How To Start Forex Trading Career In Philippines

Currency trading is becoming increasingly popular in the Philippines. Forex markets offer many benefits to traders such as high liquidity, accessibility, great market transparency, access to high leverage, good volatility, and flexibility to trade 24/5. 

Starting a career in FX trading requires a combination of various factors, such as having a quality knowledge, skills, and careful planning. The quickest way to get into the business is to open a trading account and start placing orders. However, to do it profitability and with consistency, you need training. Here are some steps you can take to trade Forex from the Philippines: 

• Education: You can learn Forex trading Philippines yourself, purchase professional trading courses, or get hired by a proprietary trading company. Prop trading firms typically hire professional traders with successful trading track records, or beginners and train them and teach them the firm’s trading strategies. 
• Get clear goals: If you are planning to trade currencies long term and turn it into a career, you should not be focused on making money. Your main focus should be to trade consistently profitable. As already mentioned above, prop trading firms and investors are looking for traders with proven track records of success and consistency. It’s important to note that professional trading can be achieved by having winning trading strategies and developing suitable risk management rules. Every strategy experiences drawdowns, and prop firms will be particularly interested in your ability to limit losses and grow accounts gradually. 
• Have adequate capital: while it is possible to fund your account with 10 USD and trade on your mobile app, this is not how professionals trade and you shouldn’t be expecting satisfactory results. Trading expenses include: purchasing home office equipment such as a PC with a good sized monitor, expenses on your education (you can also find free educational materials online), and your deposit. It is advised in Philippines start FX trading using a demo account, and move live once strategies bring consistent profits.
• Risk management: proper risk management is an essential part of profitable trading. When a trader has a strategy that provides account growth over the long term, it’s crucial to spread the risks on multiple trades so that even if a couple of trades go wrong in a row, winning trades are able to cover the losses. Often beginners use high leverage to open oversized positions. This strategy is highly risky, no matter how it ends. Even if risky strategies are profitable short term, they create wrong expectations for future trades and contribute to miseducation. 
• Trading system: trading system includes approaches to market analysis, rules for entering and exiting trades, stop loss and take profit placement rules, risk/reward ratios, and trading hours. Having clear rules make trading much easier. 
• Keep improving: financial markets are dynamic and trading conditions often change. It’s critical for success to constantly keep upgrading your systems and skills. Many successful traders are using trading journals to document their trades and learn from their own mistakes. 

Forex trading career in Philippines

There are a couple of career paths you can consider when you start to trade Philippines. Here are some of the common roles and opportunities:

• Retail currency trader: As a retail trader, you can trade forex on your own behalf. Retail trading gives you an advantage over institutional trading as traders have more freedom and can be more selective in their trades. Retail traders can operate independently or work with a brokerage company. 
• Institutional FX trader: institutional traders work for big institutions, such as banks, hedge funds, and pension funds. Institutional traders handle large amounts of volume and have access to advanced trading platforms, research tools and institutional resources. 
• Analyst/Researcher: FX analysts monitor and analyze economic indicators, news events, and market trends. They provide insight, forecasts and recommendations to other traders. FX researchers work with fundamental and technical analysts to generate trading ideas. 
• Risk manager: risk managers assess and manage trading related risks. They create and upgrade management strategies to set limits on trading exposure, and implement risk mitigation techniques to protect the company’s trading balance. 
• Forex broker jobs: Forex brokers are facilitators of trading transactions between retail traders and the Forex market. They provide trading platforms, market access and other financial services to their clients.
• Trading educator: Trading educators provide education and training to beginner FX traders. They may be offering webinars, courses, mentorship programs on risk management, analysis and planning and emotional management.
• Signal provider: Signal providers are professional traders that send trading signals or offer copy trading services to other traders. Trading signals are often sent using emails and social media and includes instructions when to buy and sell given assets. However, in order to become a signal provider, you need to have a working strategy and proven track record. 
• Algorithms creator: trading automation is achieved through algorithms. And traders need coding skills to be able to create algorithms (trading robots). Trading algorithms of the most popular platforms are MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. In order to build robots for these platforms, you need to learn MQL4 and MQL5 coding languages. You can sell your algorithms in Meta Market. It should be mentioned that other trading platforms are using their own language when it comes to creating trading robots. For instance, cTrader uses #c programming language to build cAlgo robots. 

