In today’s world, almost anything can be traded—from currencies and commodities to stocks and indices. When we talk about online trading, we’re focusing on two key markets: forex (Foreign Exchange), and CFDs (Contracts for Difference). Together, they open doors to global markets, offering flexibility, easy access from anywhere, and the chance to profit from both rising and falling prices.
Forex trading offers a way to boost your monthly income without changing careers or investing a lot of money. In this lesson, we’ll guide you through the first steps.
By the end of this short course, you’ll have what it takes to start trading.
Ready to begin?
How forex works
Suppose you’re traveling from your country to the EU. You exchange your country’s currency for euros. The more people need euros, the higher the price of the euro goes. Simple, right?
Imagine knowing when the price will change and making money from that.
You are about to get an economic degree in 5 seconds:
If demand for something is high, the price will grow; if it is low, the price will fall. By correctly predicting whether the price will rise or fall, traders make money.
Other assets, such as oil and gas, stocks, or cryptocurrencies, work the same way. All such assets are traded on the financial markets.
Note: every trading instrument is a pair, as a trade is an exchange. The most popular forex pair is EUR to USD. We write this pair as EURUSD and it is sometimes written with a slash (EUR/USD). This indicates the price of a euro in United States dollars.
How people make money in online trading
If you think the price will rise, you buy it. When the price goes up, the difference between your purchase price and the new price becomes your profit. If the price falls, you take a loss. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Naturally, people start trading for extra income. Everybody wants to find a viable option that will help them make more money.
How does that work?
With forex, you can profit on the change, not the asset itself. This is called CFD trading (Contracts for Difference). With CFDs, no actual exchange of goods happens - people don’t buy or sell anything. Traders and investors profit from price movement without owning the assets themselves, by predicting the price behavior of an asset.
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Open a buy position (long) when you believe the price will grow. | Open a sell position (short) when you believe the price will drop. |
You receive a profit if your prediction is correct.
There are various tools available to help make these predictions:
Follow macroeconomic and political news.
Follow news related to specific financial instruments, such as stocks of a particular company or gold.
Watch important economic reports released that show how healthy and strong the economy is.
Analyze the price charts of various financial instruments to see common patterns. There are many ways to go about predicting the price, and we will go through them in this course.
To operate in financial markets, an individual trader must first join a broker who will serve as an intermediary. More about brokers will be provided in the next lesson.
Is forex (and CFD) trading a scam?
Let’s clear this up: forex and CFD are 100% legit. It’s a real market, but just like any industry, some bad actors can spoil the game. The trick is to avoid false promises of fast riches and focus on learning. Forex itself is the largest financial market in the world, open 24 hours a day, five days a week. By itself, it can’t be a scam. Bad brokers, however, can run scams, so in the next lesson, there will be a guide on how to choose one.
To prove that forex is not a scam, here are the two most famous forex traders:
George Soros is known as the trader who broke the Bank of England in 1992, netting a profit of $1 billion after opening a $10 billion trade in the British pound sterling (GBP).
Andy Krieger focused on the New Zealand dollar (NZD) after a worldwide panic in financial assets in 1987. In a series of trades, he netted $300 million in profits.
With the right knowledge and tools, forex offers a chance to increase your income if you are ready to learn and become better at it.
We are sure the best time to start is now, so we have prepared a small task for you. Pass all the tasks, and you will get a bonus at the end of this course. Plus, you will earn a diploma for completing the program.
Homework:
Want to see forex in action? Open your browser right now and search for ‘EURUSD live chart.’ Look at how the price changes—that is exactly where traders profit.
Open the next lesson and let’s dive into how you can make this work for you.
