Fellow traders. Happy to meet you here.

To start with it doesn't matter if you are a seasoned trader already or if you are a beginner. I believe this series of articles will be useful for all traders no matter how long they have been active in the markets or what they trade and feel comfortable trading.

What I am planning to discuss here is generally what products are out there that you can trade and what to remember concerning each product. So let's begin.

Stock trading

Probably something most of you guys are familiar with. Trading stocks is trading part ownership of a company. This is normally done on standard exchanges but also OTC trading exists especially if traders want to execute larger trades. Stock trading is hugely popular around the world and is a huge market. Volatility is usually low but certain sectors can volatile and more risky like biotech and tech companies. Also penny stocks can move by a huge percentage in a day so remember that.

Forex or FX trading

Foreign exchange trading is one of the biggest markets around the world and goes on 24/7. London has established itself as the leading centre in foreign exchange trading but New York, Singapore, Hong Kong etc are also fairly big. Much of the forex trading is done online so no physical locations are needed in many cases. Some currency pairs as they are called (EUR/USD, GBP/EUR) are more volatile than others and thus involves more risk.

Bond trading

Bond trading has only recently become available to the greater public. Even now though only a handful of online brokers offer this product. Bond trading means trading debt of some sort. It can be corporate debt which often pays higher yield or it can be treasuries issued by nations which are considered less risky.

Commodity trading

This has picked up also quite a bit since there are more online brokers providing a chance to trade commodities now than there used to be. Most of the times when you trade a commodity though as a small investor you don't actually trade physical commodities but a financial contract instead with financial settlement instead of actually receiving a large amount pork bellies for example. Also a large amount of commodity trading is done through CFD (contracts for difference) instead of futures nowadays.

Derivatives trading

This mostly means options trading and there are many online brokers offering this service already. Options can be risky please be careful using them. At the same time though they can be hugely helpful in any investment portfolio either as a speculative bet or as a hedging tool.