Forex Investment Market

Technical Analysis Chart : How And What To Use

2010-03-04T06:31:00.000-08:00

The trend is your best friend in any financial trading market, as they say, and using a technical analysis chart for trend based trading is a simple method that at the same time can be very successful. Many traders over complicate the markets, especially at the beginning of their trading career. In fact simple systems can be the most effective.

Most traders use candlestick charts for this purpose, because they are so clear. Bar charts can also be used if preferred. Line charts would not be used.

The first thing to consider is whether the market is rising or falling. This should be visible at a glance, especially if we check several time periods. Use an indicator like Bollinger Bands to make sure that a rising market is not overbought, or a falling market oversold. Once we have this information, which should just take a few seconds to verify, we can begin to draw trend lines on our technical analysis chart. Here's how.

First, draw a straight line through the highest highs and another through the lowest lows.

1. Bullish market

If the two lines are approximately parallel and heading upward, there is an upward trend. The two trend lines can be used as support and resistance lines, which means that we assume the price will remain within the area between the two lines while the trend continues.

So if the price hits the lower line, you could buy on the assumption that it would soon rise again. First of course you would check against another indicator such as the Bollinger Bands and perhaps check in another time period to make sure that there are no signs that the trend is ending.

Some forex traders would also open a trade to sell the currency pair when the price hits the upper line, on the assumption that a retracement is due. This bucks the trend so requires extra care, but can be a profitable strategy.

2. Bearish market

If the two lines are approximately parallel and heading downward, then you have the opposite situation. The trend is downward. Again the lines act as support and resistance lines. This time you would be acting in line with the trend by selling when the price hits the upper line. Buying when it hits the lower line would be bucking the trend in the hope of a retracement.

3. Stable market

If the two lines on the technical analysis chart are approximately parallel and horizontal, the market is relatively stable and there is no trend. You could still trade on the basis of the support and resistance lines but most traders using trend-based systems would wait for a new trend to form.

4. Converging prices

If the two lines are not parallel but drawing closer together so that they would meet at an imaginary point in the future, sooner or later the price will break out and head in one direction or the other. Either wait for the breakout or place conditional orders so that if the price breaks above the limit of the upper line you would buy, and if it breaks below the lower line you would sell.

5. Diverging prices

If the two lines are not parallel but moving farther apart, this indicates that prices are becoming increasingly volatile. Most traders would stay out of this market.

Of course, financial trading is always risky and there are no guarantees. Always test systems thoroughly using the technical analysis chart in a demo account before risking any real money.

Foreign Exchange Trade: 5 Top Tips

2010-03-02T08:45:00.000-08:00

The foreign exchange trade market is an exciting place to invest and speculate. Large sums can be made in a short time, although for most traders, even the successful ones, the reality is a little different because of the need to take account of the high risk. So how should a trader act to put themselves on the right side of the equation? Here are our top tips for success in foreign exchange trading.

1. Be realistic

Anybody who gets into forex trading hoping to get rich quick is going to be disappointed. If you go out for maximum leverage on the smallest possible account, you are heading for big losses sooner or later. Forex traders do not get rich quick: they either make money slowly or they lose. We know which option we would pick!

2. Have faith in your system

It is essential to have confidence in your foreign exchange trading system, enough to see it through any bad patches. However, good systems take some finding and testing. Even if a system works for somebody else, you cannot expect to have faith in it until you have thoroughly tested it for yourself. So do not skip this step.

Once you are sure of the long term success of your system, stick with it and do not abandon it just because the market does not act the way you expect all of the time. Sometimes of course there are major shifts in the market and prices may behave differently for a while. If you think that is happening, switch to demo for a while. Don't start on a new system, it would be the worst possible time.

3. If in doubt, stay out

This is one of the catchphrases of the forex market - and probably other financial markets too. It is easy to become impatient when waiting for the trading signals to be just right, especially if we have not seen a trading opportunity in a while. However, this is not a reason for opening a trade too soon. Forex trading is exciting at times and boring at others - the only way to profit is to wait it out.

4. But do not wait too long

Hesitating when the signals are right is almost as bad as jumping in too early. You will be losing some of your profit on each trade if you constantly hover wondering whether or not to act. Your plan should be clear in terms of which charts and indicators you use to check your signal. Having done that, do not start consulting a lot of technical tools. It is time to act.

5. No regrets

Some trades lose and some trades win. Some make profits but not as much as they could have made if only ... (you had closed sooner/closed later/got in earlier etc). Unless you are in the testing process where different variables could make a difference to your final trading system, this kind of 'what if' thinking is a waste of time. No, it's worse than that. It is positively dangerous because it will distract you from the next opportunity and possibly lead you to start tweaking your system for no reason.

When a trade is closed, it is closed. There is nothing to do but record the results on your spreadsheet and move on to the next foreign exchange trade.

Technical Analysis Tools : Your Best Trading Friend?

2010-03-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

The trend is your best friend, as the forex saying goes, and if you want to know when a trend is beginning so that you can jump on and profit from it, you will need technical analysis tools.

Of course, many traders will point out that it is fundamental factors, not technical factors, that drive the currency market. Events like a rise in interest rates or an announcement of a major power's Gross Domestic Product will cause an immediate effect and possibly also a longer term movement. So trends in currency price movements always have fundamental factors at the base.

Nevertheless, most of us are not in a position to make predictions of how the next major financial announcement will go and what will be its effect on the market. Forex traders working from home are not, for the most part, economic or financial analysts. So instead, we use technical analysis tools to show us in clear terms what has been happening in the market recently.

Identifying trends is a simple way to create a profitable forex trading system. All we have to do is see which way the price of a certain currency pair is moving and then buy or sell in order to profit from the movement. That assumes, of course, that the recent movement is a genuine trend that will continue. If it turns out to be just a fluctuation that quickly reverses, we will lose money. So how do we tell the difference?

One of the simplest ways is to draw trend lines on a candlestick chart. This means drawing lines through the highest highs and the lowest lows in a price movement that appears clear from the candlesticks. If the two lines are roughly parallel, this indicates a trend.

If they converge, coming together as if to meet at a point in the future, then this indicates that a breakout is likely, other things being equal. If they diverge, the market is probably too unpredictable for most trend traders to want to get involved.

Once a trading signal has been established in this way, we need to cross check the signal. For this purpose we can use the candlestick chart for a different time period. The normal practice here is to use a longer time period for the cross check, for example one hour if the first lines were drawn on a 15 minute chart, or a full day if the lines were drawn on an hourly chart.

We can also use indicators such as the MACD crossover. These are easily consulted in most broker software systems. Checking signals against technical analysis tools like this can help us weed out the profitable from the unprofitable trades and increase our forex trading profits exponentially.

Forex Signal Services : Making Trading Easy

2010-02-28T02:56:00.000-08:00

Signing up with a good forex signal service can make successful forex trading very easy. You will be told when to trade based on somebody else's system that has proved profitable for them. This can cut out a lot of work for you. You do not have to spend months and years analyzing the currency market and developing your own system.

Often times, the forex signal service will send you advice on stop losses and profit aims, and even the size of your position. In this situation all you need to do is follow the instructions and provided the service is a good one, you should make money. In fact, it is a lot like using a forex robot except that you are in full control all of the time.

However, it is important to understand what you are getting when you sign up for forex signals. You should check ahead of time about the likely risk and success rate of their system. All currency trading systems have losses from time to time and it is important that you understand what these are likely to be. That way, you can work out your risk and the amount of backup funds that you will need to support your trading style.

Another thing to consider when you sign up with a signal service is whether you actually will be able to place the trades. There are two questions here.

The first is practical. Do you have access to a computer and internet connection often enough that you can place a trade whenever you receive the alert? If you are relying on an iPhone or similar technology, can you actually access all of the services of your broker's trading platform that way? Have you tried placing a trade, setting a stop loss etc? It is easy to assume that anything that accesses the internet will allow us to trade, but that is not always the case.

The second question is psychological. Sometimes we may receive an alert and find that it suggests risking more than we normally would, or follows right on the heels of another trade that made a loss. Would you be able to stick with the system and go ahead? Or say a signal arrives at a time when you are already under stress for some reason completely unrelated to your trading, such as a family problem. Would you be able to go ahead and trade calmly?

If the answer to these questions is no, then you may not be in a position to make the best use of a forex signal service. Discipline is one of the most important attributes of a forex trader and it is important to cultivate that before you commit to something like forex signals.

However, if you are already trading and have faced up to these questions already, but you are having trouble finding a profitable system to operate, then a forex signal service might be the ideal way to make money as easily as possible.

Successful Currency Trading Strategies

2010-02-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

Anybody who wants to be successful with forex trading needs to be very clear about their currency trading strategies. And when I say 'successful' here, I don't only mean people who make lots of money but anybody who makes any kind of profit overall, because provided the system and strategies are sound, a small profit can always be scaled up.

A forex trader's strategies should be written down in the form of a plan. It is not sufficient to carry them around in your head because it is too easy to change the rules any time you feel like it. They need to be written down and placed on the desk in front of you and reviewed constantly.

The currency trading strategies that need to be written into this plan include all aspects of the forex system that is used. This includes the signal(s) to open a trade, the position size, the stop loss and the profit target when you will close a successful trade. Depending on your system, these may be the same for every trade or they may vary according to the signal. If they vary, be sure to write down exactly what is different and under what conditions.

In addition, it is important to have goals for your forex trading. Here I'm not talking about profit targets in monetary terms. Most beginners and some experienced traders do set themselves a monetary target such as $x in 3 months, doubling their funds every 6 months, or whatever, but these targets are not true goals and often, they are counterproductive.

Yes, we hear a lot about the importance of goal setting but having that type of financial goal over a certain time can actually harm your trading. It can have the opposite effect and make you lose money. The reason being the time pressure. This adds more stress to forex trading which, less face it, is high enough already.

Imagine a situation where you have set a target of doubling your money every 6 months. Say 5 months has passed and you are not close to that goal. You have made profits, but you have only half of your target. You are clearly not going to reach your goal unless you start taking huge risks - risks that might wipe out all the profits you have made so far and perhaps deplete all of your funds.

In forex trading, it is important to accept that any profit is good profit, and not set yourself up for failure by specifying that you have to make a certain amount in a certain time. Instead, set goals that are broad. For example, set a goal that you want to master the use of a certain indicator within the next 2 months, or read and test the system described in a certain book or ebook. When you set this type of goal, your currency trading strategies are much more likely to lead you to success. Small steps to achieve big gains!

Scalper Expert Advisor : Caution!

2010-02-23T10:05:00.000-08:00

Using a scalper expert advisor can be a very profitable way to trade the currency markets but it also carries a good deal of risk. Some people seem to make a lot of money this way while others lose their shirts. So what makes the difference and how can you stack the odds in your favour when you are using a scalper expert advisor?

1. Choose your broker carefully

It is important to get the right broker when you are using a scalper expert advisor. Many brokers do not like scalping strategies and particularly object to the fast profits that can be made with an EA.

Normally these brokers will be market makers who will carry the risk of a trade themselves until they can match it in the ECN. If the EA moves in and out of the market very fast, they do not have a chance to cover their risk, and so you profit will be their loss. As you can imagine, if you are very successful they will soon decide that they do not want your business.

Brokers who have a place in the ECN and do not have to rely on a third party are more likely to be happy to accept your robot's scalping strategies. To find an amenable broker either ask the developers of your EA or look for recommendations from other scalping traders in forex forums.

2. Manage your risk

Many people new to forex trading assume that because scalping strategies rely on many small trades, they are less risky than systems relying on a higher profit per trade. This is not true at all. Scalping is just as risky as any other form of forex trading. Risk management is essential if you do not want to be wiped out of the game.

For the same reason it is important not to overstretch in terms of leverage. Certainly, do not choose a broker by looking for the one that gives you the highest leverage, unless you are very sure of the drawdown of your system and that you can cover it.

The problem with a high leverage means that triggering a stop loss will mean a greater loss. Sure, the profits are higher too, but when you go through a bad patch you can run through your funds very quickly. It is important that your account can take the battering. It is much more likely to be able to do that if you have kept your risk and your leverage low.

3. Understand your EA

It is also important to understand what your scalper expert advisor is doing. This means having realistic expectations about things like the number of times it will trade in a week, how much on average it will make on a successful trade, how much it will lose on an unsuccessful trade, what percentage of trades are successful, etc.

All of this helps you to know what you can expect in terms of your bottom line in the long term and what will be the optimum level of risk. When it comes to risk, by the way, always assume that the worst case scenario is at least twice as bad as the worst patch that you have seen.

You cannot rely on information from the developers or from other users in this respect. This is not a matter of trust, it is just that different variables will apply to each individual. So do your own back testing and demo testing before you start to use a scalper expert advisor live.

Profitable Candlestick Trading

2010-02-22T11:30:00.000-08:00

Profitable candlestick trading is a great way to make money from forex trading. It follows the 'keep it simple' rule which many traders consider to be the first golden rule of currency trading. You do not have to understand a lot of maths or do any complicated analysis.

Simple candlestick trading is often known as price action trading. This type of analysis relies only upon the price chart itself for trading signals. It does not involve use of any indicators based on moving averages such as MACD or stochastic indicator.

Many forex trading systems are built around these indicators and they may be successful in many cases, but the fact remains that they are lagging indicators. This means that they describe what was happening in the market in the past, not now. Profitable candlestick trading is based upon looking at the most recent markers possible.

For this method, bar charts can be used, since they give the same information as candlesticks. However, most traders find the visual clarity of the candles makes it much simpler to look at the candlestick chart. In some cases you may draw trend lines or support and resistance lines, but sometimes a trading signal may be taken from just one or two candles.

A simple system may be based around following either a bullish market (rising price) or bearish market (falling price). In a bullish market you would open a trade to buy the currency pair, and in a bearish market you would open a trade to sell it. We will take the bullish market as an example.

In a bullish market you would expect to see a white (unfilled) candle. If your system uses green/red or blue/red candles, the candle would be either green or blue respectively. This means that the close price was higher than the opening price. In addition, you would expect the close price to be fairly close to the high: that is, within around the top third of the full range from the low to the high. In visual terms, this will mean that the candle has a short upper wick. In some cases of course there may be no wick at all.

That situation suggests that the next period will see a test or an improvement on that closing price. So while the next period may not close higher, the high of the next period is likely to be above that closing price, other things being equal. This is how a trading signal can be taken from just one candle.

Often however, a trader would check the signal before going ahead and opening a trade. You could do this by looking at a longer period or by requiring that the previous candle also reflected an upward price movement.

As you can see, this is a simple system that is very quick to apply. Speed can be important in short term trading where a few seconds spent checking lagging indicators could mean that you miss out on the profit potential.

If you want to put this system into practice, keep in mind that it is always best to practice your skills in a demo account before going live. A bullish candle does not guarantee that the price will go higher and there is always a possibility of loss in currency trading. So be sure that you know what you are doing and are comfortable with the system before using real money. That way you can reduce your risk with profitable candlestick trading.

Forex Spread : What Is It?

2010-02-21T01:31:00.000-08:00

To make money with forex trading it is necessary for a trader to understand forex spread. This is the main cost that most traders will have, so it is important to understand how it is calculated and how much difference it can make to your profits.

Spread is the difference between the bid and ask prices of a currency pair, or the difference between the price given by a market maker if a trader wants to sell the currency pair (the bid price) and the price the trader must pay if he wants to buy the pair (the ask price).

This is how most brokers make their money. To see how it works, let us take a simple example.

Imagine that a trader is working with the currency pair EUR/USD. The ask price might be 1.4323 and the bid price 1.4320. If the trader wants to buy the pair, he will pay 1.4323. If he buys at that price and then sells with no change in the market, he will get 1.4320, 3 pips less. So the broker will have made 3 pips on the transaction.

Obviously this is a very important consideration for a trader because in order to begin making money on any trade, he has to first cover the cost of the spread. Spreads can be anything up to about 5 pips depending on the broker and the currency pair. This is a factor that needs to be taken into consideration when deciding on a trading system. The spread must always be allowed for when working out any system, especially if you are backtesting a system. It is easy then to forget it, but the spread can make a huge difference to the accumulated profits over time.

Not surprisingly, brokers will try to compete on spread and therefore the rates for the more popular currency pairs can be relatively advantageous. However, spread is not the only factor to consider when choosing a broker or analyzing your costs. Some brokers that have very low spreads have other ways of making money that must be taken into consideration.

In some cases there may be a fee per trade. This can be fine if you tend to make a low number of very profitable trades, but it is not so good if you make many small trades. In that case you would probably be better off with a broker who charged a slightly higher forex spread but no fee per trade.

Expert Advisor Review : Advice

2010-02-18T11:12:00.000-08:00

My advice is to look at expert advisor review websites when you are considering buying one of these automated forex trading systems. If you are successful in finding and installing a good expert advisor then you are on your way to making some serious money with forex trading.

However, if you do not set it up right, or if you pick a bad one or just hit a bad point in the market, it can simply lose money for you. Of course you can avoid that to a large extent by using a demo account until you are sure that the robot is profitable. Most expert advisors come with a 2 month guarantee so you can test it out in demo for that time and get a refund if it does not prove profitable for you. However, you could waste a lot of time if you did that with one EA after another. So reviews can help you pick your way through the huge choice of EAs that you will find from a brief search.

One difficulty with expert advisor review websites is that some reviews do not tell you anything about the product that is not already on the developer's website. In other words, instead of doing their own review, these site owners have just taken some facts and copied out. They will probably say nothing negative about the robot and the page may read more like a sales letter than a genuine review.

A real expert advisor review should give you some indication of how suitable the robot is for beginners, how easy it is to install, and perhaps some hints and tips on getting the most out of it. This type of information can be very helpful. Sometimes, even if there were things that the reviewer did not like about the robot, you might want to go ahead because those negative points would not apply to you. Other times this kind of article can help you choose between several robots that might be reviewed side by side.

Another point to look for in an expert advisor review is the trading style. Some robots use a scalping system that will make many small trades in a short time. Others will open fewer trades, but leave them running longer. Both methods can be equally profitable but some people are more comfortable with one than the other.

For example, many people will complain about robots that do not trade often enough, as if more trades automatically meant more profits (it doesn't). However it is true that if you only have a very small balance in your account, you cannot risk much per trade and you may find it frustrating if your robot only makes one or two trades per week.

You may have to read between the lines a little bit to work out some of these points. However, you will be in a much better position to assess which is the best EA for you if you keep these tips in mind any time that you are reading an expert advisor review.

Free Forex Expert Advisor? : Think About It!

2010-02-17T12:13:00.000-08:00

Many forex trading beginners start out looking for a free forex expert advisor that will, they think, make money for them on autopilot without any problem at all. But people who think this way are likely to find their dreams have no substance in reality. The reality of the forex market is that nothing is that easy and anybody trying to cut corners to that extent is likely to come down to earth with a crash.

Sure, you can find a free forex expert advisor: that is, a forex robot developed on the Metatrader 4 platform. Free EAs do exist. But they cost time and money to develop, so it is unlikely that most developers would release a good one for free.

Think about it. There are probably four reasons why a person might develop an expert advisor:

1. The person has a great trading system and they want to automate it so they can make millions. In this case, they are likely to want to keep the resulting EA to themselves.

2. The person has a good trading system, they want to automate it and make money from selling it. This is an EA that you would have to pay for.

3. The person is more interested than developing software than trading. They might create an EA and give it away for free, but it might not be based on a good trading system. This one could lose you a ton of money.

4. The person has something to sell in the forex world. This might be a training course or a upgrade to their free EA. They give you the free EA to draw you in to their sales funnel so that they can keep on emailing you about their services.

So which is likely to be the best? Probably number 4 if you are not able to pay anything at all for your EA. However, this EA will probably not be built from the developer's best system, because he is hoping to sell that to you later.

Another thing to consider is how much support you will get. Forex EAs are notoriously difficult to set up. Somebody who is giving away their software is unlikely to have the time to provide support for it.

Expert advisors are so variable that it may well be true that a good free robot is better than a bad paid robot. But then as you probably know, it is better not to trade at all than to use a bad robot. Clearly, the free forex robots that are available online will probably not be as effective as the best of the robots that you pay for. Since most of these come with a money back guarantee and you can use them in demo mode while you try them out, there is no risk, so why not just go buy one? Anybody who is serious about making money with forex trading would probably not choose a free forex expert advisor.

Make Money Online From Home : Forex Trading

2010-02-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

One of the most popular ways to make money online from home is forex trading. Since the world of finance opened up to the average person with the rise of the internet, there are more and more people getting involved.

So what is forex trading? Forex, FX or 4X are all short forms of 'foreign exchange', which means the buying and selling of currencies. Of course, if you want to get some foreign currency you have to exchange your own or another currency for it.

If you have ever done this for the purpose of foreign travel, you will know that the exchange rate is constantly changing depending on the relative values of the two currencies - the one that you are buying and the one that you are selling. If you change money back after your trip, you may end up making a profit on it, if the exchange rate went your way.

So from there you can easily understand how forex trading works. You buy (or commit to buy) a currency that you think will rise in value, then sit back and relax until it is time to trade out with a good profit. That is the idea, anyway. Of course it is not that easy. You cannot just make a guess. The prices can go the wrong way and then you lose.

So how can you know whether a certain currency will go up or down in value? Of course, this is the million dollar question. Nobody can predict the fluctuations in currency prices with 100% accuracy. The market is just too huge and volatile, with too many contributing factors.

The forces that drive changes in currency prices are economic ones. Anything like a rise in interest rates, an improvement in the GDP, higher retail sales or employment rates is a sign that a country has a strong economy. The big investment houses will want to invest in that country, so its currency will be in demand and the chances are good that its currency will strengthen.

However, these economic factors are hard to predict unless you have a deep interest in international economics and political finance. Fortunately, there are other ways. Most traders do not even try to analyze the market in economic terms (this is called fundamental analysis). Instead they rely mainly on technical analysis.

Technical analysis is based on charts that show whether a certain currency pair has been moving up or down lately, with all the fluctuations over many different time periods from one minute to one day. These are provided by most forex brokers. On top of this, your broker will normally offer mathematical indicators which plot other factors that may help you to assess trends, such as moving averages.

This may sound complex but most of the work is done for you. The skill lies in learning or constructing a system to use with the charts and applying it with consistency and discipline. If you are a visual-oriented person who is comfortable with figures and can generally stick to what you resolve to do, then you have a good chance of learning to make money online from home with forex trading.

Forex Rebellion : Product Review

2010-02-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

This Forex Rebellion review takes a look at the new system introduced by Russ Horn in late 2009. Russ Horn is a former T shirt printer who says that even a beginner can learn his system in 25 minutes. So, what is Forex Rebellion and does it really work? Are users actually making money with Forex Rebellion?

What's In The Box?

So what is Forex Rebellion? Let's be clear from the start, this is NOT another robot but it does have an automated component. Let me explain:

This is a manual trading system that identifies trades with a high probability of success. But you also get a piece of software called a 'trading assistant' which will alert you when conditions are favourable for a trade according to the system. You then decide whether to go ahead and trade or not.

This means you are in complete control of your trades, but at the same time, you do not have to waste your life scanning the markets 24 hours a day. It's the best of both worlds. It also means that you can cover more than one currency pair.

As well as the trading assistant, you get over 40 videos showing how the system works. This includes footage of Russ trading the system live on the real market. It also includes different kinds of situations that may arise in the market and how to deal with them.

You also get special chart indicators that have been developed specifically for the Forex Rebellion system. You will not find these indicators anywhere else but they come free with this system. Other systems leave you to tweak standard indicators as best you can - Forex Rebellion serves them up to you on a plate.

Plus of course, you get a manual. This is great for referring back to, after you watched the videos. Or if you are the kind of person who prefers to learn from the written word, you will find the system very well explained in the manual. (But it is best to watch the videos at least once, especially the bonus videos. There's information and strategies there that are not in the manual.)

The System

This is a short term trading system (day trading) which will suit anybody whose time on the computer is limited. It can be used in any time zone and on any currency pair. Since forex is a 24 hour market, people with a regular job can use this in the evenings or early mornings, while a stay at home parent could trade while the kids are at school. It's very flexible.

Another advantage of this kind of flexibility is that the market will not be saturated with traders using the same system at the same time. Forex Rebellion traders will be dispersed through different time zones and different currency pairs.

However, when you are starting out with the system it is best to stick with one currency pair. EUR/USD will be easiest to begin with, because of the high volume of trades. You also have a choice of time frames and we recommend starting with one hour.

How To Use The Videos

40 videos is a lot! And as for the claim that you can learn this system in 25 minutes - well, you would be missing a lot if you only spent 25 minutes on this. But it is a simple system that is quick to learn.

