The forex market offers the individual investor several advantages over equity markets:

• 24 Hour Trading: Markets generally open at 00:00 GMT Sunday evening, and remain open until Friday at 23:00 GMT. With the ability to trade round the clock, currency traders have the advantage of customizing their own trading schedule. Traders can generally get in or out of the market at any time without waiting for an opening bell or encountering a market gap.
• More Liquidity: Traders can almost always open or close positions at a fair market price at any time of day or night. On the other hand, stock markets can be affected by low volume resulting in widening spreads.
• Margin Requirements: Traders can receive leverage of up to 400:1 for forex transactions. While trading on margin can increase the level of risk, with the proper tools and knowledge traders can greatly use margin to their advantage, increasing potential for larger profits on a consistent basis.
• No restrictions on short selling (no "up tick” rule): Forex trades can profit in both rising and falling markets.
• FX price action moves unrelated to the stock market.
• Trade on the latest news: Forex traders can respond to the latest worldwide economic news at a moment’s notice, since forex markets are generally not affected by after hours earnings reports, analyst conference calls, or trading halts due to pending news.
• Only a few major currency swaps are traded as opposed to thousands of stocks.
• Forex market info easily accessible: Information about stocks is abundant, but so are the stocks. Vital information that moves equity markets, such as revenues and profits, is proprietary and private, and sometimes subject to fraud, deception and insider trading. In contrast, virtually all of the news that bears on the forex market is in publicly disseminated reports from governments or research institutions, and released to everybody at the same time.