A Bit Of Background On The Futures, And Commodities Market

Online trading in futures, commodities and forex (foreign exchange) connects you potentially to all the big money centers. They include the LIFFE in London, UK, the CBOT in Chicago, USA and the EUREX in Frankfurt, Germany. One needs to look at the history of futures trading, in New York, Chicago, London and the other great centers. It goes back to 1971, when the floating exchange system was first created.

Before then currencies were largely fixed to the dollar. The CBOT was opened in 1974 to oversee financial derivatives trading. The centers of forex trading and futures trading have grown larger and more diversified over the years. Major, international, inter-bank trades, and even the activity of governments determine the value of currency trades. The shift to online stock and forex trading was about 1996, with major improvements in PCs and the Internet at that time. Online trading can focus on a handful of stocks, and it look for the proper triggers that set off the major trading action. Various trading gurus have methods to choose Stocks on Steroids and even give you the list of stocks that theyre trading now.

You should also know how to get some of the stock data you need for free. Yes, a lot of the stock data that people pay big bucks for is available on the Internet, with a small amount of processing. Ever go to finance.yahoo (a free site) which can be used to plug stock history data into a MS Excel table, and then draw a chart? Of course thats on a daily basis, but there are other sources. The trading day starts in Wellington, New Zealand. A few hours later it kicks in Dubai, in the Persian Gulf. A few hours after that Frankfurt, Paris and Rome start. Then London, later New York and Chicago, and finally the U.S. West Coast open for business. Wherever you live or work, you can find time to do some Forex trading. Its the biggest daily market, about $2 trillion a day. The profit potential is truly breathtaking, because Forex is the perfect instrument to leverage. Yet a lot of smaller traders overlook this. Currency trading takes place in large financial markets. Its not exactly going to the local store or even supermarket to buy some vegetables. Although 12 million people in the world trade currency, theres no such thing as saturation.