I began my spread betting journey with a forex course which showed the fundamentals of Forex spread betting. Starting with a forex course by “Andy X” called ‘insider signal’. The course showed the use of metatrader – a trading platform which you can download to follow the markets, and trading fundamentals and signals. I signed up with a spread betting company called capitalspreads.com which allows you to trade from your laptop at home. The good thing about most of these spread betting companies is that they allow you to demo trade – you get a ‘play’ account with £100 000 ‘play’ money to learn the process of trading without having to risk real money. The bad thing about this is that it can give you a false sense of security. Trading with real money is very different and the added pressure can easily distract you into making bad decisions and breaking from your initial trading plan.
After I had been trading for several months with small amounts I slowly started increasing my steaks. An initial winning streak made me over confident and I took some heavy losses when I upped the steak. I continued to learn and signed up to a new course which took a slightly different approach. I liked this course as it focused on choosing only the very best trades and ignoring the others. Most of my time was spent on making sure the trades I was looking at were technically perfect and ‘Hector’ taught only to enter those trades and always to leave the others. Since losses are part of the trading game it is as much about limiting losses as making winning trades.
Trading is ultimately about self discipline with rolling markets open 24 hours a day and unlimited potential for loss and gain. You need a trading plan to trade or you will simply be jumping in and out with no direction or game plan. Most traders blow their account to bits within the first year or two of trading and never come back. For those who stick it out forex investing can be extremely profitable but you need to know what you are doing from the start.
Learning how to trade with a forex course which teaches you how to use spread betting software is the best place to start. Start with a demo account and trade with toy money for the first 3 months or so. Once you are winning consistently you can open a real money account with small steaks. Stick to your steak and your plan and if you deviate or start to take heavy losses go back to your demo account again.
Make sure you have a good trading plan before you start taking trades. This includes good money management. When taking Forex trades your potential gain on any one trade should be twice that of your potential loss. This means that even if you lose 50% of your trades you will be in profit. Making money by trading the Forex markets is risky and you should not risk money you are not prepared to lose. Start with a demo account and only begin with small steaks when trading for real.
Tags: Andy x, demo account, foreign exchange trading, forex course, forex investing, forex trading, fx trading, hector, Hector trading, insider signal, spread betting, spread betting companies, spread betting software