Investing in forex trading is like taking that first step out of your mother’s house. You never know what to expect out there.
There are profits to be made in forex trading as well as massive losses to be incurred.
According to statistics collected by Market Traders Institute, a renowned online financial training institute, only 10% of those who invest in forex trading make profits. The other 90% get their accounts wiped out in less than 6 months.
The main cause of failure in forex trading is letting emotions such as fear and greed interfere with your trading. The next big reasons why investors lose money in forex trading is lack of solid trading strategies.
If you have heard about online FX trade (aka online currency exchange) and decided it is a venture you would like to pursue, you will need to spend some time (and money?) learning how the forex market operates. If you’re pretty new to forex trading or just heard it for the first time and you’re wondering what it’s all about, I have a detailed post on how to start forex trading in Kenya.
Before we go any further, let me say that I am a big advocate for learning online forex trading. With the high rate of unemployment in Kenya and salaries that never grow proportionally to your needs, you’ve every reason to want to invest in online forex trading.
The second thing that I’d like to mention is that nothing beats experience. If you want to learn how to trade forex, your best bet will be to start trading. When you are a beginner, you should open a demo account on HotForex. The demo account allows you to practice trading with virtual currency. You do not put any of your money at risk. And conversely, you do not take any profits to the bank. But you will gain a lot of experience from trading forex on the Easy Forex demo account.
The downside of trading on a demo account, however, is that you do not experience how it feels to have your hard earned money on the line. I’d therefore recommend that you open a micro/cent account, deposit a few hundred shillings in it and use it to learn how to trade. It is by far the best way to learn how to trade forex.
TemplerFx is one of the brokers that offers very well structured Cent accounts. With a cent account at TemplerFx, if you deposit $100, the money appears on your trading platform as 10,000 units of currency ie 10,000 cents. $10 appears as 1,000 cents. This representation gives you the real feel of trading with a well-funded account. I’d therefore recommend you go open an account at TemplerFx and fund it with at least $50 to start trading.
In today’s article, I am going to show you a few ways that you can use to study forex and become a pro in it in less than 4 weeks.
In order to sharpen your forex trading techniques, you need to learn how to trade forex before you commit your hard-earned cash to trading. There are several ways that you can use to learn forex trading. In this article, I address what I believe to be among the best ways to learn forex trading in Kenya:
Best Ways to Learn Forex Trading in Kenya
1. Learn How to Trade Using forex EBooks
If you are interested in forex trading, getting an eBook on the subject should be the first step in learning. The reason why I recommend you start with eBooks is simple- You need to understand the theory behind forex trading before you start trading.
However, it is important to note that not all eBooks are equal. Some are low quality, spammy eBooks written by hungry forex affiliates who have never executed a single trade in their entire lifetime. Others are advanced eBook written by economists who have been in the forex market since it was established in 1973 and have lost sync with what a beginner eBooks should look like.
At Kenya Forex Firm, we constantly scrub the internet looking for the best ebooks on forex trading. We categorize the eBooks according to the knowledge level of a trader. If you’re an absolute forex trading beginner, WhatsApp me on 0739088050 to receive a forex trading ebook at 200/= only.
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2. Learn Forex Trading Using YouTube Video Tutorials
There is nothing as informative as seeing what you have been reading in forex eBooks demonstrated visually.
Again, you have to be diligent on whose channel you get the videos from. Like with ebooks, many forex videos on YouTube are recorded by forex affiliates who put their interests to sign you up to brokers for a commission ahead of your need to learn forex.
Trustworthy and well-established forex brokers and traders post the most informative forex videos. Some of the YouTube Channels I recommend you follow include FXStreet, Jason Stapleton and MetaStock. A little research on YouTube will also sharpen your acumen on other forex Vbloggers that you should trust.
The best way to use YouTube to learn forex is by using the search bar to constrain your search to one topic at a time.
For instance, if you would like to know how to read candlesticks, searching for “forex trading strategies” will be so wide. Instead, restrain your search to phrases that are directly related to information that you are looking for.
If you don’t want to do the hard work or your broadband is not strong enough to let you watch online video tutorials, we have a large collection of forex video courses that are beginner-friendly and are categorized according to topics. Contact me on 0738088050 to get your copy of forex training course videos delivered in a cool USB right to your doorstep.
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3. Learning By Simulating Trading on a Forex Demo Account
At this point, you should be aware of several trading strategies and techniques, and it is time to pilot-test them to see how practically useful is the information you have gleaned.
A lot of forex brokers offer free forex demo accounts that are loaded with virtual money that you can use to test-drive the trading strategies and techniques that you have learned on ebooks and video tutorials. I personally recommend that you open a demo account with XM Global Forex Brokers.
A forex demo account offers the best chance of learning how to implement various trading strategies without actually putting your money at risk.
NB: Never upgrade to a live forex account unless you are already making profits on a demo account.
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4. Join Forex Forums and Groups on the Internet
When you start trading on a live account, you will need to keep tabs on what other forex trading experts are saying. The information shared on forex forums offers great trading insights.
Additionally, being active on a forex forum gives you the feeling of being in a community of like-minded investors. Trust me; you do not want to barricade yourself in the house the whole day trying to make profits on the market.
Some of the best forex forums on the internet include Daily Fx Forex Forum, BabyPips Forex Forum and the OANDA Forex Forum. Make sure you check out these forums during your coffee breaks. There is a lot of information from individual members on the forums.
At Kenya Forex Firm, we are also in the process of organizing monthly meetups for all forex traders in Nairobi. These meetups will both be fun and insightful. Keep checking our website for updates on the first great meetup.
