Forex is a scam?

FOREX is a form of derivative trading where you are attempting to make a profit by exploiting the difference between 2 or more currencies.

For example, if you take EURUSD, The value of this FOREX instrument is determined by taking the Euro rate and dividing it by the US Dollar rate and expressing that value in the second currency, which in this case is the US Dollar.

So as you can see these derivatives are just another financial instrument available to trade in the marketplace.

FOREX is a very difficult form of trading to master and there is NO EASY button, no matter what anyone tells you. I've ben trading in FX among other instruments, since 2006, when I was the chief moderator for one of the largest Forex web sites.

There are many different types of FOREX trading just like there are many types of futures trading or commodities trading or index trading.

So no it's not a scam, but the field is full of scammers.
It took me a few years to become decent at trading FOREX. Keep in mind though it's a highly leveraged style of trading and with that you can lose very quickly and gain very quickly.

Foreign currency trading is not a scam.

But it's also not just something you can expect to pick up quickly.

If it were easy then all the stock brokers in the world would be filthy rich.

Better off building yourself a real business.

The safest form of FX trading that I think you can do is a type of hedged arbitrage, where you take one set of currencies like the EURUSD and a negatively correlated set of currencies like USDCHF and trade them against each other, closing your trade when you have the ability to exploit inefficiencies in pricing. Because it's hedged the risk is lower. This is not very exciting as the market is notoriously efficient.

definitely not scam but is very hard to make money form it . I was FOREX trader , but i quit because for my strategy i was needed minimal 100 000 € if i want make 12 000 € per year with comfortable risk ratio.

FOREX is not a scam. More money is traded on it than the stock market. If someone is selling you a plan to make money on FOREX don't buy it. It's tempting for newbies because of the low bar to entry and the huge amount of leverage you can swing. You would be better off going to Vegas -- at least there if you lose all your money you will have a good time.

No; it isn't.

If they were trying to sell something, that was probably the scam.

There are people who have made their livings for decades by trading forex, but those are the ones who aren't trying to sell anything.

By having the right personality and mentality, years of education and many hundreds of hours of practice with "play money" accounts.

After you've developed, honed, refined (and proven to your own satisfaction that you have) the right skill-set, it's possible for successful traders to average about a 5% return, per month (sometimes even a little more), so that would be about $10,000.

Here's some food/resources for thought ...

Recommended website:
Joe Ross's site. There's a forum there, too (or there used to be, anyway).

Books:
(i) "Trading For A Living" by Alexander Elder (good writer - has some very weird views about indicators for a man of his intelligence, but parts of the book are very good)

(ii) "Beyond Technical Analysis" by Tushar Chande (completely reliable)

(iii) "Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom" by Van Tharp (completely reliable)

(iv, and best of the lot) Any books by Joe Ross (expensive) - don't be put off by the fact that all Ross's material/teaching/books isn't specific to forex - it's all about charts, and forex charts are just like any other charts, except safer to trade because their markets are far less subject to manipulation.

All of the above are incomparably better than any information you'll readily find online.

Two key concepts:
(i) Don't listen to anyone who tells you that "technical analysis" is based exclusively on "indicators".

It's what almost all people going into forex trading believe, and it's what the entire forex marketing industry has an incentive to get everyone to swallow, and it's nonsense.

It's forex's equivalent of article marketing's "duplicate content penalty", and you have to see through it, to get anywhere at all!

In fact, if anyone tries to tell you that, you'd probably be well advised, on general principles, to ignore any other "information" also offered by the same source.

The worst, most futile and downright silliest form of attempted automated indicator trading are things called "Expert Advisors", a form of "trading alerts" made for a platform called "MetaTrader" which is what some very gullible and ill-informed home-based traders try to use. (These are the people effectively subsidizing the tiny minority of professionals who are actually making a living!).

(ii) Try to get your advice and education, whenever possible, from people who are not selling/promoting anything. Can't stress this enough ... otherwise you end up believing all sorts of "plausible nonsense" with no underlying reality at all. That's just as silly as taking SEO advice from people selling "SEO services" and it will have exactly the same results, too!

It's just like affiliate marketing, in one way: if you look in forums, you'll naturally find far more people who are making a living from "selling information to beginners" than there are people making a living from actually doing it themselves. Be aware that there's probably 50 times more "misinformation" than "information" out there, about forex trading. Some of it broadcast by people selling things, and some of it just believed by gullible/hopeful market participants who lack experience, know no better, and simply repeat what they've heard. (Just like internet marketing, really. )

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Forex is not a scam.
Just as anything in life whether it's your job, university, hobby the 10,000 hours rule is a guide on how much time you should spend with - in your case FX trading.

