FX trading from home. Brave or foolish??

[sweetgrapes]

I am thinking of things to do from home.
Forex trading was one that dh came up with.
I have been doing it on the demo version for a month now and am thinking about actually putting some real money in!!

Anyone doing this? How is it to work around kids and family life? Any experiences out here?

Thanks in advance for responses...

What site are you using? I can look into it to see if it's a scam or whatever.

What sort of spread do they use?

The demo version I'm using at the moment is dbfx. The spread seems reasonable 1-3 pips usually. Sometimes it gets higher.

But the minimum they want is $5000, so I'll probably fish around for a mini account somewhere to start of with.

Oh, well, Deutsche Bank is a real bank, at least. There's a fair bit of noise online about it being really some other platform, and actually sucking, though - the reality and the demo aren't the same ... see here.

You will be competing with corporate traders who have faster connections to the market, and perhaps faster access to the news. How long are you planning to hold positions for? What sort of plan do you have for trading?

As you say, these guys are at least a real bank but they don't offer the same platform as they use. That's outsourced to fxfm, apparently, they don't admit it.

Afaik, everyone has a bad review from someone... It seems like a very dirty business to be honest!

As far as a plan goes I really don't have a good one yet.

The way I've been doing it so far is to put the smallest amount on, with the limit of 10 pips. I have'nt been using a stop either. As the demo opened with $50,000 I could afford to wait it out if things went the other way.

But that won't happen in real life!

I don't have a formula or anything and no subscriptions to anyone either yet. Just some general reading up and tutorial types emails and news sites.

Yup, will be up against the big guys with their complex softwares and minions going thru the news!!

So, stupid??

But then I'm not aiming to make millions. A couple of pips gets $20 approx. Will that be so dificult?

Dunno - if you're just guessing/betting, then the odds are against you, thanks to the spread.

Of course you won't have the same s/w they have! Trading systems are really complicated, unlikely they run on PCs, etc etc (I used to develop them for a living!).

What would bother me more, would be your access to the exchange, I'd worry your transactions would run a bit later than everyone else's, iyswim. If your plan is to hold trades for a few days, follow the news (which is what a lot of home traders do, from what I gather) then trade speed may not be such a big deal. If you're hoping to just arb people, then trade speed is everything.