The forex thing – why I’m not trading forex right now

I still have not resumed my forex trading adventures. I am not even trading in demo mode. Honestly, I haven’t wanted to admit this because admitting it would be tantamount to admitting I did, in fact, foolishly throw money down the drain; but I think it might have been a mistake for me to get into forex trading.

There’s a reason the NFA warns that forex trading is not suitable for most members of the general public. That reason is because forex trading is not suitable for most members of the general public.

It was exciting there for a while fantasizing about making $1500 per day; but the reality of forex trading for me was more horror than fantasy.

As I write my trading platform, the FXCM Trading Station II, is opened on my desktop. I am looking at an account balance of $55.14. I haven’t traded from my live account since September 15th 2008. I can’t trade because $55.14 is not enough money to trade with. Even if I could open a position I’d have a margin call before I could take one breath.

I’m disappointed about the way this has turned out. I guess I wasn’t ready to start trading live; but I have a feeling even if I’d spent a year practicing in demo mode things would still have gone the way of disaster. Forex trading really is for people who have the money to risk. Even if there are a few cases of small timers opening accounts with small amounts of money and succeeding in forex, these success stories are too few and far between to be relied on for an accurate assessment of how possible it is to make money trading forex with only a few hundred dollars invested.

I made the decision to throw caution to the wind. I believed I could be one of the exceptions but things didn’t quite go the way I had intended I’d have about $50,000 in the bank right now. Instead I put $1701.46 plus the money they made off all my trades in spread fees, into FXCM’s bank account.

If someone were to ask me based on my experience trading forex if they should or should not trade forex, I would tell them that unless they have at least $50,000 to invest they should not trade forex, and even then, they should understand that it’s possible to be wiped out of thousands in seconds. I think anyone who has to ask if forex trading is a good idea or a bad idea should probably not be trading forex because if they knew enough about forex trading to be trading forex they wouldn’t have to ask the question of whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea.

If you’re trading forex but you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re probably going to be losing your money. Understand forex trading inside out before you get into currency trading via the foreign exchange market.