While some people will happily watch the whole video series right through from start to finish, for beginners that could be confusing. So instead, a great way to use this type of video training is to sign up for a broker demo account and actually follow along with what Russ Horn is doing. Using a demo account means that you do not have to risk any money.

At the same time, take brief notes of what is included in each video. This makes it way easier to find what you want if you want to come back and watch a strategy again.

User Feedback

People are raving about Forex Rebellion! You will see plenty of testimonials from users on the site, but the place to look for genuine impartial feedback is the forex forums. Comments there are extremely positive, with plenty of 5 star reviews.

We didn't really find any negatives except people recommending that you start small - start in demo to find your feet, pay attention to the training on risk management and stop losses, and don't start right out with 10 different currency pairs all at once. It's just common sense.

Some users do go live right away but this would only be appropriate for experienced traders who can see that the system is going to work from the videos. Beginners need to get accustomed to the mechanics of trading and this is best done in a demo account where a mistake will not cost you anything.

Guarantee

You have a guaranteed refund here if you are not happy with this system. You have up to 60 days to test it out.

In order to make this a truly risk free 60 days, it is best to use a demo account. For newbies who do not already have a broker, there is a special link to a recommended broker in the download area. With this service (and most others) you can trade in demo mode at first until you are completely confident in the system and your trading abilities.

Summary

There is a PPS that Russ Horn has put on the site: "Fate brought you here and fate can take you to a whole new level in the Forex Trading niche. I've done all I can to help you find true success. The rest is up to you."

We could say the same about this Forex Rebellion review. Destiny ... or something ... has brought you here and you can be thankful, because you have actually come across a real money making forex system among all of the dubious forex strategies out there. This is highly recommended and I hesitate to say this but I sincerely believe if you can't make money with this, you shouldn't be trading.

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Forex Seminar: What To Expect

2010-02-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

There are forex seminar advertisements all over the internet, on TV and even in magazines. They tempt you to sign up with the hint of huge profits to be made from forex if you just know how to trade in the right way. But will you learn anything useful from a forex seminar, or are they just a big waste of time and money?

The first thing to keep in mind is that one forex seminar can be very different than another. Whatever we say here about this type of forex training course will not apply to all seminars. As with most things in the world, some are better than others.

There are also seminars for different levels of trader. Those aimed at beginners will spend a lot of time covering the basics. If you are an experienced trader you may learn very little or even nothing that is new to you. On the other hand, if you are a beginner and you go to an event that is designed for active traders, you could be completely lost. Even if the information is great, you might not understand enough to gain any benefit from it.

Sometimes you will see a free forex seminar advertised. These can be interesting, but it is important to understand that the company that runs such a seminar needs to cover the costs in one way or another. So you can expect that they will either provide only very basic information for free and then want you to sign up for some kind of paid training program, or they will be promoting books, software or brokerage services. People are often drawn in to spend more than they planned at these events, so watch out.

A good forex seminar will give you practical training in forex trading that you can actually use right away. This should include a workable forex system that you can try out for yourself in demo. They may give you hands on experience of a demo account during the course. Just be aware that if they have you actually sign up for a broker account, this might not be the best broker for your needs. Often they will be earning commission from any fees or spread that you pay the broker later.

Another question to ask is whether there is any ongoing support after the day is over. This is more likely for higher end courses, but even if they do not offer one on one support, there may be a forum for seminar graduates where you can discuss your experiences with others who have taken the same course. This can be very useful if you have trouble putting into practice what you learned.

It is important to remember that even the best trading courses are only aiming to teach you to trade forex. They will not make money for you directly. You have to put into practice what you have learned. If you understand this and allow yourself plenty of time for developing your trading skills, you may be in a good position to benefit from forex training. But if you turn up expecting to pay your entrance fee and be making thousands of dollars the next day on autopilot, you will probably be disappointed in the forex seminar.

Forex Trading Platforms: How To Choose

2010-02-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

Forex trading platforms are used by every player in the market, from brokers through professional traders to the newest of beginners. If you want to trade forex you will be working online and that means accessing the market through some kind of software. The choice is important and it is not always obvious which solution will work for any particular situation. Here are some points to keep in mind.

Forex Trading Platforms For Brokers

Brokers need reliable software that will interface with their clients and the market. The ideal solution in most companies' eyes is a custom built platform, but this does not necessarily have to be written from scratch. There are several packages these days that are very adaptable but where the basics are done for you. This can save a lot of programming time and, therefore, money.

Probably the first thing to consider when designing broker trading platforms is ease of use. Traders want something that is user friendly and intuitive. Most people hate having to read a manual; they prefer to learn by trial and error. This means you have to allow for clients to explore and try things out without having the system crash on them because they did not do everything in just the right way.

It is also important that the package is flexible, if you did not have it custom built. Your company's software must have a different look and feel to anybody else's if you want to brand yourselves as a professional concern.

Forex Trading Platforms For Traders

As a trader, you have a very wide choice of brokers and their trading platform will be one of the important factors in making a decision. It is important that it is easy to use and provides clear information in a readily accessible way.

If you are relying on the broker trading platform for your technical analysis rather than subscribing to a third party charting service, it is important to check out the charts and indicators very thoroughly. You can usually do this best by opening a demo account. Be sure that the platform provides all of the indicators that you might need, not only for your current forex trading system but for any others that you might be likely to develop or use in the future. The relationship with a broker is an important one and may continue for many years, so it is best to get it right from the start.

Many traders these days use automated forex systems or robots to trade for them on autopilot. Some are commercially available and others are custom built for an individual trader's forex system. Many of these robots (called expert advisors) are built on the Metatrader 4 platform. They then need to communicate with a broker's API or interface. Some broker platforms are compatible and some are not, so again, if you are planning to use any kind of automation either now or in the future, the question of having compatible forex trading platforms will be important.

Forex Trading Signals: Fundamental Or Technical?

2010-02-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

The type of forex trading signals that you need will depend upon one thing above all else: which type of forex market analysis you prefer to use. The two types are fundamental analysis, which is based around economic performance indicators and technical analysis, which relies upon charts and mathematical indicators.

Which is best? It is a difficult question, and one that forex traders do not always agree on. Both can provide useful forex trading signals. It is true that discussion on the internet tends to center around systems based on technical analysis but that does not necessarily mean that these systems are more successful. They are probably easier for the home trader to access, and certainly easier for most people to understand without the need to know a lot about economics or international affairs.

Supporters of fundamental analysis will argue that it is the fundamental factors like interest rate changes, GDP, sales and employment figures, etc, that drive the currency markets and therefore the only reliable forex trading signals are based on these economic factors. Some even say that technical analysts are just studying the past, imagining patterns from out of chaos, and cannot possibly hope to predict any future price movements.

However, this does not explain the number of successful traders who base their forex trading signals and systems on trends identified with technical analysis tools. Certainly for the beginner, a good grounding in charts and indicators is vital.

So how can we base predictions upon a chart that only records the price movements of the recent past? It may help if to think of a currency price as if it had some of the properties of elastic. It can stretch out to certain limits, and then it will bounce back. It may not bounce back to exactly where it was before; it could stop short or go further, but it will not keep on moving in the same direction forever. Technical analysis tools can give us an idea of the strength of a trend so that we can predict how far the price will stretch and when it might turn back.

At the same time, it is certainly true that any economic report or announcement will have an effect on the market. Usually there is a lot of volatility around the time of any forex news. To some extent this is predictable, since most economic reports are released at pre arranged times. This means that even traders who are fully committed to technical analysis for their forex trading signals need to be aware of the forex news calendar, just so that they can stay out of the market when a news release is due.

Free Expert Advisor Advice!

2010-02-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

The main question in the mind of anybody looking for a free expert advisor is going to be whether there is one that really works. There are many expert advisors available, in fact people are developing them every day. Sometimes they keep them to themselves, sometimes they sell them and sometimes they let them loose on the internet for free.

One thing to think about is why would anybody give away a successful automated forex system. Are people really going to be that generous when they have spent a lot of time and skill developing it? Forex traders are typically people who are very conscious of the value of an investment.

This means that usually a free expert advisor comes from one of two situations. The first possibility is that it was developed by somebody who is interested in the software itself. They may also be a trader but not necessarily a successful one. They will release a robot in the hope that it may help someone, or because they want experienced traders to test it. There is not necessarily going to be a successful trading system behind this type of free EA.

The second possibility is where somebody is giving you a free piece of software as a marketing strategy. It's a little like the free samples that many businesses use to attract new customers. Here, the software will probably be useful. If it was not, it would fail in its purpose of making you trust the guy who gave it to you. The point to remember is that he has something bigger, better and more expensive that he is going to try to sell to you later.

It is a good idea to know something about the system behind the software before you start using it. Even if you only plan to use it in demo mode, you will be spending time on it, and time is valuable. In most cases when EAs are available for sale, the developers will not reveal much about the system that it is based on, for fear of competition. However, with a free expert advisor this might not be the case. You may be able to discover how the system works and save time by looking at back tests. This could save some time.

Using a free EA can be a gamble. Approach them with caution. In most cases, it is worth paying a few dollars for something that has a better chance of making money for you.

Forex Forum with Caution!

2010-02-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

A forex forum can be a very valuable asset to the trader who knows how to make good use of the facility. Forums can seem like great places for discussing systems and getting advice. But can you trust what you are told? Are you really going to get information that is helpful, or are you just wasting your time?

The word forum comes from the big open square in the middle of Roman cities where citizens would gather to hear the news and discuss important current issues. Formerly known as bulletin boards or message boards, online forex forums are sites where traders can go to discuss issues related to forex trading. A few are restricted to paid members, but most of them are free and can be accessed by anybody who chooses to register a free account.

In an active and popular forum, there are usually several discussions underway. If you post a question or comment you can expect to receive a fast reply. The only problem with this is that you usually do not know whether the replies can be trusted.

Forum members may appear to be experts but they could be anybody at all. It is easy to hang around long enough to pick up the language, then start handing out advice to others. Some might be complete beginners. Is their advice really valuable to you?

Of course in some cases there may be indications that a person is well qualified to help you. For example, you can often see how long the person has been a member and how many posts they have made. Someone who has been an active member for a long time may be a better advisor that someone who just joined. Or so it seems. But what if that long standing member just likes hanging out in forums?

Even the best traders who are actively making money from forex can sometimes give conflicting advice. Traders have different attitudes, systems, strategies and priorities. Oftentimes they may take more of a risk than a beginner would be comfortable with. This means that it may not be possible for a beginner to follow what they suggest.

A forex forum is a useful place for certain types of discussion. For example, it can be great to get feedback from other traders who have used a particular product or service such as a broker or an automated trading system. You still have to keep in mind that different people have different abilities and expectations, of course. Just because somebody could not figure out how to use something, does not mean that anybody else would have a problem with it. Try to get a range of opinions and look for responses from people who are in a similar situation to your own, when checking out reviews on a forex forum.

FX Trading Defined

2010-02-10T06:01:00.000-08:00

FX trading is an abreviation of forex which in turn is short for foreign exchange or currency trading. So what is that exactly? Well, it is a kind of speculative investment a little like stock trading, but instead of buying and selling stocks and shares, FX trading involves buying and selling foreign currencies.

Like all speculative trading this is a risky type of investment but it can also be very profitable. Professional traders can make a lot of money in just a few hours per day. However, you do not have to be a professional to get involved.

Currency trading is a worldwide market without a fixed trading floor. This means that it goes on in all time zones and trading takes place 24 hours a day during the business week. This has some advantages for anyone wanting to get involved from home, because it means that you can trade at any time of day or night that is convenient for you. Most FX trading is done via the internet which makes it accessible to almost anyone with a computer and high speed internet connection.

As the name 'foreign exchange' suggests, FX trading involves exchanging one currency for another. For this reason, traders talk in terms of currency pairs. An example of a currency pair would be the euro and US dollar, which is written EUR/USD. You would buy this pair (buy euros) if you thought that the euro was likely to rise in price against the dollar. This is called 'going long'. You would sell this pair (sell euros, buy dollars) if you thought that the euro was likely to fall against the dollar. This is called 'going short'.

EUR/USD is the most heavily traded pair, but currency trading is a huge market with trillions of dollars worth of deals made every day. Most of this trading involves the major currencies US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Swiss franc, or the Canadian, Australian or New Zealand dollars. Any combination of one of these currencies with the US dollar is known as a major pair. A combination of two currencies not including the US dollar is known as a cross pair.

The market is driven by economic forces such as interest rates or the GDP which mark the strength of a nation's economy. A strong economy usually means a strong currency. However, predictions of price changes are usually made on the basis of charts on which traders can identify trends in price movements. These charts are normally provided free by forex brokers.

Using the internet, traders can control their own account and make trades through the software on their broker's website. There is no need for phone calls to a broker these days. Of course, it is not always possible to predict price movements correctly and there is a risk that money will be lost. To minimize the effect of this, traders place stop orders so that if a trade goes against you, the trade will be closed before the loss is too great.

Brokers offer many services including demo accounts where you can try forex trading for yourself without risking any real money. This is the way to start for any new trader. When you are ready to trade for real, many brokers will accept a very small minimum investment. Brokers are keen to attract more home based traders and this makes it very easy to get started with FX trading.

How To Read A Candlestick Chart

2010-02-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

If you do not yet know how to read a candlestick chart, do not be concerned. Everybody has to start sometime, and candlestick analysis is really very simple. The charts are easy to read at a glance. In fact, it is one of the simplest methods of financial trading analysis. Not surprisingly, it is also the most popular type of financial trading chart.

You may see these charts referred to as Japanese candlestick charts, and that is because they were invented by a Japanese commodity trader named Homma in the 18th century. Before that date, traders had relied only upon simple line charts that tracked only the closing prices. Bar charts were developed to show the open, high and low as well as the close, but Homma's candlesticks did the same thing in a much more visual way.

Homma was a phenomenally successful trader and this meant that his candlestick analysis chart was soon copied by other traders in Japan. Charles Dow, who founded the Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones Company, brought it over to the USA early in the 20th century.

The regular type of candlestick consists of a block which may be shaded, colored or blank, plus two vertical lines protruding from the top and bottom of the body, known as shadows or wicks.

Each candle represents one time period. Generally you can set this for various options, e.g. one minute, 15 minutes, one hour, one day.

The top of the upper wick is the high for the period. The bottom of the lower wick is the low.

The top and bottom of the candle body show the opening and closing prices (either way around). Traditionally, the candle would be hollow (i.e. white) if the price rose during the period, and filled (black or any color) if it fell. However, some charts now color all of the candles, so that an upward candle is green or blue and a downward candle is red. This sounds confusing but if you just use one charting service, you will soon get accustomed to the way that they show the candles.

Of course, sometimes the open, high, low and close are not all different prices. For example the price might go up and down during the period but then close at the same as the opening price. In this case there is no visible candle body, just a cross, with the upper and lower wicks crossed by a horizontal line at the open/close level. This is called a Doji pattern.

Alternatively, you may see candles that are all body and no wick. In this case, the price moved in one direction from open to close, without exceeding either the opening or the closing price. This is called a marubozu pattern.

The colors and thick bodies of the candlestick chart make it easy to read, cutting down on errors. This is crucial in the fast moving trading environment. Knowing how to read a candlestick chart is important for any trader.

Currency Trading Account: 5 Things To Consider

2010-02-09T06:10:00.000-08:00

Opening a currency trading account is a very important step in becoming a successful forex trader. Some people new to forex trading assume that all brokers are the same and open an account with the first one that they find. This is a mistake. There are many points to consider before you sign up with a forex broker.

1. Regulation

Forex brokers may be based in any country in the world. Some countries have tight financial laws while others do not. It is important to check whether the broker you are considering is regulated under the laws of their country, and what those laws actually mean for you. Is the company a member of any regulatory bodies and if so, do they offer you any protection? What would happen to the money in your currency trading account if the company collapsed?

2. Account size

Brokers tend to market their services at a certain level in terms of account size. Some only offer standard accounts with a minimum of $10,000 investment or more. However, more and more brokers these days are targeting their services at the smaller time home investor. In a few cases the minimum investment is less than $100.

The important factor here is to go with a broker who wants clients like you. Do not invest more than you can afford just to get in with a high level broker. There is always a risk that you will lose whatever is in the account. It is better to go with a broker who tailors their services to suit clients at your level.

3. Services

You will want to use a demo account in the first stages of trading so check that this is available and that it works in the same way as the live account.

You will also want to check the charting services that are available. What you need will depend on your trading system, but you can expect brokers to provide candlestick charts as well as the option of bar and line charts, and several indiators including the Stochastic, Bollinger Bands and MACD.

4. Leverage

Leverage varies with different brokers. The most common levels are 100 times or 200 times, meaning that to control a position size of $10,000 you would commit $100 (100 times leverage) or $50 (200 times). Occasionally, 400 times leverage is offered.

High leverage means a greater potential return but also greater risk. If you have a very small balance you may be willing to risk losing it for the chance of greater returns if you are successful, but otherwise it is usually better to keep the leverage relatively low.

In some cases, brokers will offer different levels of leverage to different clients, depending on their balance and other factors such as their trading history.

5. Security

Your money is accessible via the broker's website so it is important that they have high levels of security. This can be hard to assess so you may want to check for user experiences in forex forums or ask questions of the broker through their support center. Also, of course, make your password as secure as possible by including upper and lower case letters plus numbers and symbols.

There are many forex brokers available and the number is growing. The choice can be confusing, but it is important. If you take account of all of these factors, you will be in a good position to find the best broker for your currency trading account.

Forex Mini v Micro Account?

2010-02-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

Forex mini or micro accounts are the the most popular choice for new forex traders, but what is the difference between them and which is best for your situation? In this article we will look at how much money you need to invest in each type of account in order to get the best from them.

So what are the different types of forex trading account? First let's take the standard account, which has the highest minimum investment. Most brokers ask for at least $10,000 and with some you need $50,000 to open an account. The standard lot size is 100,000 currency units. So with leverage of 100 times you would be putting up 1,000 currency units per lot.

It's a lot of money (excuse the pun) and it comes as a relief to most traders to know that they can have a mini account with one tenth the position size, ie requiring 100 currency units to control a lot size of 10,000 units. The forex micro account is one tenth of the size of the mini, with a lot size of 1,000 units that you could control with just 10 currency units assuming 100 times leverage.

So why is the standard lot size so big? Years ago, before the rise of the internet, forex trading was done through dealing desks. Most trading was in the hands of the large financial institutions such as banks. It was possible for private individuals to get involved, but they had to phone a broker to give their instructions. The time cost of this meant that brokers would only consider taking on clients with a substantial amount to invest.

However, when brokers began transferring their services onto the internet, the costs were slashed almost at once. It was no longer necessary to have a staff of dealers answering a bank of telephones. Traders could control their own accounts from their own homes or offices, by logging on to the brokers' website.

This means that it is now cost effective for brokers to offer much lower lot sizes and therefore much less of a minimum investment. Brokers leapt at this opportunity to attract a huge number of new clients, and the forex mini account was born, soon to be followed by the micro.

The minimum investment varies with the broker. Scaling down from the standard lot size you might expect the minimum for a mini forex account to be $1,000 to $5,000. In fact, many brokers will let you start with less, but it is better to have that kind of sum if you plan to trade mini lots. If you have less than $1,000 to invest in your trading, it would probably be better to start with a micro account.

There is something else to consider too. Taking the example that we gave earlier with 100 times leverage and assuming that the currency unit in question is the US dollar, if you open a forex mini account you will be dealing in lots of $10,000, requiring you to put up $100 for each trade. To many people that can seem like a lot of money. Remember, forex trading is very risky and your trades will not always be profitable. Some losses are inevitable. Are you comfortable with committing $100 to every trade?

If not, then a micro account might suit you better, at least at first, even if you have more than the minimum required to open a forex mini account.

Currency Trading Tips: Top 3

2010-02-07T02:36:00.000-08:00

There are many currency trading tips available on the internet. A lot of them seem obvious when you read them but in fact are often overlooked by most currency traders. Here are our top 3 lesser known tips. All of them have the power to seriously improve your trading performance.

1. Cross check your trading signals

Many systems mention the importance of cross checking your trading signals against another time chart, but it is amazing how many traders go ahead and open a trade without bothering to do this. Yes, it adds a few extra seconds onto your analysis time. Yes, the price may change while you do this. In some cases you may miss out on a pip or two. But a lot of the time, that second chart will save you from a bad trade, so it is worth doing.

The usual method is to start with a shorter time chart and then cross check against the longer. For example, if your system is based on a 5 minute chart you would check with 15 minutes to 1 hour. If your system is based on the 1 hour chart you would check against the daily chart.

In addition, it is worth taking a look at even longer term charts from time to time, not for signals but just to get an eye for the patterns. If you are a scalper focusing in on very short trades, look at the daily chart from time to time. If you go for longer term trades, check over several months or even years.

2. Be disciplined

It is hard to stay out of the market when you have not had a clear trading signal for a while. The conditions are almost right - but not quite. This is where you really understand the meaning of discipline, and find out whether you have it.

Do not be tempted to trade when the signals are not right. You will almost certainly lose in the long run. You may also drift into a situation where you are trading more on luck or wishful thinking than on a system. Again, this is a sure fire loser.

Keep in mind that less can be more. If you make only one trade and it is a winner, you are in profit. If you make four trades and one is a winner, you probably have a loss.

3. Keep your goals realistic and your risk level low

It's good to have a dream and we would all love to have that dream house and dream car in the driveway, but focusing your thoughts on this too much is likely to lead to taking big risks. Realistically there is no way that the average Joe with a few thousand in their broker account can make a million in a couple of trades. For every person who gets rich quick with forex there are a hundred or more who lose their shirt because the high risk wiped them out.

By applying these currency trading tips you will have a much better chance of surviving for the long term, making steady money and achieving your dreams.

To learn more about getting rich in a controlled way then my latest ebook Quick and Easy Forex Trading is an essential guide and is on special offer now.

Automated Forex Trading Uncovered

2010-02-06T14:53:00.000-08:00

Automated forex trading involves software known as forex robots or expert advisors that trade automatically for you at any time of night or day. They do this by means of an API or application programming interface that allows them to receive price information from your broker's website and send instructions that will open and close trades on your account.

The most important aspect of automated forex trading software is the system that is behind it. Most forex trading systems can be automated so that a robot will recognize the trading signals and act on them. Depending on the system, this may be an easy job for an experienced programmer or it could be more complicated. But however good the programmer is, the system must be successful in the first place. Automating it will not change the system itself.

Usually, the program runs on a trader's own computer, which must be connected to the internet at all times that the robot might need to trade. For most people, this means having a dedicated computer that nobody else uses. While a trade is open it is important that the robot can connect to close it at the right moment, so you do not want to risk having one of the kids shut it down when they are finished playing.

At the same time, of course, if your computer normally shuts down or goes to sleep when it is left idle for a number of hours, you need to fix that so that it stays online. In Windows Vista, you can do this quite simply. Go to the Control Panel and click on Power Options (or System And Maintenance, then Power Options). There you can change your plan setting and set the sleep option to Never.

There are two ways to get an automated forex trading system. The first is to have your own successful system automated by a programmer, as we just described. Usually they would use a platform such as Metatrader 4. However, this option can have high costs unless you are able to do the programming yourself.

The second way to get a forex robot is to buy one that has been developed from a successful system by somebody else. There are plenty of these available to buy online. In fact, there are so many that it can be difficult to know which to choose.

One point needs to be made very clear. You cannot assume that the most expensive is necessarily going to be the best. The forex market can be very unpredictable and not all forex robots make money. So check reviews and forums for feedback before you invest in an automated forex trading system, and always start out in demo mode until you are sure that you have it working correctly.

The Best Time To Trade Currencies

2010-02-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

You can trade currencies at any time of the night or day. Monday through Friday, the forex market never sleeps. Nevertheless, there are some times of day that are better than others for most traders.

Most traders prefer to get involved in the market at the busiest times of day. This is especially true of day traders and scalpers. They are looking for plenty of activity so that they can get in and out of a market in a short time and still make a good profit. It is less important for longer term traders, but if you plan to use day trading strategies at all you will need to know the busiest times for forex trading.

So which time slot has the most forex trading activity? The answer, not surprisingly, is the 3 hour period when it is business hours on both of the top two currency trading floors. These are London and New York.

Although the British pound is not the most heavily traded currency (it comes fourth after the US dollar, euro and yen) the London market is the most active. Most of the major European financial powers including Switzerland and Germany are within one hour time difference of London.

