I'm not familiar with the Oanda interface, so I can't comment about it - other than you must be comfortable with whichever platform you settle on. EURUSD, USDJPY, etc are great to start with - you'll typically find good movement in any of the majors during late London and early NY sessions. I'd recommend just starting out with one pair (such as EURUSD) and live and breathe it for a while. Pip is the smallest increment, so like you said, .0001 is one pip for EURUSD and .01 for USDJPY. Obviously 1-4 pip scalps are OK, if your losers are tighter than that. 30 pip slippage is possible with major news - so avoid trying to trade the news and that shouldn't be an issue for you.
I keep hearing things about "trading the news." What does that mean? Trading when news is released related to currency? Are there specific times that this occurs? What times does "news" come out? Is it different for each currency? Thanks.
Right - some news releases have a larger impact (e.g. NFP) on a currency than others (e.g. Trade balance). Some people get off on trading news events - I think more for the thrill of it. Forex Factory has a very nice and simple to use calendar... http://www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php
Cool, thanks. So if it says EUR that means it will probably affect all pairs involving EUR, right? What timezone are those times in?
Sorry..you wanted 2 sentences.. 1) forex is for fucking idiots... 2) Trade currency futures instead..
Right - they allow you to customize the calendar for time zone and pairs (you might have to sign in - I don't know).
I don't know anything about futures, either. My only experience is with stocks. Why are they better? Where can I get a practice trading account?
It seems like EUR/USD follows trendlines/Fib lines a lot more consistently than stocks do (based on my one day of experience, lol).