In any business, money is made by offering a product or service. There also must be a willing buyer and a willing seller for any transaction to take place. In forex trading, the product being sold is “money.” Yea, you heard it right. As a forex trader, your work is to buy a currency that you hope will go up in value, and then later sell the same currency for a profit. For example, if you found a product, say a laptop being sold in one region at $100 and the exact laptop is selling at $500 in your home town, you’d buy the laptop at that price and later sell the same for a $400 profit as long as you have a willing buyer. 

The same goes for forex. As a matter of fact, forex trading is more or less easier since you will always find a willing buyer and a willing seller online. Now all you have to do is spot an opportunity to profit from. Say you have $100, and you feel that the euro will gain value, you would quickly buy the euro worth $100 at it’s current price, wait, then later sell the euro back to your initial US dollars for a profit. That is how you make money in forex when the price of a certain currency is going up.

One more added advantage of trading forex is that apart from making money when prices are going up, you can also make money when prices are going down. To understand how a forex trader makes money when prices are going down, we’ll take a real world example.

Say you have a property like land worth $10,000. You predict that in one month, the value of that property will depreciate to $5,000. How would you go about shielding yourself from that loss? First, identify a buyer. The next step is to sell the property at prevailing market prices. Now, you no longer own any property, but you have $10,000 cash at hand. Wait patiently for your prediction to materialize. One month later, go back to the property you sold which is now valued at $5,000 and negotiate a deal. Buy the property back at $5,000 dollars and there you have it. You have your property and an extra $5,000 cash. You shielded  yourself from a $5,000 loss had you not taken that initiative. This is a simplified version of how money is made in forex when prices are going down.

To get the point home, assume you have a friend that bought a laptop at $2,000 which they are not using. Since the laptop is a new model, you predict that it will lose half of its value in three months when the new model finally floods the market. To gain from your speculation, you borrow your friend the laptop with the promise that you will give him back a new laptop, same model in three months time. Immediately, you sell the laptop at prevailing market prices and now you’ve made $2,000 out of the borrowed asset. When the value of the product depreciates, you go back to the market and buy a similar laptop for $1,000. Take back the laptop to the lender and magically, you have $1,000 left in your pocket as profit. 

The advantages of trading forex is that the market is open 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. This gives flexibility to a busy trader who has other commitments do plan his trading schedule accordingly. Also, unlike most other businesses, in forex, there is always someone willing to take the other side of the deal meaning there is always a willing buyer and a willing seller at any one time. Finally, a forex trader can make a profit irrespective of the direction of the market.