Example:
If you spend 8 hours a day, 336 day a year (24 days holidays) = 2,688 hours a year
10,000 / 2,688 = 3.7 years of time that you should invest in your skills.

Most novice traders have discipline but don't trade with the right tools, no money management, trade at wrong time of the day, against enemies (smart money) that have more munition than you who know psychology, how to trap you and then tear you apart.

Until then please only paper trade!
If you give yourself 10,000 hours the rewards can be great!

FX is not a SCAM, of course. You have to learn how to invest your money and how to win!

Why risk your money Trading Forex when you can make money from forex without trading - become an affiliate - there are huge sums to be made as an affiliate and in many cases you can earn 2nd tier commissions too ...

The Forex market is very competitive for affiliates, but once you break into it and start seeing the rewards, you can actually make more money than some traders.

I am not a trader myself and only know what bit of information I have picked up from the various forums, but I am happy to promote anything which feedback suggests would be beneficial to both the purchaser and myself (in terms of commission) I am not totally unscrupulous and hope that my website provides correct information. If of course I subsequently find out that anything I am promoting is a scam, I will cease any such promotion.

Just like anything in life you have to educate yourself how to use Forex, invest in some books about Forex.

Your questions answer is "Of course NO". Actually FOREX is a market where people are trading with Foreign Currency. Here one can get a huge profit easily, if he is expert in this field.It is not the traditional business. So First of all you must need to learn how to do business here. Otherwise, you will loss every think. Of course it is a high risk business. Also it is a high profit business.

I have to say something here. It botheres me when I hear people say trading Forex is risky.

Risk is a function of opportunity, preparation and action. It really has little to do with the instrument that's being traded.

Take gambling in Vegas for example. One would say this is high risk. I say ask yourself some reasonable questions first before you decide if it's risky.

Ask what are the table odds of the game I'm playing? Lets say i'm playing Craps. Well then I decide I'll learn how to play craps from an ROI point of few. I know that a bet on the pass line and a bet on the come line with maximum odds is the safest longterm bet I can make, or the inverse ( bet on the Don't Pass and Bet on the Don't Come and lay maximum odds). However, even playing the game with the safest strategy, the house has a 50.9% chance to my 49.1% chance of long term success. This being determined by large data sets of established games.

Therefore I know the odds are not in my favor on this game or with any bet I can place on the table. That means I take the action of not playing. See I've reduced my risk by proper analysis of the investment, speculation, or game that I am considering.

Another thing to consider is what is my risk to reward ratio. In other words, lets say I have a trade that only pays 33% of the time, but for every pay I make a 100% return and for every loss I lose 50% of what I risked. That would been I have a 1:2 Risk to Reward and would only have to make a successful trade once out of every 3 trades to break even.

Then I'd have to analyze the instrument and decide if the odds are better than 1 win in 3 plays.



Risk is all up to the player, not the instrument being played.

Years ago I wanted to pickup and learn how to earn with FOREX. Joined a couple forums, asked a couple of experts to guide me. I finally left it because of the learning curve and the risk associated with FOREX.

That's the person placing the trade that's producing the risk not the instrument. There is no risk until a person chooses to take an action that puts them in a position of risk.

Trading Forex without knowing the facts is risky and the action not knowing is what's causing the risk not the availability of the trade. If the odds are not in your favor long term, that means that the Risk to Reward is not justified by the odds of success in the number of trades required, then that is what has defined the risk.

There is no shortcut to becoming a proficient Forex trader. Do not expect to just start trading and you'll be earning $500 per month.

There are a lot of skills to learn and even when you have acquired all these skills it is still basically a percentage game with YOU betting that your winnings will be greater then your losses. You WILL have losses and sometimes BIG ones

ALSO there are some good indicators that can help make a decision as to which way a currency may go BUT WHATEVER YOU DO don't put your trust in any of these automatic trading bots. Like every other aspect of life there are scammers who will try and lift your money - there's no shortage of these in the Forex business.

Think about this: If I developed a robot that would consistently make me thousands of dollars in a trillion dollar market so it will never end WOULD I sell it to you for ANY amount? NEVER MIND $47/$97...??

Not likely is it?

A quick note... A am sorry, but I do not give out my trading methods. Please don't PM me I genuinely feel bad that I can't help you. If you want to learn trading it takes a lot of time and effort. Get a real trader for a mentor. Get real education. get certified. Series 3 and series 7 at the least and then apprentice yourself.

Again there is no EASY Button. I am so sorry.

It is a high risk trading environment.