New York is of course the home of the US dollar, and it is the second busiest currency trading center. Eastern Canada is in a similar time zone. Business hours here are 8 am to 4 pm EST. London is five hours ahead, so at 8 am EST it is 1 pm in London and the trading day has three hours left to run.

Therefore, the busiest forex trading hours are 8 am to 11 am EST, which is 1 pm to 4 pm British time. Of course, this is not the only time that you can trade. If you are unable to get online at those times, you will certainly find other opportunities. However, it could be good to get as close as you can. For example, if you live in the eastern USA and cannot trade during New York business hours because you have a regular job, consider trading in the early morning before you leave for work. The London market opens at 3 am EST.

On the other hand if you are in Britain or continental Europe and cannot get online during business hours in your own country, the evening will be better for you because New York will still be open. The New York market closes at 9 pm British time, or 8 pm Central European Time.

For anyone just starting out with forex trading, it is best if you can get online during some of the busier times of day. Quiet times are not easier or less stressful. In fact, during times when there is very little activity in the market, or if you are tempted to trade a less common currency pair, you will find that price movements can be much more unpredictable. Spikes happen with frightening regularity and can knock out your stop losses, leading to many small losses. It is better to stay with the crowd and trade currencies during busier times.

MACD Chart: What is it?

2010-02-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

The MACD chart is normally shown below the candlestick chart and provides useful forex trading indicators. MACD stands for Moving Average Convergence-Divergence. As the name suggests, it shows the convergence (coming together) or divergence (moving apart) of two exponential moving averages, one of which is fast and the other slow.

The indicator was invented by a New York stock analyst named Gerald Appel in the 1970s. Designed for the stock market, it nevertheless can be applied very well in other markets including forex.

On the MACD chart you will see two lines. One tracks the average of the difference between the two moving averages mentioned. Example settings for those might be 12 and 26 period moving averages. The other line on the chart is an exponential moving average of the MACD line itself, with a typical setting of 9. This is used as a signal line.

There are two simple ways to use the MACD. The first is to open a trade on the crossover of the two lines. If the faster line (the signal line) crosses the other from above, that can be treated as a signal to buy. If it crosses from below, that can be a signal to sell.

This can form the basis of a simple forex trading system which can be refined by checking the MACD in a second time frame. For example in day trading, look for the crossover on an hourly or 30 minute chart before moving in to the shorter time frame to make the trade. Then watch the higher time frame again for a signal that the trend is ending.

It is always best to consult the higher time frame first when trading on the basis of this indicator. This helps to prevent problems caused by trading against a longer term trend.

MACD can also be used to indicate overbought and oversold markets. When both lines are significantly above zero, the market can be said to be overbought. When they both fall significantly below zero, it is oversold.

The chart also includes a histogram giving a visual indication of convergence or divergence between the two lines. If the histogram is growing smaller, the lines are coming together. This can indicate that a crossover is approaching. The histogram is at zero when crossover occurs.

MACD is a lagging indicator and is prone to whipsaws when the market changes. Traders can be badly caught out. This is particularly true in the stock market where traders are relying less on the MACD these days. However, the MACD chart is still a useful provider of trading signals in many other markets, including forex.

Currency Broker Choices: What to Look For

2009-10-29T00:41:00.000-07:00

There is a very wide choice of currency broker companies online and when you are starting out in forex trading it can be difficult to find the best. We tend to be attracted by advertising, assuming they are all working in the same way. In fact this is not true. Foreign exchange brokers have very different business models which affect the way that they operate. In some cases, you may be surprised to hear that they could be working against their clients instead of for them.

Of course traditionally a broker carries out his clients' instructions, placing orders for them in the market. Originally brokers worked with telephone orders and simply placed the order for the best price that they could get through their dealing desk. These days, everything is done online so that clients put in their orders for a certain price. However, you do still need a broker who will connect to the market through their software platform.

Many brokers still work in the old way, placing orders for clients as they are instructed. These are often the brokers who run standard forex accounts with minimum investment of $10,000 and upward. But the internet has opened up forex trading to people with much lower investment funds. More recently, companies have come on the scene to cater for these smaller investors and they do not necessarily follow the pattern of traditional brokers. To cut costs, they usually do not have their own dealing desks and they may operate in some very different ways. This can have important consequences for your funds and how they are managed.

So let's take a look at the types of business model that you may come across in your search for a currency broker.

No Dealing Desk (NDD) Currency Brokers

NDD brokers work in a similar way to brokers with dealing desks, but they use a range of liquidity providers to actually match their clients' orders in the market. Competition between liquidity providers keeps the spread low, even though the broker usually increases the spread to cover their own costs and make some money.

Electronic Communications Network (ECN)

Forex brokers who use the ECN can access an online network where trades are filled. Many market makers work this way, as well as some brokers, banks and other large currency traders. Spread is usually low but you may be charged a fee per trade.

Market Makers

Market makers are not brokers in the true sense because instead of placing your order in the market they will match it themselves and then cover themselves against any loss by taking a position in the ECN or market that offsets their commitment to you either partially or fully. Market makers set their own prices, although of course these will be related to market prices. They often do not like clients to use scalping strategies because the very short term nature of these trades makes it hard for them to offset their risk. Some traders are happy to use market makers but others consider that they have a conflict of interest which may work against you as a trader.

Bucket Shops

Forex bucket shops are like bet takers in that they simply match your trade without necessarily taking any position in the market. They may not even have any connection into the real currency market. They win if you lose, so if you are successful they will probably close your account and return your funds. There is really no point in getting involved with a bucket shop unless you just want experience at very low levels of investment, and plan to lose money. They are illegal in some jurisdictions, and do not deserve to be described as a currency broker.

Best Expert Advisors: Reviews

2009-10-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

The best expert advisors can help you to make a lot of money with forex trading, while a bad EA can simply be a drain on your cash. So how do you tell them apart? Most people do this by looking at reviews.

However, online reviews can be a mixed blessing when it comes to something as important as an expert advisor. In case you do not know, an EA is a forex robot or automated currency trading system that runs on the popular platform known as Metatrader 4. Basically, you hook up the robot to your broker's software platform, set it to trade for you at the position size etc that you want, and go enjoy your day.

The problem of course comes if things go against you and it starts to lose your money instead of making it. This is always a danger with forex systems and even more when they are trading on autopilot so you may not be aware of what is happening. For that reason it is very important to run the EA on a demo account first until you have absolutely everything clear.

Reviews can certainly help you to narrow down your search when you are looking for a forex robot that will save you tons of time analyzing the market and placing your trades. However, there are two possible problems with reviews. One is that some reviews that you will find online are simply copied from the sales page for the EA itself and the person might not have used the robot at all. In this case you will usually see a very positive review with no indication of the possible downside. On the other hand a review from somebody who has actually used the software themselves can be very valuable because it will often give you hints and tips about how to get the most from it.

The other thing that you may come across is a strongly negative review from somebody who could not make the EA work for them. There may be all kinds of reasons for this which are not the fault of the EA itself. Often, either the person could not figure out how to set it up and became frustrated with it, or they set their risk too high. A common recommendation for risk is 2% per trade. The laws of statistics mean that setting your risk too high will always lead to a busted bank sooner or later, but people who do not realize this will often blame the system that they were using. This can lead to some very vitriolic comments and forum posts and of course it is never recognized that it is the fault of the trader. It must be the system's fault!

What you should be looking for when you search through reviews for the best expert advisors is a general consensus, a balance of views. Rather than simply going by a star system or whether the person liked the EA, check for specific points such as these:

- Is it easy to set up, and how much does that matter to you?

- Is it suitable for somebody at your level? Is it aimed at beginners or experienced traders? Do you need to be taking a certain position size or using a particular broker to use this system?

- Does it suit your trading style in terms of the amount of risk (stop loss settings) and number of trades?

You may need to read between the lines a little bit to work out some of these points. For example, most EAs will claim to work for people at all levels, but a system that only makes a couple of trades a week is not going to make you much money on a micro trading account unless you take huge risks, so that's why the number of trades can be important. However, many people who buy a new forex robot are also trading using other methods and then it does not matter so much if a robot only trades a couple of times a week.

So do check out reviews when you are looking for the best expert advisors, but follow your own agenda when it comes to how seriously you take them.

Free Expert Advisors: What to Look For

2009-10-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

Free expert advisors for forex trading can be found online if you know where to look. However, before you go ahead and grab one, take a moment to think about what you should be looking for.

Expert advisors or EAs are automated forex trading systems or robots that work on the Metatrader 4 software platform. MT4 itself is free, and as with most software, there are some people who have developed free applications that you can download. They may hope for donations, they may hope for some kind of paid work to come from becoming known for this, or they may just do it for fun. But the question that you must always ask is: what is the system that they have automated?

If you think about it, it is pretty clear that anyone with a profitable forex trading system is not very likely to spend hours of his time creating robot software to run it automatically and then give it away as a free expert advisor. Nor is he going to pay a programmer to create the software and then give it away for free. No, either he will keep his robot for himself or he will hope to make a lot of money by selling it.

This means that the free expert advisors that are available on the internet are not necessarily the best automated forex systems. You might be lucky and find one that is great, but you could spend a lot of time trying out free expert advisors that never make money or do not even work.

Then you have a problem because support is likely to be minimal. How could somebody spend hours of their time helping you to fix any problems that you have, if they are never being paid anything for it? Most people have to earn a living. Maybe they had a few spare hours or days to create the robot in the first place, but that does not mean they have spare time to devote to you and your problems when you try to use it, which could be months or years after they developed it.

Besides this, there may not be much in the way of instructions for setting up. This may not sound like a problem until you try it. Forex robots are notoriously difficult for the non technically minded among us, and if you do not even have much of a manual and nobody to answer your emails, the outlook is bleak.

In fact, free forex robots could end up costing you a lot of time and perhaps also a lot of money, if you are unwise enough to let them loose on your real money account before you have fully tested them. Free expert advisors are not necessarily an unmixed blessing.

Forex Tutorial: A Necessity For Beginners

2009-10-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

A good forex tutorial is essential for beginners. Despite the advertisements, you cannot expect to set out with no experience or training and start making money right away. If you have some knowledge of stock trading or other similar speculative markets you will have a much shorter learning curve but there are still a few things specific to currency trading that you will need to know.

However, do not lose heart. There are plenty of good forex trading training courses out there and with a little investigation you can find the right one for you. There are just a few things that you need to keep in mind when you are looking.

Cost

While a lot of forex training is available for free simply by reading websites or downloading free ebooks, you are not necessarily going to find the best trading information that way. Most traders do not give away their secrets for free.

So although you may be able to cover the basics from free information, you must expect to pay something if you want to learn from the pros. The cost then can range for a few dollars for an ebook describing a successful trading system, to thousands of dollars to sign up with a mentor for private coaching or attend a series of seminars.

All we will say here is that if you are a complete beginner, it could be a waste of money to pay for top level training even if it is good, because you are probably not ready for it. Cover the basics more cheaply first.

Type of forex tutorial

Many people start with books and ebooks. This can be a great way to educate yourself. There are some differences between the two that you should be aware of. Printed books tend to be more general and more informative about the background and history of currency trading, while ebooks are usually shorter and often cover one particular trading system. You need both background knowledge and a profitable if you are actually going to trade.

Of course, ebooks also have the advantage of being instantly downloadable. Sometimes they will come with a video forex tutorial which can be very valuable indeed. Instead of just reading about the author's trading system you can actually watch as he implements it on his computer. You see exactly where to click and everything is much easier to follow. So if you are considering buying a forex ebook, check to see whether videos are included.

When you buy an ebook you will also usually have a method of getting support from the author or his team. This does not come with a printed book and it is essential if there is something that you do not understand. This can also, occasionally, lead on to a mentoring or other relationship that could be very valuable to you in the future.

So do not be surprised that ebooks are usually more expensive than printed books. They contain a lot of hidden value. What you need when you are starting out with forex trading is a practical forex tutorial, and you are much more likely to get this from a forex ebook with videos than any printed book.

Forex Trading Platform: Finding the Best One for Your Purposes

2009-10-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

Whether you are in the forex market as a broker, a professional trader or a complete beginner, you probably know the importance of having the right forex trading platform. Finding the best one for your purposes is not always easy. Here are some tips to follow.

Broker Forex Trading Platform

Brokers need a solution that is reliable and flexible so that they can adapt it to their particular business. Above all, they want it to be user friendly so that it is easy for their clients to use while providing all the information that clients want at their fingertips.

Most brokers either use custom built software or adapt something that is available out of the box. Custom platforms may seem like the ideal solution for a broker but they are expensive and take a long time. Even if you have delivery of your software, you can be waiting a long time for all of the bugs to be ironed out.

Pre designed forex trading platform packages have several advantages. First, you can be pretty sure they work so you are starting with a system instead of starting from scratch. A huge amount of time can be saved by your programmer, who will just have to change things around so that it does what you want.

Do not neglect the customization, however. It is important that broker trading software is branded to your own company and has a different feel for users than other companies' platforms that they may have used before.

Trader Forex Trading Platform

Traders will usually go with whatever interface their broker provides, but they will be looking for something that is easy to use and provides plenty of technical analysis. The software is often a very important factor in the choice of a broker.

Again, reliability is vital. You do not want to be linked up to a platform that makes errors or is frequently offline. Security is another factor. It is important that your funds are protected and your account cannot be accessed by hackers.

If you are using an automated forex system to trade for you on autopilot, it is essential to check that your selected broker's software will work seamlessly with your robot. If you buy a premade robot or forex expert advisor you will usually receive a list of compatible brokers.

Many successful traders now have someone automate their system so that they can switch over to autopilot trading without changing their trading style. The platform of choice for most robots is Metatrader 4. This is free software on which your programmer can build a trading system for you. It is the most popular forex trading platform for the expert advisors that are sold on the open market and it is compatible with many broker software platforms.

Forex Analysis: Technical or Fundamental?

2009-10-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

In any discussion of forex trading you will see discussion of the two main types of forex analysis. These are technical analysis, where trading is based on historical and mathematical factors such as price charts and indicators, and fundamental analysis, where traders pay more attention to economic factors such as financial and political news.

Which one of these will give you more successful forex trading signals? It is a difficult question and the answer is not agreed by all traders. If you look around the internet you will probably find more discussion of technical analysis but that is partly because there is more to get a grip on. Beginners are frequently advised to identify trends on price charts and then trade on the basis of those alone. This is one of the easiest ways to begin forex trading and it can be successful.

Fundamental analysis depends on knowledge and news of the constantly changing real world. This makes it more difficult to take into account if you are not in the habit of checking out the financial section of your newspaper. However, there is no doubt that ultimately it is the economic factors which cause major price movements. Advocates of fundamental analysis will argue that any evidence on charts is historical and not predictive. In other words, the charts tell you what happened 5 minutes ago but not what is coming next.

One thing is for certain. Major financial reports and other events of national or international importance can have a huge and sudden effect on currency prices. So even if you prefer the technical method of forex analysis, it is wise to keep an ear to the ground and avoid being trapped in a bad trade when the US government announces a change in interest rates and the dollar leaps or plummets by 50 pips or more.

It can be helpful to think of price movements in the forex market as having a kind of elasticity. They are constantly stretching out to certain limits and then moving back, not necessarily to their starting point but often less or more. The fundamental factors are what make the prices move but technical analysis can be used to predict how far they are likely to stretch and when they are likely to start to reverse.

So the bottom line is that the best way to profit from forex trading is to make use of the technical tools such as charts and indicators but at the same time, be aware of the fundamental factors that are the real driving force behind any trends. The successful forex trader will be comfortable with both types of forex analysis.

Candlestick Analysis: Most Popular Trading Chart

2009-10-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

Candlestick analysis is one of the simplest and most effective methods of technical analysis for currency trading as well as stock trading. While there are other types of charts available including line and bar charts, the candle patterns are the most popular.

History Of Candlestick Charts

This type of price tracking chart was developed in Japan in the 18th century and that is why you will sometimes see them referred to as Japanese candlestick charts. It also explains why many of the common recognized patterns have Japanese names such as doji and marubozu.

The charts are believed to have been invented or at any rate used by the very successful Japanese commodity trader Mr. Homma who mainly profited from trading in the price of rice. Previously, simple line charts had been used to track commodity closing prices. Candlesticks gave traders a way of plotting more variables while staying within a two dimensional chart.

While bar charts can also plot the open, close, high and low, the advantage of candlesticks is their visual utility. Bullish and bearing periods are clearly visible at a glance.

Mr. Homma's phenomenal success as a trader led other Japanese commodity traders to adopt his analysis tool and in the early 20th century it was introduced to the American stock market by Charles Dow, the founder of the Wall Street Journal and co-founder of the Dow Jones company.

What Is A Candlestick

A typical candlestick has a block that is the body of the candle, plus vertical lines known as shadows or wicks which stick up and down from the body. The top of the upper shadow is the highest price reached during the trading period and the bottom of the lower shadow is the low.

The top and bottom of the candle block mark the opening and closing prices in either order. The candle was originally unshaded (white) for a rising market where the open was the bottom of the candle and the close was the top, or shaded (black or green) for a falling market where the open was the top of the block and the close the bottom. You may now see other colors used, e.g. green or blue for a rising market and red for a fall.

In a case where there is some coinciding of prices and the open, close, high and low are not all different, the candle may look slightly different. Here are some examples:

Doji - period with an equal opening and closing price, looks like a cross.

Marubozu - period when the opening price was the low and the closing price was the high (white marubozu) or vice versa (black marubozu). Has a candle body block only, with no shadow sticks top or bottom.

Candlestick Analysis In Real Time Trading

Candlesticks can record any measured time period. Typically traders will use 5 or 15 minute candles with the resulting chart showing several hours, but it is possible to set your chart for a longer term or shorter term view. Patterns can be identified that indicate emerging trends or possible forthcoming breakouts. You can then compare with indicators or other time periods to check the signals.

Trading decisions in the live market often need to be made very fast. The colored blocks of candlestick analysis help traders to see movements and reversals at a glance and avoid mistakes.

Currency Trading Brokers: How to Choose.

2009-10-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

Anybody involved in forex trading cannot avoid dealing with currency trading brokers. As an individual trader you cannot set up your own dealing desk, so brokers are your way in to the forex market.

As trading from home becomes more and more popular with private individuals who often have relatively low startup capital, new types of brokerage firms are springing up to cater for them. Most of these companies are completely legitimate but you do need to do your due diligence before committing your funds to them. Check which country they are registered in and whether they are regulated there.

What would happen to your funds if the company went out of business? In some cases you are protected by regulatory bodies but in other cases you are not. So this is a good question to ask before you invest.

Most forex traders work with 100 or 200 times leverage. This means that to control a position size of $10,000 you would have to commit only $100 or $50 of your own money. This gives you a lot of power because you can make a lot of money in a short time when things go your way. On the other hand of course it is also possible to lose a lot, if you do not have stops in place to prevent you. For this reason, when you are beginning it could be a good idea to sign up with a broker who will automatically close out your trades when the limit of your account is reached. This protects you from margin calls which can otherwise mean that you could end up owing the broker more than you have in your account.

Currency trading brokers provide many services to their clients these days. You will probably have access to a demo account where you can test out the brokerage software that allows to you trade in the market in real time. You can also use the demo account to test your trading systems before going live with real money.

They will also usually provide some kind of technical analysis in the form of charts and indicators. You can expect candlestick, bar and line charts, and indicators including the Stochastic, MACD and Bollinger bands. Try to look at the charting services provided by several different brokers through their demo accounts and consider ease of use and whether they give you the information that your trading system requires. Of course, many traders sign up with dedicated charting services once they become more successful, but when you start out, getting good technical analysis from your broker can save you that cost.

You will want assurance that the broker's software platform is not easily cracked by hackers. Remember this is your money and you do not want anybody to be able to access your account illegally. Ask the currency trading brokers what security measures they have in place, or check on forums.

Trend Trading Software: How Can it Help Your Trading?

2009-10-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

Trend trading software is built to profit from forex and other types of trading trends in order to make money. In most cases the trading is automated, which means that the software acts as a robot that will go ahead and trade for you through your brokerage account, any time that you have it connected.

However, it is possible to develop a system that would simply analyze the markets and provide you with a signal when a trend was identified so that you could trade manually, if you prefer. Some companies providing forex signals have programs that work in this way, although they are not likely to reveal the details of exactly how their trend trading software operates.

A price movement is not usually called a trend if it is very short term. Usually you would expect a trend to continued over the medium to long term, that is, at least several days. Sometimes it might continue for many weeks. In currency trading, usually there would be strong economic reasons for a downward or upward trend, especially if it was long lasting. A major financial crisis could produce a downward movement spanning several months, followed by a slow recovery that could take place over a year or longer.

'The trend is your friend' is one of the best known catchphrases of financial trading. Identifying an emerging trend in the early stages is one of the best ways to profit from forex or stock trading. Most beginners are advised to try to identify trends using charts and indicators.

Candlestick charts are commonly used for this purpose. The slope of an upward trend is shown by plotting the low points of the candlestick shadows, and the slope of a downtrend is shown by drawing a line through the high points of the shadows.

Some traders also talk about 'sideways trends' when the prices are fluctuating between two points relatively steadily. In this case lines drawn through the high and low points of the shadows will be approximately horizontal, not converging or diverging. However, others consider that this type of pattern should not strictly be called a trend.

Looking back, it is easy to see the moment when a trend began. But looking ahead into the future it is harder to be sure when you have a trend and when you have a minor fluctuation. Two candlesticks do not make a trend! We all know this, but if you are plotting trend lines yourself manually, it is very tempting to think that you have a pattern before enough evidence is there.

This is where trend trading software can help you, by taking out the human element and producing signals only when all of the conditions are in place.

Forex Trader Currency Trading: Three Basic Tips

2009-10-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

If you are a forex trader currency trading tips and hints are something that you should always be looking out for. Here are three basic tips that can help you increase your forex trading profits.

1. Avoid over trading

Many of the most profitable systems only produce a few trading signals. It can be frustrating waiting for the conditions to be right for your system. Many people give in to the temptation to open a few trades when the market is 'almost right'. People who enjoy financial trading are almost always comfortable with risk. However this haphazard risk taking strategy will almost certainly lead to losses in the long run.

Remember there is a reason why the rules of your system are as they are. The aim is to make money - but only by keeping within the set boundaries.

Remember that in forex trading, less is often more. There is no point opening ten trades a day if only one of them is going to be profitable.

If you simply cannot deal with the boredom of a system that produces a very low number of trading opportunities, then look for a second system that you can track at the same time.

2. Be realistic in your goals

One of the things that can ruin an otherwise sound trader is aiming for unrealistic goals. Often this is called greed, but that's too harsh a term for most situations. What actually happens in many cases is that the person starts daydreaming. They are constantly thinking about making a lot of money from a single trade.

Actions soon follow thoughts and they start using high risk strategies that seem to give them a chance of achieving the dream. Instead, they often end up wiping out their funds. Looking back, it was completely predictable, but they were pulled off course by persistent thoughts of riches.

So if you catch yourself daydreaming, cut off that thought right away. Focus on making a realistic profit figure - and no more. If you happen to make a lot more one time, put it aside and tell yourself that it's there to cover the losing spell that may soon follow. Do not start expecting to make that much on every trade!

3. Take a step back

As well as checking your trading signals on daily, hourly and/or minute charts, it can be very helpful to take a broader retrospective view. Look back over the last week's or month's charts regularly.

This will stop you becoming blinkered so that you can more clearly see what went right or wrong for you and why. It may give you ideas that will help you tweak your system or even find a new one. Most importantly, it will help you to refine and improve your forex trader currency trading strategies for success.

Trade Foreign Currency: The Best Time To Trade

2009-10-05T12:15:00.001-07:00

If you are serious about making money with forex trading, you will need to know the best time to trade foreign currency. And by the way if you are not serious about it, you probably should not be getting involved! Forex trading is not risk free and there are plenty of things that you need to know before you start trading for real.

Generally the best plan for a beginner is to get into the habit of trading during some of the busiest times. Do not look for quiet periods hoping to make a big break when nobody else is around. It just does not happen that way and you could be caught out. Better to go with the crowd at a time when you can be more sure of being matched at a good price for both your opening and closing deals.

So when are the busiest forex trading times? The answer is the overlap between the London and New York forex trading hours. London is actually the busiest currency trading floor, with New York second. London business hours are good for trading on the euro, British pound and Swiss franc, since most of the major countries using these currencies are within one hour time difference from Britain. New York of course is the home of the US dollar, the most traded currency, and the time zone also covers Canada.

