At the beginning of their trading career, many aspiring traders will have trouble wrapping their mind around how trading Forex works, or if it works at all. These questions point to the very heart of the problem – although they are taking the wrong approach in terms of addressing it.
Is it worth it to trade Forex? False motives, unrealistic goals, greed, inappropriate haste, lack of effort, and insufficient knowledge are the main reasons why many of those who try jump-starting a trading career leave disappointed and empty handed. Before you do anything, sit back and think about how much there is behind the Forex market and how it works.
Let's start from the beginning.

Supply and Demand

In economics, supply and demand is a model that explains price formation in a free competitive marketplace. The price of goods is settled at a point where the quantity demanded by a consumer is balanced by the quantity supplied by a producer.
Let's say you are out there one day doing grocery shopping. You need apples, and there happens to be only a single vendor with just the right amount of apples. You negotiate, agree on the price, and make the exchange – a set amount of money for a set amount of apples. Both you and the vendor made a trade, getting precisely what you wanted.
The next day, you are out there again to buy the same amount of apples, only now there are two vendors, both having the number of apples you need. This means that there is a higher supply of apples then there is demand for them. The competition between vendors will push the price of apples down since both of them realise you will probably go for the cheaper apples, assuming all other things are equal. A new price will be set and you will make a deal with whichever vendor you see fit.
Alternatively, if that day you came with a friend who is also interested in apples, but only one vendor was there, there would be more demand for apples, but the supply would be lower. A vendor would recognise this and increase the price of their apples, knowing that both you and your friend will definitely buy all of their apples. This is the ABC of economics, and it is absolutely vital that you, as an aspiring trader, understand the simple logic of this example given, since it will help you to understand how the Forex market works.
Things may start to get more complicated from here on. Applying the apple market scenario to the foreign exchange market: every time a particular currency is bought, surplus demand is created on the market, throwing the price off balance, and pushing it higher. Similarly, every time a particular currency is sold, a surplus supply is created – again, throwing the price off balance and pushing it down.
The amount of impact is directly proportionate to the trading volume per deal. Big players, like national banks, for example, can cause a lot of disequilibrium by tampering with the supply of their home currency. Small players, like retail traders, can only influence the market ever so slightly, but still manage to do so through their sheer numbers.
The ever-changing supply and demand of currencies is what makes Forex charts tick. The philosophy of price balancing is key to understanding how online Forex trading works, since all of the economic events in the world are relevant to the market only in terms of how much they influence the supply and demand of an asset. It is also worth mentioning how much they influence the projected supply and demand of an asset.
Using our 'apple market' as an example, if one of the apple vendors went bankrupt this season, both you and your friend could expect the price of apples to rise before you even show up at the market.