When people say "trading," they often only think of forex — buying and selling currencies. But a typical broker actually gives you access to several different markets, and it helps to know what they are before you decide what to focus on.
Forex (foreign exchange) is the market for trading one currency against another — for example, US dollars against euros. It's the largest financial market in the world, and it's open 24 hours a day on weekdays.
Commodities are physical goods that get traded as prices, even though you never actually receive the physical item yourself. The most popular ones are gold and silver (precious metals), and oil and natural gas (energy). People trade commodities because their prices move based on real-world supply and demand, global events, and economic conditions.
Indices (the plural of "index") track the combined value of a group of companies rather than just one. For example, an index might represent the 500 biggest companies in the US. Trading an index means betting on the overall direction of a whole market or economy, not a single stock.
Stocks let you trade shares of individual companies — betting that a specific company's value will rise or fall.
Crypto refers to digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which some brokers also offer alongside traditional markets.
Depending on the broker, you might have access to anywhere from a few dozen to several thousand individual instruments across these categories. As a beginner, you don't need to trade all of them — most traders start by picking one market (often forex) and getting comfortable there before exploring others.
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