I have applied for a forex trading account with FXCM

Well, I have begun the process of applying for an account to trade forex with real money via FXCM. Of course I have no guarantee they will accept me. We’ll see. If they reject me I will try OANDA. If they also reject me, well – I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

I am both excited and terrified at the same time. Not surprisingly I am excited at the prospect of making money and terrified at the idea of losing money. But I have vowed I will follow through with this come what may.

Yesterday I tried to think of all the other possible things I could do with the $5000 to try to make money and I could not think of a single thing that would certainly and surely turn the $5000 into more money. Every idea I came up with was as uncertain and as unsure as forex trading; and none held the possibility to see immediate results for your efforts. Besides, I was loaned the money specifically to open a forex trading account and that is what I will use the money to do.

It could be up to 5 days before the application process is completed so even if I might be tempted to start trading earlier than July 28th I wouldn’t be able to, which is a good thing. I need another week to instill in my head that trading currency is serious business that requires a practical, disciplined, controlled approach. And especially given I will be trading with such a small amount of money to start, I have to work even harder to keep my emotions out of this.

As to why I chose FXCM over OANDA, I don’t really have a profound reason. To be honest I was going to change my mind about going with FXCM and use OANDA instead because, after reviewing some points about legitimate forex brokers, I came to the conclusion that OANDA has a better record than FXCM on many counts, not the least of which is that OANDA has never been the subject of any NFA regulatory actions whereas FXCM is building up a bit of reputation with disgruntled customers and has been fined before for trying to mislead people in their marketing material. Plus OANDA appears to have more than twice the capital posessed by FXCM.

So why did I go forward with an FXCM application over OANDA? Probably not a smart reason, but OANDA’s trading platform appears to be a bit limited by comparison. I could be wrong; but the FX Trading Station appears to be far superior to OANDA’s java based platform and I feel like I can keep track of more information and have more tools available to assist with studying which is an important part of the process for me. That plus the fact that OANDA’s application seemed like it would take an age and a half to fill out.

I believe the people behind FXCM are money hungry and want me to fail; but I am not convinced that they use scam tactics to make me fail. I beleive they bank of new traders coming in and not heeding all the warnings they’re given, knowing that failure to heed the warnings will result in loss of funds. They say they want all their customers to succeed, but I doubt they care one way or another. They know most new traders will lose their money and they are okay with this. They benefit from it. But at the end of the day failure or success will come down to the trader.

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