or hedge the risk and trade more pairs ? I was wondering if most forex traders specialize or spread their risk on many pairs ?
I am new to forex and have not live traded it yet. Currently using a demo account with Oanda. Was wondering if successful forex traders utilize full leverage and concentrate on learning just a few pairs or grab whatever pairs are moving that day..
Been trading fx over 10 years now. Have done both trending and mean reverting. From manual to fully auto, back to manual and currently semi-auto. Have experienced both system failures and some incredible successes. Where has this led me to? The view that trading a few pairs is very limiting, and in many cases is the wrong thinking to approach the markets with. Trade what moves. Not what you love. Out of 20 currencies, 190 possible pairs, only 3 or 4 currencies might be interesting. Sometimes 1 or 2. Sometimes, just 1. Don't confuse 'currency' with 'pair'. Its not the same thing. In my experience, trading a few pairs is also intimately entangled with short term trading which, from a pure numbers viewpoint, is the hardest trading of all. Be under no illusions. What may seem intuitively less risky, is actually more risky and is just an illusion created by flawed intuition. Most short-term, few pair traders are going to lose, eventually. Glad I've been a short term, few pairs trader, for the experience, knowledge and money its given to me. But also very happy I'm not doing that now. I'm fully aware this won't be a popular view in retail FXland. Its just my own opinion, evolved through sweat, tears and occasional cartwheels. And still evolving.
I think it is better to not limit yourself too much. Obviously there are pros and cons to every approach. If you really do in depth analysis, then limit yourself, but I do no think this is something that many people are able to do.