Showing posts with label online forex trading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online forex trading. Show all posts

Monday, 14 May 2007

FOREX Trading System - Building One for Big Profits in 3 Simple Steps



(by Sacha Tarkovsky)

Here we are going to show you how to build your own profitable FOREX trading system in simple steps.

You can build one easily by utilizing free information on the web.

We are going to look at choosing a methodology, structuring the system and implementing it for profit – It will give you big profit potential and won’t cost you a cent.

The methodology below is the basis for all my trading systems and its very simple. I have traded for over 23 years and tried just about ever system out there and the fact is:

When trading FOREX, simple systems beat complicated ones, as they are more robust in the face of ever changing market conditions.

The methodology below works and will continue to work, so let’s take a look at it.

1. Methodology

Look at any FOREX chart and what do you see?

Long term trends that last for weeks or months – These are the trends you need to target.

To target these trends all you need to understand is the concept of support and resistance and price momentum.

Now we need a methodology, let’s take one that has stood the test of time and will continue to work – trading breakouts.

Breakouts from significant support and resistance are one of the most effective ways of catching the big profitable moves.

FACT: Most major currency moves start from new market highs NOT market lows.

You can read all about the above concepts free on the web and in some shape or form most of the worlds top traders use breakouts.

In conclusion, we are going to look for long term trends from support and resistance - now let’s look at how to put this into practice.

2. Structuring a System

Now you need to organize the above and enter some trades – Here is a simple way of trading the above:

• Look at the weekly chart

Look for well established support and resistance that has been tested several times preferably at least 4 times and several weeks apart

• Look at the daily charts

Now look for tests that coincide with the weekly levels that have again been tested several times.

NOTE:

If you start with the weekly chart you will get the big picture and well established support and resistance can be seen - that if broken will give you high odds of the break continuing.

3. Timing the trade

Here we need to look at price momentum and trade with confirmation that the odds are in our favor.

Trading with price strength on a break is an essential element of any successful FOREX trading system and you need indicators that will help you spot it.

Pull up a free chart service such as futuresource.com

Look at the stochastic indicator and Relative Strength Index ( RSI), both these are fantastic confirming indicators.

We don’t have time to write about them in detail here but they are covered in our other articles so look them up.

If a break occurs you can go with the break providing your momentum indicators confirm it.

If you are only trading strong support and resistance that the market recognizes as significant then the odds of the break continuing as stops are unwound and trend followers come in is higher.

Stops should be below the breakout point on daily close basis only (US hours) you can also wait till the end of the session to enter your trades.

This system won't give you many trades each year, but the ones it will give you will have high odds of success and fantastic profit potential.

The FOREX Trading system above can be adapted, but its an excellent base to start from and is perfect for novice FOREX traders.

Take a look at this FOREX trading system because:

Its simple to understand, simple to apply, takes less than 30 minutes a day and can yield triple digit gains

Even better it costs you nothing, but could make you significant long term capital gains.

Don’t spend money on worthless e-books selling systems they have plucked from free information on the net build your own.

GRAB 3 X FREE ESSENTIAL TRADER PDF'S AND MUCH MORE!

On all aspects of becoming a profitable trader including features, downloads and some critical FREE Trader PDF's and more FREE Forex Education visit our website at http://www.net-planet.org/index.html

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Saturday, 12 May 2007

Choose One Currency - The Importance Of Focus In Forex Trading



(by Jovan Vucetic)

Many beginner forex traders start out making a common mistake. They will begin trading one currency but within a month and sometimes much less, will have traded almost all the major currencies. If you take a peek at some of the forex chat forums on the Internet, you will see enthusiastic newbie traders making the same mistake. They will ask questions, discuss and trade the yen, the pound, the euro, the Swiss franc and go back and forth between them all.

Why do they do this and why is it foolish?

Let’s see. If you ask them why they do this, they will probably reply that either they saw an opportunity for a profitable trade on their charts that was too good to pass up or that they were just increasing their chances of success by spreading their bets. Fair enough, that seems like a perfectly fine answer.

Imagine this however: You are a pretty strong guy and you think you can handle yourself in a street fight. Then you are thrown into a ring with a guy who’s been training boxing for years. The outcome of this fight? Well, there really is no fight – you will get slaughtered.

Forex trading is the same. To be a success, you must always be looking at ways to swing the odds in your favour. The fundamentals that influence the yen are totally different to that of the Swiss franc or that of the Australian dollar. If you are trading them all, while it may appear the same, its not. Just like the fight against the boxer, you are up against highly paid institutional traders and currency analysts - experts in a particular currency.

