Anyone here trade currencies? I’m interested in hearing peoples experience of hobby trading

Cheers

Like most hobbies, it will probably get expensive.

Wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Rightly or wrongly I’ve alaways assumed it to be time consuming and the low margins not justifying the risk.

It’s gambling. There’s a reason you don’t pay tax on your winnings.
From my experience: win small, win small, win small, lose BIG. And stop.

It’s fairly safe to make money with Forex, but you need a large investment. The rule of thumb is to only invest 1% of your funds at one time. So to make real money with it you need 10s of thousands, not a couple of hundred. Which is what most hobby people do, then invest too much and screw up.

Crowd information is the best way to make money, it’s all about timing, catch a swing too late you will get caught out. Go on tips, there are loads of forums and sites you can find this information.

Be prepared to lose, it’s a game of attrition, and you can do it, but you have to be a certain type of person to do it. It’s funny i wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, because i wouldn’t want that responsibility, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Do your research, that’s the most important thing, my degree is in banking and finance, so i was doing it all through uni, start small and build, and be patient.

The only piece of investment advice I have is don’t buy stuff unless you understand it. For me this means anything to do with the square mile!

Yep, there’s lots of tipsters around, but forex is largely at the mercy of things totally out of our control; Politics, oil prices etc.
Personally I’d rather short shares listed on various exchanges by spread betting. That way you don’t own the underlying asset, but you have to be sure there’s going to be negative movement. To give an example, banking shares were all hammered a couple of years ago when astronomical fines were on the horizon. There’s only one way they went. I would recommend knowing as much as possible about any company before you try though.
Oh, It’s still gambling though.

I made good money and lost good money. I treated as an education in something that I didn’t understand but was interested in, put £1300 into it, willing to lose £300. Most of my trades were on oil as that moves quite fast or silver/gold which is slower. I generally set my limit at $50 (so can’t lose more but can’t gain more either). Like others say, it’s gambling, it’s interesting, can be fun and don’t gamble
More than you can afford to lose.

I do it, I’m on the hook to one probable scam operator that are refusing to pay out on my 10 grand gains and I’m up three grand on another algorithmic see saw that is at least regulated by the Australian Exchange commission. They have at least paid out.

But it is a dodgy quagmire of largely unregulated operators, the idea is to get your original investment out asap and trade the profits.

Cheers all, it was the repeated Trading 212 adverts that got me thinking and the responses here have tempered my enthusiasm

I dont but am tempted, a bit too risk averse v shares. At least with shares you earn a dividend while waiting for some increase. My only forex activity is on the p2p platforms as i earn gbp and have euro costs, so always have a bid on.

Guranteed to lose money I would say (I am a “professional” asset manager/trader with 35 years experience). What I and wife (also an asset manager) is make medium term strategic calls with investments inc pension, eg both of us are negative on euro/Europe so invest significantly in Asia / US over past 10-15 years. Trying to punt currencies short term is a lottery imho.

Obvious question to a wannabe amateur forex trader is why do you think you’re better informed than the pro on the other side of your trade?

9 out of 10 amateur FX traders lose money, in some cases, lots of it.
Don’t go near it.