Now that you know a little more about forex, we’ll take a closer look at how to make your first trade. Before you trade you need to follow a few steps.

1. Select a currency pair
When trading forex you are exchanging the value of one currency for another. In other words, you will always buy one currency while selling another at the same time. Because of this, you will always trade currencies in a pair.

Most new traders will start out by trading the most commonly offered pairs of major currencies, but you can trade any currency pair that we have available as long as you have enough money in your account. For this walkthrough, we’ll look at EUR/USD (Euro/ U.S. Dollar).

2. Analyze the market
Research and analysis should be the foundation of your trading endeavors. Without these, you’re operating on emotion. This doesn’t typically end well.

When you first start researching, you’ll find a whole wealth of forex resources – which may seem overwhelming at first. But as you research a particular currency pair, you’ll find valuable resources that stand out from the rest. You should regularly look at current and historical charts, monitor the news for economic announcements, check indicators and perform other technical and fundamental analysis. We’ll talk more about specific types of research later on.