When a news announcement breaks, without thinking they know and incorporate its effect on a particular currency and its relationship to other currencies, the interest rates, bonds and gold market. The Australian dollar is a commodity price driven currency; the Swiss franc will do well when global security is a problem; the yen is a currency reflecting a nation with a huge export surplus and so on. All these currencies have different characters, moods and personas. They are influenced by different and conflicting information that you need to be aware of.

To increase your chances of success in trading, it is much better to master one chosen currency. This will help you build focus and trading discipline. Sticking to trading one currency will eliminate the need to have to focus on numerous sets of information. However, the most important thing: with time, as you understand your chosen currency and its character traits inside out, you will gain conscious confidence in your trading – something invaluable in this game.

If you are switching back and forth from trading one currency to another, understand that no one currency is easier or better to trade than another. There are no guarantees that you will make more money trading one particular currency over another. If you were doing poorly trading one currency and decided to switch to another thinking this might improve your chances, think why should it?

It is much smarter to stay focused, learn the particularities of your currency inside out and in the process develop trading discipline. Over the long run, you will have swung the odds of success in your favour.

Jovan Vucetic is the Editor of Margin Strategies, an educational forex website, which reviews forex trading systems. Learn about different types of forex trading strategies including a 100% fully mechanical trading system.

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Friday, 11 May 2007

Forex Factory- How To Prepare For Your Trading Session



(by Michael A Jones)

The Forex Factory web site is a very popular site among developing Forex traders as shown by an Alexa rating of around 5,400 most visited sites on the web. Any site within the first 100,000 gets serious traffic!

Forex Factory provides 3 main services listed in my personal order of importance:

- Calendar

- News

- Forum

Calendar

The main attraction of the Forex Factory calendar of upcoming economic reports and fundamental announcements is that it is so visual and easy to read.

A color coding system gives an indication at a glance as to how volatile the announcement is expected to be:

Yellow - Low Impact

Orange - Medium Impact

Red - High Impact

Another good feature of this calendar is the ability to customize the time to your own time zone. So instead of having to add or subtract a certain number of hours from GMT to arrive at the time of the economic report in your country, you can set the calendar according to your time zone and see the time accurately displayed.

This feature saves some confusion and prevents a newer trader from leaving a trade in around a volatile news report because of getting the time mixed up!

News

A number of news reports are featured daily from authorities and advisors in the financial markets.

Within a few minutes the trader can come up to speed on the latest economic factors that might impact the market.

Forums

The Forums at Forex Factory have a huge appeal as indicated by the thousands of users online each day.

The forums are divided into various themes including:

General Discussion

Trading Systems

Broker Discussion

Forex Beginner Questions and Answers

How To Get The Best From Forex Factory

For me, the calendar is by far the most useful feature at Forex Factory. I consult it each day in preparation for the next trading session and make sure I am out of the market around volatile news releases (flagged by the red icon) and also many times the medium impact reports (flagged by the orange icon). The News feature is also useful to get a broad overview of market sentiment. At the same time caution is needed if you use technical analysis as your main trading tool as the comments and opinions of others can sometimes blur your own analysis and lead to flawed trade entries.

You may have detected a perfectly good trade setup and the trade is going well. Then as it starts to stall the comments of a news analyst come to mind and you exit prematurely from what could have been a very profitable trade.

So it is good to view the News objectively and coordinate it with your own technical analysis.

Forums - Be A Little Cautious

For newer traders the discussion forums can be helpful in bouncing ideas off other newer traders. One of the main benefits is encouragement and motivation from hearing how others are getting on.

However, as to whether you can get good trading tips and strategies from the forums is in my mind a little doubtful.

After I attended a Forex seminar run by a licensed professional who trades the Forex every day and is a fund manager, I noted his comment that the really successful Forex traders rarely have time to visit online forums and participate in discussions. They are too busy making money on the Forex!

So as long as you approach forum discussions with the realization that most participants are also in the learning stage, you can evaluate their comments and suggestions accordingly.

There is no doubt Forex Factory (forexfactory.com) provides an excellent group of services for newer Forex traders. Definitely use the calendar to the full and depending on your level of expertise, use the News and Forums features to gain a better perspective of daily market activity.

Michael A. Jones is a writer, webmaster and Forex trader.

Do you want to make consistent profits and take your trading to the next level?

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/forex-course.html

For a purely mechanical strategy for the EUR/USD pair click here:

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/Advisor/forex-trading-machine.htm

For a collection of invaluable free Forex tools:

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/tools.html

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Wednesday, 9 May 2007

Pivot Point Trading- 7 Guidelines For Success



(by Michael A Jones)

What do we mean by pivot point trading? It simply means that Forex traders take into account pivot points calculated from the previous day's trading range and use them as reference points to identify support and resistance levels.

