[U][B]Currency speculation & its impact on the society[/B][/U]
Forex market is getting bigger and bigger every passing day. Everybody turns towards the forex market looking for easy money. This is not a productive activity. These speculators don’t produce anything. As I can see, there’s no much difference between gambling and currency speculation (of course one can conduct forex trading as any other business as long as he or she has the necessary education, experience and most of all the ability to control oneself). [B]What impact would it have on the economy if everybody becomes forex traders??? [/B]What if everybody leaves their jobs (as farmers, doctors or such productive occupations) and decides to keep ‘gambling’ staring at a computer screen all day? Seriously if the market grows at this rate soon we will find everybody trading forex! What would the world look like when this happens? What are your opinions on this matter? Thank you.
99% of all the people I know have no interest in trading. And most people aren’t motivated solely by money and look for job satisfaction in their work and so they follow professions which can provide that satisfaction. Still others follow their passions and find ways of turning their hobbies into a living.
I’m aware that speculating on currency is, on the whole, a fairly vacuous pastime but I enjoy it. Once I’ve made enough money from it, I have three business ideas I plan to invest in which will produce, employ and add to society if they succeed, so I have no qualms about making money from the markets.
I don’t think your prophecy of doom is likely to happen - people need different things from their work, most will never be trading forex.
That would not happen. If people started leaving professions then the amount of money made by those professionals would go up and more people would flock to them. It doesn’t really mater how many people trade the forex markets because the few will always make money. The market simply seeks stops and moves to them. So it doesn’t really matter how the whole trades they will always lose money. The more small money traders the better for the market.
That’s similar to asking, “What if everyone became a doctor? What if everyone became an IT tech? What if everyone became a McDonald’s worker?” When we think in those terms, it becomes a bit silly.
What I suspect you’re feeling is that as you start out on this journey of learning to trade, you’re starting to idealize what it’d be like to be a trader full time. For you personally, it sounds relatively alluring and you start thinking to yourself, “Man, why wouldn’t everyone want to do this? This is great!” But that leaves two major holes in the thought process:
Very simply, not everyone will enjoy it the way you are finding you are. Echoing what TheDayTrader said, most people I know have no interest in trading (I mean, people always have an interest in trying to make money or turn their money into more money, I think that’s human nature – but the actual process of trading, most people don’t really care for it). Especially when we’re referring to a committed job because it would drive people away from social interaction that they wouldn’t feel right living without. It can be a very lonely profession.
If you stick around long enough, you’ll realize that it’s not all candy and unicorns and rainbows. Full-time traders have to already have a substantial capital base to live off of returns alone. Acquiring that level of capital is probably a bigger roadblock than trading successfully, and trading successfully over time is really damn hard. Then, your monthly income depends purely and solely on your performance and you’re performing in an environment that is inherently dynamic.
It’s almost like being at a job where the tasks you perform are changing month-to-month (which actually would help keep from getting terribly bored of repetitive work), BUT you’re also paid only on your performance of this brand new task that you’re still not certain about and need to adjust to. Oh, and if you make some mistakes - which you are very likely to - you actually have to pay your job for them and therefore lose money.
You’ll also start to really over-appreciate the capital that you have because it’s not only a large sum in and of itself, but is also your source for continuing to generate income. So you start to become a very frugal person (if you aren’t already) and everything you do will start to be balanced by how much of your precious capital you have to chip away at to do it. There’s no comfort of a certain monthly income that allows you to relax and do things that cost money more enjoyably - and note that most things cost money in some way or another
And to top this all off, your emotional stability is one of the most important elements to remaining consistently profitable, yet once choosing to go full-time, you’ll find that your emotional stability is tested to its highest of upper limits for all of the reasons mentioned above.
Those who flock to forex trading looking for easy money are those who exit it rather fast. It is simply an illusion that any form of trading is easy money and the high failure rate indicates that. Trading may be one of the hardest professions to master and it takes a certain skill set as well as mindset in order to succeed.
