Article

Popularity of Day Trading

Prior to about 10 years ago, the majority of Forex trading was handled through a Forex broker who was called a few times per week to place trades. If the broker wanted to notify you about some current currency fluctuations, he would have to call you and most probably leave a message on your answering machines. Deals could be lost and investment opportunities missed because of the lack of or difficulty of communication. Day trading (buying and selling of currencies on the same day) was not particularly popular due to the time gap in communication. Long term trading (positions held open for about a week or longer) was much more popular since immediate communication was less critical to a trade. Today, however, the two trading strategies are equally convenient and realistic for the Forex investor. Here's why.

Online trading platforms

With the advent of the Internet, Forex trading has basically gone virtual. No longer do most Forex investors place their trades through the phone. Today, an investor simply has to go online and place his trade through his online broker's trading platform. He can place trades around the clock, even in the dead of night. Before the advent of the Internet, an investor would normally have to wait until normal business hours to call his broker to place a trade. That's if his broker was available. If he wasn't available, he might have to wait a full day to place a trade. By that time, however, the market could have moved in the opposite direction, and the deal might have been blown.

Trading signals

Not only do the online trading platforms offer a convenient, online environment to place trades, they also offer around the clock trading signals. These trading signals, or alerts, notify the trader of the latest, most up-to-date information on the Forex market. If you wanted to know the latest currency fluctuations, or most recent interest rate changes around the world, you would simply have to go online to your Forex trading platform and log onto your account. Even if you weren't logged into your account, you could still be notified of the most recent currency fluctuations via your email or mobile phone. No longer would you need to wait for your broker to call you back to place that trade.