Taking the high, low, close and open values of the previous day's price action, strategic levels can be identified which may or may not have an influence on price action. Pivot point trading puts emphasis on these levels, and uses them to guide entry and exit points for trades.

However, as with any technical indicator, there are limitations and pivot point trading, to be high probability, needs to stay within certain parameters. The following 7 guidelines can help pivot point trading be more profitable:

No. 1

Pivot points should not be used as a standalone indicator. Do not enter or exit trades purely on the basis of pivot points. Use them in conjunction with other indicators such as candle patterns, Fibonacci levels, MACD, and moving averages to identify and confirm key levels of support and resistance which may provide trading opportunities.

No. 2

While some traders living in various parts of the world may calculate their pivot points according to the time zone in which they live, a fairly safe standard for calculating the levels of pivot point trading is to use GMT (Greenwich Meantime).

Midnight GMT is a very quiet time in the market with very little volatility and provides a good opportunity to calculate more accurate pivot levels going from midnight GMT to midnight GMT the following day.

No. 3

It is good to understand what is going on behind the scenes when it comes to pivot point trading. Rather than just staring at candles on a chart, understand what they actually represent.

Thousands of traders around the world, some working for large institutions and handling millions or even billions of dollars worth of currency, are taking positions according to previously established highs and lows in the market.

Pivot points draw attention to these key levels which will often be strongly defended by traders who have a lot at stake. This is the reason pivot point trading can be so successful, once a trader understands underlying reasons for price action.

No. 4

It is good to calculate mid levels in addition to the S1, S2, R1, and R2 pivot levels. Sometimes there is a significant gap between these levels and calculating a mid point gives another point of reference. Price will often be seen respecting M1, M2, M3, or M4.

To calculate mid levels, simply subtract the level below from the level above and divide by 2. (see the resource box for a free pivot point calculator)

No. 5

Pivot point trading can be a useful strategy for entering and exiting trades at the right time. A pivot point can provide a key level of support or resistance where price is likely to bounce for a 10-20 pip profit.

Or in the case of a trend, price may retrace to a pivot level before continuing its run. The retracement point at the pivot level would be a good place to put an entry order to be taken in when price comes back to retest at the pivot level.

No. 6

The Euro - US dollar pair often puts in a daily average of between 75 and 100 pips. Watch for specific behavior around the time of the London market open. Price will often come back to test a level which is a pivot point and form a distinctive candle pattern such as tweezers, or a hanging man, and then reverse and go on its 75-100 pip run for the day.

If price comes back to the M1 level check your other indicators to see if they confirm this would be a good level to go long. Likewise, if price, just around London open, tests the M4 level, check your other indicators to see if this would be a good place to go short. You may be able to get a slice of the 75-100 pip run for the day.

No. 7

Pivot point trading helps mentally in establishing the buy zone and the sell zone. Traditionally, anything above the Central Pivot Point is a Sell area, and everything below the Central Pivot Point is a Buy area.

If you go contrary to that, make sure you double check your analysis and have very good reasons for doing otherwise.

Pivot point trading is just one of an arsenal of weapons available to Forex market participants. However, it must be stated that many successful traders use just a handful of tools that become their favorites. After all, too many indicators can lead to decision paralysis.

For many traders, pivot points are a key element in their overall trading strategy. Use the 7 guidelines above to use them safely and responsibly.

Michael A. Jones is a writer, webmaster and Forex trader.

Download a free Forex Pivot Point Calculator you can customize here:

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/pivot-point-calculator-download.html

Do you want to make consistent profits and take your trading to the next level?

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/forex-course.html

For a purely mechanical strategy for the EUR/USD pair click here:

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/Advisor/forex-trading-machine.htm

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Friday, 4 May 2007

FOREX Day Trading - Brokers Love Day Traders For One Reason



(by Kelly Price)

FOREX Day traders are loved by brokers these are the traders they simply want more than any other type of trader.

FOREX day traders are wary of brokers, because they think they pick their stops off and that’s why they love them – but the real reason is:

Day traders are guaranteed to lose their money without any help from a broker. I used to work in the back office of a broker and we factored them in as losing straight away and a big fat profit for us.

So here are the reasons we loved them and other brokers do to:

1. Day trading by its very nature doesn’t work

Trying to trade in short time spans of a few hours or a day and to try and measure where prices are going is ridiculous.

All short term volatility is random and prices can and do, go anywhere.

We traded several thousand day traders and not one made money, they all lost.

The logic FOREX day trading is based upon is totally flawed.

