Edited by Laura Sether

W&A Publishing
P.O. Box 849
Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613
208 pages, $19.95

Of all the market areas that have blossomed in the last 10 years, foreign exchange - or forex or currencies, as some prefer - has clearly been a leader. Many markets have expanded volume greatly during that time, thanks to electronic trading, but forex has boomed from a virtual unknown, at least for individual traders, into one of the most interesting and exciting markets for active traders these days.

Limited to bankers and big institutions on the interbank market for many years, forex has become an active, accessible, liquid market for individual traders with accounts as small as several hundred dollars. And the fate of the U.S. dollar and other major currencies is now widely reported by the financial media, not only for the opportunities in trading the relationships among currencies but also for their impact on commodities and other markets.

Along with the growth in interest in forex trading has come the need for information and education about this new market that essentially involves trading spreads 24 hours a day around the globe. Stocks, Futures and Options Magazine - or simply SFO - has published a number of articles about forex in the last few years, and this book is a collection of the best of them in one handy volume.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section has seven articles/chapters covering the basics of forex trading and the historical evolution of the forex marketplace from institutions to individuals in explaining how the industry got to where it is today. It provides an excellent foundation for the next two sections.

The eight chapters in the second section take a more in-depth look at the distinctive character traits of the forex market and how these unique features of forex can be traded in various ways. Each chapter is informative but one of the more interesting narratives by David Silverman details how he moved from a "black market" trader in the Israeli pound (now the shekel) as a student in the late 1970s to a currency futures pit trader. It is a good illustration of the effect of changes in currency values.

Section three with 12 chapters focuses on specific trading strategies, and there are some good ones. A market that trades actively 24 hours a day provides some real challenges for traders, and the authors describe various approaches for both short-term or long-term trading as well as the highly publicized carry trade. Several chapters discuss which fundamentals all forex traders should be following closely.

Among the authors in the book are Darrell Jobman, senior analyst at www.TraderPlanet.com, and Louis B. Mendelsohn, founder and president of Market Technologies and developer of VantagePoint Intermarket Analysis Software.

Forex Trading is part of SFO's Personal Investor Series, which compiles articles into books on various topics such as online trading, technical analysis and others to come as part of a publishing venture by Wasendorf & Associates. Founded by Russ Wasendorf (Sr. and Jr.), W&A Publishing shares the same goal as www.TraderPlanet.com: Educate traders and share information.

If you are one of SFO's 120,000 readers, you may have read the forex articles in this latest book, but now you have them all in one place to review again. And you can't beat the price. How many hard-cover books on trading can you find for $19.95, especially one that is as chock full of information as this one is?

Review Date: July 2009