Rating:

I have an undergraduate background in international business and economics and learned a tremendous deal about how the actual mechanics of the FOREX market work as opposed to the theory behind fundamental analysis, FED policy, interest rates, inflation, and the like.

I highly recommend this book as a beginners guide to currency trading. There were many things that I read which whetted my appetite to learn more about the field. As far as my opinion goes based on further reading of trading and analysis of markets, I don’t believe that this book will teach you how to become a profitable trader but it will definitely give you a solid foundation to build upon.

Rating:

However, I felt this book could have done better in a few areas: it walks you through considerations to construct a trading plan but doesn’t provide a detailed example of one (preferably the authors’). This book actually walks through a trade set up (shorting the USD/JPY) and details the things to consider, but it was picked seemingly at random (based on a double doji) and not from some back tested trading methodology. Also not covered in the book are tools to effectively back test strategies and what a sample trading journal should look like.

But like I said at the beginning, this book is a lot better than most of the other FX trading books you find on retail book stores/sites–books that are filled with marketing fluff and little practical guidelines to actual trading. Currency Trading for Dummies actually has a lot of substance and value for the novice trader.

Rating:

This book provides some really good advice about trading the forex market. Which currencies have what tendencies, which times and reports to look out for, how to manage trades and money, etc. It provides the basics for any beginner. But, if you are a beginner, you will NOT notice something EXTREMELY important that the authors of this book did not mention ON PURPOSE. The authors, in full disclosure, state they are associated with [...](i.e. Gain Capital). And while in the book they make it seem that since [...] is part of/is a(n) FCM/CFTC/NFA (basically throwing out terms to a beginner to make it seem safe and legit), the author’s on purpose do not mention that [...]is NOT an ECN broker, and hence you’d think that with all those acronyms they’d be credible, but think otherwise. In real short, what this means is that if you are not an ECN broker, you are allowed to, and most disclose in very fine print hidden among pages of other details they know few will read, take on purpose trades opposite of yours (hedge), in order to make more profits and ensure that begineers get wiped out and even good traders don’t last for the long term. There are many more terrible practices these bucketshops use like fishing for stops, spread manipulation, etc, and [...]has the “white gloves” implied in this book very much dirty. Just google it if you don’t believe me.

Just thought I’d throw this out there for any beginners. Choose your books wisely, but don’t trust everything they say, and make sure you know what they failed to say and why.

EDIT: I don’t mean to pick on Gain Capital specifically. All I am saying is when you do go to choose ANY forex broker, keep my information in mind since it wasn’t outlined in the book.

Edit#2: Just in case, another point that wasn’t mentioned: rememmber that if your broker is not FDIC insured, and they go under, all your money with them will almost certainly never be seen again (don’t fall for their sales/marketing ploys of “we’re the biggest ones” or we have a safe and positive balance sheet; if you never heard of Enron, GM, WAMU, then you’d need to read a bit about them). The only FDIC insured FX broker I know of is CITIFxPro, which, if you read in fine print, is managed by Saxo Bank, not CitiBank.