It is not a secret that forex trading is a less than respectable part of the financial world today, after more than a decade since its exciting launch by some ambitious entrepreneurs, and eventful rise through much of this decade. Part of this is the result of irrational expectations on the part of traders which are exploited to the maximum by forex brokers through marketing campaigns, misleading forex demo accounts, and promises that forex trading is more or less child’s play. It is the irony of this business that on the same page you can find discussions of how easy it is to trade the EURUSD along with descriptions and legal statements about how past performance is never a guide to future results. This is all a result of the still immature state of the forex brokerage business. But it is also the fault of the public in that they can still be credulous to claims that it may be possible to get rich quick without taking massive risks in the process.

Brokers want to attract clients. They can’t attract clients if they advertise forex trading as a business choice, a career decision that will surely demand a lot of time and energy from the trader. Instead, the focus of the campaigns and programs of advertisement is always the suggestion that forex is easy. Nobody likes to discuss the fact, however, that the vast majority of retail forex clients end up losing a large part, if not all of their accounts. A large part of the remainder manage to breakeven only, and by all accounts, only a fraction of traders achieve profitability. Another way of popularizing this business as one where great profits are made with very small commitment in a short period of time is contests. Here the tiny fraction of traders who make good wins of more %1000 percent over a short time are advertised as heroes, and they are interviewed as great traders symbolizing the great potential of forex for those who are in-the-know.

Of course, not one bit of all this noise has any bearing to reality. Success in forex has nothing whatsoever to do with such huge profits, and it is not easy to trade forex if a person doesn’t have interest, or time for following events in trading with commitment. Massive profits cannot be duplicated over time, and if they are, they are almost always followed by huge losses due to the high-risk strategies involved. In any case, a long-term strategy can never be built on expectations of large profits all the time; traders must focus on managing losses.

Those are some of the faults of brokers, but traders are not entirely immune from blame either. The worst, of course, is ignorance. And the other is gullibility. One would expect that at this day and age people would have gotten over the notion of getting rich quick at no effort, but for the average person, baseless claims advertised with great skill and conviction still have an allure.

Many people are furious about forex scams and the losses suffered by traders as a result of the dishonest behavior of brokers. But the truth is that a far greater proportion of money is being eaten away by simple and easily remediable faults of perception and errors of judgment on the part of traders. Make sure that you never let go of your commonsense if you plan to trade forex. That is far more valuable than any strategy or style that you could ever devise to meet the challenges of trading.