Start Forex Trading tips for Filipinos in Prop firms

Proprietary trading firms, also known as prop firms are companies that provide trading capital, strategies, technology, and infrastructure to traders for executing trades. Prop firms typically take share from the traders’ profits in exchange for their services and capital. While there are a limited number of prop firms in the country, Phillipinos can explore opportunities with global prop trading firms which accept traders from the Philippines. Here are a few examples of such firms:

• TopstepTrader: TopstepTrader is a famous prop trading company that provides traders with demo accounts to give traders an opportunity to prove themselves. Successful traders get funded by the company to trade real money in live trading environments.
• SMB Capital: the company is based in the USA and has international presence. The firm accepts traders from all over the world, including from the Philippines.. They offer training, mentoring and funding to traders that have potential to succeed. 
• T3 Trading Group: T3 Trading Group provides traders with capital and advanced technology.
• Fidelcrest: Fidelcrest is an international prop trading company that offers remote trading opportunities to traders from different countries. They provide account funding and access to trading platforms. In addition, the company provides training.Which is important for novice traders. 

Managing drawdowns effectively is crucial for traders when it comes to getting a job at prop trading firms, in addition, good risk management and drawdown management strategies are important in finding an investor or providing signals to other traders. Here are some strategies that will help you manage drawdowns: 

• Use of stop loss orders: it’s recommended that you always use stop loss orders for every trade to define your maximum acceptable loss. This ensures that you exit a trade if the price goes in the opposite direction to your predictions. It’s not recommended to change the stop loss target after you enter the trade, as judgment gets poor when traders are under the influence of active positions. 
• Diversification: spread your risks across different (uncorrelated) currency pairs, time frames, and trading strategies. This helps to limit the effect of drawdowns on your trading portfolio. On the other hand, diversification is difficult for beginners as novice traders have a lot of information to digest at once. It’s best for beginners to stick to a couple of currency pairs and learn how to trade them profitably first. 
• Be adoptive: market conditions often change and sometimes radical changes in the price movements can damage trading results dramatically. The changes may be temporary or permanent. If the market conditions have changed permanently and the trading strategy becomes useless, traders need to develop new strategies. When drawdown periods start, many traders reduce their trading sizes or start trading using demo accounts until the trading strategy goes back to being profitable. 
• Remain calm and stick to your trading plan: Emotions can have a devastating impact on your trading balance, especially during drawdown periods. Stick to your trading strategies, plan and risk management rules and avoid revenge trading. Often, after a series of losses, novice traders open oversized positions to cover the losses fast. This strategy may work a couple of times, but eventually will end in an empty account. 

Often, prop trading firms accept students from colleges and universities, train them, teach them trading strategies, and give demo accounts. The students need to demonstrate that they follow the strategies thoroughly and can grow trading accounts gradually. Successful traders get the chance to trade live using the firm’s capital. Profits are split between a trader and a broker. When getting a job at a prop firm, it’s best to ask them to give you a salary if possible, so that you are not dependent on profits from trading. Traders that have to trade to pay their bills often overtrade and lose money. It’s best to have no such pressure on your shoulders when making trading decisions. 

Key takeaways

To sum everything up, there are various career paths beginner traders can undertake in Forex, such as: retail currency trading, institutional trading, analyst/researcher jobs, risk manager, educator, signal provider, and algorithm creator. To get accepted by prop firms, get funded by the investors, and be able to provide other traders with signals, it’s crucial to be able to manage risks and drawdowns well. The key steps to start Forex trading journey include: education, having clear goals, having adequate starting capital, risk management, building a trading system and keep improving strategies and skills to cope with the changing environment.

FAQs on how to start Forex trading career in Philippines

How to start trading Forex in Philippines?

In order to start FX trading in Philippines, you need to take a few steps. First you need to educate yourself. There are many quality educational materials online. You can also attend webinars and seminars. The very first step is to learn trading terminology and basics of risk management and probabilities. Next, you can start learning how to use trading platforms. You can open demo accounts that will enable you to learn and trade without risking real money. Demo trading is free of charge. When you feel comfortable with your results and believe that you’re ready to trade live, search for a broker that best suits your needs. The most important aspects to take into account are: regulations (make sure your broker is licensed), trading fees, trading platforms, customer service (make sure your broker offers at least 24/5 live chat option), and availability of trading instruments of your interest. 

Where to start Forex trading in Philippines?

You can start Forex trading in Philippines from your bedroom. Financial trading has become easily accessible to traders globally. Brokers are offering desktop trading platforms, mobile apps and web terminals to their clients. One more way to start trading is to get hired by a prop trading firm. While, there are a limited number of proprietary (prop) firm in the country, here are some of the most notable one: 

• Citisecurities Inc.
• First Metro Securities
• AB Capital Securities

How much does it cost to start Forex trading in Philippines?

Depends on your broker. In order to start Forex Trading in Philippines, first you need to find a broker that best suits your needs. It’s crucial that you pick a regulated broker with low trading fees. Many brokers do not have any minimum deposit requirements, which means that you can start trading from as little as 1 USD. While the majority of brokers have 200-500 USD minimum initial deposit requirements. It should be mentioned that generating great income from small deposits is very difficult, and you should manage your risks and avoid taking oversized positions to keep your trading account from blowing up.