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.

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.

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.

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.

MACD Divergence Forex Signal - How Reliable?

(by Michael A Jones)

Some traders regard MACD divergence as a Forex signal to enter a high probability trade. They almost suggest you get straight in to a trade as soon as you see MACD divergence.

Is this Forex signal that reliable? To be fair, it certainly has a place in a successful trader's kit of strategies, but as with any Forex signal, there are certain precautions that have to be observed to make any trade high probability.

At this time there doesn't appear to be any Forex signal that offers anywhere near a 100% success rate.

So if you are tempted to trade on the basis of MACD divergence, what other factors should you keep in mind?

MACD Divergence Defined

First let's just spell out exactly what is meant by MACD divergence.

MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence) comes as a standard Forex signal on all the main charting packages. Some show MACD by itself with two lines, one a combination of a 12 and 26 Exponential Moving Average, and the other line based on a 9 Exponential Moving Average.

Some charting packages also include what is called a Histogram in the same charting area as MACD. The histogram merely represents in a different way what is happening between the two MACD lines as to market momentum. The wider the gap between the MACD lines, the higher or lower the height of the histogram bars.

To identify MACD divergence, simply draw a line across the highs if MACD is above the zero line, or draw a line across the lows if MACD is below the zero line.

Now go to the price action section of the chart, the candlesticks, and draw a line across the highs directly above where the line is drawn on the MACD highs, or draw a line across price lows directly above where the line is drawn on MACD lows.

If they are going in opposite directions you have MACD divergence. In other words, when MACD is making lower highs and lower lows but price is making higher highs and higher lows, this negative MACD divergence forms a Forex signal indicating price could well start to drop.

If MACD is making higher highs and higher lows but price is making lower highs and lower lows, this positive MACD divergence forms a Forex signal indicating price could well start to rise.

MACD Divergence Precautions

Be aware that MACD divergence on a smaller time frame is not so significant. When it is seen on a 15 minute chart it may or may not be very important.

If seen on a 60 minute, 4 hour, or daily chart, start doing more analysis.

If you see MACD divergence on two or more of the higher time frames, then definitely sit up and take notice and start looking for other factors to indicate when price may react to the divergence.

This brings us to a key point when trading MACD divergence as a Forex signal to enter a trade. On a higher time frame, MACD divergence can be a fairly reliable indicator of a change in price direction. However, the big question is: WHEN?

Many traders get caught out by entering a trade too soon when they see MACD divergence. In many cases, price has still got some muscle to continue in the current direction. The trader who has jumped in too soon can only stare at the screen in dismay as price shoots through his stop taking him out.

How Can This Scenario Be Avoided

Before pulling the trigger when you see MACD divergence on the higher time frames, be sure to look for other key Forex signals to confirm that the divergence has really kicked in.

For example, if you see a distinctive candle pattern such as a tweezer top or a hanging man on the higher time frame it may appear price has topped out and is now ready to move in the other direction.

If at the same time the distinctive candle pattern is at a key level of previous support or resistance, or at a pivot level, or a Fibonacci retracement or extension level, you have added reason to believe this could well be a turning point and put an entry order in at this level to get taken in.

At the same time, you will want to consult your trading calendar to make sure you are not entering a trade near a significant Fundamental Announcement. Even though the MACD divergence may kick in soon, the Fundamental Announcement could cause a major spike in price and take out your stop.

So in summary, is MACD divergence a high probability Forex signal?

Answer: By itself NO!

How can MACD divergence be used safely?

Answer: Check to see if MACD divergence is seen on one or more higher time frame charts such as the 60 minute, 4 hour, or daily.

Then look for other Forex signals such as candle patterns, support or resistance levels, or Fibonacci retracement extension levels.

In other words, use MACD divergence as a confirmation Forex signal that you are going in the right direction rather than a stand-alone Forex signal.

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.