I had lunch with a friend with whom I discuss all sorts of interesting subjects, and he brought up the story of an acquaintance of his that was trading forex.
I didn't know anything about forex trading despite having traded options for the last 5+ years, so the past few days I went on a reading binge on the subject.
First, my favorite:
The author is a long time forex trader and manager who has a skeptical view of the market and its participants, with reason! To wit:
- There's no central clearing house for most trades; usually it's trader vs broker, and the broker is in position to exploit the trader in many cases
- Unlike other brokers in options or stocks who do operate with a clearing agency and thus have their client trader's interest aligned in that these firms make more money the more trading occurs. In forex, in many cases the broker can manipulate the trader into losing his or her entire account in a short time (by the use of excess leverage, sometimes up to 400 to 1, and very wide spreads)
- It's advertised as "commission free" but the brokers are paid by the bid/ask spread, so of course it's not "free" and with manipulated extra-wide spreads can be much more expensive than a small commission would be
If you're only going to read one book on forex trading, read this one.
Next is Anna Coulling:
She's apparently a well-known personality in the world of forex and I did find her book useful:
It gives a very detailed look at the entire landscape of forex, with her own warning on unscrupulous broker/dealers (but nothing like as jaundiced a view as Silvani). She does promote a "leading indicator" (fully explained in a more advanced book) of "Volume Price Analysis." that looks worthwhile .. I bought another one of hers,
A Three Dimensional Approach to Forex Trading, but haven't read it yet.
One big plus for Ms. Coulling: she disparages paper trading and suggests you instead start with a tiny "micro" account and when you can show a profit trading with this then scale up. This fits my experience ... who cares about paper money?
And with the Kindle reader on my phone I couldn't resist a few other low-priced books:
All of these were worth at least the (very low) price while I'm trying to get my head around this, but for the moment I'm sticking with options trading ... maybe when that's getting boring (a little too exciting lately!) I'll start with a micro account doing this.
Any other Forex traders out there? Comments please!