Try this simple test:

Ask any vendor selling a system on the net and ask for a real time track record and see if you get one – You won’t.

Many of them are simply writers or failed brokers.

They make up track records sell them and then do a deal with a broker for a kick back commission and believe me the commission is good – we paid out tens of thousands every month!

2 Great commission

Day trading is the best commission to equity you can get and for a broker that’s great.

Lots of trades, eroding account equity to zero and paying commission every day.

Much better than a trader coming in and blowing his equity in a couple of trades.

Market makers are equally happy.

As they want the traders deposit lost and on their book.

They are trading against the client and don’t need to worry it will soon be in the bank. Furthermore, as day traders never make any big profits (running profits is totally alien to them)

The risk of carrying a day trader on your own book as a broker is low.

DO BROKERS HUNT STOPS?

The answer is no.

Day traders believe this, but the real reason is they set their stops to close.

Support and resistance are meaningless in day sessions and that’s why stops get hit all the time.

Its not the brokers fault, it’s the day traders for being stupid and placing his stops in meaningless time frames where volatility is random.

There you have it.

The reason brokers love day traders is their great money earners for the house and guaranteed to lose as well, which is perfect for market makers.

GRAB 3 X FREE TRADER PDF'S AND MUCH MORE!

On all aspects of becoming a profitable trader including features, downloads and some critical FREE Trader PDF's and more FREE Forex Education visit our website at http://www.net-planet.org/index.html

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Thursday, 3 May 2007

Forex Day Trading: Top 7 Checklist When Using Support And Resistance



(by Michael A Jones)

Why are support and resistance levels crucial when participating in the Forex day trading market?

Simply put, they represent key, strategic price points at which traders processed orders involving millions or even billions of dollars. No wonder price at times has a hard time getting past a previous high or low. Those levels are being fiercely defended by traders who have large amounts of money at stake and who do not want to see price break those levels.

For this reason anyone who engages in Forex day trading should learn how to trade support and resistance. The following checklist provides crucial guidelines:

1. Support and resistance levels are much more significant on the higher time frames. Pay particular attention to price highs and lows on the daily chart as this time frame is commonly used by big traders.

2. A price high or low has more significance when it has a number of candles either side of it which are lower (in the case of a price high) or higher (in the case of a price low).

3. Before you consider Forex day trading at a support or resistance level, see if there are more factors that would indicate this is a key price level.

For example, does a trendline intersect at the same point? Does the support or resistance line match up with a Fibonacci level, either a retracement or an extension? Does the support or resistance level coincide with a pivot point if you are in the practice (and it's a wise one) of calculating pivot levels when Forex day trading?

4. Has a key support resistance level been broken? Then look to see if price will come back to test that level. Remember, resistance once broken can become support in the future and support once broken can become resistance in the future.

These Forex day trading scenarios can present excellent trading opportunities as you put an entry order in at the key level and wait for price to come back and pull you in. Within a short time your dealing spread is covered and you are in profit.

5. The market spends most of its time in trading ranges or consolidation channels. You need to accept that this is a characteristic of Forex day trading and adjust your mindset accordingly. Identify the high and low of the trading channel and manage your trades accordingly.

6. After identifying a trading channel or range and you see a trading opportunity, set your entry level at the base of the channel if you are going long or at the top of the channel if you are going short.

Don't chase after price once it breaks out of the channel (although many who engage in Forex day trading do so). You will not get the optimal entry point. Waiting for price to take you in either at the top or bottom of the channel means you can have a smaller stop and your price target is closer.

7. Pay particular attention to the previous day's high and low. Price will often hesitate and retrace at these levels. If you are a Forex day trading scalper, you can often grab a nice pull back of 10 pips or more at these strategic levels.

Note: Although there are various ways to calculate the previous 24 hour period depending on where you live, using GMT as a standard is often beneficial. Midnight GMT is a time when the market is generally very quiet and unlikely to make new highs or lows.

Succeed Or Fail?

It is unlikely you will succeed at Forex day trading if you fail to understand or take into consideration support and resistance. This indicator is that crucial! Yes there may be fancy indicators out there with all the bells and whistles, but this simple indicator, marking where price reached a high or low during previous trading sessions, can be one of the most powerful and effective Forex day trading tools available.

Be sure you spend sufficient time studying it, examining your charts, marking off the key levels each time you begin a new Forex day trading session.

Michael A. Jones is a writer, webmaster and Forex trader.

Do you want to make consistent profits and take your trading to the next level?

