I know someone who makes quite a good business from FOREX. I do wonder though whether there is a lot of skill to this or whether it is just luck. What do you think?

For real FOREX you need a lot of skill, to know how to gauge the markets, dealing with everything from the season or holiday in each area to how the pairs we react to a world leaders speech.

Then, learning the various methods, candlestick, one that deals with crossing line charts, and a few others.

One guy I knew swore that gold would fall back to the $500.00 region after breaking $900.00 and leveraged short more than he had. As everyone knows he was wrong and he lost everything. He did not read the signs right.

http://www.oanda.com/ has a faux platform you can use that tracks everything in real time, so you can use it to hone your skills.

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If you rely only on luck, you'll lose everything. You need to learn a lot.