Should you be paying for a forex trading training course?

While you may be new to forex, the truth of the matter is that the forex market has been online for hundreds of years and with the recent innovations in the fintech industry, it has been made more efficient and accessible than ever before. There’s also so much information freely available that you would be doing your wallet a disservice by wasting money on those forex trading training courses that swindlers post on their Instagram accounts.

That doesn’t go to say that there aren’t any legitimate trading courses out there, but they will either be way to costly or not suitable for everyone since in forex there are multiple approaches to trading and one size definitely does not fit all.

Be your own mentor

New traders are incredibly lucky since they have everything they need to get started right at their fingertips. The best place you can start, of course, is the extensive and all-inclusive trading tutorial available at Babypips.com. It may not make you an expert in trading, but it does give you accurate info in an easy to digest manner.

Admittedly, the Babypips training tutorial does walk you through the basics of the market, the various forex trading platforms and even advanced trading strategies as you progress through the course, but it shouldn’t be your only source of forex education. The internet is a big place after all, and you have virtually unlimited resources at your disposal. From YouTube channels that will teach you all about technical and fundamental analysis to your forex broker’s very own website where you can find learning materials as well as forex trading training webinars to join.

Slow and steady wins the race

Taking a shortcut with a paid “Become a pro trader in a week” course may seem ideal but most of the time it would be more beneficial to take things slow at your own pace. Truth be told, as long as you go through the client verification process and get your trading account activated, you can place your first trade in mere seconds. It really is that easy, but your trade would likely be a loser. However, if you have game plan regarding how you are going to tackle your trading, you can actually fast-track your progress without skipping on the important bits.

What you should be focusing on in the beginning of your forex journey is:

• Finding out how the market works and common forex terminology
• Learning how to use the platform and the order execution types available
• Risk and money management – arguably the most important part of trading
• The different trading strategies and which one makes most sense to you

These four steps are the cornerstones of learning how to trade consistently but another important aspect of trading forex is having a reliable forex broker.

A partner you can trust

Since your forex trading broker is your point of entry into the market, the one who will be providing the pricing for every trade you place, you also need to make sure that it’s a company that you can trust with your hard-earned money.

Therefore, the first thing you need to check is if your broker is regulated i.e. licensed with a regulatory body in the jurisdiction that it operates. Usually the license information is readily available on your broker’s website and you can even head over to the regulator’s website to verify that it’s accurate.

Regulated brokers provide you with peace of mind since they need to follow strict requirements regarding the safety of your funds. But aside from protecting your funds, it’s in a forex broker’s best interest that clients are happy with the service and for that to happen, they need to have easy access to learning opportunities.

As such, reputable brokers will have a dedicated forex trading training section on their website where you can receive free eBooks, charting tutorials etc. Live webinars are also very helpful due to their interactive nature and these usually take place weekly or monthly and focus on all aspects of trading the markets including how to trade with the broker’s available trading platforms, high probability trading strategies and how you can predict price action with market analysis.

Conclusion

Forex trading courses that boast consistent success in span of a couple of weeks are at best a compilation of all the free information already available online or at worst a complete scam. If you are really interested in harnessing the opportunities in online trading, you are better off taking things step by step, focusing on the important stuff first.

After finding a reliable and trustworthy forex trading broker, fluency in the trading platforms offered by your broker of choice should be top priority. When that’s out of the way, you can focus your efforts on learning as much as you can about the market in order to better inform your trading strategy.