Expressed in British time (the same as UTC in winter), trading starts in London at 8.00 am and finishes at 4 pm, while trading in New York starts at 1 pm UTC and finishes at 9 pm. Therefore the overlap is from 1 pm to 4 pm British time. Expressed in New York time (EST), the overlap is from 8 am to 11 am. That is when the forex market is busiest on practically every day.

Of course those hours may not be ideal for everybody. If you live in one of those time zones and want to trade foreign currency outside of normal business hours when you may be working another job, you will certainly have the opportunity. If you live in Europe you can trade in the evening when the New York market is still open, and if you live in the EST time zone you can trade in the early market when the London floor is already very active.

Also, if you trade cross pairs that do not involve the US dollar, you may find a busy time for that pair based on the business hours of their two countries. For example the AUD/JPY pair can be reasonably busy during the Asian session when Australian and Japanese business hours overlap. However, even on these pairs there is usually more activity if you can also overlap with US or British trading times.

Long term traders who may leave a trade open for several days or weeks will be less constrained by the peak trading times. For day traders, however, it is important to be able to slip in and out of a very busy market if you want to profit from forex scapling strategies. So it is also important to take into account how you plan to trade foreign currency.

Online Currency Trading Explained

2009-10-04T06:43:00.000-07:00

What is online currency trading? Put simply, it is a way of making money from the daily changes in currency prices by trading in currency on the internet. It is often called forex or FX trading, which are just short names for 'foreign exchange'. It is a speculative form of investment, so it is risky. At the same time, it allows many people to make money from their home computers by working just a few hours each day.

One of the benefits of forex trading over stock trading is that it is a 24 hour market so you can trade in the evenings. Currency trading can be done in any part of the world, you are not limited to your own country's currency. So you can take advantage of the different time zones which mean that the market is constantly open from Sunday night to Friday night.

In other respects you may think of it as being a lot like stock trading. You are dealing in rising and falling prices, submitting buy orders for currencies that you think will rise and sell orders for currencies that you think will fall in value. You can make these trading decisions on the basis of world economic events or more simply, you can look at charts which show patterns and indicators that many traders follow to make successful trades.

Currency is always traded in pairs because it has to be an exchange: in order to buy one currency you always have to sell another. A common pair for beginners to use is EUR/USD, or the euro and US dollar. These are the most heavily traded pairs so costs are usually low and a lot of information is available, making it one of the easier and cheaper pairs to trade.

When you are trading this pair you are always either buying or selling euros, with the dollar as the quote currency. If you want to buy dollars when trading this pair, you have to place a sell order for euros, and that will automatically mean that you are investing in dollars. This is called 'going short' on EUR/USD. If you want to buy euros, that is called 'going long'.

The aim, of course, is to place a closing order on the trade after the price has moved the right way so that you are in profit. Of course if it goes against you, you can lose, so you need to place stop orders. A stop order cancels out your trade at a certain level of loss so that you are protected from large losses.

Many brokers will accept a very small minimum investment to attract new traders. At the same time, the use of leverage and margins means that you can control large position sizes with a small account balance. You may only have to supply 1% of your trade amount in order to open a trade. The broker guarantees the rest, protecting their position with automatic stops. All of this means that online currency trading does not require a large investment to get started.

Metatrader EA: What You Need To Know About Expert Advisors

2009-10-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Metatrader EA or expert advisor is a whole family of forex robots that work on the free downloadable software platform called Metatrader 4. MT4 basically acts as a platform or framework that trading robots can be built on. That's why, when you buy a trading robot, you usually have to download Metatrader 4 and install it on your computer before you can set up the robot or expert advisor itself.

Automated trading systems such as expert advisors will act for you in the market, making trades according to their own system with regard to the settings that you put in. This has a lot of advantages if the system is profitable. Your Metatrader EA will not need to sleep, eat, visit the bathroom or have a social life. Provided you can make sure it is always online, it will watch the markets 24 hours and should never miss the right moment for opening or closing a trade.

Robots also have perfect discipline and never feel any emotion. This means that they will not be tempted to make trades that are outside the rules of your trading plan because of fear, greed or over optimism. They do not have hunches that tell them to buck the trend in some disastrous way.

It is easy to set trailing stops in MT4 and this can help to maximize your profits. The trailing stop will automatically move to follow the price when things are going your way, and stop if the market turns. This means that on a successful trade you can play it out to the maximum while guaranteeing profits at a certain level. If things go against you from the outset, of course the stop does not move but is triggered to minimize your loss.

Of course this relies on the Metatrader EA being constantly in touch with the market, like other aspects of the robot's trading. It runs on your own computer and connects with your broker's software platform over the internet. So this means your computer needs to be on 24 hours, except at the weekend when the market is closed, unless you exit all of your trades before the end of your working day.

Many computers automatically shut down when they are left idle for an hour or more, so you will need to make sure that you can alter that setting. In Windows Vista you can change the plan settings in Power Options in the Control Panel. You also have to think about whether anybody else who uses the computer is likely to shut it down after they finish using it. Most traders prefer to have a dedicated computer that nobody else will use, but this is not always possible.

A better option to make the most of your trading robot is to have it hosted remotely. Sometimes the developer of the robot will offer you this option and it is often worth taking. They will then set it up on a server so that it does not run on your computer. This also has the advantage that you can access your Metatrader EA from any computer if you need to go in and change settings.

Currency Trading Australia: A Commodity (Gold) Currency

2009-10-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in currency trading Australia you need to know about some of the special factors that affect the price of the Australian dollar. It does not matter whether or not you live in Oz, you still may want to trade this currency from time to time. It can have benefits because the Australian dollar sometimes stays more stable when other major currencies are very volatile. This is partly because of its position as a commodity currency.

Commodity currencies are the currencies of countries whose main exports are in raw materials rather than manufactured goods or services. Raw materials can include food and other agricultural products, iron and other metals, gem stones, oil, etc. In Australia, the main commodity export is gold.

When the average consumer thinks of gold they usually equate it with jewelry. However, in the world of investments, gold is bought and sold more for its commodity value than for use. Gold is something that often preserves its value in times of economic crisis. For example if there is rampant inflation or a major stock market crash, the average person's savings will often become almost worthless but an investment held in gold will maintain or more likely increase its value.

Australia is one of the world's largest sources of mined gold. Production levels have fluctuated a little due to the effect of internal taxation but broadly speaking, Australian gold production has risen from just 20 tonnes a year in the late 1970s to around 300 tonnes a year today.

Because of this, there is a close correlation between the price of gold and the value of the Australian dollar. Interestingly, even though the USA is another major source of gold, even producing slightly more than Australia, the price of the AUD/USD currency pair is also closely correlated with the price of gold, other things being equal. This is because gold is not such an important factor in the huge American economy as it is in Australia.

So when gold prices rise, the price of AUD/USD will often also rise, and when gold falls AUD/USD is likely to fall. Often there is a little delay before the currency price reacts so a foreign exchange trader involved in AUD/USD has the opportunity to use this to his advantage.

You can also expect that commodity prices in general and gold in particular will go up when there is any major economic crisis in the world. Provided that Australia is not too closely involved in a crash, that is often another early indication of an upcoming rise in the price of AUD/USD.

Of course, gold is not the only factor here and if you want to trade AUD/USD you will need to stay informed about anything else that might affect the price. You can never completely remove the risk involved in forex trading. However, understanding the influence of gold prices on the Australian dollar will be of benefit to you if you want to make money from currency trading Australia.

Top Currency Trading Systems

2009-09-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

There are many currency trading systems out there. You could probably find hundreds or even thousands on the internet and in books. So how do you pick out a good one?

This is one of the most important questions when you start out as a forex trader. Anyone will tell you that psychological factors are vital in making a successful trader and it is true that it is very important to have discipline and the ability to apply your system consistently. But you must have a system that is capable of returning a profit in the first place.

Now you probably do not want to spend years in demo accounts trying to reinvent the wheel and design your own new system from scratch. So given all of this variety of systems set out in forex books, ebooks and video courses available online, how can you find a reliable system that will have a good chance of making you money?

One factor that you should look at when you are considering different currency trading systems is the success rate of the trades. Usually the publicity will tell you this, or you can ask.

Theoretically a system with a low success rate could be just as profitable, depending on the amount of money gained and lost on the trades. However, a high success rate is important for two reasons. One is that this is a good sign that the system works well in most market conditions. No system has a 100% success rate but something over 80% is achievable. If you put this into practice consistently, and perhaps avoid the very worst market conditions such as a choppy market, you should have a good chance of getting a profitable result.

The second reason that most traders work better with a high success rate is that it increases our confidence in the system. This helps us to keep motivated to apply the system consistently.

For the same reason, it is important to make sure that the system will give you enough trading opportunities to keep you satisfied that you are trading actively. That may sound crazy but if you only have one trade a week you will start looking around for other possibilities and probably take chances with your trading that will lead to losses.

Plus of course you need to be sure that it will only involve you in a level of risk that you are comfortable with.

The best currency trading systems are usually provided by someone who is a professional trader and using the system to make money themselves, so look out for information about the person's trading experience, and check that they will offer support if you have questions.

International Currency Trading Explained

2009-09-29T04:18:00.000-07:00

What is international currency trading and why should it matter to you? The answer is that maybe it does not matter at all, unless you are interested in making money from home with this fast growing speculative trading method.

Have you ever thought about the way that the dollar or another currency is constantly rising or falling, and what this means in practice? It means that they can be traded on the open market, just like stock. Money can be made from assessing which currencies are likely to rise or fall, and trading them one way and then the other in order to make a profit on the difference.

Keep in mind that when you see financial news reports on TV, they do not just say "the dollar rose" or "the dollar fell". They always talk about it rising or falling against another currency, such as the euro, or against a basket of currencies. This is because a currency only has exchange value when you compare it with one or more other currencies.

The international currency trading market is usually known as the foreign exchange market, or forex for short. This is a huge global market, much bigger than the stock market, that trades in all time zones, operating 24 hours a day.

It is something that can be done from home these days if you have a computer with a high speed internet connection, but trading currencies can be very risky, especially if you do not know what you are doing. As with any speculative investment there is no guarantee that you will make money and there is always a risk of losing your investment.

However, there is a safe way to get started and that is by opening a demo or practice account. This is a dummy account that lets you trade using real time prices but without any real money. It's a little like the play money that you might use in certain online games.

To make the most of your practice trading you should do everything you can to convince yourself that it is real, so that you learn not to take unnecessary risks. You will find that sometimes you gain and sometimes you lose, but when your profits are consistently exceeding your losses you are probably ready to begin trading with real money.

These accounts are available from forex brokers who are doing all they can these days to attract new clients. When you are ready to start forex trading for real, they will often let you begin with just a few hundred dollars or even less.

There are many facilities available to help you make money from your international currency trading. When you are starting out you will find plenty of books, ebooks, instructional DVDs and online videos aimed at helping beginners to get started and find a successful trading system. You will also find free newsletters, forex forums and charting services. As you become more serious about your trading you may find it worthwhile to attend one of the many currency trading seminars that are run by brokers or successful traders.

The hardest part of learning forex trading is having the discipline to stick to your system so that you do not take too many risks. Focus on this when you are looking for training and you will have the best chance of setting yourself up for success with international currency trading.

Currency Trading Markets: Avoid these Mistakes to Make Money

2009-09-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

Making money in the currency trading markets is not nearly as easy as it should theoretically be. The fact is that there are a lot of good systems and profiting from them is actually very simple. Yet it is obviously not easy to put these simple systems into practice, because 99% of new traders entering the market just lose money.

One of the biggest mistakes that traders make, even those with some experience, is that they dream. They are just like lotto gamblers, they spend their time fantasizing about the perfect trade that will bring them hundreds of pips. These fantasies are fueled by other traders who boast about such successes on blogs and forums, which make it hard to let go of the dream.

Of course such trades do happen ... but not to those who spend their time dreaming instead of getting some solid focused forex trading education. All that happens to them is that they feed their hard earned cash into the currency trading markets where it is lost, going into the pockets of the banks or successful private traders who took the time to learn their business.

It is vital to understand your own abilities, neither underestimating or overestimating them. This is hard when you start out, because it takes a while before you realize how much there is to learn. It is not so much a question of theoretical knowledge which you can pick up quickly from a few books. It is the practical experience that gives you a 'feeling' for the currency trading markets.

While a successful trader always follows a plan rather than his own feelings, that kind of experience can help you spot emerging trends and market patterns that signal a trade for your system. More importantly, it will mean that you know when conditions are wrong and you should just switch off and do something else with your day, rather than sitting there trying to find an opportunity to trade until frustration leads you into something reckless.

This is one reason why it is important to have support from more experienced traders. A mentor is ideal but when you are starting out, it can be hard to find one. If you are not in the fortunate position of having a friend or family member who is a successful trader, you are unlikely to find anybody who is willing to spend a lot of time on you when they could be using that time to make money.

The best way is probably to visit forex forums and show that you are seriously trying to learn, rather than hoping to make thousands of dollars overnight like most of the other newbies. That way, you may make some useful contacts.

You can also look for technical help. It is possible to cut corners and start trading for real much faster if you have a good automated forex system such as one of the top expert advisor software programs. They are not expensive and most of them come with a money back guarantee so you can try them in demo and if they don't work, trade them in. Be sure to give them a good run in demo mode and take time to understand the settings, however. You must give them a chance if you want to find one or two that will consistently make money for you.

Of course forex trading is risky however you do it, but good software can certainly help a beginner to start making money in the currency trading markets.

Currency Trading Course: FAQ, Is Currency Trading Safe?

2009-09-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

One of the first questions that many people ask when they are thinking about taking an online currency course, is whether currency trading is really safe. There are so many advertisements and promotions on the internet, as well as in magazines an on TV, that people often become suspicious. Is it really such a great way to make money? Can anyone profit from it? And is your investment secure?

The first thing to understand is how currency trading works. It is also known as forex or foreign exchange trading, and it a kind of speculative investment that allows traders to make money by speculating on the rise and fall of currency exchange values. These are the prices that you often see quoted in the financial pages of the newspaper, that tell you what the dollar is worth against other currencies.

These prices are constantly changing, so a person who can predict which way they will move can make money by buying a currency that is about to rise or selling one that is about to fall. But how can you tell which way the prices will go? Currency values are closely linked to economic performance: when a country's economy is strong, its currency is likely to have a high value. When there is an economic crisis, the currency value will fall.

However, most forex traders do not rely on predictions of the economic status of a nation to make their money. Instead they use analytical tools that help them to identify emerging trends on a mathematical basis. This is called technical analysis. Fortunately these days everything is computerized so there are no calculations to do. Brokers and charting services provide tools such as charts and indicators to give traders signals that tell them when to enter and leave the market.

Forex trading used to be something that was only done by professional traders working from banks, but now everything is online and you can get involved from home. Brokers are keen to attract more clients and so they will let you start with just a few hundred dollars.

There are many kinds of currency trading course and also systems that you can follow that will help you to be successful with forex trading. It is also possible to get software that will trade automatically for you according to a pre set system. This is called a forex robot.

However, even with all the tools and software programs that are available these days, forex trading remains a risky business. Predictions are never 100% correct and all traders make losses at times. Also, an unexpected event such as a terrorist attack or the sudden collapse of a bank can turn everything around without warning. So it is very important to understand the risks and put stops in place to minimize your losses when things go wrong.

Most people who begin forex trading are hoping to make a lot of money in a short time. They soon find out that this is not realistic. It is much better to aim for slow and steady profits, and keep your risks as low as possible. Nevertheless, there are no guarantees that you will make money.

Forex trading is exciting and it can be very profitable but no, it is not safe. As any currency trading course will tell you, forex is for people who are prepared to take a risk.

Make Money On The Internet With Forex Trading

2009-09-25T05:12:00.000-07:00

Whether you need a little extra cash or want to dump your job and work from home, it is great to be able to make money on the internet. You do not have a boss and you do not have to leave the comfort of your own living room or den. You can stay home with the kids and work whenever you want. For some people who have trouble getting a job, it is the only option; for others, it is a very attractive alternative to the 9 to 5 world.

The world wide web has opened up so many possibilities for anybody who has a computer and a broadband connection. One of these new possibilities is forex trading, also known as foreign exchange or currency trading.

Forex trading is a way of making money online through financial speculation on the changing values of world currencies. A few years ago the forex market was only accessible to banks and other large financial institutions who could put representatives in the trading floors of the big financial centers of the world, but the internet has changed all of that.

Anybody can get involved these days and you do not need a lot of money to get started. A few hundred dollars is enough. In fact it is so easy to get into online forex trading that many people go live before they should.

We all have dreams of turning a 3 or 4 figure fund balance into 5 or 6 figures, but despite what you may see in the advertisements, this is not easy to do. Forex trading is risky and the only way to make money on the internet with forex trading in the long term is to keep your risks as low as possible. This means that your funds will grow more slowly, assuming you are following a profitable system, but your account is likely to stay in credit even through the inevitable losing runs.

Many people get into forex trading as if they were gambling. They hope for luck and trade on the basis of their intuition instead of looking for a system that works. They talking about 'playing' or 'getting into the game'. The result is that they take too many risks, again like a gambler, and end up losing everything.

This kind of mindset is easy to get into when you are trading with small funds. In fact, forex trading has replaced the online casino for many Americans. That is why so many new traders quickly lose all the money that they put in. If you are serious about wanting to make money, and we hope you are, you must avoid falling into this trap.

Forex trading is simple, in a sense, but it is not necessarily easy. It is tempting to want to rush in and hope that you will be lucky. You must avoid this temptation if you want to be successful. Instead, you will find a good system and master the techniques and tactics that are required to implement it. That is the best way to make money on the internet with forex trading.

Currency Trading Chart: What is it?

2009-09-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

The currency trading chart is one of the most important tools for the forex trader. Charts are at the root of forex technical analysis, which forms trading systems based on studying price movements rather than economic forecasts which are the basis of fundamental analysis in forex trading. Most traders these days prefer technical analysis which does not require any special knowledge or training in economics.

Any currency trading chart will show price movements. Usually you can track these over a variable period of time. You can look at the last few minutes, hours, days or longer. Using a chart in conjunction with the mathematical indicators provided by most brokers and charting services, you can identify emerging tendencies and trends that can signal a trading opportunity.

Forex charts come in three formats.

1. The Line Chart

A line chart plots the closing prices at the end of each trading period, which could be anything from one minute to one day, you can set this. These are joined with a line to show the direction of movement. However, a line chart does not tell you anything about what happened at different times during the time period, only the final closing price.

2. The Bar Chart

A bar chart gives you four prices for each period: opening, high, low and closing price. You will see a vertical line for each period. The top of the line marks the high and the bottom is the low. A notch on the left side shows the opening price and a notch on the right shows the close. Usually these are at different levels but they could be the same. Either one of them could be the same as the opening or closing price but more commonly they are somewhere between.

The advantage of the bar chart over the line chart is that it shows you how wide the fluctuations were during the period, giving you an idea of the volatility of the pair at a glance.

3. The Candlestick Chart

This last type of chart gives you all of the same information as the bar chart but in a coloured format which many people find easier to take in.

Again a vertical line marks the high and low prices during a period, but there is also a wider block that runs between the opening and the closing price. This block will be filled with colour, usually red if the price is falling (opening price is the high end of the block, closing price is the low end) and green or blue if it is rising (closing price is the high end of the block, opening price is the low end). If shown in black and white you will see black for a falling price and white for a rising price.

The colours give you an instant view of whether prices rose or fell during the period. This makes candlesticks quicker to read at a glance than a bar chart. You can immediately see a reversal, which will show up as a series of green blocks marking the trend followed by one red marking the reversal, or vice versa. That is why candlesticks are the favorite type of currency trading chart for many traders.

Forex Trading Course: The 5 Essentials

2009-09-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

If you want to get involved in currency trading it is worth looking around to make sure that you find a top rated forex trading course. Of course you will want to start making money as soon as possible but forex trading is risky and if you do not get a good grounding you could easily be losing money instead.

It is not so simple to predict which way currency prices will go. There are many factors to take into account. On top of that, it is vital to open and close your trades at the right moment to get maximum profit from any price change. If you try to work all of this out for yourself it will take a lot of time. So why not give yourself a head start by taking a good forex trading course?

Your course should cover all of the basics so that you are well prepared to begin trading. Here is a short list of important points that you will need to understand. Make sure that your course covers all of these before you sign up.

1. Principles of currency trading

Any good currency trading course will explain the basic principles of the forex market including leverage and margins, pips, spread and other costs, and what to look for in a broker.

2. Technical analysis

Technical analysis includes interpreting charts and indicators to identify trends, swings, breakouts and other factors that could be signals for you to open or close a trade. Different systems rely on different indicators. In the beginning, you only need to master the indicators for your own chosen system. Trying to cover them all could be confusing. Later, you might want to refer to other indicators to tweak your system for better profitability, so it's good if you have access to a course that you can dip into again further down the line.

3. Fundamental analysis

Fundamental analysis relates to the economic news, announcements and other events which affect currency prices. In the end, it is each country's economic performance which causes the value of its currency to change. You do not necessarily need to be able to predict these events. In fact many traders stay out of the market completely around the time of a forex news announcement. But it is important to understand how the process works and keep an eye on the alerts for anything that might affect your trading.

4. Risk management

Risk management concentrates on minimizing your losses through the use of stops, and protecting your funds by limiting the position size. In general your risk on any one trade should never be more than 5% and many traders work on 2%, 1% or even less. Broadly speaking you should expect to reduce the risk for larger fund sizes, simply because it will be more important to protect a fund of several million dollars than one of only a few hundred dollars. But you are pretty sure to crash and burn if you exceed 5% so make that your limit. You may feel like taking a chance for quicker growth on a small fund but wiping out your funds is not a good way to go!

5. Mindset

We put this last because it is usually the last thing that beginning traders want to hear about, but it is possibly the most important of all. In the end, if you do not master the mindset of a successful trader you will not be able to profit from the forex market.

You must develop a cool headed approach and work on your discipline so that you can follow a trading system without letting fear, excitement or other emotions get in your way. You also need to understand how to handle losses on the psychological level. Risk management techniques can help but if you let your emotions get the better of you, it is easy to fall into a pattern that will guarantee more losses. A good forex trading course will include teaching and exercises to help you master the art of self discipline and keep your emotions off the trading floor.

How To Trade Currency: The Basics

2009-09-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

If you are considering getting involved in forex trading, it is essential that you know the basics of how to trade currency. Even if you plan on using an automated forex trading system (or forex robot) you will need to understand something about what it is doing in order to set it up right.

Forex trading and currency trading mean the same thing. You will be trading world currencies on the foreign exchange market. Forex and FX are simply abbreviations of 'foreign exchange'.

If you do not use a robot then you will need some system that will help you sort out whether a country's currency is rising or falling, so that you can decide whether to buy or sell the pair that you are trading. You always have to trade a pair of currencies because you are exchanging one currency for another. A popular pair for beginners is EUR/USD, the euro and the US dollar.

Currency trading systems are usually based on technical analysis, which means watching price movements and indicators on charts. Most brokers supply this kind of data or if you do not get everything that you want from your broker, you can sign up to one of the many online forex charting services.

You can get started for a very low initial investment these days. Competition between brokers and the ease of access through the internet has meant that brokers are offering mini and micro forex trading accounts to encourage the smaller investor to get involved.

Costs are generally low too. Most brokers do not charge a fee or commission, but make their money from the difference between the bid and ask prices of the currency pair (that is, the different prices depending whether you are buying or selling). This is good for small investors who can make many small trades without paying any fixed fees. This is one of the reasons why more and more private individuals are getting into forex and wanting to know how to trade currency.

The forex market is open 24 hours a day from Sunday evening to Friday evening (or Monday morning to Saturday morning if you are in Australia or Asia). This can be very convenient if you have a day job and want to get into trading in the evenings. It is also a huge market, with deals totalling almost $4 trillion a day. Prices move fast and there is a lot of money to be made.

Of course there is also a risk. Like any speculative investment, you may lose more than you make, especially in the beginning. You should be prepared to possibly lose your investment funds so do not trade with money that you need for other purposes.

It is important to stick to a system exactly and keep clear records of your trades. If you do not do this you will be shooting in the dark and the net results could be damaging. You need to be sure of what you are doing and able to look back and see what worked and what did not work.

There are many forex trading systems sold online but remember that you only need one profitable system to make money. It is not a good idea to try to use more than one system, and certainly do not switch from one to another all of the time, because that will not work for you. Being consistent in your trading is the key.

Forex trading is risky, but it can also make you a lot of money. Follow these pointers and you will soon have mastered how to trade currency.

Currency Trading Pip - What is it?

