So if you’re starting out in forex, it’s not so much about where to find good resources. The harder question is where to look first and how to filter the stuff you should know right now from the stuff you can afford to discover a bit later.

Here are seven basic resources which will set you on a good footing.

1. iMarkets Live

Let’s just state the bleeding obvious right out of the gate. Forex trading and educational products are thick on the ground. You can spend way too much time and money signing up for these before you hit on something which works. A simple way to save yourself some leg work is to follow the money. IMarketsLive is an incredibly successful product. Its forex training program and materials are now available in 8 languages across 120 countries.

It’s an excellent place to start, simply because the methodology it’s built around is proven. In 2017, this company was bringing in an income of over $6 million per month. It spans both crypto and FIAT currencies and it gives you the option of selling the product if you enjoy using it.

It’s well worth checking out. You can read a full iMarketsLive review here.

 

2. Investopedia

Here’s an easy one and a no-brainer. You can get into a ton of hot water if you don’t understand your definitions. When you encounter a term, acronym or concept you don’t understand, tackle that incomprehension head on! An easy go-to reference is Investopedia. Will it answer every question you have about a particular concept? Well, no. Will it give you the basic conceptual handles you need to understand what it broadly means? Yes. Investopedia is a quick and easy way to paint in the gaps in your knowledge. Once you have that down, deepening your understanding becomes much easier.

3. A Calendar View of Economic News

Understanding market relevant news over time is one basic, inescapably important building block of understanding forex. While time based data can be filtered, analyzed and scrutinized endlessly, the simple starting point you’ll need is a hyperlinked list of key financial intelligence over time. Here’s one great example.

 

It’s pretty basic really. Your typical economic calendar is going to give you a one or two week forward view on economic releases, along with some kind of basic indicator of its relative significance. Some will be of crucial significance, others slight or tangential. Gain a time-based view of forex early on in your journey. It’ll serve you well.

4. A Quick Way to Convert Time Zones

Here’s another easy one. This sounds stupidly basic, but understanding time zones can make a huge difference to quick and accurate decision-making. We all get that time zones differ but it can help to see where you’re at in the respective trading hours of each of the world’s major forex trading centers. A good forex time zone converter is going to give you a neat, graphic way to see what forex markets are open and how their hours of trading overlap. A simple place to begin is: http://forex.timezoneconverter.com.

 

5. A Solid Community to Learn From

Learning alone isn’t just boring, it’s haphazard and sloppy. Drawing from other perspectives, lessons and approaches is vital to maturing your own unique approach to forex trading. For that to happen, you need community. Which particular community you gravitate toward is going to depend on several factors, not least of which will be your own unique personality. The trick here is to put out feelers in several online communities and discover which works best for you, intellectually and socially.

The Naked Forex Now community is an excellent place to start. This forum gives you the chance to observe how successful traders approach their work. Exposing yourself to as many successful strategies as possible can never be a bad thing. If you’re looking to up your trading versatility, check out the 2nd Skies Forex Price Action Community. This community is all about breaking down strategies that can work in a variety of timeframes and across varying market behaviors. If you hang around and pay attention, you can end up with a great understanding of the basic foundations of forex — and this is knowledge you can apply organically under a wide range of conditions.

6. A Tool for Calculating Pips

If you’re new to forex, a “pip” is the lowest possible trading unit for a given currency pair. It’s not worth a fixed amount. It simply represents the smallest unit of value you can trade in between two currencies. Because this is a shifting target, understanding pip values can be a major stumbling block, particularly if you’re new to the process of trading currencies or if you have many open positions. A pip value calculator gives you a perfectly simple way to correctly evaluate a currency pair and your true position size. You simply enter the details of your currency pair and the calculator sets to work. Which you gravitate to is going to depend as much on your interface preferences as the data you like to work with. Just trawl until you find something which works best for you.

 

7. A Great Book

If you’re interested in forex and not in the habit of reading about forex, you should probably build up the habit of shoving your nose in a book, stat. The question of which you should read is a “how long is a piece of string” question. The ideal scenario is to read everything voraciously but who has time for that? A great place to start is “Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude,” by Mark Douglas.

This book offers a forex knowledge buffet. It looks at the psychology of good trading but grounds that in a solid explanation of the forex fundamentals. The balance it strikes between looking inward and outward is a great approach, and it’s a top notch contribution to getting a forex trader’s brain where it needs to be.

The key, ultimately, is to soak up knowledge. It’s that much easier if you can find resources you enjoy; which suit your brain, your personality and your way of working.