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/forex-course.html

For a purely mechanical strategy for the EUR/USD pair click here:

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/Advisor/forex-trading-machine.htm

For a collection of invaluable free Forex tools:

http://www.vitalstop.com/Forex/tools.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Wednesday, 2 May 2007

Forex Traders - Speculating on The Presently Undervalued Chinese Yuan



(by Ariyo Akinlosotu)

The Yuan can yield tremendous profits to investors if it rises against the dollar. The article below will discuss fully about the subject.

China’s trade surplus has been a sore thumb with the American government over the past few years. The Americans believe that their massive trade deficit with China is fuelled by a cheap Yuan policy which the Chinese government is determined to pursue in order to keep its economy humming at break neck speeds.

In order to keep the Yuan weak, the government has been mopping up dollars at a frantic pace. This has made China the country with the most foreign reserves, now topping over $1.2trillion. This is equivalent to half it’s GDP and will easily accommodate over one year of imports- which is far higher than the acceptable four months.

The question is- can the Chinese accept a revaluation of the Yuan to more acceptable levels?

The communist government is terrified of social disorder. Its only claim to legitimacy is the fast economic growth that has lifted hundreds of millions out poverty over the past two decades especially in the last six years.

One of its primary tools of achieving fast growth is the weak Yuan policy which has created and sustained a manufacturing and export boom which in turn as lifted growth to dizzying levels.

Unfortunately for the government however, there is still discontent. There are over a 100million surplus farm hands seeking work and unemployment still exist in the cities.

Also large parts of China still remain very poor especially the hinterland.

To add to this, many farmers in the rural areas where most of them are based complain about official neglect and corruption.

China thus believes it still needs years of fast economic growth to arrest the above mentioned problems.

However, things are not as simple as they seem.

First and foremost, the weak Yuan which is tied to the dollar is causing liquidity to rise to dangerous levels within the economy. This is in turn swelling demand to horrendous levels. And deflation has now been replaced by inflation. Too high a level of inflation may bring- wait a minute- social disorder. Many analysts speculate that high inflation was perhaps the true trigger for the Tiananmen tragedy.

From high inflation perspective alone, the Yuan needs to strengthen

Anyway, the government has begun tightening credit, always preferring to use crude monetary instruments such as restricting the quantity of loans flowing to some certain sectors especially real estate and steel which are poster children of the boom.

This is working to slow down growth both only slightly.

Growth can only be moderated if the Yuan rises. And the truth is that a rise will not lead to a downturn, but at most – a very soft landing. Growth may slow to 8% which is not bad but less than the double digit figures it has been enjoying of late.

The government has since 2005 permitted the Yuan to appreciate and it has consequent gone from Y8.28/$1 TO 7.71/$1. And interestingly enough, this did not cool the economy.

This indicates that further strengthening of the currency may not in reality have a dampening effect on growth.

The question now is- to what level must the Yuan rise before it reaches its real value?

Tying it with a basket of other currencies, the value will need to rise to between 6.50 and 7Yuan to the U.S currency. Whether the government will have the stomach for it is another matter.

The economy can still grow at 8% annually.

The probability of such a rate appreciation taking place may be plausible bearing in mind that the government has allowed the currency to appreciate slowly against the dollar in particular.

For the time being, however, I foresee the currency hitting 7.40Yuan to a $1 within the year or at the least 7.50.

This portends a fat profit for any trader that decides to make a move now. It may be one of the best pickings for the year.

Desire To Make Money Trading Forex,Then Visit My Blog at http://www.forexmakingit.blogspot.com

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Monday, 30 April 2007

The Skills Traders Need To Acquire



(by Peter Bain)

Each individual trader creates his own experience of the markets based on this picking and choosing process and the decisions that result. If you accept this concept as valid, then the implications are that you will never have a valid reason to blame the markets for your unsatisfying results. The markets don't owe you anything (regardless of how hard you work to be successful) because every other trader participating is doing so to take your money away. You and you alone are completely responsible for whatever you end up with. The sooner you accept that responsibility (if you haven't already), the easier it will be to identify what skills you need to learn to interact with the markets more successfully. Even if you can't identify the mental components responsible for what you ended up with, at least by assuming that you are responsible, you will be opening yourself up to find out.

Nine Skills To Be Acquired:

1. Learning the dynamics of goal achievement so you can stay positively focused on what you want, not what you fear.

2. Learning how to recognize the skills you need to progress as a trader and then stay focused on the development of those skills, instead of the money, which is merely a by-product of your skills.

3. Learning how to adapt yourself to respond to fundamental changes in market conditions more readily.

4. Identifying the amount of risk you are comfortable with, your "risk comfort level", and then learn how to expand it in a way that is consistent with your ability to maintain an objective perspective of market activity.

