Why trade forex?

• Enormous Volume:

The forex market dwarfs all stock markets of the world in volume. It trades about $4 trillion each day. To put this in perspective, the New York Stock Exchange trades around $28 billion a day. The entire U.S. stock market trades about $191 billion daily. The Futures market trades about $437 billion daily. None of these even come close to $1 trillion, much less several trillion

• Benefits:

Greater volume means better fills on your orders (less slippage). Slippage is where you click on a market price yet get filled at another price by the time your order can be filled. The more volume at each price level, the better those fills become. Therefore, the forex market offers the least slippage of any market. Keep in mind too that slippage is a “real” trading cost.
On top of better fills, the spreads are less which means your costs are less and you can get into profitability sooner in this market due to that. Typical spreads are 2-4 pips on the majors and 4-7 pips on many of the crosses.

• No Commissions:

You simply deal directly with the market maker and therefore you don’t have a broker’s commission. This is a huge savings and allows you to get into profitability much sooner too. For instance, in stocks, you are charged twice (a buy commission and a sell commission).

• 24hrs a Day Trading:

Unlike stocks, that trade only 6 ½ hours a day, you can literally trade forex anytime 24 hours a day (Sunday evening through Friday evening).So instead of having to trade at work, they can trade after work when they can really have some focus. So it doesn’t matter where in the world you are or what shift you work, you can trade forex. More tradable hours means more tradable opportunities.

• No Restrictions on Short Selling:

In forex, you can short just as easily as you can “go long” (buy). The fills are just as quick. There isn’t any need for a firm to check for “shares to borrow” like in stocks. There are no “uptick rules” either. There’s none of that nonsense to worry about.

Besides, in currencies, you are always going long one currency in the pair and essentially short the other. So they don’t care which one you are long or are shorting.