The Foreign Currency markets (Forex or FX) were deregulated in 1997 and no longer the private domain of the banks, insurance companies and other large financial institutions. Private investors quickly discovered what the large trading companies knew for a long time. Which was, it is much easier to invest in currencies for a profit than invest in stocks for a profit. In every currency transaction there is one winner and one loser. The winner simply needs to make more than the commissions (Pip's) charged them by the brokerage firm they are using. When purchasing a stock, the seller of that stock could be selling that stock at a loss, and the person they bought it from could have sold it at a loss and the person before that could of sold it at a loss and so on and so on. One of my biggest pet peeves when watching the business broadcast on television is when an investment banker from one of the stock brokerage firms come on and says, investing in the stock market over the last 100 years has been proven to produce the largest capital gain when compared to any other form of investment. At that time I wish I was a TV host so bad, because I want to ask the lying banker, exactly which companies would you have bought 100 years ago that are still in business today? Can't you just hear them when you ask that, I am sure they would then mention some more fabrications like this, well there aren't too many, but if you sold this company after 2 years and then bought this other company and held it for 5 years and then sold it and bought XYZ firm and held it for 8 years, just a bunch of useless trash talking. That's my opinion anyway. In essence, purchasing currency is a lot more like gambling on two sports teams than it is similar to purchasing stocks. When gambling on sports teams there are two participates and one wins and one loses. The winner pays the commission (Vic) to the bookmaker. There are quite a few differences between gambling and investing in currencies though. First, the quantity and quality of information the currency has at their disposal when attempting to decide on when to buy and when to sell is vastly superior to gambling on sports teams. In fact, if you follow a few simple principles and don't get greedy this information can be used to virtually guarantee profits. The next difference is the upside potential verses the downside loss in trading currencies. When gambling a gambler will normally invest in a one on one situation, in other words they invest one dollar to make one dollar. The currency investor on the other hand can limit their losses to what of percentage of their upside gain they believe is possible. If a gambler is correct 50% of the time they are still losing money. If a currency trader is correct 50% of the time they are traveling around the world on their own yacht trading with their wireless internet connection visiting every exotic know location. That is quite a substantial difference. There are quite a few more reasons that investing in currencies is the best form of trading, but I am only going to mention one. If you manage your money correctly and have a low tolerance for risk then you only need to be correct somewhere around 20% of the time to break even. Even a blind monkey can do that. Really if you just throw darts at a chart you are going to be right 20% of the time. Since most of the people reading this will be new to the currency markets I highly suggest you acquire a quality education before attempting to trade. Yeah, it is not too tough, if I can do it, surly anybody can. But, I got my education before starting.
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