When it comes to investment possibilities, people often overlook the opportunity of investing in money directly, commonly via foreign currency exchange. This form of investment does require some skills, experience and a bit of luck but once you learn the ropes it can be an extremely lucrative way to earn money on a fast cycle.
Of course, there are risks in any type of investment and just like you can make big profits, you can also lose money in the process.
Choosing the Right Timing
One of the biggest risks in currency investing comes from the fact that most investors just don't know when to move out of a certain currency. Therefore, in order to learn how to invest in currencies, you will need to learn how to identify the right time to enter and leave a currency.
How to do that?
To start with, you should already understand that currencies reflect the strength of their corresponding economy. Therefore when we choose to invest in a currency, we are making a statement that we expect that the particular economy is going strong.
However, our ability to predict the strength of a certain economy is limited. That is why the best term to predict the future movement of a certain currency and invest in it is three to five years. There are just too many factors that can influence a currency to choose a longer period for our predictions, and making currency bets for a shorter period of time is just gambling.
Factors to Observe
How to predict where a certain economy is headed? There are several factors that matter most for an economy and you should carefully examine them in order to make good currency bets.
Two of these factors are growth and inflation. You would certainly want to invest in a growing economy since this will result in greater demand for the particular currency, and therefore rise in the currency's value. One of the indicators of a country's economic state and growth is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
However, generally high growth generates inflation. Therefore you should also look for signs that the country is not faced with too high inflation which can decrease the attractiveness of its currency. One of the indicators that are useful for determining the levels of inflation is the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Other factors you should observe when evaluating a country's economy are geo-political risk (look for economies with stable political situations), diversification (look for economies that are not dependent on goods or services but rather diversify across products and across countries they export to), balance of payments, etc.
Currency markets are indeed extremely volatile and you should be well familiar with all the dynamic factors that influence currencies' values in order to make successful investments. Once you know what factors to look for, it can become quite easy to keep up with trends and make quite profitable currency exchanges.