2009-09-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

If you are getting into forex trading it is essential to understand the currency trading pip. This is how your profit, loss and costs are measured. Your broker account may translate pips into dollars or other currencies for you, but it may not. In any case you will want to know what it means for yourself.

A pip is a percentage in point which is a transferable unit of measure, much more useful for the purpose of comparison than a dollar profit figure. It is used in price quotes and as a measure of the change in currency prices.

The pip is the smallest measure of movement in the quoted price. Prices for most currencies are quoted to four decimal places, so one pip is 0.0001 units of the quote currency. (The exception is the Japanese yen which is much less valuable and is therefore quoted to 0.01 yen.) The quote currency is the second of the two currencies in a pair. So for example in the pair EUR/USD, the quote currency is the US dollar.

Some brokers are now beginning to quote to five decimal places and there is some argument among traders as to whether a pip then becomes 0.00001, or whether this would just be confusing, since it would mean that some brokers' pips were 10 times as big as others.

If you visit forex forums you will see traders all the time talking about their profitable trades in terms of pips. They will not tell you how many dollars they made, because that depends on their position size which another person would not necessarily replicate. Talking in terms of pips also means that they do not have to reveal the size of their account.

For example you may see a trader talking about making 200 pips profit on a trade in EUR/USD. They could be an amateur who traded a micro lot or a professional bank trader who traded tens of thousands of lots. Each would have made 200 pips, but the value of those pips would have been vastly different.

To know how much it would mean to you in terms of profit and loss, you simply multiply by 0.0001 and then by the lot size. The result will be the profit in the quote currency.

The quote currency for EUR/USD is the US dollar. So if the trader is dealing in standard lots of $100,000, one pip is 0.0001 x $100,000 i.e. $10 per lot. If he made 200 pips profit, that is $2,000 per lot. But if he uses mini lots of $10,000 it's a profit of $200, and on a $1,000 micro lot it's only $20 profit.

Still, if you assume 100 times leverage, he has only had to put up $10 for his $20, $100 for his $200 profit or $1,000 for his $2,000 profit. So it's a pretty good return and no wonder he is haunting the forums to boast about this trade!

Anyway, you can see how it is an advantage to be able to talk in terms of pips.

Also, of course, the currency itself could vary. The quote currency will not always be the dollar. If that example trade was in EUR/GBP then the 200 pip profit would be 20, 200 or 2,000 British pounds. If you wanted to know what that was in US dollars you would need to add another step into the calculation, multiplying by the current exchange rate.

This may sound confusing at first but when you start trading, even in a demo account, you will soon understand what a currency trading pip means in practice.

FX Trading Software - How Useful is It?

2009-08-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

FX trading software programs include the automated systems or robots that help you to trade online from the comfort of your own home. They are very popular but are they necessary? What do they really do?

Many people are unwilling to trust their trading decisions to a computer program, especially at first. It is true that it is wise to be cautious in the beginning, because there is always the chance that you will misunderstand something. But you can almost always use the software in demo mode until you are familiar with all of its settings and features.

The main point to remember is that you are controlling the software, not the other way around. You tell it what to do by setting it up in a way that follows your preferred system.

An automated forex trading system can do many things that you cannot. For example, it can trade 24 hours a day. As the currency markets are international and operate in almost every time zone, they are never closed for business from Monday morning in Australia to Friday afternoon in New York. FX trading software can exploit these very long hours and watch the markets all day and all night, never missing a possible trade.

If you join a retail forex trading company online, you will almost certainly be offered software so that you can operate your account from your own computer. This takes the pressure off the company's website. You can use this type of software to check the currency values and operate your account. This is different than a robot, because you are making the trading decisions and simply using the software to put them into effect.

Automated forex robots, by contrast, are not linked in to one particular broker or company. They run on a trading platform and offer historical market analysis and trend data as well as real time currency values. This data can be extremely valuable for identifying patterns. You can look back to see how currency values fluctuated around the time of certain major events such as an epidemic or an election. Even something like an international sports event can affect national confidence and so cause a change in currency values.

As you become more skilled in interpreting the market trends, you will use all of this data to help improve the success of your trades. Of course there is no guarantee that the currency markets will always behave as they did in the past but any expert will tell you that you cannot ignore the historical data. To put it simply, getting information like this from your FX trading software can help you to make more money from your forex trading.

Trade Forex For Profit: The One Thing You Must Do

2009-08-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

To be successful and trade forex for profit is like any other profitable business. You must have a trading plan. You need a goal and a strategy for achieving that goal. This is particularly important in the forex investment market which is fast moving with many twists and turns which, for the unprepared can lead to financial disaster. The advertising you see, particularly on the internet, gives the impression of rich pickings and dreams being fulfilled overnight. Ok, some people can be lucky but the same applies to gambling. If you liken forex trading to gambling then you will lose money. So how do we establish our goal and develop a strategy to achieve it?

First you need to establish the correct mindset. You must be devoid of emotions such as euphoria, greed, fear and above all panic. By creating a trading plan in advance and being determined to stick to it you are less likely to be tempted to make emotional decisions.

Be realistic with your goal. Don't set out to make a fortune overnight or even over a few days, weeks or months. The higher the goal, the bigger the risks you will take to try and achieve it. Like any business, plan for a slow level of increasing profits over time.

Establish your boundaries. The most basic being how much money will you set aside for trading. Do not expect to win on every trade. To be successful and trade forex for profit it is simply a matter of winning more often than losing. Do not trade with money you cannot afford to lose. Your position size for each trade must be calculated within this boundary.

Your strategy or trading plan needs to be based around a tried and tested system and your position size will relate to your system. Some systems go for a high number of winning trades but the losses when they inevitably occur are big. At the other end of the extreme, some systems allow for a high number of losing trades where the losses are small but can expect several losses in a row. Most traders will settle for something between those extremes.

Finally, choose your indicators. This is the information and advice you will use with your system. Always use at least 2 or 3 different indicators and only trade when they all point in the same direction.

Ok, so how do we develop our strategy? My advice is to paper trade using a demo account for as long as it is necessary to establish a system, trading style or preference which will achieve your goal. Once you are trading profitably with your demo account, you will move into real money trading with a lot more confidence and a lot less likely to be influenced by emotion.

Be prepared to modify or fine tune your strategy over time to increase your level of profitability as you gain more experience and acquire more knowledge but NEVER EVER change anything during an open trade. You must open and close a trade on the same strategy.

I sometimes liken forex trading to playing poker. Poker is one of the few 'gambling' games which can be profitable if the player has a rigid game plan. A successful player will expect to lose sometimes and knows what his potential gains and potential losses are at every stage of the game and will bet accordingly. A good poker player with be calm and play without emotion and the same goes for a good forex trader.

This is a very brief overview of the need to develop a trading plan in order to trade forex for profit and hopefully will make you feel more comfortable about proceeding further.

The 5 Golden Rules on How To Make Money On The Forex Market

2009-07-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

1. Keep Cool

Successful traders do not let their trading depend on their emotions or their emotions depend on their trading. They do not risk more because they are feeling lucky, they do not hesitate when the signs are right, or pull out of a trade too soon out of fear. Equally, they are unlikely to celebrate a gain, nor will they sulk, shout or kick the dog when they lose.

A person who is ruled by their emotions will not make it as a forex market trader. Self discipline can be learned but make sure that you have fully mastered your emotions on a demo account before you think of going live. If you are still taking unplanned risks you are not ready for real trading.

2. Think For Yourself

Different traders have different techniques. This means it there is limited value in getting advice from anybody else. In fact, unless you know that the person follows your system and techniques, their advice is probably worthless to you.

Do not copy somebody else's system just because they seem to be making money with it. Do your own research and check everything that you are told. Even then, consider carefully before abandoning the system that you have chosen before. There may be factors that you have not taken into account. Something that works for somebody else will not necessarily work for you.

3. Keep Records

Keep a spreadsheet detailing every trade so that you can see patterns in your own results. You do not necessarily need to use it to change anything, but refer to it often to remind yourself of the many small trades that add up to success or failure.

What should you record? At a minimum, the currency pair, your position and the opening and closing prices. However, these bare facts will be much more informative if you can also add why you took the position. Did it fit the criteria of your system? What made you think that the trend would go your way? When you look back you will have a much better view of why your trading history is going well or not so well.

4. If In Doubt, Don't

Do not open a trade if you are hesitant or unsure about it, provided of course that you have a reason other than fear for your hesitation. A trade can only go one way or the other, so if it is not completely right, it is wrong. Wait. There will be plenty of better opportunities.

5. Limit Your Trades

Do not be drawn into thinking that you must never miss an opportunity. You do not have to be on top of a lot of different currency pairs and jump into every market regardless of what else you may be doing.

Limit the number of open trades that you have. It is not a good idea to have more than two open positions at the same time, and unless your first trade in the forex market is profitable you should not even consider opening a second.

Forex Trading Signal Providers: What To Look For

2009-07-29T12:54:00.000-07:00

As the popularity of trading the currency exchange markets online from home increases, the number of forex trading signal providers is increasing too. In fact they are proliferating to such an extent that it can be very difficult to know how to find the best one.

Signals are the main source of information for some traders who do not have the time, experience or inclination to analyze the markets for themselves but do not want to trust their trading to a robot. Equally they can be a useful source of additional information and trades for those who mainly make their own trading decisions.

You usually have to pay to subscribe to a forex signal service. Fees may be charged per month or per signal. Some companies offer a trial period where you can test their service on a demo account. If not, you will be paying out money from the start so to have a chance of making profits, you need to be trading at a level where you can expect to make more money from the signals than they are costing you.

The first thing that most people look at when considering forex trading signal providers is their recent results. This can be a mistake. Recent results are not as important as performance over the long term. So do not be seduced into signing up with a company who make a huge deal of their last month's good results but will not tell you what their signals have made over a full year. Also remember that when they show their profits, they do not have to take account of the cost of the signal service itself.

Remember that most traders starting out in the forex markets lose money. Forex is a risky form of investment and you should be prepared for this. Losses are not always the fault of the information. Even if you are receiving profitable signals, you can make losses if you do not have a clear plan for managing your funds. It is very easy to take bigger risks than you should, so that an unexpected loss has a big impact.

Most companies who offer forex signals will send them to you by email and/or SMS text message. It is best to get both, although SMS alone can be enough for some people. The only problem with SMS messages is that it is very frustrating when one arrives and you are too far from a computer to access your account. If you are a serious forex trader relying on signals, you may want to get your PDA hooked up to your trading account so that you can deal with those signals that arrive when you are stuck in traffic or having lunch with a client.

Remember that the foreign exchange is a 24 hour market. Be prepared to be woken in the middle of night by your cell phone bleeping with an SMS that you need to act on right away. You may want to check how your spouse feels about this too. Even the best information from the top forex trading signal companies is probably not worth getting a divorce for!

FX Charts: How To Use The MACD Indicator

2009-07-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

The MACD or Moving Average Convergence Divergence indicator is one of the most popular tools on FX charts. It can be used either as an indicator in itself, or as a check when you are mainly relying on other tools.

The MACD chart measures faster and slower moving averages and whether they are getting closer together (converging) or farther apart (diverging).

When they are converging you will see the two lines on the chart approaching each other and the bars on the histogram at the bottom of the chart become smaller. This usually indicates that the current trend is coming to an end or has ended.

Of course the faster line reacts to a change in price movements more quickly than the slower line. So when a new trend forms, the faster line will get closer and finally cross the slower line. If it then separates or diverges from the slower line, this is often an indicator that a new trend has formed.

When the two lines cross, the bars of the histogram will be at zero and then cross their axis so that if they were below the axis before, they are now above it, and vice versa. If a strong new trend is forming, the bars will quickly lengthen in the new direction.

So this crossover could be used as a signal to place an order. You have a buy signal when the faster line crosses the slower line from below, and a sell signal when it crosses from above.

However, there are disadvantages to the MACD which make the crossover unreliable as a self standing signal. The main problem is that even the so-called fast line is significantly behind actual prices because it measures averages of the past prices. So when the market is very volatile, trends could be ending before the MACD crossover marks that they have begun.

Generally the MACD is a better indicator of the strength of a trend than it is of its direction. For this reason some traders ignore the crossover and look instead at the length of the histogram bars. However it is not a good idea to enter a trade on the basis of this histogram (measuring divergence) and then leave it as soon as the price goes against you.

So if you decide to trade the MACD, you should probably use it for both your entry and exit signals. This takes a lot of nerve and experience, and it is not recommended for beginner forex traders. So if you are just starting out, you are probably better advised to base your trading decisions on other indicators on FX charts and refer to the MACD only for background.

FX Technical Analysis: What Is An MACD Indicator?

2009-07-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

The MACD indicator is one of the most useful tools of FX technical analysis but it is not usually well understood. This is a pity because many traders could probably use it more effectively if they understood it better.

The letters of its name stand for Moving Average Convergence Divergence. It is true that the name sounds rather complicated and unfortunately this is often enough to put people off from wanting to know more. So they only use the very simplest applications without understanding the power of the tool itself.

Like most forex tools, this indicator is used to show us when a new trend is forming, so that we can get in on it and make money. The MACD does this by plotting the relationship between two moving averages.

Settings

The settings are usually expressed as three numbers. Commonly you might see 12,26,9.

Traders using FX technical analysis often make the mistake of thinking that the first number on the MACD indicator (12 in this example) relates to the faster moving average line, the second number (26) relates to the slower moving average line and the third number (9) relates to the histogram at the bottom of the chart. That is not quite correct.

In fact the first two numbers (12 and 26) indicate the number of periods used to calculate two moving averages. The faster moving average line, which is often green on the chart, measures the moving average of the difference between the 12 period and the 26 period moving averages.

The slower moving average line is often red on the chart. This line plots the average of the last 9 (or whatever is the third number) periods of the faster moving average line. It usually shows smoother curves because its effect is to smooth out the fast moving average line.

Divergence And Convergence

The histogram that measures convergence and divergence is the series of blocks stretching above and below an axis near the bottom of the chart. This simply records the difference between the faster and slower moving averages.

As the two moving averages separate from each other (diverge), the blocks of the histogram will become longer. As they get closer (converge), the blocks become shorter. If the two lines cross, the blocks of the histogram will switch from stretching above the line to dropping below it or vice versa.

So the histogram measures the convergence and divergence of the two moving averages. And that is why this tool for FX technical analysis is called a Moving Average Convergence Divergence or MACD indicator.

What is a Stochastic Indicator and How Can I Use it?

2009-07-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

A Stochastic Indicator is a measure of price momentum. Otherwise known as Stochastic Oscillator, it was developed by George C Lane in the late 1950's. Based upon a predetermined high and low range, it will indicate a closing price after a consistent level of either high or low closing prices measured over a set number of periods. A consistent high level near the top of the range creates an accumulation or momentum known as 'buying pressure' and a consistently low level near the bottom of the range creates a distribution or momentum known as 'selling pressure' The Stochastic Oscillator will indicate when a trend is about to turn and flags up a buy or sell signal to the trader.

This article tells you how a Stochastic Indicator is calculated and how it is used to help make successful trades.

The calculation is as follows:

100 X ratio (recent close - lowest low)/(highest high - lowest low) = %K, where the lowest low and highest high is taken over a specified period. The most common period is 14days with the highs and lows recorded for each of the 14 days and the recent close is the closing price on the 14th day. This in effect mathematically compares the latest closing price to previous prices over the number of periods being considered. Clearly, since this ration is a percentage figure, it will vary or 'oscillate' between 0 and 100 over a period of time and is represented by a %K line on your chart.

The signal line or %D line is simultaneously plotted alongside the %K line and is normally a 3 period moving average. It effectively smoothes out the oscillations making it easier to spot the turn in trend which is why it is called the signal line.

What I have just described above is in fact known more specifically as a Fast Stochastic Indicator. There is also a Slow Stochastic Indicator and a Full Stochastic Indicator which are similar but more advanced and beyond the scope of this particular article. If you follow my articles on my by blog at http://forexinvestmentmarket.blogspot.com/ I will be posting more on this subject in due course.

There is no need for you understand the mathematics here or to even make this calculation yourself because most trading software will do this for you and will be shown plotted on a chart provided by your system supplier or forex broker account.

However, unless you are using a robot to trade for you, it is necessary for you to know how to use the Stochastic Indicator to help with your forex trading decisions.

In very simple terms, if both the %K and %D lines are high relative to your horizontal 'sell' trigger line then it is a signal that the market is overbought and about to reverse. This is and indication to sell.

Conversely, if the lines are low relative to your 'buy' trigger line then it is a signal that the market is oversold and about to reverse. This is an indication to buy.

Of course the trigger lines are set to suit your own trading style, usually somewhere between 70 and 80 for the high and between 20 and 30 for the low.

Different traders interpret the Stochastic Indicator lines in different ways. For example when they intersect going up or coming down is often used as a trigger to buy or sell. Before making any real trading decisions based on Stochastic Indicators, as always you should paper trade to become familiar with then and the positioning of your horizontal trigger lines. In other words develop your own system.

Never ever use the Stochastic Indicator as your only guide to trading. You should always use a combination of indicators which all point in the same direction before you make a decision.

Foreign Exchange Basics - The 6 Main Influences

2009-07-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

To be successful in the forex market is is necessary to understand foreign exchange basics. Technical analysis with charts and trends is one thing but it's equally important to understand the fundamental reasons why the various currencies around the world are constantly moving relative to each other. Being able to understand what influences a currency movement and correctly predict a movement in one direction or another is what makes a successful forex trader. Let's look at the 6 main influences

1. Current Affairs and the News.

Be aware of what is happening around the world especially within the major world economies. Monitor national and international news channels for such events as political unrest, social disorder and in particular financial news.

2. Unpredictable Events

A major natural disaster or significant terrorist activity can influence a sudden currency movement. You should always protect your trades from unpredictable events by using stop losses to minimize the affect of a sudden adverse currency movement.

3. Predictable Events

A political event such as a general election is predictable. A major international sporting event such the Olympic Games is predictable. The important thing here is to be able to understand which currencies are likely to be affected and in which direction they will move. It's not just the events themselves which may influence a currency movement but also the announcement of such an event. So be aware of the timing of such announcements.

4. Financial Reports

Be familiar with the timing of financial reporting from countries of influence. Announcements concerning GDP, interest rates, inflation etc., will often influence currency movements. Monitor the financial results for the major international companies, particularly the banks and other major international financial institutions.

5. Rumors

It's difficult to avoid rumors but you should be very careful if making a trade based on a rumor because very often a rumor is simply no more than just a rumor and often a rumor is spread to fool traders into thinking the market will move one way when in fact the opposite happens.

6. Currency Pairs

You should pay particular attention to applying foreign exchange basics in the two countries concerned with your currency pairs. It is fact that the US dollar has the strongest influence on other currencies particularly if one of the pair is a minor currency.

The problem for the beginner in forex trading is how to apply all this fundamental analysis to successful trading. The best advice I can give is to gain experience with fundamental analysis and how each type of influence effects currency movement before you use it to make real trades. After a while you will develop a feel which will give you more confidence as you become familiar with the foreign exchange basics.

Read more about foreign exchange basics in my new eBook - Quick And Easy Forex Trading is aimed at understanding the fundamentals of forex trading...it's on a special launch offer now Forex Trading eBook

FAPTurbo Evolution Pre-Review

2009-07-12T04:05:00.000-07:00

FAPTurbo Evolution Pre-Review

In this FAPTurbo Evolution pre-review I look at this new forex trading robot due to hit the market on the 14th July 2009.

As you will know if you have been around the forex market for a while, FAPTurbo was the big automated forex software hit of late 2008 and is still trading well in mid 2009. The economic downturn seemed to do nothing to prevent this automated forex trading system from making money for its users. So why the release of FAPT Evolution, the new revision of FAPTurbo from the same developers?

The first thing to note is that FAPT Evolution is designed to work with one brokerage company in particular, the Swiss based Dukascopy. In fact until they ran into trademark issues the developers' original plan was to name this new robot FAPT Swiss.

However, the robot remains independent and Dukascopy will not be providing support for the automated software, only for their own trading platform. Still, this makes FAPTurbo Evolution a very different creature from the old style expert advisor forex robots that, like the original version of FAPTurbo, run on Metatrader 4 and are compatible with a number of brokers who support this platform.

Dukascopy is a highly regarded broker and we do not envisage the close dependence to be a problem. However, if you were thinking of getting FAPT Evolution to run with a few hundred dollars in a mini trading account you will have to think again. The minimum investment at Dukascopy is $10,000. So this is a not a robot for the small time investor.

For obvious reasons the developers are planning to limit the number of copies sold. FAPT Evolution is already making a big noise in the market and Dukascopy may be flooded with new account enquiries, so we recommend you get in fast if you want in.

The development team is fast becoming the market leader in the world of forex robots. They say themselves that "FAPT Evolution is the most powerful and stable Forex Robot we have ever developed, period."

Some patience may be needed in the first few days while the brokers deal with so many new accounts and you deal with the learning curve required to set up your new robot. However, the software will have its own forum where you can pick up support and suggestions from other users as well as the developers. This takes a lot of pressure off the developers' own support system and should be your first port of call for any minor issues.

The differences here mean that 'Evolution' was maybe not the best choice of name. This new version of FAP Turbo is not so much a new model as an alternative choice for a different type of investor. In short, the release of Evolution should not stop you from buying the original FAPTurbo with its proven results, if that would suit you better.

So for beginners and those with smaller investment funds, I recommend starting out with the original version of FAPTurbo which you can operate on a mini account with several brokers.

FAPTurbo

However, serious forex brokers should take a close look at FAPT Evolution. My conclusion from this FAPTurbo Evolution pre-review is that this could revolutionize your forex trading and take automated forex systems to a whole new dimension.

FAPTurbo Evolution

For a full FAPTurbo Review register on my blog and as soon as it is ready I will send it to you, also if there any changes to the launch program I will let you know.

Forex Trading Strategies: 3 Golden Rules

2009-07-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

When you have read a few forex books or visited a few online currency trading forums, you will quickly realize that there are almost as many different forex trading strategies as there are traders. People have their own style; but more than that, in currency trading there are many different ways of making money.

So there is not one top forex system that you must follow to profit from foreign exchange trading. However, there are some guidelines that apply to the way in which you approach your trading and these are true for just about anybody. I call them the golden rules of trading.

1. Follow The Trends

Most forex trading strategies and systems focus on identifying trends and there is a good reason for that. Whether the trend shows a rise or a fall, get in to go long or short as appropriate and do not go against it. Bucking the trend will see you losing money fast.

2. Safeguard Your Funds

Risking too much on one trade has been the downfall of many a promising trader. Never risk a lot of money on a single trade, however strong your feelings may be that this one cannot go wrong. They can all go wrong.

So how much do you risk? It depends on your strategy and how much it matters to you if you lose all of your funds, but never more than 5% of your balance. 2% per trade is a safer option.

Some people maintain the percentage as their funds increase, so that they gradually risk more in real terms on each trade. That is up to you but consider carefully before you do this. When you have more money in your account, you will probably be more unhappy if it is wiped out, so you may want to keep the same position size (reducing your percentage risk) as your funds increase.

3. Set Goals For Each Trade

Have a clear profit goal for each trade, so that before you enter, you have already decided when you will take the profit and close. Do not get greedy and try to stay in there for more and more.

In the same way, if it turns bad, do not try to hold on in the hope that the market will turn back your way. Cut your losses and get out.

Using stop losses to do this automatically is a very wise strategy.

Those are the first three golden rules of currency trading: the guidelines that can help you develop profitable forex trading strategies, whatever your system.

How to Choose Foreign Currency Trading Software

2009-06-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

There is a wide choice of foreign currency trading software for the forex market. When you are just getting started with forex trading you will need to shop around to find the platform that will suit you best. But what types of program are available and what features should you look for?

Online brokerage accounts are always run through forex software. Your broker may either give you access to a platform that runs on their server or you may have something that runs on your own computer.

Brokers may have their own custom forex trading platform or they may use a generic platform which they can have tailored to their company.

This should provide you with many features including a wide variety of charts, tools and analytical capabilities that can indicate changing patterns and trends in the price movements. There may also be a forex alert feature or a running commentary on the financial news.

In some cases you can customize your desktop view of the software. This is more useful than you may realize at first. It can save a lot of time to have your preferred settings or combination of tools and charts load automatically when you log in.

If you choose to use automated foreign currency trading software, otherwise known as a forex robot, this will need to connect to your brokerage account to make the trades. See my review of Megadroid on this blog.

If you are running a program yourself, be aware that this usually means that your computer must be switched on and connected to the internet at all times while you have open trades, stop losses or orders to open a trade at a certain point. If your internet connection is often broken by storms or other factors, or if your internet provider automatically cuts the connection any time there is no activity from your machine for more than a certain time, you will not be able to trade effectively unless your instructions have already been passed to your brokerage account and are stored there.

