In the interests of completeness…
The first 2 letters of the code are the ISO 2-character country code and the third is (usually) the initial of the currency itself. so for example CH – for Confoederatio Helvetica, ie. Switzerland, and F for Franc gives CHF, the Swiss Franc.

It’s all there in ISO 4217, if you really need more information…
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There’s a distinct group of people in forex trading – they do ok, they probably make some money every week. They spend a lot of time comparing signals, calculating and working out their entries – and almost no time at all considering their exit signals.

We all can be guilty of it – decide to place a trade and then completely overlook the second part, deciding on the stops, take-profit or stop-loss – and this part is just as important in determining your profits (or limiting losses) at the end of the day.
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When you’re learning your way in the forex trade, regulation is something in the small print to be glossed over.

Some sites offer services to US residents only, some are for EU residents only, others are open to all – nothing to do with the trading, it depends how they operate in their local jurisdiction and how they are regulated.

1. It’s kinda obvious, but maybe stay well away from non-regulated forex brokers…

2. It’s also kinda obvious, but among brokers registered with a regulatory body, look for those with a clean regulatory record.

You can, if you want to have a go, search around for the financials of a given company. There’s information and opinion available from a variety of web sources. But then Enron showed a clean set of financials to the world for quite a long time…
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So you want to trade moving average crossovers, huh? Take a currency pair – if the 12 period moving average (exponential or simple, usually exponential) crosses above the 26 period MA we would take this as a signal to go long on the pair. Things are looking bullish…

This is (largely) the principle behind moving average convergence/divergence, MACD

Here’s an example – GBP/USD 1-hour chart from a week or so back, with (roughly speaking) a double-top pattern formed, the shorter period MA, in red, crossing below the purple longer period MA, and the market going bearish. No real problem with this example.

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Or ‘no interest’ accounts – more common nowadays across the internet are spot forex accounts that do not levy or pay swap interest. These are often referred to as an “Islamic Account” – because Islam prohibits the levying or paying out loan interest, which a forex trade is taken to be….

If you’re a day trader, closing trades before your broker’s daily cutoff time, this problem isn’t going to arise, but occasionally there are forex systems and stategies that could benefit from this approach.
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Instructive to look back a couple of years to an interview given by J Welles Wilder – in which he states the unpalatable facts about market-making – although it should be remembered he’s talking in regard to general investment, not specifically about the forex market.

From way back then, these sentiments didn’t seem quite so uncomfortable, and perhaps were even to be welcomed, in the general gung-ho spirit that pervaded…

I would probably qualify the second sentence with respect to forex, but here we go…
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USD As confidence in the European markets ebbs away, the US Dollar appears more and more to be the safe-haven currency of choice for most investors. Large investors are bailing out of other currencies and building up their positions within the USD regardless of fundamental data.

EUR A type of “save the king” mentality may be present in the eurozone – rescuing France and Germany will help stimulate the others to return to growth. However, given economies in Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Italy are all experiencing a credit crunch, some are beginning to wonder what the benefit of multibillion EUR bailout packages will offer when their focus is on France and Germany almost exclusively – hanging others out to dry…
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The one thing about forex – provided you stay well away from proprietary systems and automated tools – you’re on your own…
With just a romance with your chosen broker to make or break.

Consider the situation if you’re dumb enough to think about letting someone else handle your investments. Yes, I’m thinking towards Bernard Madoff – crazy name, crazy guy – and Ponzi schemes. I had an interesting chat with a guy who knows about these things and his opinion was that these funds never started out as a Ponzi scheme, but due to structural weakness that’s exactly what they had to turn into in order to keep afloat.
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The martingale system, or martingales, in forex is a play on statistics.

Let’s say there’s a 50% probability that a currency pair goes up or down (and we’ll ignore the broker’s spread for now…) – spin a coin and make your trade (place your bet) – you win, great, keep going… You lose? Then double your wager and go again…

The principle of the martingale system involves a single initial bet – every time the bet loses, the wager has to be doubled up so that, given the time and opportunity, a single winning trade will recoup all previous losses and put you back into profit. An apparently 100% forex system.
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Noticed anything on the news recently? The coming recession has seriously affected financial markets worldwide. What has deepened the crisis is negative sentiment – a self-fulfilling prophecy, the majority of investors are pulling out of the stock, equity, futures markets and looking for suitable alternatives.

Forex doesn’t do negative sentiment – if you reckon one currency is going to go down against another – well – buy the other currency. And you won’t be waiting for 2-3 years for a stagnant equity market to pick up again.

Actually, instability can be positive, in that volatility in the fx market can provide increased opportunity for profit. The larger the swing, the larger the pip profit.

Volatility does make a trade riskier, no doubt about that – stop-loss orders are regularly used in forex, allowing a trader to limit their risk in terms of their total investment. This will allow a trader to protect against unpredictable movements while taking advantage of market volatility at the same time.

It’s also possible to practice forex using virtual money together with real market prices – a free practice account – so you’re not risking anything until you’re ready to have a go for real.