Differences Between the Forex and Stock Markets
| FOREX MARKET | STOCK MARKET |
| Higher trading volume: $6 Trillion daily average | Lower trading volume: $200 billion daily average |
| Less volatile | Highly volatile |
| 24 Hour Markets | 8 Hour Markets |
| Narrow Focus | Wide Focus |
| Minimal commissions | Higher commissions |
| High liquidity | Low liquidity |
Buying well-chosen individual equities at the outset of a big bull market is arguably the most successful option if you want to hold trades for a long period. If you can only afford a retail CFD broker, however, the cost of maintaining the position for a long time will be significant, and if you are over-leveraged, any large unfavorable swings – which are typical in equities – can be terrifying and costly.
Forex is less volatile than stocks and is less influenced by high-frequency trading algorithms. If you're going to day trade, it's probably easier to day trade Forex than equities because of the cheaper cost of frequent trading and larger leverage.
It's also worth noting that there are no “short” positions in Forex, although short positions in equities may be restricted. Unlike the stock market, which closes down frequently during the week, forex markets are open 24 hours a day during the week, meaning you might be locked in a position with no effective stop loss overnight if you maintain a position that long.
Why Should You Trade Forex Rather Than Stocks？
With the top stockbrokers, there are two methods to trade stocks. You may purchase and sell genuine stocks through a stockbroker, or you can trade CFDs (contracts for differences) based on underlying equities through CFD brokers. Retail Forex and CFD brokers are more likely to provide the latter. Most Forex firms provide stocks as CFDs to overcome the CFD vs share trading packaging conundrum.
If you don't have at least $10,000 to put down, trading stocks with CFDs is generally not a good idea. The overall spread + commission on a Forex deal, on the other hand, is far cheaper than the identical trade in an individual stock CFD. As part of my study, I verified the offered spreads for EUR/USD and a CFD based on Glencore PLC, a publicly traded firm on the FTSE 100, at a well-known retail Forex brokerage.The spread for EUR/USD is 0.02 percent of the instrument's value, while the spread for Glencore is 0.23 percent of the instrument's value. That's a significant cost difference in trading.
There's also the issue of non-Islamic Forex or CFD brokers offering overnight funding. If a Forex currency pair is held overnight for a year, the interest charged is typically around 3% of the position's value. The interest levied on stock CFDs is often a little higher. You won't have to pay any overnight interest if you buy actual stocks. CFD brokers, on the other hand, frequently (but not always) pay dividends, just like you would if you bought the underlying stock directly.
Without a doubt, the fees of trading stock CFDs with retail brokers are much greater than those of trading Forex.In summary, there are three primary reasons why trading Forex rather than equities could make sense: First, skilled traders tend to earn larger risk-adjusted returns in Forex than in stock trading; second, significantly higher leverage is possible in Forex than in stock trading; and third, “genuine” stock trading takes more money than Forex trading.
Leverage in Stocks vs. Leverage in Forex
For retail traders, determining how much leverage may and should be employed is critical. Let's start with stock trading, using the Securities and Exchange Commission as an example. If you buy actual stocks from a licensed broker, the most leverage you can have at the end of the day is 2:1. At least half of the expense must be covered by you. When selling stocks short, the rules vary from slightly more than 3:1 to 1:1, depending on the stock's price. You'll pay a yearly interest rate of 4% on the leverage (usually calculated as LIBOR + 2.5%), which means the stock must increase in value by at least 4% per year on average for the leverage to be beneficial.
Of course, retail brokers selling CFDs based on stock prices are significantly more liberal with leverage, but the leverage they give in Forex trading is often even more generous. In most cases, a Forex broker in an offshore center will provide a maximum leverage of 100:1 on Forex currency pairs (limited at 30:1 in Europe and Australia), but only 20:1 on individual equities. On a like-for-like basis, this implies you can earn five times as much on a Forex movement as you can on a stock fluctuation.
Conclusion
In a strong bull market, if you have a lot of money, say a significant five-figure sum in US dollars, and a long time horizon, you will most likely be able to make the most money by buying actual stocks through a stockbroker you may discover in our stockbroker evaluations. Because the commission/spread is a fixed cash amount, it is considerably more affordable at this level.
If you have a smaller account and want to trade on shorter timeframes or merely day trade, you'll probably have a better luck trading Forex with one of the firms included in our top Forex brokers list. In a bull market, however, if you have done your homework and truly like a few particular stocks, you may definitely profit from short-term holdings of these stocks, but you need be very careful in minimizing your overall exposure.
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