Should You Get Into Forex Trading - Is It Really Worth It?
Have you ever thought about trading forex, but you weren’t sure whether you should or not or whether forex trading is really worth it?
You’re not alone and you are right to be cautious before pursuing forex trading – the majority of retail traders who trade forex actually lose money.
Having said that, the forex traders who don’t lose money, make a lot of it.
Is forex trading really worth it?
Forex trading can be an extremely lucrative pursuit, but it also requires a lot of discipline, dedication and hard work.
If you are up to the challenges you will face on your forex trading journey and you are prepared to put the required time and effort into your trading and education, then forex trading will be worth it.
Why you shouldn’t trade forex
Forex trading takes discipline, determination and hard work – do not start trading forex because you think it will be easy.
Generating a full time income from forex will not happen overnight and will not happen from a small balance – do not start trading forex because you only have $100 of savings and want to quit your job.
Why you should trade forex
The first and foremost reason to trade forex is to make money. If you’re not interested in making money then you’re probably not reading this guide.
Skilled forex traders can generate incredible returns that dwarf returns from passive stock investing or even investment in actively managed funds – you don’t pay any performance fee on your own performance.
Even if you don’t have a large enough balance to trade forex full time, in this day and age everyone needs a side hustle to get ahead and forex can be a great side hustle if you pick a strategy that works around your schedule.
This is likely where most traders will start, but eventually you might find yourself with a large enough balance and enough experience to make the transition to trading full time – the benefits of being your own boss with no one to answer to (but yourself!) should be immediately clear to you.
Why you should trade forex as a side hustle
Trading forex as a side hustle can be very empowering and leave you with a lot of extra walking around money for the things you want to do in life.
If you have a few hours spare outside of your day job and want to make some extra money, you should seriously look at trading forex as a side hustle.
As well as a basic understanding of the forex market and a modest amount of investment capital, all you will need is a strategy that doesn’t require you to look at the charts all day and every day – if your boss catches you doing that at work, your side hustle might become your only hustle.
The great news is lots of strategies can be adapted to only require a little bit of chart time. For example, if you work in Asia, you might scalp or trade intraday swings for the first couple of hours of the European session in the evenings.
Similarly if you are based in the US, you might do some range trading of the Asian session after work.
Higher time frame, longer term strategies work too as they only require you to act once a day, or once a week.
The great thing about trading forex as a side hustle is you know your day job is paying your bills and putting food on the table, this allows you to focus on doing your job as a forex trader and that is trading well.
If you have to worry about paying the rent from your trading before you are ready, it’s only going to lead to disaster.
Why you should trade forex full time
If you’ve been trading successfully as a forex trader part time, have built up a significant trading account and you are starting to generate more money from trading than you do from your day job, it may well be time to take the plunge into trading forex full time.
Even if you are not quite ready to take that risk all at once, you could look at reducing your work hours and scale into trading full time. Reducing your hours will give you more time to focus on your trading and give you a better idea of whether or not you could actually trade successfully full time.
Trading forex full time is very difficult. Even the best traders have bad weeks and bad months, if you’re trading longer term you may have a bad quarter or god forbid a bad year. How are you going to survive these periods where the market has borne you know fruit?
Forex trading full time is definitely possible and for people who are capable of it, they should not be doing anything else. Having said that, you do need a large trading account and some money to fall back on when the market is unkind.
Be realistic about forex trading and what you want from it
Whether forex trading is worth it for you will come down to who you are as a person, what you want to achieve and what you are ready to do in order to achieve those goals.
Forex trading can be an extremely lucrative pursuit that will teach you a lot about yourself and not only make you a lot of money, but make you a better person.
Are you up for the challenge?