It is not a scam. You can earn those kind of sums on Forex. However, it calls for a strategy and for discipline to follow it.

The same can be said about everything in life. The reason why most people consider Forex a scam is because they enter in it expecting to win with ease, lose their money and then blame Forex.

So Forex in itself is NOT a scam. Forex ads on the other hand are a bit on the limit.

Forex is a scam? there are aprox 100 million traders out there, Most of them are millionaires who wants to play with their money and make huge profits..
There are people who make money on forex and people that losses, If it was 100% guaranteed profit then everyone would be millionaires by now and quit their job..
If you lost you're money on a bad trade it's you're own bad luck.

On a lighter note, I just figured out how you can beat Craps in Vegas. It was so obvious and simple.

Okay, You play the game in the safest way possible as described in my previous post and play for the smallest minimum bid, (usually a dollar) Then drink all night on the free drinks they bring until you're sufficiently ahead on what it would have cost you to drink that much and at that point stop playing, feeling satisfied in the knowledge that you put one up on the house.

After that you can head to the restroom or out in the parking lot to puke.

Forex is not a scam though it needs brain to make it work for you.

Forex is certainly not Scam, but it's a high risk investment instrument that you need to play it carefully.

I would suggest just start with focus on 1 currency and familiar this currency fundamental and technical and understand how news can impact the movement of this currency. I would suggest you start with the demo account to familiar the whole process in the first month.

Then just start with $100 or any small investment that you're comfortable to lose by opening a micro or macro trading a/c. This will give you a real feeling of forex trading which is totally different from the demo a/c. The key to make money in forex is not how you can make huge lump sum in short time, but how you can make consistent return with forex.

Just my 2 cents

Finally a topic where I can give something back instead of always asking questions!

I have been a proprietary trader (a professional trader that has no outside clients and trades my own account in partnership with a company) my entire career.

Firstly is FOREX (foreign exchange) a scam? Asking that question is like saying "is the internet a scam". Forex is a market place, it is a means of swapping one currency for another, on the lowest level it is what you do when you go on holiday. At the highest level it is high frequency algorithms exploiting miss pricing in currency derivatives 24/7. Forex isnt a scam, it is integral to the world economy.

That's the brief answer (I could go on forever talking about this topic). For those of you still with me. There are a lot of scammers in Forex as there are in a lot of industries. As a professional trader I wouldn't touch it. I only traded Futures contracts as do most professional traders for many reasons it would be too long to go in to here.

But a few tips. A lot of Forex brokers can be quite unscrupulous as there is no centralised exchange for Forex they can move the quotes they show you to suit themselves (unlike Futures).

Trading, whether it be forex, stocks, futures is a skill, I spend 15 hours a day sometimes, working on a trading floor with some of the most successful traders in the world constantly researching and learning and improving, that is your competition! However, is success possible, absolutely, it just isnt an instant path to riches.

The ways that will help you to become successful is either A/ join a professional trading firm as I did over a decade ago.. not an option for most people or B/ Find someone to teach you, this is obviously hard as there are a lot of rip off merchants out there that dont actually know how to trade themselves. But a few tips to be aware of.. firstly get a feel for the mentor, he should be able to answer your questions comfortably and have a strong philosophy of what he thinks works. They must have made a living trading, its unlikely they will show you statements, as I wouldnt expect anyone to show me their bank statement, but you can just tell from their career history and contacts in the industry if they are legit. Do not pay thousands for a training course, trading is a skill, its no different to going to Tiger Woods golf coach and expecting to win a PGA tour the next weekend. You can be taught techniques and skills but you still need to master them.

The techniques we use professionally are different to what most of the "Trading Academies" out there teach you. If you are seeing the same old rehashed info on people's websites it probably has little unique value.

Hope that gives you some pointers

I was also a pro trader for several years.

If the saying

"Those that know don't talk- and those that talk don't know"

is true anywhere,

its true in futures/forex/leveraged derivative trading.

If you meet anyone - up to and including the Buddah - offering to teach you how to trade in order to give "something back"

cover your wallet and run.

Yes, one can make a great deal of money trading derivatives - but, unless you are exceptionally well capitalized - and connected - and can think probabilistically (like a pro gambler)- rather than linearly

the odds of any one person doing it are very, very slim.

Yes forex is a very profitable niche. However you need a strategy in place in order to make any real money within that niche. Are you thinking of going in as an investor? Or as an affiliate?

If you choose the route of an investor, I strongly recommend you have some serious coin in the piggy bank because you're going to be risking your money. Now you might win some trades, but it's not very often that you do.

if you are thinking of taking the affiliate route, then you'll have lower risks, and high payouts when you sell other people's courses and software.

