FOREX trading is not for everyone.... especially for investors without a deep pocket. Furthermore, the instruments are almost 24 hours trading = more stress or probably losing precious sleeping time.
In the early hours (Australia, Asia hrs), the flunctuation may be limited (range trading) but once the European & New York trading hours starts, volume picks up gradually.
Also, you need to follows the economical indicators for both countries closely (for eg USvsYen, we called it DollarYen), becos the spot currencies move sharply if any of the fundamental datas indicate a possible interest rate change in the near future.
Charting, or Technical aspects are essential if you want to know the entry points and/or support levels, ie, resistance levels. Now that there are many prices information providers around, the older days... (early 90s when i 1st started trading...) i had to plot charts manually, ie, Japanese Candle-sticks and/or bar charts.
Much time is saved when information providers (eg Reuters, Bloomberg) came in with plotted charts, and you just need to subscribe to their services and input your own technical studies together with the charts (with many intervals like 5min, 30min, hourly, 3 hourly, daily, weekly and even monthly).
Oscillators like RSI (Relative Strength Index), MACD, k%d%, Open interests and even using moving averages do give you a indication on the market trend. Do beat the market, this is definitely not enough... you really need to read more (books on trading strategies, ie hedging, spreading or averaging... MOST important of all... how to CUT LOSSES). hahaha.
Not going into it too much... just my personal advice, if you got limited monetary resources, keep away from FOREX trading... Alot of people said they made $$$$... I have been a bank trader before... the number of people got their fingers burnt are 9.9 is to 0.1.
Anyway, if you are within the 0.1 percentage of winners, I wish you luck.
Cheers. JDIL.
This message was edited by Just_do_it_lah on 10-Dec-2010 @ 8:52 AM