eToro.com - Forex Trading for Dummies

Forex. Sounds familiar, but just what is it, you ask? If you’re not a frequenter of Wall Street and if you don’t keep up with the stock market, Forex or Foreign Exchange (the selling and buying of currencies) probably sounds rather, well foreign. Still, it’s a huge business with an estimated $3.2 trillion in turnover daily. Newcomer eToro aims to make Forex more approachable, by presenting it in a simplified and basic manner for ordinary people. What you get is a downloadable app which lets you play at money trading, and do the real thing too. On the site you’ll get a primer on Forex customs, courtesies and terms, along with a detailed description on how it actually works. After you’ve read up, start playing or investing. Currrencies which can be traded are the US Dollar, Australian Dollar, the Euro, Japanese Yen and the British Pound. There are four games to play: the Marathon, a foot race pitting currency against currency—you pick the stronger one and compete, next there’s the Dollar Trend where you race the US Dollar against other currencies, then there’s Globe Trader in which you manage your portfolio by forming alliances with other world currencies, and finally there’s Forex Match which put currencies back to back in an all out showdown of tug of war. If you decide to abandon the play world you can put real money into either REtailFX or IFX Markets.

“eToro makes it faster and easier than ever to execute trades, watch your trading activity, share, and enjoy financial information - using real or virtual money. It is a unique and user-friendly platform, which combines multidisciplinary expertise from the fields of finance, software development, and design to bring you the next generation of trading.”

This site really simplifies Forex trading for regular folks who don’t delve into world currency markets. It’s informative, user-friendly (very) and fun. It’s basically a more realistic gaming community. Good for learning if you don’t lose too much money.

Is this site targeted at lay investors who are less likely to put their money in highly volatile and rather unknown territory of currency trading? What’s eToro’s cut in this, should people decide to gamble their money away? Forex trading is serious stuff, can it work for casual users?