Is Trading Forex Essentially Gambling

No forex is not at all gambling. it is like investing our money for a result. “Those who treat forex trading as if they were in a casino will see the same long-term results as when they go to Las Vegas,” he says, adding: “If you treat forex trading like a business, including proper money management, you have a better chance of success.” …Newsweek International, March 15, 2004

 

Well to the uneducated person or the inexperienced forex trader, it would appear to be very easy to arrive at this conclusion, particularly if you start watching the chart of any currency pair and observe how it moves in a seemingly random fashion.

However many large financial institutions around the world, and indeed individual traders, make consistent profits from trading forex markets, so you can be pretty sure that they’re not gambling away huge amounts of money every day at random.

 

There are of course many different ways you can give yourself an edge trading forex. The main way is of course through technical analysis. This is basically the study of charts and technical indicators to identify trading patterns and help you find potentially high probability trading positions.

They work so well because traders all over the world watch the same charts and the same technical indicators and see the same patterns repeating themselves over and over again. This allows them to take positions knowing that the price will most probably behave the same in this instance as before.

Trading Forex is a Smart Business or Investment

Is forex essentially gambling?… It can be if you have no discipline!! Forex trading should and can be all about making a smart investment, taking the time to learn a system or strategy, practice and test it.

You can make a living out of trading if you treat it like a business. There are thousand strategies out there that have been tested for years and can produce a lot of money over time if you follow the rules and never let your emotions get on the way.

An amazing and proven strategy would be Harmonic patterns, which are geometric patterns that repeat over and over again on any price chart. Search google for it and you will be amazed by the amount of free resources to learn this strategy.

You could also treat trading like gambling, but in this case I would prefer to try gambling systems in casinos, playing roulette or blackjack for example.

I hope it helps you understand the difference. Remember that gambling is based on random outcomes in which you only can take into account a bet and your odds. In trading, you can test a system and get to know the probability, risk and outcome over time, which eliminates the randomness about it.

With both you can definitely make a lot of money, it just depends on how you want to make it and which one you feel more confortable with.

Good luck!