By CountingPips.com
Forex Trading has been surging in popularity the last several years due to many factors from technological advances that have opened up the market to traders and investors looking to diversify their portfolios or migrating from the stock market.
Here is a list of 5 factors that I feel make the Fx Market an attractive one:
1. Free Forex Demo Accounts – Feel that you’re the next George Soros or you’ve got a can’t-miss trading system? Well, you’re going to want to test out your system or your speculation skills before risking your hard earned money. Demo account trading is where to start, demo losses may hurt your ego but they won’t empty your wallet. Demo trading is also a great time to get acquainted with the characteristics of the forex platform you’re going to be trading on, learn your market orders, stop losses and charting applications. Don’t rush to trade real money right away, the forex market will be there next week, next month and next year, build your skills through practice and 
you will give yourself a better chance for success.
2. Democracy – The forex market is as close to a true democracy as a market will probably get. Starting with the fact that no region or country has a built-in advantage over any other region or country of the world. Unlike the major stock markets, the forex market trades continuously 24 hours a day, 5 days a week from the afternoon on Sunday to the end of the work day on Friday at 5 pm EST and allows all regions of the world to trade equally. The market is generally considered to trade in three sessions, the Asian session followed by the European session and then finally the North American session. The barriers to entry are also low as an individual retail trader can enter the market with a trading account deposit of just $1.
3. Liquidity – The forex market is the most liquid market in the world by far. The daily turnover exceeds 3 trillion dollars on any given day and dwarfs all of the world’s major stock markets. Liquidity is attractive because with so many market participants, a trader can usually get a fair price to enter the market. Also, the enormous liquidity does not allow for any one entity to bully the forex market. A rare exception to this rule is when a central bank intervenes in the market as we saw a few times in 2009 by the Swiss National Bank.
4. Leverage – Leverage allows you take a bigger trading position compared to the amount of money you have deposited in your trading account. Depending on your forex broker, leverage levels up to a 400:1 ratio can be found. This means that your broker will allow you to trade a position that is 400 times the amount in your account. Leverage gives you more bang for the buck but as it can magnify your gains, it also will magnify your losses. It is best to start with a small leverage ratio and increase if you feel comfortable. For more in-depth reading on leverage, check out this article (Forex Leverage: A Double-Edged Sword) .
5. Always a bull market somewhere – This is commonly said about the forex market and it is true. One of the most interesting characteristics of trading in the forex market is the currency pair nature. In the over-the-counter spot market, currencies are directly traded against each other. For example, when the USD/CAD currency pair is rising, there is a bull market in the USD and a bear market in the CAD as more traders are buying the USD and selling the CAD simultaneously. This dynamic is always present throughout the forex market and proves the statement true that there is always a bull market going on.
