Starting with practice account

The best way to start and learn trading without loosing to much money is with practice accounts. Every forex or stock broker enables you to trade with virtual money. With practice account you are instantly in the action. You can test your trading strategy, your technical analysis and following the trading plan. You start to trade without fear of loosing money. Practice accounts are great to get you started but they cant replace experience on trading with real money. When dealing with real money emotions come to play.

With practice accounts, you can learn about different terms like stop loss, market order, limit order, trailing stop-loss orders...You can see how the system is working and you can learn from brokers help library, almost every broker has one. So spend some time trading with practice account and learn about technical analysis in the process.

Trading style

Before you enter the world of stocks and currencies you must ask yourself what kind of trading style is for you. Do you want to be day trader, long time holder, swing trader....If you choose day trading style you must spend a lot of time in front of a computer analyzing graphs, making fundemental analysis, listening to the news,...If you have a full time job you can expect to devote all your afternoons to stock or forex markets. So you should realisticly think how much time do you have left each day.

The other part of the equation is the money  part. Dont risk your family savings with your first endeavours with the stock or forex markets. Learning takes time and it costs money. You will almost certainly loose money at the begging of you carrer so be prepare to take some loses. Dont use money that you require for living, and dont borrow money to make money in forex or stock market.

Most online trading platforms offer usage of leverage. Leverage can increase and also decrease your profits. Your mistakes will cost a lot more if you use leverage. Of course leverage looks tempting, you can earn more money quickly. Dont use leverage especially if you are a begginer. Your carrer in investing in either forex or stocks can be over very quickly.