5. Learning how to execute your trades immediately upon your perception of an opportunity.

6. Learning how to let the market tell you how much is enough, instead of assessing the potential from your personal value system of how much is enough.

7. Learning how to structure your beliefs to control your perception of market movement.

8. Learning how to achieve and maintain a state of objectivity.

9. Learning how to recognize "true" intuitive information and then learning how to act on it consistently.

From "The Disciplined Trader", Mark Douglas

Peter Bain is the Internet's #1 Forex coach and mentor. He is famous for his unique ability to uncover new and innovative ways to harness the power of the Forex. Peter has long been known for his passion for commodity and currency trading. Peter learned trading in the early days of his career from some of the top traders in trading houses. Over the years, he has developed his instincts for a simple yet powerful trading system based on his Pivot Program, which has been continuously refined over the years. His system is the same system used by many trading houses today. For more information, please visit http://www.forexmentor.com

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Friday, 27 April 2007

The Forex Mini Account - The Best Way To Start Off Trading Forex On Low Capital- Part #1



(by Peter Lim)

A lot of people assume that forex trading will require a huge capital base. As a result, they would instantly decline to entertain any proposal to start trading in forex, preferring to remain with trading stocks and shares which is more affordable. This is simply not true, because in forex trading, you can start off with minimal capital when you utilise a forex mini account.

There are four main advantages of a Forex Mini Account.

1. Low Minimum account size

$300 will allow you to start a forex mini account. This is affordable for most people to start off with in forex trading. When you consider forex trading as a business, there are very few businesses costing only $300 as a startup capital offering lucrative prospects of earnings within a very short time.

2. High leverage

You can get leverage of 200:1 In the mini forex account, there is a small margin deposit required fixed at $50 for per lot traded. This amounts to a stunning leverage of 200 to 1. One of the key factors to accelerate profits is to use trading vehicles of high leverage, and a forex mini account certainly meets or fulfils the definition of high leverage.

3. One pip is equivalent to $1

Trading in pips allows the new forex trader to scale down his risk. With such a low denomination, the trader is able to deal with forex trading with less pressure and more discipline. For example, a 20-pip floating loss is approximately $20, so that if you have a 20-pip sudden move against the direction of your trade on a 100K account, that is translated into a $200 floating loss. In every transaction, by using a Mini account, the trader does not end up with a total loss as he loses only a small amount on every losing transaction. This allows him to follow his trading strategy in a disciplined manner.

4. A smaller trade size

The mini forex account trades in smaller contract sizes of 10,000 units which is 1/10 th the size of the standard account. This smaller trade size allows traders an opportunity to trade live with less overall risk. As a result, a beginner can transit or move into forex mini trading quickly from paper trading. While the standard lot is 10,000 units, the beginner trader can increase trading to more lots or units as he gains experience and confidence, and as his profits increase as a result of disciplined trading.

One hidden benefit of trading the mini forex account is that traders can become familiar with the quality and also the reliability of the forex trading platform or trading station of his broker. This is because the forex mini account utilises the same state-of-the art trading software as that for normal sized forex trading.

Mini accounts are recommended for traders with account balances of less than $10,000, allowing them more trading opportunities without over leveraging their account and hence get more staying power in the market.

We will discuss how you can exploit these features of a forex mini account to your advantage in Part #2 of this article so that it is easier to earn a consistent income trading on low capital and lower risk.

Be sure to read Part 2 of this article to discover how you can acquire the powerful trading knowledge from an experienced mentor to trade mini forex and where to secure an online mini forex trading account ."Click Here For Part #2-Mini Forex Trading” or visit http://1forex-trading.blogspot.com

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Thursday, 26 April 2007

FOREX Education - Thinking Of Buying FOREX Advice? Read This First



(by Kelly Price)

There is a huge amount of FOREX Education you can buy but before you buy it read this, as in excess of 90% of it will ensure you lose.

So you ensure you get the right FOREX Education follow the guidelines below.

1. Never buy a day trading system!

Most novice traders are enticed by the theory of making money everyday, with low risk and high rewards, but this is not the reality of day trading.

The reality of day trading is:

A quick wipe out of equity – why?

Quite simply, all short term moves are random and using support and resistance as day traders do is destined to failure.

If you don’t believe me try this simple test when buying any FOREX Education from a vendor:

Ask for the real time track record of profits and you won’t get one from a day trader.

At best you will get a hypothetical track record, but that’s done in hindsight, knowing the closing prices and if we know the closing prices its not hard to make money.

If you want to make money don’t day trade!

2. Real time profits

A real time track record is an essential requirement on ANY FOREX education you buy, not just day trading systems.

The fact however is, most FOREX education is sold by failed brokers, or people who have never traded in their lives.

