The Forex Marathon

By: Charley Warady

So, you have a couple hundred dollars that your Aunt Gladys gave you for your birthday, and you'd like to turn that into the Ferrari you've had your eye on since you were eight years old. You've read about the Forex market, seen the advertisements on the Internet, watched the videos of Forex robot traders (narrated by the same guy who does every used car commercial), and glanced over at least a half dozen of the best Forex broker sites. You know they're the best Forex brokers because they came up first when you Googled them. You're ready to jump into this thing, and you're already making room in the garage for the new car.

If you're reading this before you've actually handed over the couple hundred bucks to a broker, here's the first useful piece of advice. Take the said same two hundred dollars; go to the nearest convenience store; and buy two hundred dollars worth of weekly lottery tickets. The reason for the purchase of weekly lottery tickets as opposed to daily lottery tickets is that with the weekly tickets, for six days you can believe you are about to win untold millions. It's much more fun that way, and your dream will probably last longer than if you had put the money into a Forex trading account.

Like Life itself, the Forex market – done correctly – is a marathon; it's not a sprint. After your very first trade, your goal should be, not making millions instantly, but rather your goal is that you're still making trades (on your original investment) a year from now. And the very first building block to achieving this goal is to start out sufficiently capitalized. The importance of this can not be understated. The scared Forex trader does not last. The scared Forex trader does unnecessarily risky things that seals the doom deal quickly.

There is no such thing as a quick fortune in Forex trading. Even if there is, it's a thought that should never enter the mind. On Forex brokers' web sites they claim a minimum far below five hundred dollars, or a thousand dollars, and there's nothing wrong with that. As long as the trader adjusts his trading size to the money in their account. For the small investor, there is the mini or even the micro. The problem enters when the novice trader sees that they're only making ten cents per PIP, and how are they going to get that Ferrari on ten cents a PIP?! It's hard to stay focused and disciplined in that frame of mind.

Marathon. Not sprint. It's the trader who is there for the long haul that will wind up making money in the Forex market. If you come into the market properly capitalized, where you can trade a small percentage of the money you're risking, the odds are going to swing heavily in your favor. There's nothing wrong with trading micros or minis as long as your goal remains to be longevity instead of quick fix.

So, either wait a couple more birthdays and put Aunt Gladys' birthday money aside for now; hit Aunt Gladys up for a birthday money advance; or forget about what you want to drive and concentrate on trading Forex successfully.