Do you need to buy a forex system? Depends: Do you like being taken advantage of?

Any time there’s financial speculation involved, whether it’s gambling in Vegas or playing the stock market, people want to find a “system” that ensures success. The forex market is no different in that regard. But is there a forex system that will eliminate risk and guarantee profits for the investor? If you believe there is, we’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn we’d like to sell you, too....

You hear gamblers talk about their “systems,” but who are these gamblers? They’re never the high rollers, never the people who actually win a lot. They’re people who WANT to win and have convinced themselves they will if they adhere to their “system.”

The same is usually true of forex systems. The Internet is riddled with people selling some system or other. They’re are always very mysterious -- the sites never give any clues about what the system entails -- and they’re full of people giving breathless testimonials about how easy this system is, and how quickly they learned it, and how rich they are now.

No system can guarantee success. It’s impossible: The currency market changes every day, and while experts can use past history and external factors to make educated GUESSES as to how it will perform, they are still guesses. You can still lose your shirt, no matter what forex “system” you’re using.

Are all systems worthless? Not entirely. Some are no more than sound advice and common sense practicalities, probably gleaned from other books and Internet sites. In those cases, it’s not that the system is lousy; it’s that there’s no reason to pay for it when you could get the information it contains for free elsewhere.

You can usually tell that a forex system is suspect simply by the way it’s advertised. Web sites full of large fonts and exclamation points are a tip-off. So are sites full of grammar and spelling errors, written in an extremely unprofessional, too-casual style. You have to ask yourself: If this system is so foolproof, why haven’t the authors made millions with it? Why must they resort to selling a system ABOUT forex instead of engaging in it themselves? Or at the very least, why can’t they afford to pay a proofreader to give their site a once-over? With forex systems, as with everything else in life, remember: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.