Either way, you can make money - you just have to choose whats best for you.

All the best,
Michael

Forex does work, but just like anything you need to put in time and dedication to see results.

FOREX is not a scam, but for sure there are a lot of scammers operating in that niche.

Not a scam, huge huge market but you are competing against the best of the best, it can be done but the learning curve is steep and the lessons the market will teach you will be expensive.....

I've been a professional trader for about 11 years. Of course it isn't a scam. No more a scam than any other business in the world. It's a market place for people to buy and sell. The forex market is foreign exchange. There are commodities, stocks etc etc. Finance is the biggest industry in the world.

However it is incredibly hard and most people don't know what they are doing and are under capitalised.

As for whether a lot of the places teaching you to trade are scams. Then yes a lot of them are.

But to claim forex a scam. No.

From every financial expert I have ever talked to about getting involved in Forex currency trading, whether it be an established banker or even successful businessman in general, every single educated person in the field has told me that attempting to profit by charting the ups and downs of currency, offered no better odds than betting in a casino.

I've lost money in Forex for 3 years, didn't have the right mindset and kept jumping from system to system. Now it's my main income and allows me to now try IM. Forex is a tough nut to crack and only 5% make money and just 1% make a living.

Of course with any opportunity that makes money it will be plagued with rogues on the make. you need to a good mentor and system then stick with it. I like to swing trade as it only takes me 20 mins every day at 10pm GMT, so I don't get caught up with psychological issues of trading which is the biggest downfall of wannabee traders. Message me privately if you wish to know more.

I have mentioned this in previous threads,

But, a friend of mine has been trying to learn forex for a while,

And he still hasn't been able to quit is job and just do it full time

Yes. The foreign currency exchange was made up by fourth graders at Mrs. Hamm's elementary school.

No one really trades currencies, how ridiculous!

Is foreign currency trading a scam?

No.

Are the guaranteed systems and trading bots sold to the GRQ crowd scams?

Yes.

Back in the 1970s, there was a book out with "proof" that the author's stock timing system worked. And, if you happened to do exactly as he did, when he did it, it did work. Start one month earlier, and it didn't work nearly as well. Start one month later, and you would have lost your shirt.

Like horse betting systems, the key to proving the system works lies in very carefully selecting both the examples and the time frame of the example.

Forex system scams are no different.

Forex isn't a scam in itself although the market is filled with those who say they have the perfect FOREX 'system'. FOREX is the foreign exchange market. I have done some genuine trading courses but even the 'guru's' don't get it right all the time. It's a risky market and takes a huge amount of self control and discipline to master trading the currency markets. Be prepared to do a lot of training and you need a bank to trade with too. Don't trade money you're not prepared to lose, only use 1-2% of your bank on any given trade.You can earn from this over time but be prepared to shell out some money for training courses, then test for a few months with a demo account before using small amounts of real money.

For from it! All the banks used to use our monies at night and trade in the forex marketplace.
High risk and you need to be carefule.

I played with forum a number of years ago and had 20 bucks in a platform. The markets close on a Thursday night and Sunday when they opened back up I had over $500. Fast...

It is not a scam but the market is so volatile and it ia very hard to predict market direction and the way currences move so it is very hard to make a decent income with it, so most people think it is a scam
though if you study market and cpe with market direction you might make some income and good luck with forex trading

It's definitely not a scam I just don't think when it comes to properly explaining what it is those who are marketing it are not doing such a great job on that part(my opinion). Only because most that I have ran into ask me do I know what it is(which isn't a cool selling point to me) then ask if its something I'd like to be apart of but don't send me any links or information they just use the glamour and glitz of their lifestyle to push it.

You have to be patient with forex, recognize patterns and think about the overall spectrum of the graph and where it's headed. There's a lot of patterns that show up frequently that are often fabricated and you have a better educated guess of which direction to place your bids. With my strategy I can make about 10k+ a month, This December I actually cashed in 13.8k (with picture proof for all the skeptics) I record all the positions I took and the profit made from each position so there is money to be made if you invest the time into learning the basics and building up YOUR OWN strategy.

It´s not a scam. It´s like penny stcoks. If you know what you are doing, you can get lucky and do decent. A lot of luck and studying has to be put into it. Most people today want to make a quick buck without working for it, hence why most people fail.

Forex trading in itself is not a scam. It's the brokers who are manipulating the orders who are scamming the traders. They don't push the orders to liquidity providers or holding the trader's funds and having a hard time withdrawing their money. That's scam.