B[/B] Start by going through the entire School of Pipsology here on the Babypips site. On your first pass through the School, don’t try to become an expert in all the topics presented there. Instead, try to get an overview of what this business is about.
If you decide to delve further into forex trading, you will probably return to the School lessons many times, and that’s when you can concentrate on mastering the topics that are important to you.
B[/B] The School will always be available to you for your continuing forex education. But, there are other free resources available, as well — from books, to YouTube videos, to instructional websites, and so forth.
And this forum contains a wealth of information, but it requires some digging. Learn to use the SEARCH feature here. It works essentially like the search engines on Google, Bing, or Yahoo, except that it searches only this forum. The trick to making it work for you is to be clever in your choice of key words to search for. Experiment with it, until you get good at it.
B[/B] Investigate the difference between technical forex trading and fundamental forex trading. You might find that fundamentals suit your temperament and your way of thinking in [I]this market,[/I] just as they do in the stock market.
It’s a fact that most forex traders are technical traders, and most of the talk on this forum revolves around technicals. But, we also have an active group of fundamental traders, who generally hang out in the part of the forum called Fundamental-ville, and you should start to pay attention to what goes on there.
The choice between technicals and fundamentals is not an all-or-nothing choice. Fundamental traders rely [I]primarily[/I] on their analysis of fundamentals, but they use technicals to some extent, as well. Maybe, for them, the mix is 90% fundamentals and 10% technicals. If you find that you are best suited to fundamental trading, you will nevertheless need a basic understanding of technicals.
B[/B] If you are a U.S. resident, choose a U.S. forex broker to experiment with. Ignore talk of offshore forex brokers (including my own thread on that subject) for now. Getting involved with an offshore broker involves too much additional complexity for someone just starting out in this business. You can always look into offshore opportunities at some time in the future.
Open a free DEMO account with the U.S. broker of your choice, and begin experimenting with their trading platform. The goal here is not to commit to this particular broker necessarily, but rather to learn how to navigate a typical forex platform, and to begin experimenting with online forex trading in a totally risk-free environment using PLAY MONEY.
Most forex brokers offer a trading platform called MetaTrader4 (MT4), which you may or may not like. There are other platforms, as well. If you decide to pursue forex trading, one of your tasks will be to choose from among these platform choices.
In many cases, choosing a particular broker means accepting the one platform that they offer. But, there are also brokers who offer two or more different platforms. This is the case with FXCM, for example. They offer their own proprietary platform called TradingStationII along with its associated MarketScope charting package, and they offer the MT4 platform, as well.
That should get you started.
If you decide to pursue forex trading, accept the fact that your forex education will largely be a do-it-yourself proposition, and it will likely continue throughout your trading career.
Most of the people I know in this business have wasted large amounts of money on courses, seminars, mentors, “trading” software, etc., and most of them would advise you to avoid all that useless stuff. Everything you need is available for free here, and elsewhere on the internet — but, you’ll have to quickly learn to be shrewd in evaluating the stuff that’s offered. The same internet that offers high-quality forex education also contains scams and rip-offs galore. You can’t avoid [I]all[/I] the scams and rip-offs, but you can avoid the worst of them if you just refuse to pay money for training or software.
Good luck, as you begin your forex journey.
And welcome to this forum.