Forex is an interesting way to make money, but it also gives you money making skills that transfer into other financial endeavors. To understand that, you have to understand how Forex works. We’ll start with a simple explanation.

Forex terms can get a little complicated, so a free trial with a brokerage source like ETX Capital is really the best way to go. When you get there, you’ll see a lot of different currency pairs. The first currency listed in the pair (if you were to bet money on it) is the currency that you think will gain value relative to the other listed currency, over a specific amount of time.

Forex trading allows you to leverage your trades, sometimes as much as 200:1. This was, you might be able to effectively trade one hundred thousand pounds, for example, while only being required to deposit a thousand or so.

The finer points of Forex (and its cousin, spread betting, also available through ETX Capital) are best learned through experience, so try out free accounts with reputable brokers to learn the ropes. Alternately, you can watch plenty of Youtube videos about Forex trading, which use images to convey concepts which are harder to grasp through words alone.

How Forex Gives You Money Making Skills in All Disciplines

Now that you understand more or less what Forex trading is, it’s time to explain how trading Forex will give you transferable money making skills for all kinds of purposes.

At its core, this form of trading is all about exploiting opportunities. You’ll quickly learn when you make an account of your own that you won’t have much success if you’re simply guessing about value behaviors. There are so many complexities that influence the relative value fluctuations of global currencies. In order to make money regularly, you’ll have to do some homework. Fortunately, this will yield an education that can make you a very sophisticated investor in disciplines outside of the world of Forex.

Let’s say you do really well at Forex trading and earn $100,000 in your first year. You want to use some of this money in the traditional stock market so that you can earn excellent returns without having to make regular trades as you do in your fast-paced Forex account. Your knowledge of the United States Dollar gives you the inside scoop on companies like Coca-Cola, who are being challenged globally by the strength of the US Dollar.

You knowledge of currency would tell you that because the dollar is so strong, money that Coca-Cola makes outside of the United States (an international market which the soda giant is actively trying to increase its market share within), loses value every time it is brought back into the United States where Coca-Cola does its banking.

You would expect, therefore, that the international brand would be having revenue difficulties in the present (they are), and that any time the Dollar starts to lose some steam, that revenue for Coca-Cola would increase (it will).

Then you hear that President Donald Trump is announcing measures to slow down the progress of the too-strong Dollar, as a way of preventing another market bubble. We’re not recommending that you take action on this hypothetical scenario, but just as an example, what would you do next?

If you thought that Coca-Cola stock would be a good bet based on that information, a lot of investors would agree with you. And you made this insightful decision based solely on your knowledge of the power that global currencies have over consumer brands. This is knowledge that the average investor lacks, and you got it just by trading Forex. Forex is a great way to make money on its own, but it’ll also prepare you for all kinds of other opportunities.