Why Currencies Are Easier to Trade Than Stocks

If you’re looking for what stocks to buy, you have over 13,000 publicly traded stocks to choose from right now.

That’s a lot to weed through and it significantly drops your odds of choosing a winner. Even the best of stock pickers don’t always screen for the exact combination of things that you would look for in a stock.

However, in the currency world, there are only eight major currencies: U.S. dollar, euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar. So this makes about seven major pairs when paired against the U.S. dollar.

If you’re trading in the FX market, you could technically also pair these currencies with other currencies besides the U.S. dollar. But even then, you only have 15-30 pairs to choose from - compared to over 13,000 stocks.

In other words, you don’t have to watch thousands of currency pairs, because the pairs are such “macro” instruments.

This makes things simpler. All you have to do is pay attention to the most important data that comes out each day on those eight currencies. The economic announcements for a country can easily be found on an economic calendar at www.dailyfx.com or www.forexfactory.com.