To make money of course!
Forex trading, in comparison to share trading, has a very low barrier to entry allowing ease of access to anyone wishing to participate. Brokerage fees are very low with some fees being as low as $1 on a $100,000 trade.
Forex is the commonly used term to describe Foreign Exchange. Other common names include:
The forex market is open 24 hours 5 and a half days a week. Whether you chose to trade in the Australian market, European market or Americans' market. This means no matter what your day looks like, whether forex trading is your side business/hustle, retirement money, or a full time job—you will always have an oppurtunity to trade
Billions of dollars are day are transacted on the Forex markets. It might take major stock exchanges up to 30 days
to transact what the forex market transacts in a single day. This makes the forex market extremely liquid. A liquid
market allows you to constantly open and close positions without the worry there is no one on the other side to buy from
or sell to.*
* This is not a hard rule and world circumstances could always effect this. Trading major currency pairs is generally recommended
if you want the lowest risk.
Share markets are normally open for 7-8 hours a day; though news can happen anytime. When a the stock market is
closed and a company releases bad news, the price can gap down a great amount causing your position to be significantly
weaker when the market opens.
Forex trades for 24 hours a day 5 and a half days a week. If you take a position on a currency then you can
keep watching your exchange for the best opportunity to close your position. You can keep watching the news and react
immediately as you see its effects. The only gapping occurs over the weekend, where we do not generally hold positions as
traders.
The forex market generally is not as volatile as the stock market—though it definitely can be; consider a country going to war. Forex currency pairs may only experience 1% price swings in a day, so most traders set a stop loss of 1% so that the max risk they lose on a trade is only 1%— a $500 trade would only risk $5. This means in the unfortunate circumstance where you make a bad call, you're losses won't stop you trading.
Forex trading has a very low cost associated with it, where brokers generally only charge on the spreads.*
The spread is the difference between the bid/ask price the broker reports the last price. When you put in a buy order you will
pay the bid price and when you put in a sell you sell at the ask price.
Broker spreads may be as little as 1 or 2 pips (a pip is the change is the last—4th decimal point $1.0001—of
a currency pair).
* Please see your broker for exact details on pricing.