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5. Hire a forex expert to train you
Up to this point, you might have noticed that all the various ways of learning forex I have recommended are free. They also involve you looking for the information personally. While these methods will greatly limit the money you have to spend learning forex, it also means that you might have to spend more time learning.
There is also the possibility that you are busy using your time trying to learn techniques that are no longer relevant in the forex market.
You might also prefer to have a mentor who will take your hand and guide you through forex training. If that is the case, you need to hire a forex expert to train you.
There are several individuals in Nairobi who offer premium forex training. The charges for these lessons usually range from as much as 50K to as low as 10K.
If you have a few thousand shillings to spare, hiring a forex trainer or mentor is one of the best ways to learn the ins and outs of the forex market. A lot of forex traders who offer forex trading classes in Kenya will charge you an average of 50,000/= for a few days of training.
The best thing with hiring a trainer is that they give you concise and concrete information that you can put to use immediately and recoup your investment.
4 Reasons to Get Serious and Hire a Forex Trading Course
A Trader Coach is a consistently profitable trader who can take you as a trader, and develop your skills and abilities to turn you into a consistently profitable trader. A Trading Coach will have experience at improving the trading performance of their clients and in mentoring them in more than just technical analysis.
1. A Trader Coach Has Experience In The Markets.
One of the massive benefits of having a trading mentor is that they have plenty of experience in the markets, and you can use this experience to fast track your own progress and shorten your learning curve. It makes sense to learn from a Professional Trader Coach as you will be able to avoid a lot of their mistakes when they were learning themselves.
You’ll also know that what you’re learning works, as they are making money from it. I’d suggest that when you’re looking for a Trader Coach, you pick one that has at least 5 years of experience trading the markets, as they’ve been in the markets long enough to have seen different market conditions and scenarios play out.
2. A Trading Coach Can Help You With A Lot More Than Just The Technical.
As a Professional Trader Coach, my job is 20% technical, and 80% psychology, although my students really do start off thinking it’s the other way around. The technical and trading strategies really are the easy part, though it may not feel like it when you first start out.
Learning the technical entries, exits and management is of course very important, as I have to make sure that my students know how to execute high probability trade setups correctly. They also need to know how to manage their trades on to a profit, as well as how to identify the next opportunity. However developing the correct trading mindset is a critically important step in applying your technical knowledge.
Some of the most important things that my students and I focus on are:
• risk management and position sizing,
• money management and trading account management,
• relationship between average risk reward ratio and winning percentage
• capital preservation
• trading psychology through the good times and the bad
It’s vitally important that traders understand the importance of risk management and position sizing before they start pulling the trigger on their trades. You must understand that losing trades are going to happen, and making them as small as possible is key to allowing the big winning trades to have the most positive effect possible on your account.
My students also learn about trading account management, how many trades they are comfortable running at the same time, and how strict money management can benefit their trading.
The relationship between reward risk ratio’s and average winning percentage is a key concept that traders need to be aware of. It’s not just about how big your winners are and how small your losers are, but in relation to your success rate. If your winners are typically 3:1, but you only have a 10% success rate, you’re never going to make any money.
My students learn how important it is to have a success rate greater than 50%, to ensure that their morale is not too badly effected by having long strings of losses.
I also coach my students so that they are fully aware of needing bigger winners than losers, and as such will only take trades that are at least a 1:1 risk reward ratio, while several of my students prefer to only take 2:1’s or 1.5:1’s. It is this ability to let trades pass them by, while they wait for the high probability opportunities, that allows them to become consistently profitable and make money trading forex.
Capital preservation is key to staying in the game. Cut the losses short, and let the winners run, while being aware that a 50% success rate does not mean that you’ll win a trade then lose the next, win one, lose one. This ties in with trade sizing and risk management so they preserve their trading capital through the more difficult times.
As you can see I spend significant time coaching my students on the importance of a good trading mindset and having strong trader psychology. It is this psychological conditioning that allows them to stick to their trading plan through the tough times, and not get carried away in the good times.
3. You Should Be Held Accountable To Your Trading Coach.
Accountability is a very important part of trader coaching. By making themselves accountable to me, my students stick to their trading plans and have to report their trading performance to me so that we can evaluate the trades they have taken and their results. The additional benefit here is that it also prevents over-trading, because if they turn up with 700 trades a month, they’ve already shown themselves that they’re trading too much.
4. Coaching Is Popular In Lots Of Different Fields. Life Coaching, Business Coaching and Trader Coaching.
Lots of different sectors use coaching to improve performance. There’s life coaching, business coaching, sports coaching and of course, trader coaching. Coaching and mentoring is nothing new, but it is proven to improve results in every industry and field that it is used. Trader mentoring is no different. Each of the students that I coach wholeheartedly agree that it’s the coaching that has really allowed them to improve as traders, as they have the ability to interact with a professional trader coach and have personalised attention to improve their trading.
We have a forex training module for beginners that goes for only 8K. During the training, you will be introduced to forex trading, we will teach you technical analysis using various strategies, and show you how to manage risks in forex trading. If you are interested in learning, drop me a line on 0710251380.
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Free Online Courses and Forex Tutorials
The internet is a mine of information. Seriously. There is so much information online and all you need is to know how to use Google. Some good places to find free online forex courses and tutorials include:
Although there is all the information you need about FX trading in websites and blogs, you need to be wary of websites where you are getting your information. Some may contain outdated information while a majority publish information just for the sake of publishing.
Another downside with using online forex tutorials is that you may suffer from information overload. Every forex trader develops his or her own forex trading system. The information you get online is therefore very subjective.
To adequately utilize the information you get in online forex trade tutorials, you will need to sieve much of the information and only retain the one that you are going to use.
P.S. Leave your comments below. Was this article helpful? What do you think is the best way to learn forex trading in Kenya?