New to forex? Start here
Start here.
If you have never placed a trade, this is the page to read first. It takes about four minutes and tells you — in order — what forex actually is, what the honest odds are, and the exact sequence to learn in so you do not lose money finding out.
1. What forex actually is
Foreign exchange is the market where one currency is exchanged for another. It is the largest financial market in the world: about $9.6 trillion changes hands per day (BIS Triennial Survey, September 2025). When you "trade forex" as a retail beginner, you are almost always speculating on the price of one currency against another through a broker — you are not buying physical currency.
2. The honest odds, before anything else
Across the disclosures European regulators require brokers to publish, roughly 74–89% of retail CFD accounts lose money. That figure is not a reason to avoid learning — it is the reason to learn in the right order. Most of those losses do not come from bad market analysis. They come from position size: risking too much on one trade, so a normal run of losses ends the account.
The single rule that matters most: never let one trade risk more than a small fixed fraction of your account — commonly 1%. At 1% risk, it would take 100 losses in a row to wipe out the account; ten in a row does not do it. At 20× leverage with no size control, a single stop can cost 10–20% and five can end it.
Source: FirstPip knowledge base — Foundational trading rules, Risk per trade.
3. Learn in this order
- Vocabulary first. Pip, lot, spread, leverage, margin. Without these, every other explanation is noise. → Glossary
- Risk management second — before strategy. This is the opposite order to most sites, and it is deliberate. → Risk Management First
- Position sizing with a calculator, third. Do the arithmetic before the trade, not after. → Calculators
- Only then, a demo account. Practise the mechanics with no money at risk.
- A broker, last. Choose on regulation and real cost, not on a bonus. → How to choose a broker
4. What to do today
Do not open a live account today. Do these three things instead: read the glossary entries for pip, lot and leverage; run one position-size calculation; and get the free 7-day course so the sequence arrives without you having to remember it.
5. What we will never do
We will never promise you profits, sell you signals, or show you a rented car. Broker research follows a published methodology, and any affiliate relationship is disclosed at the top of the page it appears on.