Forex

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How Forex Money Management Protects Currency Traders

If you consider Forex money management a boring distraction from the real fun of Forex trading, you've missed the whole point. Before you can make any real and consistent gains in the Forex, you must come to understand that money management is just as important as the trading part. One of the most essential ingredients of successful Forex trading is the unfailing use of money management techniques to minimize losses and protect your gains.

Before you even begin laying out money and making trades, you'll want to decide on a set of Forex money management guidelines. Placing bets without any kind of safety net is irresponsible toward yourself and your family.

Successful traders recommend that you start small and gain a gut-level grasp of the markets before moving on to bigger bets. Hoping for a big score right at the beginning is the mark of a casino gambler, not an investor.

The best advice:
Keep your risk, right from the beginning, at about one percent or less of your total equity on any one trade. Keeping your risk low, in the one percent range, protects you if disaster strikes and you have a string of losses. You could actually survive 20 consecutive bad trades and still have 80 percent of your equity remaining. Taking tiny little one percent baby steps may seem boring, but it certainly beats being wiped out by a run of adverse trades. It will ensure that you're still around to invest next week, next month and next year. It also helps you safely build confidence, judgment and experience.

Many new Forex traders ask how much they should put into their trading account. The surest and wisest advice is never, ever bet your rent or grocery money. In other words, only use money you can afford to lose. Yes, I know that in your special case there aren't going to be any losses, and you're in a big hurry to make it big. But long experience says it's not going to happen that way for you either. If you were to lose everything you invest, would you and your family still eat okay? Would you still be in your home, or would you have to move into your brother-in-law's basement? Just think about this, okay?

It's important for you to know about the four stops. These are standard (and very wise) ways to prevent losses from ravaging your finances as you begin trading the Forex markets. You or your broker can use one or more of these four stops to protect your money.

1. Equity Stop
This stop lets you decide beforehand how much you're prepared to risk on a single trade, and you won't risk anything beyond that percentage. A beginner may set the equity stop to one or two percent. Once you've gained considerable experience, you might eventually raise this to five percent, but never forget that at the 5% level, ten consecutive bad trades (not impossible) could wipe out half of your account.

Downside: This stop makes no allowance for positive fluctuations. The protection is strong, but if you never vary from it, you may miss out on some of the more profitable trades. When you're a newbie, the safety net it provides while you're learning is more important than any gains you might miss while you'e learning.

2. Chart Stop
The trading charts that technical analysis provides can be accurate indicators of market movements. Technically minded traders who live, eat and breathe mathematics and probabilities often love chart stops. But the smart ones don't get reckless. They also include equity stops in their calculations.

Downside: Generating charts and analyzing them can take significant time for newbies. This is time in which the market has moved on, leaving all that beautifully charted data a little (or a lot) outdated.

3. Volatility Stop
Related to the chart stop but more complex, this one assigns risk values according to volatility rather than price action. Until you're experienced in Forex trading, it's best to leave this difficult technique to your broker. It's based on subtle and sophisticated evaluations of high versus low volatility of currency pairs and assigns greater or lesser risk to each market situation.

Downside: Demands steady, unflinching nerves and a great deal of experience.

4. Margin Stop
With the Margin Stop you're deciding beforehand that you'll get out of any trade before you're out of money. If you have ,000 in your account, setting your margin to 0 means you'll trade with the top textarea,500 but if your losses ever reach that amount, you'll close your position and preserve that last 0.

Downside: It's hard to find a downside to the Margin Stop. You keep control of your account, even when using an account manager.

Forex money management is essential when trading in the currency markets. And these stops are important backup measures to be used in tandem with your own patience, caution and growing judgment to minimize losses while maximizing your gains.

Finding the Right Forex Trading Software

Forex Trading is quickly becoming the hottest niche in the trading world. The regular market has become so tumultuous that the best traders in the industry are walking around scratching their head on a regular basis. If you were ever going to get involved in forex trading, now is the time. However, you are going to have to find the right forex trading software to be successful.

If you have familiar with the regular market, you are quite aware of how quickly the market changes. This is even more so true in forex trading, but the patterns of the changes tend to be much more recognizable as you are dealing in currency.

Now while currency has a reputation of being extremely volatile, it also follows patterns over times that you can spot. The challenge is in being able to spot the trend in time to be able to take advantage of it. While there are still a few horses around that have the gift, few people can pick up trends like software can.

Unless you are able to stand at the computer 24 hours a day, it is unlikely that you are going to be able to be successful trading currency unless you have software that can do your tracking for you. While you are sleeping, the software is busy crunching numbers and evaluating trends for you. When a good trend shows up, you can have the program send you an alert that will allow you to verify the trend and take advantage of the trade.