If these people have not had the confidence to trade their own money on their own system why should you?

3. Understand the FOREX Education

Even if you are lucky enough to find a system that does have a track record of real FX Profits you need to be mindful of the following:

You need to fully understand the method and not follow it blindly.

If you don’t understand why a method works you won’t have confidence to follow it through inevitable periods of losses.

Not only must you understand it to follow it with discipline, you must also check it fits your trading personality.

Some traders can take big drawdowns or losses, other traders find them hard to take, so pick a system with a risk to reward you can handle emotionally.

4. The best FOREX education

There is a huge amount of FOREX education and FOREX advice free on the web, so use it.

In other articles we have shown how to build a system that makes profits from free info and it’s a lot easier to learn FOREX Trading this way than many people think.

You can also get some great FOREX education at nominal cost from your local bookstore this FOREX advice is from:

Traders who don’t just talk the talk – they have walked the walk and made money.

Great books to look at are Jack Schwager’s excellent Market Wizards and New Market Wizards – which interview some of the best traders of all time.

Trader Vic – Victor Sperandeo a great all round book and there are many more.

Rather than buying a e-book from someone without a track record, get your FOREX Education free on the net and get some classics from legendary traders.

Most of the courses and systems on the web are over priced, don’t work and you can frankly, do better on your own with the above advice.

FREE ESSENTIAL TRADER PDF'S AND MUCH MORE

On all aspects of becoming a profitable trader including features, downloads and some great FREE Trading PDF's visit our website at http://www.net-planet.org/index.html

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Friday, 13 April 2007

Forex Money Management



(by Milos Pesic)

Forex money management is one of the most important things you can learn before you actually begin making live trades.

The money management principles discussed here will teach you how to avoid the costly mistakes many new traders make, often to the degree that they lose their entire investment on the first handful of trades.

Psychology is really the most important factor to money management in forex. You have to be able to separate yourself from any emotional attachment you may have to your money. This is not very easy to do, but it works and it can be done.

If you allow yourself to become emotional on a trade, you will not exit the trade properly, and this could mean holding on to a trade when you should have let it go, or letting go before the trade had a chance to turn profitable.

First and foremost, you should consider leverage and risk. It is advisable that you never risk more than two percent of your account balance on any trade. However, some go further and allow for as much as ten percent, but never more than that. This gives you the ability to withstand market fluctuations, and if the trade goes bad, you still have money to try again. You should never operate under the assumption that you will profit from every trade. You should also plan for losses. Therefore, most traders will tell you that the best thing to do is to keep your gains large and your losses small. Develop your trading strategy around this idea.

Keep track of your gains and losses. Keeping accurate and detailed records of your account activity will allow you to see whether or not the strategy is working, or if it needs to be re-built.

Never go blindly into trading without a way to keep track of results. You will lose all of your funds and never understand why it happened.

Finally, it is highly advisable that you first practice a strategy on a demo account. Nearly all brokers offer a virtual account whereupon you make trades in real-time, but with imaginary money, so nothing is risked. This is the best way to test a strategy before you put your real money on the line.

However, be careful, once again, of the psychology of trading. When you play with fake money, nothing is risked. When real money is on the line, you must not get emotional. If you do, you will find yourself with very different results, most likely losses, than you had with the demo account.

Milos Pesic is an expert in the field of Forex Trading and runs a highly popular and comprehensive Forex Trading web site. For more articles and resources on Forex related topics, online forex trading, trading tips, forex software and much more visit his site at:

=>http://forex.need-to-know.net

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Thursday, 12 April 2007

Online FOREX Brokers – A Brokers View Of Why Novice Clients Lose



(by Sacha Tarkovsky)

I write frequently on how to trade but my observations on the markets here I will go back to may days as a broker and give you the view from the dealing room on client behavior and the major reasons traders lost.

I dealt with several thousand traders over 8 years and here are my observations.

This was the late eighties and early nineties and online FOREX brokers of course did not exist, clients behave no differently today as they did then.

Here are the top reasons traders lose with any FOREX broker and that includes online FOREX brokers

1. Methods traded were illogical

The first reason was simply methods did not work as logic they were based upon was not relevant to market movement.

Today, day trading is more popular than ever with online FOREX brokers, but it was around 20 years ago and the same results were obtained which were:

A wipe out of equity in a short time.

Day trading did not work then and it doesn’t work now- Volatility is random in short time frames.

Any support and resistance seen in a daily time frame therefore is useless for trading purposes.

Online FOREX traders just like we did must love day traders lots of commission generated!

As a broker your balance sheet is based upon commission to equity.

