Learning how to invest, tips

I have been an investor since August. I have a stable account with Acorns which has been giving me excellent returns for a passive fund, and will be enough to retire if I put enough in there every month once I get my first real job. On top of this, as an economist, I have been learning how to trade currencies, because I have a goal of being able to choose to work in 10 years. This is important to me, and how I will be able to have the ability to help others financially and spend time doing the research and activism which I believe the world desperately needs.

I started my Forex account about a year ago, exactly when Brexit started. From the beginning there have been some major problems. They gave me a 48 hour moratorium period to start with, which meant I could not profit off of Brexit which was the entire point of starting the account when I did. They have only about 30 currency pairs, which does not leave too many choices in how to invest, and are missing many important indicators, such as the Awesome Index. On top of this, in order to trade with any information you have to use their application on Windows using Silverlight, which is terrible software for so many reasons. You can technically trade on your phone, but this is not recommended because you are trading blind without any indicators. they have some good educational tools, but do not have the tools you need to be successful at trading.

I started my Oanda account a week ago and so far I love it. It is cross platform and works on any operating system, as someone who uses Linux for multiple reasons this is a huge plus. It has more indicators and more currency pairs, and an API interface which I need to set up. The Awesome Index is supported which makes it far easier to trade successfully versus the poorer indexes on Forex.com. It is much easier to use, presents information in a much better way, and the options are far better than what Forex offers. They also require far less money to get started with Forex, you can start for as little as $5, making investing accessible to more people and allowing you to test your chops with very little risk.

Once you set up your Oanda Account, the Awesome Index combined with Bollinger Bands is the easiest way to get started and make some money on the side. I am finding that it is workiug for me. Happy trading!

Disclaimer: I am in no way compensated from Oanda or Forex for these opinions which are solely my own based on my personal experience with these two systems.