UAE: Many people still moving to online forex trade after the pandemic, fearing job loss

Many people in the UAE, the region and globally as well have moved to online forex and commodities trading during the Covid-19 pandemic due to job loss fear and this upward trend is continuing.

Industry executives that the number of retail investors massively increased during the pandemic as people were at home and were worried about their jobs.

Damian Bunce, chief customer officer at Exness, said during the pandemic, there was a huge rise in the number of retail traders. “People were at home, worrying about jobs and finances, and online trading is obviously very accessible. So they entered the market and stayed in the market,” he said.

The forex industry trades about $7.5 trillion per day and the retail community trades $1 trillion per day. Exness trades about $150 billion a day.

“The trend doesn’t seem to be abating and that’s largely linked to the markets because markets are pretty chaotic, whether it’s weakening and strengthening of the US stock market and certain currencies such as dollar/yen being actively traded driven by interest rate decisions at the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve. The markets are hectic and active, obviously, it is an opportunity for people to trade,” he said.

“We are looking at the best ways to structure ourselves to come to this market. There is a big opportunity, particularly with a large influx of people moving to the region, there is growing wealth here and people want to put some of it to work in the markets,” he added.

Elie Nachawaty, senior business development manager for Mena at XS.com, said forex trading is continually evolving and mobile trading has made it easier to access markets anytime and anywhere, helping traders benefit from market movements whenever they happen.

“Online forex trading is constantly growing and has been used by increasingly larger categories of individuals due to several factors such as technological developments. Trading platforms have become more user-friendly and accessible, and mobile trading apps allow people to trade from anywhere, at any time,” he said, adding that the large availability of educational resources and the efforts of forex trading companies in this regard have helped traders board the market more easily and in larger numbers. Online trading has seen a boost from the lockdowns that followed the pandemic as people moved to online platforms in great numbers.

• Business