You generally assume all clients lose anyway, so if they pay lots of commission while losing all the better.

There were other methods that lost especially the ones that clients bought that promised regular money or an income from trading.

These methods were normally bought tested in hindsight and the trader threw in the towel after a few losses, or was wiped out.

Another group that lost were the ones with complicated methods.

They figured the more complicated a method was the more likely it was to succeed, this of course is totally wrong.

Simple systems work best as there are fewer elements to break.

We had one trader who bought a system which he proudly boasted was based on artificial intelligence and the same technology used by NASA to put a man on the moon

Unfortunately, it did not help him in the market!

2. Discipline

What always struck me was how few clients could trade in a disciplined fashion.

They had jobs where they had to be disciplined everyday, yet in the markets they simply behaved irrationally as soon as a few losses came along.

- They would chop and change methods looking for the perfect one. - They would revenge trade to catch up losses. - They would blame the markets and call them stupid

When money is on the line we all know it’s hard to be disciplined, but the emotions that we saw ranged from crying to total despair, including one suicide.

3. Money management

Many clients were good at picking market direction but could never make any money due to poor money management.

This was problem for them not only in cutting loses ( they very often removed stops or never placed them) of course, a small loss soon becomes a big loss, the trader cant take that, then he was handed a loss he had to take.

He would have been better of taking the small loss in the first place.

What surprised me was how few traders could accept big profits.

The bigger the profit became the more they wanted to take it even if their system indicated further gains.

The argument given was:

“you don’t go broke taking a profit”

Of course you do, if profits don’t exceed your inevitable losses.

This was perhaps more important than taking small losses.

Traders I saw could not allow trades run to $10,000 or more, a couple of thousand and they banked.

There are more reasons but they above are the ones that caused most losses and of all the traders I traded less than 1% made money longer term.

In part 2 of this article we will look at different personalities we traded, who won, who lost and the traits of the traders who won.

FREE ESSENTIAL TRADER PDF'S AND MUCH MORE

On all aspects of becoming a profitable trader including features, downloads and some great FREE Trading PDF's visit our website at http://www.net-planet.org/index.html

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.

Friday, 6 April 2007

Online FOREX Trading – To Be Successful Don't Listen To The News



(by Sacha Tarkovsky)

The online forex trader today has a vast amount of news at his fingertips due to growth of the web and many investors think the more news they study and act on the more likely they are to win, however the exact opposite is true:

Pay to much attention to the news and you will lose.

The reason for this may not be obvious, so let’s look at this question in more detail and see why.

Will Rogers once said:

“I only believe what I Read in the papers”

He was joking but the majority of new online forex traders think they can use the news to their advantage, but they can’t here’s why:

Markets discount

Let’s face it, we see stories all the time from news wires that are full of convincing reasons why a currency will rise and fall, but in most cases there simply good stories and the currency often moves in the opposite direction.

The markets however don’t move on supply and demand fundamentals and opinions nor do they move logically.

Currency prices move to the following equation:

Supply and demand fundamentals + Investor psychology = Market movement.

Investors are in the equation and it is how they view the news that is so important, not the news itself.

Investors are driven by emotions greed fear and hope and it is they that determine the price.

Markets discount news instantly in today’s world of lightening fast communications, so it is almost impossible for most traders to trade off news stories.

Throw in the unpredictably of human nature and trading news for most investors means losses.

Discipline

If you pay to much attention to the news, your emotions can well come into play.

You will hold positions you should not, simply because the “experts” are saying they are right in the press.

Don’t forget these experts are selling stories and are not traders.

If you pay to much attention to the news you will simply let your emotions get in the way and discipline will go out the window.

It’s a fact, that:

Major market tops are formed on bullish news and major market bottoms are formed on bearish news.

A compelling conclusion

For small traders the best way to trade fore markets is with a disciplined technical system.

Why? Because it takes the news into account anyway.

All it assumes is that fundamentals are instantly discounted and will show up in price action.

Not only does technical analysis take into account the fundamentals and news, it also takes into account investor psychology.

Taking into account investor psychology is critical, as investors determine the price of anything.

Human nature never changes.

Repetitive price patterns can be seen in charts that reflect human psychology and can be traded for profit.

That is the opportunity, if you trade with a technical system and ignore the news.

MORE FREE TRADING INFO & A SYSTEM WITH A REAL TIME TRACK RECORD

On all aspects of becoming a profitable trader including info and for an exclusive visit our website at http://www.net-planet.org/index.html

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If you're looking for a forex trading platform, I can highly recommend Easy Forex. They offer competitive spreads, guaranteed stop-losses if required, live training and support, and you can start trading with as little as $25.