Forex is riskier than the stock market, but almost 12 million people in the U.S. own common stock today.
This fact, which was only mentioned briefly, is the most important one. Because it sums up one of the most important and far-reaching changes in American economic and social life in the 20th century. Never before in our country's history have so many people owned so much of the industrial wealth, productive capacity, and profit potential of the country.
Most people thought that the stock market was a huge trap for people who weren't careful. Like all public images, this one wasn't exactly right, but it wasn't wrong either. During the tumultuous growth of the country's capital after the Civil War, small investors were often tossed around by the tycoons' market battles, and panics and depressions crushed their hopes of getting rich. People who were sane were shocked by all the crazy speculation in the 1920s. Everyone knew someone who had been hurt by the Crash, and even those who didn't lose everything were likely to blame Wall Street for the depression that came after.
Most people thought that buying a home was a good way to invest in capital. If there was money left over, it was put into savings and insurance.
The story slowly faded away. Most of the 1930s were spent getting over the Great Depression. Up until the middle of the 1940s, the Second World War was going on. During this time, the stock market continued to operate at the same place, but at a much smaller scale. In 1936, it climbed back up to a respectable peak, which was not as high as the peak in 1929 but was still the highest point since the Crash. It fell sharply during the recession of 1937, went up and down for a few years, and then went down again because of the war. But since 1942, the trend has been steadily up, even though there have been some setbacks, like the recession in 1957.
When the war was over, most people didn't realise how much the economy had changed. Because of the war, factories had to grow by a huge amount, with a lot of help from the government. High tax rates and limits on profits made people more likely to invest in facilities. And liberal settlements after the war let corporations buy government-built plants cheaply or get rid of them quickly, reducing or getting rid of long-term debt that would have been a burden otherwise. The end result was that the book value of many companies' most important assets went up by a huge amount.
Also, consumer wants were very strong. Americans were ready to buy everything they saw after going without for five years. Without even one enemy bomb, industry was able to quickly switch to production for peacetime. The boom started. Americans started to fill up their lives with new things like cars, houses, and appliances. And along with these familiar, much-missed things came new ones that were almost unimaginable before the war: television, hi-fi, sports cars, antibiotics, tranquillizers, frozen foods, synthetic fibres and fabrics, plastics, electronics, and, for the future that was quickly approaching, peacefully used atomic energy. Radio Corporation of America said that four-fifths of its sales now come from things that didn't exist ten years ago. By the 1950s, economists thought that research and development were responsible for more than a third of the country's gross national product, which is the total value of all its goods and services.
Many things have come together to make this happen. Before the end of World War II in 1945, most people thought that only wealthy people could own stocks. Large amounts of stock could only be bought by wealthy people. Only a person with extra money could afford to wait out a market slump or a short-term drop in income or value. And only a small group of people were really taught how markets work and what the basic rules of investing are.
Now, anyone can invest in the Forex the same way they can invest in stocks and shares.
To do well with Forex trading, you need to start out by getting some good Forex software.
