Getting started

Forex trading for beginners

Checked October 2026

Forex is trading one currency against another, quoted in pairs like EUR/USD, where the price is how many dollars one euro buys. Backtoast tested 13 published forex strategies in 2026, and every one failed. The best made 2.3% a year.

Backtoast

You pay $99 for two full tests of your own strategy, and a pass is an offer of 30% of the profit Backtoast makes trading it with its own money.

Pips, leverage and swap

A pip is the fourth decimal place on most pairs, 0.0001, and the second on yen pairs, and it's how traders count a move. US brokers cap leverage at 50 to 1 on the major pairs and lower on the rest. A position held past 5:00 p.m. New York pays or earns swap, the interest gap between the two currencies, which is what a carry trade lives on.

What the tests show

The best result was G10 currency carry, which buys the three highest-yielding major currencies and sells the three lowest, at 2.3% a year. A forex moving average crossover made 0.0%, and the FX fix reversal, which trades around the daily benchmark rates, lost the whole account.

The firms that sell simulated forex accounts are compared in best forex prop firms for 2026, and the test tells you whether the rule is worth that fee.

The runs are Backtoast's, from 29 October 2026, after costs. The full list is forex trading strategies tested in 2026.