to web and mobile platforms and can be installed on a VPS (virtual private server) which is important to reduce the order execution time.
Almost all standard platforms contain a set of popular technical indicators and trading robots, as well as offer the possibility to create your own indicators, trading robots, and scripts. The most popular platforms are Metatrader 4, Metatrader 5, and Strider. You can find a lot of programmers on the net who specialize in writing programs for forex trading.
They can help you write an indicator or a robot if you have an idea, or you can buy an indicator or a robot based on algorithms created by other forex traders. You should consider that a forex broker can provide several types of trading platforms or only one, so it’s up to you to choose a platform or broker first and then come up with the platform you prefer.
How to choose a broker for forex trading
When choosing a forex broker, there are several factors to consider:
- Where the broker is registered and who regulates it. It is important to understand that many Forex brokers may be registered in several jurisdictions, which means regulated by several regulators. For example, a broker may be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and also regulated by the Republic of Mauritius in this case it all depends on the country you live in. If you live in England, then you have nothing to fear because your account will be opened under the regulation of the FCA, but if not, you should check with your broker.
- The broker’s reputation. You will find many broker ratings on the Internet. Pay attention only to those who do not advertise brokers, receiving from them a commission, but really give traders an opportunity to express their opinion about the broker. To avoid promoters and advertisers, you can do your research with websites such as topbrokers.com that provide proven and detailed information about various brokers with relevant statistics and analytics in order to make an informed decision. This way, you are less likely to end up with a broker that is not trustworthy or useful for your trading journey.
- Does the broker work with clients from your country?
- What payment systems does the broker use for deposits and withdrawals?
- What platforms does your broker offer?
Under no circumstances use any additional services from the broker, even if they are free, such as analytics and forecasts, VPN, bonuses, robots, and indicators. Many brokers use b-books and for this reason, there is a crossover of interests and the broker is interested in you losing. Also if
the broker asks what trading system you are going to use – change the broker. The forex broker’s job is to give you access to the forex market and nothing more.
Forex manual trading vs robot trading.
I am a supporter of forex robot trading. Let me explain the pros and cons. If you have a good trading strategy for manual trading, why not program it? The forex robot can be tested on historical quotes and its parameters can be optimized. Testing will show all the weaknesses of the trading strategy and allow you to improve it.
You can also realize that the strategy is too risky and can lead to the loss of the deposit or its part. Forex robot allows you to trade 24/5 around the clock and on several trading instruments and accounts. Forex robots will not give in to all sorts of temptations to break the rules of the strategy. Forex robot reacts much faster to a trading signal and will not miss it.
For manual trading I would single out one advantage – some traders have a gift to feel the market or have been watching it so long that they can predict it based on their feelings which they are unable to put into an algorithm.
How to choose a strategy for forex trading.
Usually, a beginner forex trader does not immediately write his own strategy due to a lack of experience but tries to find an algorithm or a ready-made trading strategy. I would not recommend searching for an algorithm and then programming it, because it will lead to disappointment because the algorithm does not work, searching for new algorithms, programming again and in the end, you will spend more money to find a working algorithm than to buy an already ready and tested robot. Start your search and pay attention to the following:
- Whether the seller’s website has a test robot on a real account.
- Does the seller offer a demo version or a money-back guarantee if the robot fails to meet your expectations?
- What other customers have reviewed this forex robot on independent arbitrage software review sites
I found the HFT Arbitrage platform with latency arbitrage for myself after reading the reviews and looking at the forex arbitrage review site. I found the HFT Arbitrage platform with arbitrage and the arbitrage platform with latency arbitrage after reading reviews on the forex arbitrage platform website.
Conclusion
After reading this article, don’t rush to open a real trading account and buy forex robots, better spend more time on learning. Download a demo trading platform, most forex brokers offer demo accounts on their websites and trade on a risk-free account. Switch to a real account only if you feel confident.
Forex trading must not become for you a game of chance, it’s not a casino, and it’s not an occasional game of fun. Only in case, you treat online Forex trading as a real job with real responsibility, you can reach significant success and financial independence.