The software should be simple to access and use. Clear instructions plus an FAQ page or manual that you can go to for reference are essential. Beyond that there should be some kind of support, either live or by email, when you need more detailed help or cannot find the answer to your question in the documentation.

Forex trading is risky and you can make losses as well as gains. In this very fast moving market it is vital to have all of the information that you need at your fingertips, plus the power to make your selected trades fast. Automated foreign currency trading software can help you massively and you need the best that you can get your hands on.

Product Review - Forex Trading Made E-Z

2009-06-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

Forex Trading Made E-Z comprises an e-book and 12 videos and is a step by step guide to a successful but unusual system of trading on the foreign exchange currency markets developed by a retired American airline pilot named George C Smith.

This is an electronic product which can be downloaded immediately after you have placed your order securely online with Clickbank. Access to the videos is via links strategically placed within the e-book. I say strategically placed, because the e-book explains in detail the step by step system used by George and each step is supplemented by a video tutorial making it very easy to understand. In addition, you will have access to over 40 further videos of live trading sessions to help you further understand the process.

The e-book at 84 pages may sound a little overwhelming but most of it is taken up with the charts essential to George's system. He describes the success of his system as similar to the 'flight plan' needed to fly an airplane from point A to point B. Once you've learned how to follow the flight plan, it still takes a disciplined approach to make it work. That's why pilots follow check lists -- so they don't forget anything!

The combination of e-book and video is a great way to learn this system. You not only learn from the e-book which describes each step in detail, the video also shows you the live action - as though you were standing over George's shoulder while he does it.

This is not a get rich overnight system. It aims to increase the size of your trading bank by 5% each day of trading. That may not sound very exciting but when you consider the cumulative effect on even a modest bank of say $500, George shows how an average gain of 5% per day will double the size of the bank to $1,000 in just 14 days. He then goes on to show you how you can earn that extra $500 per day on average once you have mastered his system. Don't let me mislead you here, I say on average, because you will not hit the sweet spot every day - there will be days when your trade will lose which helps to maintain a healthy attitude to the real risks which without George's steady and disciplined system would surely take you down a typical gamblers losing path.

This system is not just for beginners, although the more experienced traders may skip through the early stages, there is something in the unusual nature of this system which even experienced traders can gain significant advantage from.

One of the things I particularly like about this product is that it concentrates on explaining how a complete beginner can make money at forex trading in the shortest and simplest way without all the hype and fluff I have seen in more expensive products of this type on the market. It doesn't attempt to explain the detail and complexity of the foreign exchange markets and the pros and cons of trading in different currency pairs. There is a link in the introductory section which takes you to a free e-book you can download if you want to know about that stuff.

A word of warning. This product is not a magic wand. You have the right mindset to be keen to learn and understand charts, patterns, trends and monetary statistics. If you are a complete beginner then you must follow the e-book and video tutorials and learn each step from the beginning and not become frustrated and jump the gun and try to trade too soon. You could do all this over a dedicated weekend and be ready to start trading when the markets open on Sunday night. My advise would be to paper trade for a while using a demo trading account before using real money just to make sure you are applying all the techniques of the system correctly.

Finally, there is support from George personally if you run into problems along the way and be sure to sign up to the notifications update list when prompted during the ordering process to have access to support and to receive updates with new ideas, explanations and even links to new videos as they are issued from time to time.

In summary, a great product and the combination of e-book and videos makes this an ideal way for a beginner to get started in a complex trading market. Also presents some unusual and interesting ideas for the more experienced trader.

Highly recommended. Click Here!

Forex Trading Training: How and Where

2009-06-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

To become a successful currency trader, then no matter what background you have, you will need forex trading training. Currency trading has its own rules and even if you have experience of day trading on the stock exchange there are a few things you will have to learn.

So how do you go about finding training that is right for you?

One factor that you will want to take into account is the cost of your training. There is a huge range here from free information available on the internet to private mentoring from a successful trader that could cost you a thousand dollars a month or more.

Clearly, mentoring will only be of value to you if you intend to trade full time. Private coaching is most useful for people already profiting from forex trading but wanting to make more. Those people are also likely to be in a position where they can judge which coach or mentor will be most suitable for their own trading style. If you are just starting out, you would be better off covering the basics in some other way.

A good way to do this is to use a book or ebook. These are usually organized in a way that will be easy to follow and will cover the basics for beginners. Most will also cover more advanced aspects as you progress.

Ebooks have several advantages over printed books. First, you can download them right away. You do not have to go to the store or wait for them to arrive from Amazon. Second, as well as the forex book itself, they often include other training materials such as spreadsheets, audio recordings or even video.

Many people learn better from video than from the written word. When you are learning a new technique it can be very powerful to be able to look over somebody's shoulder and watch while they show you how they do it. Video can offer you this experience and save you a lot of confusion.

Also, if you buy a forex ebook you will often find that you can get some kind of support. You may be able to email the author with your questions, or there might be a forum that you can join. You almost never get this from a printed book.

It is true that there is a lot of information available for free on foreign exchange websites and you can also pick up tips and tricks from free forex forums. However, the information you will get from free sites and forums is usually very disorganized and may be contradictory. You can see this very quickly if you look at the questions on any forum. One person comes along with one answer, and then another argues something different.

So free information is useful while you are deciding whether to get involved in forex trading at all. But once you have made up your mind, you will want some more helpful forex trading training. So bookmark this blog and I will help you find your way.

The FX Market: What is It?

2009-06-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

The forex or FX market is the currency trading market where foreign currencies are exchanged. It is not located in just one place. By its very nature it is a global market and trading happens all over the world.

In a sense there is a separate market for each currency pair. Every possible combination of currencies has its own price. Although these are related in some ways there is not necessarily a direct connection between them. Obviously if a country is doing very badly in economic terms,
then its currency is likely to fall in comparison with most other countries. But another country might be doing even worse and then the opposite would show on that particular currency pair market. For example the dollar could be falling against the euro while at the same time it is rising against the yen.

The biggest participants in the FX market are banks and other large financial institutions who have a lot of money to invest. They employ professional currency traders who do this for their job. But the markets are so huge and access is so easy that anybody can get involved these days.

All you need is a computer with a high speed internet connection. Do not try trading over a dial up connection! You will find it very frustrating. Prices will change too fast for you to act and you will probably lose money.

You will also need access to a broker who will cover your trades by offering you leverage. This means that with say $100 of your funds you can control $10,000. The broker handles this amount, but you can get started with just a few hundred dollars in a mini FX trading account.

The forex market is highly liquid and very volatile. Liquidity is a measure of how easy it is to turn an investment to cash. Currency is already cash so it has high liquidity. What this means for you is that you can buy and sell at any time. You do not have to wait to find a buyer as you often do with stocks.

The high volatility of the forex market means that prices are constantly changing. This makes it a very risky investment but also potentially very profitable. The possibility of gaining or losing a lot of money in a short time is very attractive for people who are prepared to take the risks. Forex trading is exciting and can be very lucrative for the skilful trader.

Traders use charts and graphs to indicate trends in the movement of the prices. The aim of course is to predict whether the price will continue to move in its current direction or when there will be a reversal. These charts and graphs are normally provided by your broker.

At the same time it is important to stay alert to world events that might affect the financial markets. Many brokers also provide a live feed of forex news. This can be very useful if only to remind you to leave the FX market by closing your trades before major financial announcements are expected.

FX Trading Platform: Finding The Best

2009-06-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

Finding the best FX trading platform can be a challenge for both brokers and traders. Brokers will want software that is reliable, adaptable to their needs and easy for their clients to use. Traders are also looking for ease of use with good technical information.

Forex Platforms For Brokers

Many forex brokers, especially the larger organizations, will have a trading platform custom built for them. This is big business and a brokerage company will usually sneak a look at all of the platforms that competitors are using and then try to build something better. The cost of this is sure to be high. It can take a long time too. Software development, like construction, is something that always seems to take longer than expected.

Smaller brokers cannot usually afford to have all of the software designed for them from scratch. Instead, they may buy an FX trading platform that they can use out of the box. However, experienced traders will recognize this and may avoid such brokers. It is hard for traders to have confidence in a company that does not appear to be investing any resources in its trading software.

A compromise that works well for many brokers is to take a pre designed package and then have somebody customize it for you. The look of the program can be altered to include your logo, company colors and other factors. Better still, you could add more charts and offer any the technical analysis that traders are looking for but cannot get elsewhere. This way you can give the appearance of offering a unique trading platform without the cost of full scale software development.

Forex Platforms For Traders

Individual traders will generally use whatever software their broker provides. The platform is an important consideration when looking for a broker. For some traders, it is more important than cost. They may accept a bigger spread for the sake of the exact charts or information that they need to operate a system that they know is profitable.

In addition, traders who use automated systems or robots to trade the foreign exchange market will need a software platform on which their robot can operate. Experienced traders who have developed a profitable system of their own sometimes design a robot to automate their system for their own use. Most of the popular robots or expert advisors run on the Metatrader 4 platform. You need to download this for free in order to use most of the forex robots that you can buy today.

Automated trading software has many advantages, including the ability to automatically open and close trades when the market favors your system. Many forex traders are now moving into the world of robots and Metatrader 4 is probably the best FX trading platform for those traders.

Which Type of Forex Market Analysis is Best?

2009-06-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Within the forex trading environment, there are basically two types of analysis used to anticipate what is going to happen to currency movements. These are known as fundamental analysis and technical analysis.

Fundamental Analysis

What are the fundamental factors influencing the movement in currency prices? Of course we have to start with the world economy as a whole and the local national economies of the nations involved when we are looking at a specific pair of currencies. Generally, a healthy economy will point to a strong currency and vice versa.

Each time there is a financial report or statement issued concerning the state of a nation such as Gross Domestic Product, statements of the national debt, inflation, employment levels and trade deficits etc, there is a movement in currency values. By analysing historical data it's possible to predict what might happen when such a report or statement is due.

It's not only the economy that can cause fluctuations in currency values. Social and political events can have a strong influence particularly events such as an election, social unrest, terrorist attack or a natural disaster. Again it is possible to predict the effect of such events based on historical data.

Technical Analysis

This method is based entirely around charts to identify trends and patterns in currency movements. There are literally hundreds of technical analysis indicators available to traders and it takes a lot of time and practice to work successfully with this method.

As you would expect there are two schools of thought as to which is the best method and many forex traders will rely on one or the other. However, my advice is that neither method is mutually exclusive. It can be argued that fundamental analysis is based on emotion and technical analysis on logic. Well, like all things in life, the reality is a combination of both.

Fundamental analysis will help to identify large movements in currency prices but technical analysis is better at identifying small fluctuations which cannot be attributed to any significant economic announcement, social or political event.

So my advice is to work with technical analysis for identifying trends and patterns in the short term but also use fundamental analysis to keep and eye on the bigger picture. Forex market analysis using both methods is the way to achieve the best levels of consistent success with forex trading.

Candlestick Charts used in Forex Trading

2009-06-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

Among the many types of technical analysis available to forex traders, the single most useful and popular are probably candlestick charts. These were originally developed in Japan during the 18th century by a prominent commodity trader who used them to chart the fluctuations in the price of rice. For this reason they are often known as Japanese candlestick charts, and many of the patterns that they form have Japanese names.

Simple line graphs plotting the price of a commodity at regular intervals in time had been used for centuries, but traders were in need of something that could plot more variables within a two dimensional graph. The bar chart showing the opening, high, low and closing prices of a commodity was useful and helped traders to predict future price movements in a more reliable way than line charts, but candlestick charts were even better.

They were introduced to the American stock market and from there to the worldwide financial markets by Charles Dow at the beginning of the 20th century. Dow was the founder of the Wall Street Journal and co-founder of the Dow Jones company.

Candlestick Formation

The chart is made up of a series of 'candlesticks' which typically have a chunky body with vertical lines stretching up from the top (the upper shadow or wick) and bottom (the lower shadow or wick). The different points measure the differential in prices over a certain period of time, which might be 5 minutes, 15 minutes or longer.

The top of the wick is the highest point reached during the time period and the lowest point of the lower wick is the low. The top and bottom of the body are the opening and closing prices. If price rose during the period the body will be white (or green or blue if colored). The bottom of the body marks the opening price and its top marks the close. If the price fell during the period the prices are the other way around and to show this at a glance the body will be black (or red if colored).

How To Use Candlestick Charts In Forex Trading

A chart showing 5 or 15 minute candles over a period of several hours can provide the forex trader with many patterns on which he can base a system for determining when a trend is developing. For example, when the candle body is white or green and higher than the preceding candles, it indicates that buyers are very bullish. When it is black or red and lower than the preceding candles, it indicates that buyers are very bearish.

Being able to see these implications at a glance is vital in the fast moving forex markets where trading decisions often need to be made in a split second. So candlestick charts are one of the most useful visual aids for any forex trader.

Foreign Exchange Brokers: How to Choose

2009-06-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

Foreign exchange brokers are in abundance around the world with new brokers entering the market every day. So how do you set about choosing a good forex broker?

Firstly, look at the way they advertise. What are they saying to you? Of course they will want to attract your custom by telling you about the benefits of forex trading and the possibility of making lots of money. However, they should also be realistic and tell you about the risks. Many traders entering the market for the first time are blind to the risks and 'dive in' too soon.

Look for a broker who clearly states the risks and in doing so gives you some automated protection in your account, particularly the closing of trades when the funds in your account are in danger of being insufficient to cover a losing trade. This is particularly important for beginners who may not spot a potentially bad trade until it's too late. Be aware of the leverage offered. In the Forex market we see the highest leverage ratios being applied. Typically 50:1, 100:1 or even 200:1. At the lower end, 50:1 or 100:1 is normally provided for a standard trade of 100,000 units of a given currency. For smaller trades of $50,000 or less 200:1 is the norm. So make sure you understand how to apply stop losses and make sure your broker will hold your hand on this and apply stop losses automatically until you acquire the necessary trading knowledge and skills.

Look for a broker who has been around for a while and can demonstrate a good track record. We wary of customer testimonials on their website. You have no way of knowing if they are genuine. Look for credentials such as membership of a regulatory body. Are they supported by a reputable parent company?

Look for a broker who will offer you a complete service from tutorials, demo or paper trading accounts for beginners and full chart and technical analysis support with a variety of 'off the shelf' trading systems for you to try and bespoke systems you can develop for yourself as you become more proficient.

Look for a broker offering reliability and backup servers. You need to be sure that you’re in control of your trades 24/7. Does the broker provide a customer forum on their site? This is a good sign and gives you the opportunity to visit the forum and research problems that existing customers may have experienced. If they don't have their own forum, visit one or two of the popular forex public forums and don't be afraid to ask questions.

Finally, look at the spread being officered by the foreign exchange brokers. This is how they make their money. Is the spread on offer consistent with all forex pairs?

Forex Mini Trading Account

2009-06-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

Forex mini accounts are ideal for just about anybody who is starting out in forex trading. You would have to be very rich or very confident to start right out with a standard account if you are a retail trader (i.e. somebody trading on their own account from home). A mini account lets you get started without risking so much money and this makes it a very attractive option for most people.

Mini forex trading accounts generally allow you to trade with just one tenth of the normal lot size. This usually means 10,000 units of currency instead of 100,000.

Of course you do not have to have this much in your account. Currency trading works with leverage. If you are using 100 times leverage then you need $100 to control $10,000 in your mini account or $1,000 to control $100,000 for a standard account.

$100 or 100 units of other currency per trade is enough for most people to commit to a trade when they are starting out and that is why the mini trading account is so attractive.

The pip size is also usually smaller in a mini account. Pips are units in which you will measure your profits, losses and costs (the spread).

Their dollar value can vary depending on the currency pair that you are trading, the lot size and other conventions of your broker, but a common standard pip size is $10 and mini pip size is $1.

Some brokers are now quoting prices to 5 decimal places which technically would make one pip 0.00001 of the quoted price, but we will continue to use the standard 4 decimal place pip for this example.

So if you have a standard forex account you can expect to put up $1,000 on each trade, be involved in trading lots of $100,000 and measure your profits in $10 units.

If you have a forex mini account you can expect to commit $100 on each trade, be involved in trading lots of $10,000 and measure your profits in $1 units.

Of course you can set stop losses so that you do not have to risk all of the money that is committed to the trade. But your losses will be measured in terms of pips so these too will be 10 times greater in the standard account.

If you are successful and your fund grows, you may want to move up to trading greater sums. You can still do this in your mini account by trading more than one lot at a time. So if you want to trade a standard lot size you would just trade 10 mini lots. This has the advantage of still giving you the ability for fine control of your stops because your pip size is still just $1.

The standard account used to be all that was available before so many people had powerful home computers and high speed internet connections that made it possible for the ordinary person to trade from home. The forex mini account is a development that has opened up the market to people who have the technology but not the money for standard currency trading investment.

If you want to risk even less of your money, you could look at forex micro accounts which allow you to make even smaller trades. Be aware though that the spread is often a little high and you might find it difficult to profit with a micro account. It may be better to use a demo account until your confidence builds and then open a forex mini account for real trading.

Forex Trends Is The Way To Make Money In The Currency Markets

2009-06-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

The way to make money with forex trading is by observing patterns and trends in the currency movements and then acting when a trend is about to form in a positive direction. When I say positive direction, this can be an upward trend when opening a trade or a downward trend when closing a trade.

Charts are used for this type of technical analysis. There are generally three types of chart used for this - line, bar and candlestick charts but the most common is the candlestick chart because most traders find them easier to read.

In a candlestick chart, a vertical column shows the high and low price whose width represents the opening and closing prices. The columns are traditionally coloured white for rising and black for falling prices but colours such as green for rising and red for falling are now becoming more common. This type of chart is preferred by many traders because it is easier to see the turning points where a price has reversed from an upward trend to a downward trend and visa versa.

Being able to identify a trend before it actually happens is the big secret and this is where skill and experience is so important. Some traders will observe a currency movement between two imaginary horizontal lines on a candlestick chart and any movement up or down between these lines is considered to be a sideways trend and any movement beyond these lines is considered an upward or downward trend and will consequently trigger an opening or closing trade.

Sometimes these lines are referred to as resistance lines because the currency price will usually fluctuate between them or 'bounce' off them as though they were a physical barrier. Of course they are imaginary and the positioning of these lines is the secret to success.

It is important to take your time and practice with paper trades until you are confident with your interpretation of currency movements and emerging trends before you start trading with real money. Forex is risky and even with the best systems there will always be losing trades. The secret is to ensure that there are more winning trades than losing trades.

Traditional traders prefer to work with charts and develop there own manual systems. It gives them a buzz to be able to read the market and spot a good time to open or close a trade. For others, it's more do with just making money and increasingly there are some very good automatic trading systems, often referred to as robots, entering the market. Of course you have to set the parameters which are similar to the imaginary lines I've just mentioned but having done that you just sit back and let the robot open and close trades automatically.

However, even with robots, you should always paper trade until you are confident in setting the parameters correctly. When you purchase the robot software to run on your computer, it will come with detailed instructions and the ability to demo trade. Visit my blog for regular reviews of the latest robots as they hit the market.
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Forex Pip Explained

2009-06-11T02:27:00.000-07:00

When you start to look around forex websites online, you will soon see references to the forex pip. Your gains and losses will be measured in pips. Something else that is measured in pips is the spread, the difference between the bid and ask prices which is the main cost of forex trading and how the brokers make their money. So it is clearly very important to understand what is a forex pip.

The word is an acronym standing for percentage in point (or sometimes, price interest point). It is the smallest increment of changes in values. It allows us to measure a rise or fall in currency values in percentage terms instead of in dollars and cents.

Why do we need to talk in pips? The reason for this is simple. In the foreign exchange market there is no world currency in which to express values. The US dollar may be the most commonly traded currency but it is not involved in all trades. If you are trading cross rates, i.e. two other currencies such as EUR/GBP or any other combination that does not involve USD, it would not make any sense at all to express your gains and losses in terms of US dollars. Instead, we need something that is a small percentage of the value of whatever currencies we are dealing with.

This means that the monetary value of a pip varies according to the currency.

Most currencies are quoted to four decimal points. For example you might see the bid price for EUR/USD quoted at 1.3642 and ask price 1.3644. The difference (the spread) is 0.0002 or 2 pips. Here a pip is 0.01% of a lot.

So if the lot size was $100,000, one pip would be worth $10. For a lot size of $10,000, one pip would be $1.

That is the value of pips when the US dollar is the quote currency, i.e. XXX/USD. But when the quote currency is different, one pip is usually 10 units of that currency (e.g. 10 euros or 10 pounds). Or if your lot size is 10,000 units, one pip is 1 unit (1 euro or 1 pound).

The exception is the Japanese yen which has a much lower unit value than most currencies (you get a lot of yen to the dollar). Because of this, the yen is only quoted to the second decimal point. You might see a price USD/JPY 110.15. In this case one pip is 0.01 or 1% but in yen, not dollars. So the pip value is JPY 1000 which at that price would be worth US $11.015.

These differences can be confusing when you are just starting out. So it is better for beginners to trade consistently with just one currency pair.

If you are trading one pair regularly every day you will soon get used to how much a pip means in terms of your actual gains and losses in your account. You will know how much one pip is worth in dollars or in your own currency.

But when you are trading several different currency pairs, you have to deal with pips of different value. If you get confused, you could be taking greater risks than you planned or closing trades with less profit than you thought. It is much easier to deal with only one pair at first until you have a sound understanding of trading practices and forex pip values.

Currency Trading Tips

2009-06-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of money to be made in foreign exchange trading. Here are 3 currency trading tips to help you maximize your profits.

1. Use weekly charts in addition to daily charts

Checking back over the week's price movements for your chosen currency pair will give you a better perspective on both short and long term trends in the market. It is easy to become blinkered in spot forex trading especially if your method concentrates on day trading. Weekly
charts allow you to take a step back.

Sometimes the new perspective that you gain in this way will help you see what went right or wrong with your trading and why. This can help you to refine your systems to make them more profitable. However, do not make changes in a good system every time something goes wrong. There is a need for balance here.

2. Don't over trade.

It is tempting to jump into the market and open a trade whenever you think you spot an opportunity, when really you should have held back. It is often true that the fewer trades you make, the more money you will make. This seems counterintuitive because we tend to think that we need to make a lot of trades to build up big profits. But opening a trade at the wrong moment leads to losses, so in fact the opposite is often true.

You need to be comfortable with risk in order to engage in forex trading. Most traders even enjoy the risk. So it can be difficult to hold back from something that looks like a big opportunity. Remember this is investment, not gambling. You must choose your trades carefully. Taking chances in the hope of making a big killing is likely to lead to your account balance taking a hammering.

If you have a profitable forex trading system that does not often offer the opportunity to trade so it is not making you much money, do not be tempted to widen the criteria so that it lets you trade more often. This will almost certainly turn your profitable system into an unprofitable one.

Instead there are two things you can do. First you can increase the amount of each trade. This increases your risk and is probably not a good idea unless you are very sure of your system. Second you can try to find a different system that is equally profitable that you can operate alongside the first. This is the better option for most people but make sure that you test your new system thoroughly before adopting it.

3. Be realistic.

When you are thinking about how much money you hope to make with currency trading, it is important to be realistic and accept that sometimes you will lose. You should only be trading with money that you can afford to lose and do not expect to double your money over and over in a short time.

Unfortunately many advertisements lead you to have very high expectations. You may see an ad that suggests you can double your money in 7 days, for example. This does not mean you are certain to double your money, and it definitely does not mean that you can do it every 7 days with no setbacks. Doubling your money in a short time is possible but doing it over and over without losses is not realistic. Expect to take at least one step back for every two steps forward and have reasonable targets by comparing with what you might make if you invested in stocks or bonds.

Before starting forex trading for real, be sure you are armed with sound strategies that you have tested for yourself. Weigh up all of your options and remember that you are entering a risky business. Keep these currency trading tips in mind and give yourself the best chance of succeeding as a forex trader.

The Best Forex Trading Times

2009-06-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

So what are the best forex trading times? The forex market is open 24 hours a day during the business week, but this does not necessarily mean that all of those 24 hours are good for trading.

There is a lot more activity on the foreign exchange markets at certain times of day and generally speaking, the best times to trade are when the markets are busiest.

The two biggest trading floors for forex are London and the US markets. Although the UK does not use the euro, most euro countries are within one hour time difference from the UK, as is Switzerland. US time zones also include Canadian. So the London session and the US session between them cover most of the major currencies that are traded.

