Cropped image of woman buying or selling bitcoins while staying at home during COVID-19 pandemic, using trading mobile application on digital tablet, closeup.

YONKERS, WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — June 14, 2022 —For all its adverse effects, the COVID pandemic was a shot in the arm to the international forex markets. There were few winners in the wake of the world’s most deadly virus. However, the fact remains that several healthcare corporations, market segments, and individuals not only survived the ravages of the infectious malady but ended up better off. One of the beneficiaries of the economic displacement caused by COVID was the world of currency trading and foreign exchange in general. 

Why and how did this happen? Why wasn’t the FX industry wiped out or diminished like many others? How did brokers end up growing instead of facing bankruptcy? Who were the individuals that, by necessity, changed jobs during the lockdown and profited from it? Those questions go a long way toward discovering the multiple causes and effects that played out from March of 2020 onward, as the virus spread through more than 150 nations and forever changed the way people work, play, and interact with one another. So what are the four ways the pandemic improved the long-term stability and popularity of currency trading? Here are the details.

The Need for Extra Income

The most crucial effect COVID-19 had on the forex markets was bringing more traders into the fold. Already a wildly popular way to earn a side income for millions of people before the pandemic, forex trading experienced a resurgence after March 2020. Once most developed nations instituted lockdowns and shuttered millions of small and medium-sized businesses, vast numbers of people were essentially confined to their homes, unable to continue in their former jobs. As a result, millions of them turned to online opportunities and began searching for realistic ways to bring in money to survive. This need for primary, survival-level income caused countless adults in dozens of nations to sign up for a forex demo account with their favorite online broker and earn money by trading international currency pairs.

Some Nations Do Better Than Others

As even the greenest FX trader understands, the path to success is quite different than it is in equities or commodities trading. That’s because forex devotees don’t search for individual currencies set to rise or fall but instead try to identify currency pairs ready to display a disparity of value. When COVID began to decimate some economies but not others, there were some significant differences in currency strengths among national economies. Traders who were active in the early part of 2020 no doubt recall some of the fast rises and falls that made it easier than usual to spot profitable pairs for trading. Even in late 2022, the lingering results of the pandemic continue to wreak havoc on some nations but leave others relatively untouched.

FX Trading is Home-Based

Individuals who were displaced from their jobs during lockdowns had plenty of good reasons to stick with FX trading even after they were free to return to their old jobs. Many prefer the relative safety of working from home and the ability to earn a regular paycheck without having to commute daily or spend hard-earned money on gasoline and vehicle maintenance. Primarily because FX enthusiasts can work from their homes and have no need to commute daily to an office, the virus became a significant incentive for working adults to open brokerage accounts and turn their extra bedrooms or dens into permanent office space. The major boost to the FX industry after March 2020 was mainly because foreign exchange transactions are, by their very nature, computer-based.

Perfect Health is Not a Requirement for Success

Even those who became ill due to the pandemic could work from home and continue to supplement their income via FX buying and selling. Indeed, for many families, the FX-related income was the only thing that kept them afloat during the worst economic downturn. Another bonus for those who had other jobs was the forex work hours, which are 24/7, five days per week. Additionally, forex enthusiasts can make trades from laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, or any internet-connected device. Fortunately, practitioners need not be in perfect health to sit at a computer and make FX transactions, which is just one of the factors that made the job an ideal one for people whose health was compromised by the virus and who couldn’t leave their homes for months at a time.