There’s a correlation between fear of worsening economic conditions and the interest in forex trading. This can be seen in figures disclosed by big forex portals and also in my internal statistics.
Forex trading is at many times an alternative to stock markets. Many forex brokers tease potential customers by pointing out that their stock portfolios are plunging. Forex still didn’t reach out to the masses, but it did draw more money and more interest following the crisis.
Francesc Riverola, CEO of the popular forex portal FXStreet, recently published a post which showed that October saw the highest traffic since March.
Ben Bernanke stunned the markets in March, by announcing the trillion dollar printing program. Since then, the dollar fell and stock markets rallied. Interest in forex fell, according to FXStreet.
And when was the new peak? In another post, Riverola shows that it was on the last week of October. This was the best week of traffic on FXStreet This specific week saw panic return to the markets. Riverola’s transparency is impressing.
Fears of a double-dip recession, Roubini’s scary prophecies and sent the markets down and the dollar up. At the end of that week, I was wondering if the tables are turning.
Here at Forex Crunch, I also had a peak week in the last week of October, significantly better than previous weeks. Monday, October 26th saw a peak of 7,000 page views.
Also in a much smaller site like mine, the fear was felt in the interest in forex trading. Thanks to all my readers!
Looking at my favorite portal, Forex Factory, you can see that the highest number of concurrent users was last Friday, when US unemployment rate rose above 10% – quite gloomy.
I believe that other forex blogs and portals are also seeing the same equation: bad economic situation = good times for forex.
Thanks to Michael Greenberg that pointed out Francesc Riverola’s blog. Read more about the situation of forex portals in Michael’s blog.