The London session starts at 8.00 UTC and finishes at 16.00 UTC. The currencies that are most active during this session are the euro (EUR), British pound (GBP) and US dollar (USD) which is involved in the majority of all trades.

The US session starts at 13.00 UTC (8.00 EST) and finishes at 22.00 UTC (17.00 EST). The most traded currencies during these times are USD, EUR, GBP, AUD (Australian dollar), JPY (Japanese yen) and CAD (Canadian dollar).

The peak trading time, as you might expect, is during the three hours when these two sessions overlap and the markets are open in both London and New York. This period runs from 13.00 to 16.00 UTC (8.00 to 11.00 EST).

If you like to let your orders run over several days it may not make so much difference to you to know the busiest times on the markets. But if you are involved in day trading forex where you might open and close a trade within a few minutes, you will find most opportunities coming up during the most active hours.

If you are involved in a cross rate, i.e. a currency pair that does not involve the US dollar, you may have another window of time when the financial centers in your two countries are open for business.

For example if you were trading AUD/JPY you might find that trading was good during what is called the Asian session. The Australian and Japanese business hours are pretty close and on a day when activity was expected you might find some profitable trades during the overlap.
However, generally speaking this is a slower session for just about all currencies.

So the best time for most forex traders is during that three hour window in the morning in the US and the afternoon in the UK and Europe, when the markets are open on both sides of the Atlantic. Trading can be frantic during those hours, there is maximum liquidity and the currencies move far and fast. A lot of the important financial news is released during this period too, especially toward the beginning. So these hours are the best forex trading times if you want to grab quick profits.

Electronic Currency Trading: The Basics

2009-06-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

Electronic currency trading is simply a way of dealing in currency exchange online. You may have seen it described as foreign exchange, forex or fx trading. It is something that appeals to many people who are looking for a way to make money on the internet using their home computer.

Forex is a little like stock trading, although the market itself is very different. You have the same aim of buying something hoping the price will rise. But with forex you are always dealing with money so you can also make money from a falling price, by exchanging out of the falling currency into a steady or rising currency.

Imagine for example that you are trading on the currency pair EUR/USD. This is a common combination for beginners. The US dollar and euro are most traded currencies and there is a lot of information available to help you, so it is a good choice to start.

With this pair you can choose to either buy or sell euros. If you place a buy order, this is called 'going long'. You would do this if you think the euro will strengthen or rise in value (or the dollar will fall).

If you place a sell order, that is 'going short'. You would do this if you think the dollar will strengthen (or the euro will weaken).

Your aim is to make a profit by closing the trade when the price goes the way that you anticipated. Closing the trade would involve selling euros if you had gone long, or buying them if you had gone short.

Of course, there is a risk. The price could go the wrong way, and you could make a loss. So it is important to have good information and a profitable trading system.

You do not need a lot of money to get started with electronic currency trading. Many brokers will let you begin with a couple hundred dollars, although it is better if that is not all the money that you have in the world!

Forex trading involves margins. This means that you can place orders for a lot more money than you actually have. You do this through a broker who will guarantee the balance of the order. They know you will be closing the trade at some time and if one currency is falling, another is rising. Currency values are relative, so it is not possible for all currencies to crash in the way that all stocks can crash.

Currencies can be very volatile but you can use stop losses to ensure that you do not lose more than you are willing to risk. Some brokers operate limited risk accounts where they will automatically close your trade if you lose the balance of your account. This means you do not have the dreaded margin calls which can be so disastrous for stock traders.

What You Need To Know about Metatrader 4 Expert Advisor

2009-06-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Metatrader 4 expert advisor range is the most popular range of forex autopilot software. There is a wide choice of expert advisors designed to run on this free downloadable platform or framework that sets a structure for EAs to be built on. Whichever expert advisor (EA) you choose will act as a robot on the forex market, trading for you according to the boundaries that you set.

Clearly this has many advantages over making all of the moves in a trade yourself. The EA does not need breaks for eating, sleeping and human contact. Neither does it suffer from human weaknesses such as fear and over optimism which can distract us from our systems and lead us to exit a trade too soon or not soon enough. Once you have set it up it will obey your system to the letter all the time that it is online.

An EA will often protect your interests when you could not do it yourself. The opportunity to set a trailing stop is one example. A trailing stop automatically moves up with rising prices but stays in place if the market falls. This means that on a successful trade it protects a part of your profits without exiting too soon. On an unsuccessful trade it protects you from heavy losses just as a standard stop would do.

Some of the functions of an expert advisor depend on having it constantly connected to the internet. This because MT4 and the EA run on your own computer or server, not on your broker's servers. For example if you have set a trailing stop, MT4 sends a message to your broker account to move the stop each time and it has to be connected to the internet to do that.

This means that to make the most of the potential of a Metatrader 4 expert advisor on a home computer you have to leave your computer online 24 hours Sunday night thru Friday unless you happen to have exited all of your trades before you stop work on any particular day.

Any break in the connection will mean that no more messages are sent to your brokerage so the trailing stop will be left where it was last set. It will still protect you from a large loss but it will not move up any more so you will have lost some of the advantage of having a system that works while you sleep.

However, some EAs can be hosted remotely. This means that you can set them up on an internet server instead of your own computer. This could be your own or a facility offered by the EA company. They may offer this option as an upgrade after you order their Metatrader 4 expert advisor.

Forex Trading Education: 5 Tips For Sticking to a System

2009-06-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

One of the most important things you can learn in any forex trading education is how to stick to your chosen system or systems in a consistent way.

Changing from one thing to another will kill any chance you have of success, but we are all tempted from time to time. If you find it hard to stick to one trading system, here are some techniques that may help you to learn to be consistent.

1. Consider carefully before you decide to follow any system. One successful businessman has said that the secret of his success was thorough research before a decision, and then sticking to it like iron. You need to be sure that your system is profitable ... not necessarily the very best. And you need to be comfortable with all the actions that it will require you to take, whether things are going well or badly.

2. If you have problems with self discipline in other areas of your life, use those to train yourself in the skill before you start live trading. Do not pick the thing that you have most trouble with, but something that you could fairly easily master. It might be getting up at
the same time every day,

3. Allow yourself a small 'fun' budget or have a separate mini account for trades that look so tempting that you cannot pass them up even though they do not fit your criteria. You will almost certainly lose this money over a period of time, so be sure you can afford it. If not, avoid the temptation and track these trades on paper instead or use a demo account. Be sure to track them all because we have a tendency to remember the few that would have profited us and forget the majority that would have lost.

4. Do not discuss your trades or your system with anybody else. It is fine to ask around on forums before you have decided on your system, but do not be drawn into debate about the merits of a system after you start using it. You will quickly be swamped by negativity from people who want to believe that their own system is better. Equally, do not discuss it with non trading friends or family members. They will often be negative simply because they do not understand.

5. Do not drink alcohol while you are trading. In fact, it is better not to even look at the markets when you have had a few beers. If you see a tempting trade that breaks your normal rules it will be much harder to resist when you are under the influence of alcohol.
So even though we all love the idea of working from home in our pajamas with a beer at one elbow and the cookie jar at the other, reality is that relaxing to this extent does not combine with successful forex trading. A mind that is even slightly fuzzed by alcohol will not be able to keep to a consistent trading plan.

An automated forex robot can help you out here. You can set it up to trade automatically for you, if you are not yet able to act consistently while you pursue your forex trading education. This robot is highly recommended Click Here!

Trading Currencies: 7 Good Reasons Why Trading Currencies is an Attractive form of Investment.

2009-06-01T06:22:00.000-07:00

With the advent of fast internet connection, trading currencies has become a very attractive form of investment. Otherwise known as foreign exchange or forex, it's a market where almost anyone can become involved. You need a computer with an internet connection, some money to invest and a little time at the beginning to learn the market, develop your own system or buy into one of many off the shelf systems.

The amount of money you need is not much. Many brokers are vying for your business and now offering mini or micro forex trading accounts requiring just a couple of hundred dollars to set up. Of course, there is a risk in forex trading as in any other form of investment, especially to start with as your learn the ropes, so you should stick to the old adage and not invest money you cannot afford to lose.

However, assuming you have the funds and you are keen to invest those funds to make money, then I will give you seven good reasons why you should choose trading currencies as opposed to trading in stocks, shares and commodity markets.

1) No fees or commissions.

Brokers make their money from the spread between the bid and buy price of a currency. So unlike the stock, shares and commodity markets, you do not pay fees and commissions which can absorb much of your profit.

2) Minimal start up costs.

All you need is a couple of hundred dollars to open a trading account, a computer with a high speed internet connection and you are away. You may decide to buy into some automated trading software which will set you back another $100 or so (example: Click Here!
).

3) Tools and information are free.

There is a lot of competition between brokers and consequently they are falling over themselves to win your custom. A good broker will offer tutorials and demonstration accounts where you can learn to paper trade without real money while you learn the basics. They will also provide you with free charts and show you how to use and interpret them. Otherwise, all the learning and information you need is freely available on the internet via specialised websites or blogs such as mine.

4) 24 hour trading.

Because the currency market is Global, it is effectively open 24 hours per day, 5 days per week. It opens in Sydney Australia at 22:00 UTC on Sunday evening and closes at 22:00 UTC on Friday afternoon in New York. This makes it very easy to do this part time while holding down a normal day job. Once you have leaned the ropes and become successful at trading currencies, you can give up the day job and become a full time forex trader.

5) Higher levels of Leverage

The leverage that is achievable in the forex market is one of the highest that investors can obtain. Usually, the amount of leverage provided is either 50:1, 100:1 or 200:1, depending on the broker and the size of the trade. This gives you the opportunity to make a lot of money by trading with more money than is available in your trading account. Be aware, this is not for the faint hearted - if your trade goes bad you will have to pay the money back. However, when you become more experienced and successful with your trades this high level of leverage makes this form of investment stand out from the 2:1 leverage commonly provided on equities and the 15:1 leverage provided by the futures market.

6) No fixed size of contract.

Standard trading is done on 100,000 units of currency. However, with spot trading you can, in theory, determine the size of contract you wish to trade. Some brokers do have set sizes for administrative purposes but if you shop around you will find a broker who will cater for your needs.

7) Liquidity and Volume.

The liquidity of an asset is the ease with which it can be turned into cash without loss of value or at least without any significant loss in value. Currency is money and money is cash and is therefore more liquid than any other asset making it very easy to trade. The volume or amount of money being traded in the forex market every day is around $4 trillion. The international banks and other financial institutions as big and as influential as they are have no chance of dominating the market. Trading currencies is also void of the risk of insider trading which can blight other forms of investment.

Currency Trading Basics: The Seven Basic Elements of Currency Trading

2009-05-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

Currency trading, foreign exchange trading, forex trading or Fx trading are just four different titles often given to act of investing in the currency exchange market. If you are interested in investing in the foreign exchange market, then you need to understand the seven currency trading basics:

1) What is currency trading?

Currency trading is simply buying and selling currencies and making a profit from a positive price change between two different currencies involved in a trade. The two currencies involved in a trade are known as the forex pair. The most common currency involved in forex trading is the US dollar which is involved in 85% of all trades.

A forex trader will monitor the financial markets and react to trends in the movement in price between one currency and another. He makes a profit if he buys or opens a trade at a low price and sells or closes at a higher price. The skill is being able to understand what is happening in the market and correctly anticipate the upward or downward movement of currency prices. There are many tools available to help with the analysis of the market - the most common being a variety of charts which show historical trends and patterns. Increasingly, there are new trading software packages entering the market which automates much of this process eg Click Here!
.

2) The forex market

The volume in the foreign exchange market is massive, with around $4 trillion dollars being traded every single day. The international banks and financial investment companies are the main players but especially now with the internet and high speed connections, the market has opened up to the small private investors who are entering the market in their droves. The constant fluctuation in price between currencies provide a lucrative market for the shrewd investor.

3) Investment Capital

Just a few hundred dollars is enough to get started. You need to open an account with a broker but generally they do not charge any upfront fees or commission and make their money from the spread in buy and sell prices of the currency and from leveraging.

4) Trading hours

Because the currency market is Global, it is effectively open 24 hours per day, 5 days per week. It opens in Sydney Australia at 22:00 UTC on Sunday evening and closes at 22:00 UTC on Friday afternoon in New York.

5) Risk

Unfortunately, too many people enter the forex market and expect to get rich quick. Forex trading is not gambling, it's a skill which can return good profits if you enter with the correct mindset and are prepared to learn the various tricks and techniques. In any form of investment where the potential profit is high, then so too are the potential losses. Even the most skilled and experienced traders will lose money and should not be put off when you do. The important thing is to make more gains than losses, so start small and learn from your mistakes. Always trade with a stop loss, particularly if you are using any form of automated trading software, this will protect you from huge losses if the market should suddenly turn against you.

6) Strategy and Systems

You need a clear strategy and to develop a profitable system within that strategy. Fear and greed are your worst enemies. Work hard at understanding the markets, study the charts and get a feel for the many factors which influence price movement. Persevere and above all be consistent.

7) You are in control

You are in total control of your investment. Unlike most other forms of investment such as stocks and shares, you are not dependent on the performance of a third party. So long as you learn the currency trading basics and learn to recognise the world events which influence currency prices then you are in a strong position to take advantage of positive trends in currency price movements.

Foreign Exchange Market and the Five Secrets of its Success

2009-05-31T06:19:00.000-07:00

The foreign exchange market or forex market as it is more commonly known used to be the preserve of the big international banks and to a degree they still try to control and manipulate it. However, largely due to the internet and high speed connections, the market has opened up significantly to the smaller traders. The forex market is unique and offers a better opportunity to make money than most other forms of investment for five basic reasons:

1) Global Market

Forex trading is carried out all over the world and whilst it is influenced by domestic events in the countries of major financial importance, the effects are often balanced out between negative influences in one corner of the world and positive influences elsewhere. Forex trading is always between two currencies or forex pairs as they are known and the individual currencies have no absolute value in isolation. The value of a currency can only be measured in comparison with another currency and if one of them falls in value the other will rise in value. This is unique because in other forms of investment such as the stock market, a negative influence in one corner of the world can ripple around the world and create a fall in value in stocks around the world. The current economic crisis is a perfect example of this. The sub-prime lending market in the USA crashed and the effects were soon felt around the world with the biggest stock market crash since the 1930's.

2) Trading Volume

Simply put, this is the amount of money being traded at any given time and within the foreign exchange market the trading volume is immense. A survey carried out a couple of years ago put the amount of money being traded in the forex market at $4 trillion per day. The US Dollar is the single most traded currency involved in 85% of all forex trades, followed by the Euro at 35%. The largest forex trading center is London, followed by New York and Tokyo.

3) Liquidity

The liquidity of an asset is the ease with which it can be turned into cash without loss of value or at least without any significant loss in value. Currency is money and money is cash and is therefore more liquid than any other asset making it very easy to trade.

4) Leverage

Leverage is about controlling something big with something small. The leverage that is achievable in the forex market is one of the highest that investors can obtain. Leverage is a loan that is provided to a trader by the broker handling his or her forex account. When a trader decides to invest in the forex market, he or she must first open up a margin account with a broker. Usually, the amount of leverage provided is either 50:1, 100:1 or 200:1, depending on the broker and the size of the trade. Standard trading is done on 100,000 units of currency, so for a trade of this size, the leverage provided is usually 50:1 or 100:1. Leverage of 200:1 is usually used for trades of $50,000 or less.

To trade $100,000 of currency, with a margin of 1%, an investor will only have to deposit $1,000 into his or her margin account. The leverage provided on a trade like this is 100:1. Leverage of this size is significantly larger than the 2:1 leverage commonly provided on equities and the 15:1 leverage provided by the futures market. Although 100:1 leverage may seem extremely risky, the risk is significantly less when you consider that currency prices usually change by less than 1% during a days trading.

5) 24 Hour Market

Because the foreign exchange market is global, forex trading can carried out 24 hours a day over 5 days per week. The market effectively opens in Sydney, Australia at 22:00 UTC on Sunday evening and closes on Friday afternoon in New York at 22:00 UTC.

FX Trading: The What, the Who, the Why and the How.

2009-05-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

What is FX trading, who can do it, why would they want to do it and how can they do it? In this brief article I will attempt to answer these basic questions.

What is Fx trading?

FX or forex is an acronym for foreign exchange. Therefore, FX trading is foreign exchange trading. In other words it is trading in foreign currency. FX traders will trade in forex pairs with the US Dollar and Euro being the most popular pair. Forex traders will buy and sell currencies and make money from the currency price movements.

Who can do Fx trading?

Anyone can do it. It is no longer a special preserve of the banks and other financial institutions. You do not need a lifetime of knowledge and experience from working in the investment and forex markets in the London Stock Exchange, New York Wall Street or other financial centers around the world.

The internet, particularly with the advent of broadband and high speed connection, has opened up these markets to ordinary people working from the comfort of their own home. They can access real time data in the form of latest currency prices, charts and other data. They can open an account with an online broker and carry out all trading transactions online. Recognising this potential, brokers have made the whole task relatively easy and inexpensive to get started. Of course, to be successful, you need to learn some basic rules and techniques.

At the same time, the ongoing development of special trading software is so sophisticated now that forex robots can automatically do the trading for you. You do not have to understand the market or decide when to open and close a trade - the robot does it all for you on your own computer.

Why become a forex trader?

It is a way of making money from the comfort of your own home and given the current economic climate, many people are choosing or being forced to look at other ways of creating an income. Forex trading can supplement other forms of investment trading on the stock market as an extension of your investment portfolio, thereby spreading the risk. It can be a full time or part time activity and it can be fun too for people who enjoy a challenge. Beware though not to be too casual about forex trading. It's not gambling and should not be viewed upon in this way; otherwise you will make more losses than gains. Of course there are risks and even expert traders will make some losses but with the right mental approach, patience, motivation and commitment to succeed, it can be very rewarding.

How to get started?

It's very easy. You will need to sign up with a broker before you can make any trades. You will find many of them with a simple search on the internet. Shop around and compare fees and other charges. Make sure you understand the basics of how to open and close a trade and how to use stop losses to safeguard your position if a trade should make a sudden adverse movement.

You might want to take advantage of the many automatic Fx trading or forex robot software packages on the market. If so, make sure you understand how they work and trial by 'paper trading' first before letting a robot loose with real money in your Fx trading account. (Forex Megadroid Click Here!).

Which Forex Pairs to Trade?

2009-05-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Forex pairs are the two currencies involved in currency trading. You exchange or trade one currency say US Dollars for another currency say British Pounds Sterling. The forex pair in this example is USD/ GBP.

Of course it is possible to trade with any pair of currencies from around the world. In practice, however, it is the currencies of the major economically powerful countries which account for most trades. Note that I say economically powerful and not politically powerful. The Swiss Franc is the currency of a small country, physically and politically but because of the special nature of the Swiss banking system it is very economically powerful and therefore a major player in the financial markets.

Around 90% of all forex trading involves just 6 forex pairs, all involving the US Dollar as the most significant trading currency:

1) US Dollar/ British Pound Sterling USD/ GBP (sometimes known as the Cable Pair)
2) US Dollar/ Euro USD/ EUR
3) US Dollar/ Japanese Yen USD/ JPY
4) US Dollar/ Swiss Franc USD/ CHF
5) US Dollar/ Australian Dollar USD/ AUD
6) US Dollar/ Canadian Dollar USD/ CAD

According to a recent study, the US Dollar is involved in 85% of all trades and the Euro 37%, followed by the Japanese Yen, British Pound Sterling, Swiss Franc, Australian Dollar and Canadian Dollar in order of significance.

When first entering the forex trading market, it is advisable to begin with the USD/ Euro forex pair because there is so much more information concerning these currencies which because they tend to me more stable and more easily manageable result in lower costs.

Some currencies can make difficult forex pairs and should be avoided by the beginner to start with. For example, the Canadian Dollar and the Japanese Yen can be a difficult partner in any forex pair because they are both influenced by fluctuations in the price of oil (Canada is a large oil exporter and Japan a large oil importer).

Of course oil as an example is just one of many influences effecting currency movements and the experienced forex trader will know what to look out for. However, for the beginner my advice would be to trade with the USD/ EUR pair for a while to gain experience and then maybe the USD/ GBP (Cable) pair as an alternative before moving on to the more volatile forex pairs.

Forex Investment - The Risks.

2009-05-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

Forex investment is being advertised across all forms of media right now as a great way to make money. The advertisers imply that it is an easy and profitable way to invest your money and let’s face it under the current economic climate we are all looking for an easy low risk option to make some extra cash. So let’s take a closer look at forex, understand what it is and evaluate the true risks.

Forex is an acronym for 'foreign exchange' and forex investment trading is a form of investment by taking advantage of the movements or exchange differences between foreign currencies.

Because the rate of exchange between a pair of currencies is constantly changing, it is possible for a shrewd trader to make a lot of money by accurately predicting these changes. It's very similar to trading in stocks and shares on the stock market, you buy when the price is low and sell when the price is high.

As is common with investing in the stock market, forex traders can take a medium to long term view based on a steady drift in currency prices over a period of time. However, the advertising suggests short term gains and to be fair, this is what most forex traders do. They use trading skills and techniques to make relatively small gains over a short period and repeat the process over and over.

A forex trader will buy a currency when he thinks it will rise in price. This is called opening a trade. A closing trade is when he sells a currency because he thinks it price is about to fall. Often he will open and close a trade within minutes. The skill is in watching the markets and recognising a pattern developing which he knows from experience will lead to an upward or downward trend and thereby chooses to jump in and open or close a trade.

Many traders use a system which either they have developed themselves over many trades or they buy an 'off the shelf' system which can provide a short cut through the learning curve to becoming a successful trader. This is what most of the advertisements are trying to sell and it is necessary to be very wary about some of the claims made with some of these systems. There is also software available which automate the whole process and robots open and close the trades for you based upon parameters built into the software. There are one or two of these robot systems emerging in the marketplace now which look very promising (for example Click Here!).

With the ever increasing accessibility and popularity of the internet, brokers have seized the opportunity to attract a lot of a new breed of investor to the forex investment market - people with relatively small funds can begin with just a few hundred dollars. Many are encouraged to think that they can make a lot of money in a short time and are often disappointed. It is necessary to learn some specific skills and require a lot of self discipline to be successful. It takes time, motivation and commitment.

Some people take up forex investment simply because they are looking for a new challenge. Maybe they already invest in the stock market and are looking at other ways of increasing their portfolio of investments. These people are more likely to succeed because they have a better understanding of the risks and are prepared with sufficient funds to lose from time to time. The skill comes in making more gains than losses over a period of time.

There are many influences on the market and some of them completely unpredictable even to the most experienced trader. Take disasters such as the terrorist attack on the Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 for example. It is wise to set up an automatic stop loss if things suddenly turn against the trade. A stop loss is a pre-determined amount your trade is allowed to lose before it is automatically closed. A very sensible precaution.

In summary, forex investment has risk attached to it but it is a risk that can be controlled and managed provided you learn the skills, tricks and techniques required before becoming heavily involved.

Make Money Online From Home with Forex Trading

2009-05-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

The idea of working from home is nothing new and more and more people are doing it in the offline world because a) with modern communication technology many companies are encouraging their employees to work from home because it saves them the cost of office space and b) saves the employee the cost and inconvenience of commuting to an office each day, not being tied to fixed office hours and gives them more time with the family.

An increasing number of people are taking this a stage further and setting up their own online business from home, especially under the current economic climate when good offline jobs are becoming more difficult to find.

Even as a part time activity the idea of earning some extra money online is very attractive. People from all walks of life including the unemployed, retired and disabled are getting in on the act. All that is needed is some basic computer skills and a willingness and motivation to succeed.

Forex currency trading is an ideal way to make money from home but it is important to approach this with the correct mindset in order to be a successful online trader.

Many people start out with the mindset of a gambler and expect rich rewards overnight. As a result, many of them lose money, particularly in the beginning. It is not a game of chance, it a serious form of investment which rely on the skill of a trader being able to recognise a trend or pattern in currency movements and pick the right moment to open or close on a trade. It's not guesswork.

This type of trader has become more prevalent in recent years probably due to the banning of online casinos in the US. They were used to getting a buzz or kick out of the risk associated with a game of pure chance and think that they can achieve the same thing with currency trading which is totally legal simply because it isn't a game of pure chance. Ok, some strike lucky but believe me, as in all forms of pure chance gambling, the majority will lose.

Once you understand that and take time out to learn what is happening in the forex market and train yourself in the application of a few necessary skills, techniques and tactics you have a real chance to make money online from home with forex trading. Don't misunderstand me, there are many systems which traders use and some are profitable and some are not. Whatever system you use you will always have some bad trades. The skill is in developing and using a system which gives you more gains than losses.

