THE BENEFITS OF LIQUID INVESTMENT TRADING

The main benefit of investment trading in a liquid market is the flexibility of buying and selling assets.

Investment liquidity is the ability of an asset to be bought or sold without causing price movements of any significance. The most liquid asset is cash as it can be used immediately to carry out economic activities but for trading purposes the really liquid markets are forex, stocks and commodities in that order.

The Benefits of Liquid Investment Trading:

An asset is classed as liquid when it can be sold quickly without any loss in value, at any time during market hours. The crucial characteristic of a market classed as deeply liquid is that there are eager sellers and buyers available at all times and that the price of the next trade is equivalent to the preceding one.

A major benefit of trading in a liquid market is that the most liquid market, foreign exchange, is open 24 hours a day except for weekends. You can decide to trade in your own time frame, after work, before you go to work or even at work.

Liquid markets are so much more efficient in that when there are many sellers and many buyers, the price at which the trade is done is very close, if not the same as the last market price. Again the most efficient market is the foreign exchange market as it has a trading volume that is over 50 times larger than the New York Stock Exchange.

Another benefit from trading in liquid markets is volatility. When a price fluctuates as it does in a liquid market more trading opportunities are available. If you buy an asset and its price doesn’t move there is little or no opportunity to make a profit. Volatility is the magnitude of the level of a price’s fluctuation and its frequency of fluctuation. Volatility is measured as the maximum return that can be generated with perfect prescience. For example the average volatility for stock is 70 but the average volatility for a currency is 500. Day traders in particular can exploit this greater volatility in the currency markets.   

A further benefit of investing in a liquid market like the currency markets is that there are no commission fees and no transaction fees. The fees are all in the spread and there is hardly any ‘slippage’ cost. Slippage is a cost that a trader incurs when entering the market at a worse price than the price level they wanted. For low volume trades slippage is not such a problem but for high volume trades it could be.

Leverage can be a big benefit for investors who are investing in liquid markets, particularly the currency markets. Using leverage an investor can trade the equivalent of $10,000 and depending on the broker the investor is trading through, the investor only needs between $50 and $200. This makes it possible for an investor in a liquid market to profit from a small trading account.

The benefits of trading and investing in a liquid market are numerous and give the investor greater flexibility to buy or sell investment assets.