Teamwork a must to get familiar with foreign exchange trading

Learning to trade in foreign exchange can be a little complicated.

Learning to trade in foreign exchange (forex) can be complicated.

So when Max Knudsen, the chief market strategist at ADS Securities, was asked if he could teach people the basics in half an hour, alarm bells rang.

He knew the standard format of lecturing to a class would not work.

"I needed to convey things simply for them in a way they won't get bored with [and] to keep people interested you need to keep it fun," he says.

He decided the only way to do it would be to create a game.

"In a bank, traders sit in groups and they are usually dictated by the desks they work in and the products they trade," says Mr Knudsen. "We wanted to teach them like [they were in a] trading room."

New forex traders learning through ADS are split into teams or "desks", represented by large, three-dimensional coloured signs.

"I would say, 'Right, you guys are now the Australian dollar desk and I would create for you a position of A$100,000 [Dh384,253] for you live. Your desk now owns that position,'" he says. Coloured bricks are placed on the desks to show whether students are making a profit or loss on their positions.

Mr Knudsen spends 10 minutes on theory and five minutes on practice at a time.