Academy of Financial Trading – Forex Markets

Earlier in the week, we provided you with some “interesting facts” regarding Forex trading, and the monetary sums involved on a daily basis.  Let’s now look at things from a slightly different angle.

Online trading, as we often mention, is one of the very few occupations (yes – occupations!!) which people believe that they can succeed immediately in, irrespective of their background or specific knowledge in the subject matter. 

We often refer to day traders as “retail traders”.  This is the industry term for a regular person who has opened an account with a broker, and has committed some of their hard earned capital to this broker in the hope of generating a return – in most cases a substantial return.  This person also has very little experience of the financial markets, or of how they work. 

Let’s put some figures on the table.  Did you know that a recent study revealed that 99.6% of retail traders are unable to achieve more than four back to back profitable quarters?  Let’s put that another way – only 0.4% of traders achieve consistent profits quarter over quarter in one year.  Are you one of those? 

Some investment banks are known to allocate up to 20-30% of their funds into the Forex market.  This generates between 40-60% of their total profits - by far their most lucrative endeavour.

We were recently given a great analogy by a student – trading without an education, without a proven strategy, without learning to trade, is no different than you standing on the 1^st tee at St. Andrews Golf Club, beside Rory McIlroy, then taking all your potential trading capital and betting on you to emerge victorious after 18 holes.  It’s just not going to happen, is it?

Learning to Trade

The online trading industry is both hugely popular, and hugely competitive. 

It is popular because almost everyone has some interest in what is happening in the markets today – it affects us all in some way or other.  Think of the price of oil – any driver among us will know of the impact which that has upon our weekly spend on petrol or diesel.  There are also other commodity markets which we are all reliant upon – think of Wheat, or Corn, or Soybeans, or Orange Juice… all are dietary staples, and they are just a very small selection as to what is available to trade. 

The industry is competitive simply because it is highly lucrative.  The majority of brokers are “market-makers”… this simply means that they profit from their client’s losses.  This is not something which is new, but it somehow has become something which is acceptable.  Still, brokers work hard to attract traders.  Some offer educational services to “assist” the novice (or professional!) trader. 

So what are the best trading courses?  A complete education can only come from an entity who does not have an agenda – from someone who is only representing themselves, and is not representing a broker or someone who is advertising a particular broker’s services.  To do otherwise would be no different than going into a bookmaker and asking if they will assist in the placing of a bet on the Grand National.  

The Academy of Financial Trading prides itself on being a purely educational company.  We are not aligned with any specific broker and we are able to give clear, unambiguous, unbiased advice as to the steps any potential trader needs to make in order to help them become successful.  Our success comes from your success!