“Hey, Steve! Last week you told us that the opportunity to make excellent returns on small investment was present in the Forex market and you talked about getting one standard lot open for an investment of about $1,000. But you forget you come from America where the streets are paved with gold and they throw slightly flawed diamonds out with yesterday’s trash! But I’m from a country where only the richest have that kind of money to invest. For us, $1,000 represents the combined income for a year of a family of four! What about us? Are we shut out?”

Absolutely not! But I’m just being funny (or trying to be) here. Of course the streets aren’t paved with gold in America, they’re paved with concrete and we don’t throw any kind of diamonds away. It might surprise you to realize that the overwhelming majority of Americans are in very tight financial circumstances. According to recent statistics, 2% of the American people control over 50% of its wealth. We make a little more in America than in many places but our cost of living is ridiculously high. Most Americans live from paycheck to paycheck and losing a job can be disastrous and we have poverty and homelessness here in distressing numbers.

But in the Forex, most brokers offer “mini-accounts” which are 1/10th the size of standard accounts and can be opened with as little as $200 or $300 USD. Everything is the same except the pip in the major pairs (the AUDUSD, EURUSD, GBPUSD and NZDUSD) is worth $1, not $10 and it costs only $100 to get the trade open, not $1,000. And some brokers offer “Micro Accounts” where you can trade at 1/10th the size of a “mini-account” and the pip is worth .10 cents. And your demo accounts don’t cost anything and you should use them. Even pro traders use them for many experimental purposes.

Another thing you can do is form “Investment Clubs.” Many people, particularly young professionals, do this. They pool their money and they make their trading decisions jointly. It can be a lot of fun and very profitable. Whole villages could do this!

But what about people from Socialist and even Communist countries? Millions of people have given their lives fighting for the socialist ideals for over 150 years! Are they now to simply turn around and turn Capitalist and betray those ideals? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Get this clear: Comrade Deng Xiaoping proved in his writings that THERE IS NO CONTRADICTION BETWEEN SOCIALISM AND A MARKET ECONOMY and he did this while Mao was alive and Mao did not disagree with him. Mao in fact urged socialists to do business with Capitalist countries…but just to keep aware of who they were and how they operated while doing it. Karl Marx was a SCIENTIST and he had no objection to the semi-sacred “Law of Supply and Demand” which Capitalists live and die by because that is an iron-clad Law of Economics, as indisputable as the Law of Gravity, which it resembles closely. Marxist objection to Capitalist organization and practices centers on three things: 1) Ownership of the Means of Production; 2) More Equitable Distribution of Wealth; and 3) Class Struggle (The desire of people to be treated with human respect as equals even if they don’t have one red cent to their names!) Not only can Socialists and Communists participate in Market economics, some of the finest and most successful traders in the world today come from such countries!

But it is not a cure-all. The less money you have, the more losing it hurts. Trading resembles warfare in many ways. In order to do it successfully, you need to cultivate the personal characteristics we admire in the greatest martial artists and religious figures: iron self-discipline, lack of ego, clear perception.

We desperately need to raise the standard of living all over the world. Participation in market economics is only one of many steps that must be taken to do this successfully. No, it is not a cure-all. But it is a doorway, a path and an opportunity.

Trading is a spiritual discipline.