Hi Dan,

Why didn’t you give it a try? The cool thing about stock and currency trading as opposed to online gambling is that at least the at the odds aren’t stocked in favor of the house. Also, there’s no chance you’ll start trading real money unless you give them bank and credit card information, so you don’t have to worry about that. The one thing to watch for is that you don’t want to get seduced by early winnings. It takes two years at least to actually become a decent trader. If you win early it may have more to do with luck. But let me know if the trading works out for you.

-Patrick

I’ve been giving it some thought, Patrick … wondering how much of an investment of time it might require. Two years is quite a while. I just wonder how much time it would take each day.

I know how I used to be when things started rolling at the roulette table or at racetrack … top of the world, ma! But I learned years ago that once you’re ahead, you have to get up from the table while you’re still gambling with their money. :)

In Forex only about 5% of the “players” actually win the big bucks. Even if you have a good strategy, at a certain point the market will have an unpredictable turn.

If you really want to be a trader, first thing to learn is discipline. Will you be able to set your targets without being influenced by current variations? Also, you need to make rigurous calculations on how much money to invest and how much can you risk losing.

I’m a full-time trader, and trade both UK shares and the forex markets.

My advice would be to stick to the three main forex markets - the GBPUSD, EURUSD and USDJPY, and just watch them for a few weeks. See how they move, both intraday and over a longer timeframe.

Also make use of free charting software and add technical indicators to your graphs to see how effective they are for predicting future moves. My favourite indicators are RSI, EMA, Stochastics and MACD Histogram.

Finally I can highly recommend getting a copy of “Come Into My Trading Room” by Dr Alexnader Elder. It offers information not only on how to successfully trade the markets, but also has sections on mindset and discipline, which is very important if you are going to become a successful trader.

I think being profitable in Forex requires a lot of work, dedication, learn, practice, more than a good discipline, sharp knowledge of money management and understanding of the psychology of the currency market. Therefor it is better to practice on virtual currency before taking risk on your real money.