So to summarise, before you jump in and start trading, you need to learn and understand the currency market and then concentrate on learning the skills and finding a reliable system before you start. When you have spent this time on your forex training you can look forward to make money online from home with forex trading.

Forex Trading with Charts and Trends

2009-05-24T07:58:00.000-07:00

There are two ways of analysing the foreign exchange markets. One is to study price movements - known as forex technical analysis. The other is to look at outside influences such as economic factors, political climate etc - known as fundamental analysis.

Let's look in detail at forex technical analysis using charts and trends. The idea is to look back in time at historical data and see how prices have moved and identify trends which can be used to predict what might happen in the future. Trading opportunities exist when you recognise a familiar pattern emerging. There are generally three types of chart used for this - line, bar and candlestick charts:

Line charts are simply a line representing the closing price of a currency pair over a period of time which gives a general visual indication of price movement. However, this only shows the closing price and not the price fluctuations within the trading period.

Bar charts on the other hand will show vertical lines or bars spanning the lowest to the highest price in a given time period. The opening and closing price is represented by a short horizontal bar to the left and right of the vertical line respectively. They are sometimes referred to as OHLC charts because they show, open, high, low and closing price positions.

Candlestick charts are similar to bar charts in that they show the same information but presented in such a way that makes it easier to interpret at a glance. Instead of a thin vertical line showing the high and low price, there is a column whose width represents the opening and closing prices. the columns are traditionally coloured white for rising and black for falling prices but colours such as green for rising and red for falling are now becoming more common. This type of chart is preferred by many traders because it is easier to see the turning points where a price has reversed from an upward trend to a downward trend and visa versa.

Currency traders refer to the trend as your friend because the time to trade is when you see a trend forming and a profit is made by trading in the same direction as the trend. Learning how to spot the trend is vital to success in currency trading and candlestick charts make the complex process of forex technical analysis easier.

Of course there are various software programs on the market which claim to make the whole process of forex technical analysis easier, particularly for the beginner and regular readers of my articles will know that there are some very good products emerging in the market place.

See my Forex Magadroid product review dated 21st May.Click Here!

Forex Fundamental Analysis and The Economy in Forex Trading

2009-05-23T06:22:00.000-07:00

There are basically two types of currency exchange trading: forex fundamental analysis and technical analysis. There is a lot of debate about which is better. In fact, both are important.
The simplest way of looking at these two methods of analyzing the market is to say that fundamental analysis considers the world economy while technical analysis looks at charts. In this article we will consider the different fundamental or economic factors and how they can affect your trades.
It will be clear to anybody who has even the most rudimentary understanding of the currency markets that a nation's economic status will have an effect on the value of that nation's currency. A healthy economy means a strong currency, just as a company's stocks will rise in value when that company is doing well.
Any time that a major financial or economic report is due from one of the main players in the world economy, you can expect to see an effect on the foreign exchange markets. This includes reports of the country's Gross Domestic Product, statements of the national debt, inflation, employment levels and trade deficits. Many of these reports are given out regularly at predetermined times and dates, and you will see a lot of volatility in the forex markets around those times.
It is very important to keep track of when these reports are due, not only in your own country but in all of the countries whose currencies you regularly trade. You cannot rely on national newspapers and television for this. They do not carry international economic news at a sufficiently detailed level. You need specialist publications. Many people use the internet for this purpose.
However, it is not only the economy that counts. Social and political forces also have a strong influence on a nation's currency values. Events such as an election, civil unrest, or a natural disaster can cause fluctuations in values.
Some of these events are difficult or even impossible to predict, but you can still base trades around what is likely to happen after the event. You can use historical analysis to see what happened in the currency markets the last time there was a similar event.
If you want to base your trading around fundamental analysis of the forex markets you will need to be the type of person who enjoys following the financial, political and economic news.
The alternative is to use information about upcoming events to avoid trading at those times. People who prefer to rely mainly on technical analysis will do this. But you still need to know what is happening, in order to keep out of the market. So even for somebody who prefers basing their trades on charts, forex fundamental analysis is important.

Finding a Qick and Easy Forex Tutorial

2009-05-22T04:19:00.000-07:00

Your first foreign exchange tutorial will cover the basics of what you need to do to get started with forex trading. The aim, of course, is to have you making money by predicting the rise and fall of one currency against another and opening and closing your trades at the right moment.

It takes time to learn to be a successful forex trader but you can cut corners if you have a good introductory program that covers everything you need to know. This includes:

- understanding the principles of currency trading including managing your account, trading margins, and allowing for the cost of the spread.
- technical analysis: discovering how to recognize trends in the markets, the different types of charts and how to interpret them so that you can profit from market movements.
- fundamental analysis: understanding what to do in the face of major national or international economic events that are likely to impact on currency values.
- finding out how to minimize your risk and protect your trades with stops.
- developing the power to apply your system without allowing losses or emotions such as fear to throw you off balance and affect your chances of earning long term profits.

A good place to pick up hints and tips can be a forex trading online forum. There are many of these on the internet and members will comment about all kinds of issues relating to the market and their own trading. This can be a great place to go if you have questions. However, forums have some drawbacks. One is that the advice you get may be very contradictory. There is more than one way to trade forex profitably and it can be confusing to be receiving advice from several different people, each with their own approach. It is usually better to stick to your own system.
The other problem with taking advice on forums is that you do not usually know anything about the people who are posting. Somebody could sound very knowledgeable and then it turns out they have only ever used a demo account and never made a real trade in their lives. Some people spend more time hanging out in forums than trading. Just because somebody is very active in a forum does not mean he or she is an expert.

So do not rely on forums, free guides or untested theories for your trading system. When you are starting out in forex trading you need a solid grounding in the basics and a system that is easy to follow and actually works.

As with most things in life you usually have to pay for the best. So look for a foreign exchange tutorial that is part of a profitable forex system.

An Introduction to Currency Trading

2009-05-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

Forex, foreign exchange and fx trading are all different names for currency trading, where one currency is exchanged for another in the hope of making money when the exchange rates change. These rates are constantly changing due to market news, national events or a knock on effect from changes in the stock exchange.
At the most basic level, imagine you exchanged some US dollars for British pounds. You might give $100 to buy £65. Then the rate changes in your favor so you exchange them back again. Now with the new rate you get $102 for your £65. You just made $2 or 2% of your investment.
Currency traders do this kind of thing all of the time with the aim of increasing their funds through many small trades. They trade on margins so that they can control larger amounts with only a small investment. In the above example, you might only have to hold $10 in your brokerage account to make the purchase even though the amount is $100. The broker covers the rest on the assumption that the market is unlikely to change by more than 10% in a short time.
Forex trading has been around for over 30 years but until the rise of the internet it was almost entirely in the hands of banks and other institutions with large investment funds. These days ordinary people can get involved on their home computers although the financial institutions are still the major players. When I tell you that around US $4 trillion changes hands every day on the currency trading markets you will understand that only a small part of this belongs to ordinary people like you and me.
Foreign exchange is a worldwide market and because of the different time zones around the world you can trade almost any time. Sydney, Australia is the first currency exchange market to open each day, and by the end of the business day in New York the Sydney market is open
again for the next day's trading. So for 5 days per week this is truly a 24 hour market. It only closes on weekends.
You are not limited to dealing in your own country's currency so if your national economy is in a very unpredictable state you can switch to trading two other currencies that are a little more stable. While it is true that a volatile situation with big fluctuations can give you big profits in a short time, it is extremely risky to get involved in a currency that is experiencing a crisis.
These days brokers are going all out to attract the new type of home investor who does not have a lot of capital, so you can get started with just a few hundred dollars. They will provide you with software that allows you to make trades on your account, and real time market information including charts to show you the direction of movement of the different currency pairs.
With so much money changing hands every day, foreign exchange is a high liquidity market. This means that your capital will not be tied up for the long term as it might be if you bought certain kinds of stocks.
Apart from some funds to invest, the main things that you need to get started with currency trading are good money management skills, self discipline, a profitable system to follow and perhaps a forex robot to apply your system for you. When you have these in place, currency trading can be fun and quite profitable.

Product Review - Forex Megadroid

2009-05-21T02:31:00.000-07:00

This Forex Megadroid review examines the expert advisor software which claims it can see into the immediate future with 95.82% accuracy. This is a remarkable claim and is worthy of some close scrutiny. Developed by John Grace and Albert Perrie with a combined 38 years experience working in the forex market, the software was launched in the spring of 2009. Forex Megadroid uses what is called 'market adapting intelligence' to make it flexible enough to achieve a high level of accuracy in a fluctuating market.

The big difference between this Forex Megadroid and other automated forex software used by many traders is that its robot is flexible enough to be able to cope with major changes in the patterns of market fluctuations. Other software relies on the low level of fluctuation of a consistent market which has always been the main criticism of this type of software.

The secret is in the new market adapting intelligence which allows the robot to learn from the changing patterns in the market and refines the trading rules accordingly – the flexibility. This gives your funds a much better chance of survival in a volatile market situation. We’re not talking about predicting movements’ way into the future. The 'reverse correlated time and price analysis' (RCTPA) feature of Forex Megadroid aims to predict market movements only over the next few hours.

Ok, so the proof of the pudding is in the eating and this software has only been on the market for a few weeks but traders using this software are already reporting an amazing 90% or better success rate.

All traders expect to make losses and sometimes 2 or 3 losses on consecutive trades so it is necessary to evaluate the performance of this or any software of this type over a period of time with many trades. So far traders using Forex Megadroid are reporting 10% to 20% gains over a month of trading which in any language is a healthy improvement in profit.

At the start, when the software was first released, traders complained that the robot was only trading 3 or 4 times per week which although profitable was frustrating for ‘beginners’ expecting to make a fortune overnight. More experienced traders know that a slow, long term approach is more sensible. However, with a recent upgrade to version 1.1 of the software, traders are now reporting 10 or more trades per week. At a 90% success rate that is a remarkable performance.

For an incredibly low price of just $97 at the time of writing, this is a complete no-brainer, not just for people starting out with Forex trading but for the more experienced traders too. The product is available through Clickbank who offer a no quibble 100% refund within 60 days of purchase. That’s 60 days to try it out for yourself at no risk!

Forex Megadroid is clearly a leader in a new generation of software being developed for Forex trading and comes very highly recommended.

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What Are The Risks With Forex Managed Accounts?

2009-05-19T02:55:00.000-07:00

Forex managed accounts present an attractive opportunity for people who want to make money from the lucrative currency trading markets but cannot or do not want to learn to trade for themselves. With a managed account you do not have to do any trading at all. Instead, you entrust your fund to the management company who will act for you.
There are two basic types of forex managed accounts.
1. Standard accounts
With this type of account, your money is kept in your brokerage account in your own name and the manager simply has control over it so that they can trade with it. You can see how much is there and how it is doing at all times. It remains your money. You have to accept the risk that even a skilled account manager cannot predict the markets 100% and you may have to take some losses. Still, if you are a beginner, he is likely to do better with your money than you would yourself, so it is just a question of whether he can do well enough to cover his fees and make you a good profit.
2. Pooled accounts
Pooled accounts are more risky in that there is more possibility of fraud. Here, your money goes into a pool held by the account manager. You are paid a share of their declared profits.
In theory the pool provides a buffer so that profits and losses are more evenly spread and your income could be a little more predictable than when your money is being managed separately. The problem is that you cannot really know what is happening and an unscrupulous management company could simply be making small regular payments to keep their customers happy while illegally diverting the bulk of your funds into their own pockets.
If you are guaranteed a certain percentage return on investment by a forex account manager using pooled funds, you could be heading for trouble. There are no guarantees with forex trading and any company that makes promises of a 10% return or whatever should be treated with
extreme caution.
Of course there are some well run pooled accounts and they have the advantage of a little more predictability than standard forex managed accounts. However, you should research a company offering pooled accounts even more thoroughly than usual before you decide to invest.
Even if you choose a standard account, you need to shop around. Avoid managers who insist on you signing up with their preferred broker. That usually means that they get a commission on all your trades, so they have an incentive to make a lot of small trades even if that is not the most profitable strategy, simply to increase the broker's earnings from the spread and their own commission rakeoff. Even if their commission is worked on a different basis, you probably will not get the best or cheapest broker that way. It is better to sign up with a company who
will let you choose your own broker for forex managed accounts, even if they charge a slightly higher fee.

Forex Real Time News Trading

2009-05-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

Forex real time news trading is a way of making money on the forex market from international events and upcoming current affairs stories.
Predicting the way that these events will go and their effect on the currency markets can appear to be very profitable, at least in theory.
The problem is that in practice things do not often go the way that you might expect.
The truth is that when it comes to financial news, the major international banks pretty much always make sure that they are the first to hear. When an expected report is released they will have people right there. The trade-from-home little guy, on the other hand, has to wait a
few crucial minutes for the report to appear on the TV news or the internet. Even seconds can make a difference.
At times like this the markets will change so swiftly that you cannot really hope to jump in and make money. The banks will dominate the markets and although you may sometimes be lucky, you could easily be wiped out if the news goes against you.
In practice if you do want to trade on the outcome of an upcoming event such as an election or a financial report, you are more likely to try it by opening a trade before the announcement. You might have a strong belief that it will go one way or the other. However, you cannot
really know for sure. When you think about it, opening a trade at this time is really nothing more than betting on the outcome.
It is at times like this that we tend to be easily carried away by our own ideas, hopes and emotions. It is can be very difficult to make a rational assessment of a situation where so much can ride on the outcome. Therefore, unless you are really in the thick of the financial news
centers, it is probably best to avoid this kind of trading. A system that makes steady profits over a period of time is the best way for most small traders to operate.
Of course you must still keep one eye on the news while you are actively trading, but instead of aiming to make money from current and upcoming events, you are more likely to want to close out on your trades before certain reports are released. Critical times include the
opening of the stock exchange in the countries whose currencies you are involved with, and announcements of interest rate changes in those countries. In addition, the USA is such a major player in the forex markets that events in the USA can affect all currency pairs, even if you
are not trading the US dollar. You will probably want to avoid being caught with an open trade at all of these times.
For this reason, most traders who operate a sound forex trading system will avoid trading altogether in the extremely uncertain times preceding a major announcement or release of forex real time news.

How To Find A Forex Trading Broker

2009-05-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

One essential that you must have when beginning currency exchange trading is an account with a forex trading broker. The broker is your link into the markets and will cover you to trade margins.
But how do you go about selecting a good one? Here are 5 points to take into account when you are shopping around for forex brokerage accounts.
1. Reliability
This operates on several levels. Firstly, of course, you want a broker that you can trust, who will not suddenly disappear from the internet along with all of your money. The forex market is broadly speaking unregulated, so there are a huge number of brokers and some are more
trustworthy than others. Your first step is to check that the broker is regulated. In the USA this means that you want a broker who is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the National Futures Association (NFA). Look for a forex broker with a clean record in any complaints logged against them on the NFA site. Other countries have their own regulatory bodies.
Then you need to think about whether the broker's platform is reliable. This is their software that you will connect with whenever you want to trade. If it is often offline, it is likely to cause problems for you. You could miss out on either opening or closing a trade at the best time. Check forex trading forums for feedback from users on this point, although be careful not to be swayed either way by a single individual who may have his own reasons for being strongly for or against a particular broker.
2. Services
The forex markets are open 24 hours from Sunday night to Friday afternoon EST. Check that your broker's trading platform is available all of this time (most are) and that they offer 24 hour customer support on trading days too. Check that they cover at least the seven major currencies USD, AUD, CAD, GBP, EUR, CHF, JPY. Again most will, but it is worth being sure.
A broker should offer you charts, technical analysis, and instant execution of your orders at the displayed price.
3. Costs
Forex brokers do not charge commission but make their money from the spread, which is the difference between the buy and sell prices on any currency pair. Spread can be anything from 1 pip or less, up to about 3 pips, depending on the broker and the pair. The size of the slice taken by the spread can make the difference between profit and loss in your trading account in the long term so look closely at this. If you know which pairs you are likely to trade most often, the spread on those pairs will be more important to you than others. At the same time, do not be drawn in by a special offer that may not last long once you have committed your funds.
You also need to consider how much is the minimum that you can invest. Most new traders are best advised to start small, so look for a broker who will let you open an account with $250 or less.
4. Margins
Margin requirements can vary a great deal from broker to broker. A lower margin requirement means higher leverage, and higher leverage gives you greater profits or losses on the same fund size. So low margins seem great when you are doing well, but losses will be bigger if things
go badly.

Zen And The Art Of Forex Currency Online Trading

2009-05-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that we need a little zen in the jungle of forex currency online trading. We especially need it when it comes to one
particular skill. It is a skill that is absolutely vital to successful forex trading and yet people do not talk about it very much.
The reason for this is that it is something that most of us do not really like to hear about. Just the name puts us off. We associate it with dark cold schoolrooms from 100 years ago.
I will tell you what it is if you promise not to stop reading. Do we have a deal? You will read to the end of this article and I will disclose the secret word to you.
OK ... it's discipline. Or more accurately, self discipline. Now, as I said we tend to associate those words with old fashioned educational styles and even punishment. But that is not what it is about.
One dictionary definition of discipline is: behavior according to established rules. Applying this to the forex markets, it means trading according to an established system, and not deviating from that system.In fact, if we want to get around the negative associations of the word, we could describe it instead as being consistent ... acting consistently in accordance with the system that you have selected.
The opposite of self discipline is self indulgence: giving in to every desire without thought for the future. Translated into trading terms, this means acting on your whims ... trading on impulse and on 'feelings'. When you do this, you are leaving your profits in the hands of pure
chance.
In order to be successful at most things in life, you need to act consistently and it is not always easy. Self discipline requires saying no to an immediate temptation for the sake of longer term success or happiness. If we are to reach our goals, future consequences must be more
important to us than current satisfaction.
In everyday life terms, this means turning down dessert because you do not want to gain weight, or passing on the illegal parking spot because you do not want your car to be towed.
In forex currency online trading, it means accepting a loss without losing faith in your system.
It means looking for a reasonable profit in the long term instead of taking huge risks because you want to get rich overnight.
It means not giving into the fears that hold you back from making a larger trade when you know it is the right thing to do.
It means doing your research instead of believing that the latest great technique is going to work for you just because you want it to.
In short, it means seeing that the emotions which can feel overwhelming at times are not really so important. Strong emotion, whether it is fear, anger, greed or desire for pleasure, almost always relates to a short term wish, not a long term plan. We need to get beyond this to be
successful.
Our lives do not have to be ruled by emotion. In fact the bottom line is that if you allow yourself to be constantly diverted by passing feelings like a sail boat in a hurricane, you will find it hard to earn a living in the forex market until you learn to see your fears and desires for what they are: just feelings that will pass, no more important than the itch of a flea bite.
But if you have trouble with this, do not worry. Help is at hand. Try an automated forex system. They are as emotionless as Spock and will do all of your forex currency online trading for you with the discipline of a robot.

Using The Forex Trailing Stop With MT4

2009-05-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

The forex trailing stop is a stop that you can set in an expert advisor on the Metatrader 4 platform. It is pretty much what you might guess
from the name: a stop loss that moves according to the current prices on the forex market. And a stop loss, of course, is a marker you set
that will cause your MT4 expert advisor autopilot software (EA) to exit the trade when it goes against you to prevent you having any risk of
a large loss.
But there are several things to be taken into account when you consider how to use the trailing stop. It is a little like a ratchet in that
it can move up but not down. When you move into profit, it follows behind, moving up by the same number of pips that the market moved. But if
the market falls, it stays where it is. So the market can rise and rise and you go on making more profit, but when it falls just a little
way, the stop loss comes into effect and exits your trade with whatever profit or loss you made up until that point.
To give an example, you open a trade to go long. Of course at the moment of opening you are at point zero: 0 pips profit or loss. Let's say
you set your trailing stop at minus 30 pips. If you are unlucky and the forex market just falls and falls, the stop loss will kick in and
close the trade for you at 30 pips down. But if the market rises, the stop loss will rise with it.
So when the market is 20 pips in your favor, your stop will have moved to 30 pips below that. If the market then falls and the price hits the
stop, the EA would get you out with a loss of just 10 pips.
If the market rises to 40, the stop moves up to 10 above zero. You then have a guaranteed profit of 10 pips. In fact as soon as the market
rises by the same number of pips as your trailing stop (in this case 30) you cannot lose.
Sure you could monitor the markets and operate this strategy yourself, but there is a risk of you failing to make your exit at the right
moment and taking a greater loss than you planned, or having to exit a trade while the market is still rising because you have to sleep or
whatever. So as long as you can leave MT4 running, an EA on autopilot relieves a lot of the pressure that would otherwise be on you in this
situation.
The volatility of the market is the main factor in deciding where to set the trailing stop. You do not want to take a heavy loss but at the
same time you do not want to have the stop triggered by random fluctuations in the market. A forex trailing stop that is too close to the
starting price will be triggered so often that you could end up making constant small losses.

FX Trading Software - Do You Need It?

2009-05-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

FX trading software programs include the automated systems or robots that help you to trade online from the comfort of your own home. They are very popular but are they necessary? What do they really do?
Many people are unwilling to trust their trading decisions to a computer program, especially at first. It is true that it is wise to be cautious in the beginning, because there is always the chance that you will misunderstand something. But you can almost always use the software in demo mode until you are familiar with all of its settings and features.
The main point to remember is that you are controlling the software, not the other way around. You tell it what to do by setting it up in a way that follows your preferred system.
An automated forex trading system can do many things that you cannot. For example, it can trade 24 hours a day. As the currency markets are international and operate in almost every time zone, they are never closed for business from Monday morning in Australia to Friday afternoon in New York. FX trading software can exploit these very long hours and watch the markets all day and all night, never missing a possible trade.
If you join a retail forex trading company online, you will almost certainly be offered software so that you can operate your account from your own computer. This takes the pressure off the company's website. You can use this type of software to check the currency values and operate your account. This is different than a robot, because you are making the trading decisions and simply using the software to put them into effect.
Automated forex robots, by contrast, are not linked in to one particular broker or company. They run on a trading platform and offer historical market analysis and trend data as well as real time currency values. This data can be extremely valuable for identifying patterns. You can look back to see how currency values fluctuated around the time of certain major events such as an epidemic or an election. Even something like an international sports event can affect national confidence and so cause a change in currency values.
As you become more skilled in interpreting the market trends, you will use all of this data to help improve the success of your trades. Of course there is no guarantee that the currency markets will always behave as they did in the past but any expert will tell you that you cannot ignore the historical data. To put it simply, getting information like this from your FX trading software can help you to make more money from your forex trading.

What Is Currency Trading In The Forex Market

2009-05-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

What is currency trading? It is something that sounds quite simple and many people speak about it as if the meaning is obvious, but not everybody knows what it really is and how it works.
Currency trading is also known as forex trading. Forex (sometimes written FX) is short for foreign exchange.
You probably know that the value of each country's currency goes up and down according to how well the country is doing compared with others. So for example, the value of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar will be higher or lower depending on reports of the Canadian and US economies. The same thing happens with all other currencies.
Currency values are constantly changing, so a trader can easily deal in them to make a profit. He or she can buy when a currency is worth less and sell when it is worth more, just as a stock trader would do.
The difference is that where stocks have only one value, their value on the stock exchange, a currency has different values compared with each of the other currencies. So for example the Canadian dollar might rise in relation to the US dollar but at the same time it could fall in relation to the Japanese Yen, if the Yen rose even higher.
Principles Of Currency Trading
Most forex market trading is margin trading. This means that instead of buying the whole value of the currency, you can invest in only a percentage. This allows a small deposit to control larger amounts. The principle of it is that a currency is very unlikely to change in value by more than a certain percentage of its value.
To simplify trading, currencies are traded in what is called pips, or price interest point system. These are the units of trading. They give a standard for comparison as the currency values change relative to each other. So you will hear traders talk of a currency gaining or falling by a certain number of pips, rather than talking in dollar terms.
How To Make A Profit With Currency Trading
In order to make a profit with currency trading, you need to have some idea of the likely movements of currencies. This knowledge can be gained by analyzing the markets or by applying a system that experienced traders have figured out from their own analysis.
If you are a beginner it is probably better to be receiving your information and analysis from somebody with more experience at first. You can pick up a lot of different systems online and watch how each one does, or you can work with an automated system. These are known as expert advisers or forex robots, and they will make the trades for you when the time is right according to the settings that you have programmed.
If you use an automated forex system you do not need to know what is currency trading in so much detail, although as with all things, the more you know the more success you are likely to have.