Is trading penny shares riskier than forex trading? This is not an easy question. Personally I think they are too seperate to say which is the most risky. Currencies are often traded on margin. Some currency brokers actually allow leverage up to 500:1. This amount of leverage can very quickly blow an entire account.

Penny stocks can fluctuate extremely quickly and also quickly eat into a trading account.

One big plus of forex is you can very simply select how much leverage you want to use. If you have an account size of ,000. You can simply place trades that equal your ,000 or borrow money.

One advantage of forex is that there are often no trading commissions. With stocks you usually have a set fee per trade. Many penny stock brokres also charge additional fees for trading penny stocks. This can mean you have to earn high returns just to pay the greedy stock broker their fees.

If you trade forex with many retail forex brokers, theres no commissions to pay. They make their money their the buy and sell (bid/ask) rate spread.

Trading both penny shares and currencies is highly risky. Be sure to take your time selecting a brokerage firm. For stocks a discount stock brokerage is often best suited. For currencies a good solid retail broker with a good reputation and low spreads if often the best.

Be careful with forex brokers though, they are often not heavily regulated and they have been known to go bust before. You could have heard of the broker refco, they went bankrupt a couple of years ago. Many account holders lost all of their funds.

One thing you can do is try a demo stock trading account before trading a real account.

Think of how bad it would be if you lost your entire trading account because of your broker going bankrupt!