Of course, even the best program is going to put up a dud every now and again. Sometimes there are false trends that even the computer will misread. The goal of course is to find the right software that will allow you to win on more trades than you lose. If you can do this, the odds are in your favor to make a nice profit over the long run.

Something else to keep in mind as you follow this market is to make sure that you wait for the trend to be verified before you jump on it. You do this so you don't get caught up in one of those false trends. By taking that little extra time, you are protecting yourself and your investment.

The big knock on doing this is that you are not going to be able to take advantage of the lowest support level if you are going long or the best resistance price if you are going short. In the end, you have to look at if the risk is worth the reward. By trading in this manner, you may not make the maximum profit on the deal, but you are much more assured of actually making a profit every time you do a deal.

Forex trading is a great way to lock up that future and to make a living in the current economy. If anyone tells you that it is going to be an overnight get rich quick deal, run away. What you need is a good, reliable program that spots good deals that you can make money from time and again.

Finding the Right Forex Trading Software

Forex Trading is quickly becoming the hottest niche in the trading world. The regular market has become so tumultuous that the best traders in the industry are walking around scratching their head on a regular basis. If you were ever going to get involved in forex trading, now is the time. However, you are going to have to find the right forex trading software to be successful.

If you have familiar with the regular market, you are quite aware of how quickly the market changes. This is even more so true in forex trading, but the patterns of the changes tend to be much more recognizable as you are dealing in currency.

Now while currency has a reputation of being extremely volatile, it also follows patterns over times that you can spot. The challenge is in being able to spot the trend in time to be able to take advantage of it. While there are still a few horses around that have the gift, few people can pick up trends like software can.

Unless you are able to stand at the computer 24 hours a day, it is unlikely that you are going to be able to be successful trading currency unless you have software that can do your tracking for you. While you are sleeping, the software is busy crunching numbers and evaluating trends for you. When a good trend shows up, you can have the program send you an alert that will allow you to verify the trend and take advantage of the trade.

Of course, even the best program is going to put up a dud every now and again. Sometimes there are false trends that even the computer will misread. The goal of course is to find the right software that will allow you to win on more trades than you lose. If you can do this, the odds are in your favor to make a nice profit over the long run.

Something else to keep in mind as you follow this market is to make sure that you wait for the trend to be verified before you jump on it. You do this so you don't get caught up in one of those false trends. By taking that little extra time, you are protecting yourself and your investment.

The big knock on doing this is that you are not going to be able to take advantage of the lowest support level if you are going long or the best resistance price if you are going short. In the end, you have to look at if the risk is worth the reward. By trading in this manner, you may not make the maximum profit on the deal, but you are much more assured of actually making a profit every time you do a deal.

Forex trading is a great way to lock up that future and to make a living in the current economy. If anyone tells you that it is going to be an overnight get rich quick deal, run away. What you need is a good, reliable program that spots good deals that you can make money from time and again.

Reading a Forex Quote

Total newbies to the foreign exchange market can find reading a Forex quite intimidating (even baffling) at first. In fact, this is the most common initial hurdle. The quote is brief, but it packs in a great deal of useful information. And although it doesn't make a lick of sense to a newcomer, here's a quick, simple explanation of what it means.

A Forex quote is always based on a pair of currencies, where you're simultaneously selling one currency and buying another. And there are two prices, one for selling and the other for buying (bid price and ask price). When reading a Forex quote, it might typically look like this: USD/JPY 106.52/56

The first currency is called the base currency and the other is the quote currency. The base currency value is always 1 (in this case 1 US dollar). The number in the quote tells you how many of the quote currency (Japanese yen) you can buy with one US dollar.

And that number - 106.52/56 - is a shortened version of two numbers (106.52 and 106.56). The lower number is the bid price; the other is the ask price. The bid price shows how much a dealer will buy the base currency for. The ask price shows how much a dealer is willing to sell it for.

If you saw 106.52/56 when reading a Forex quote, it would mean that you could sell US dollars and receive 106.52 yen per dollar. On the other hand, if you wanted to buy US dollars, you would have to pay 106.56 yen for each dollar.

The difference between the bid price and the ask price in a Forex quote is called the "spread," and each tiny 0.01 unit is called a "pip." In our example, the spread for our USD/JPY quote is four pips. The spread for the most commonly traded currencies is usually that small. In general, you'll do most of your trading in US dollars, Japanese yen, Great Britain pounds, Euros, Swiss francs or Australian dollars. Also please keep in mind that when the competition really heats up some spreads will be as small as one pip.

On the other hand, for less heavily traded currencies, you may run into much larger spreads. But don't think that a small spread means tiny profits (or losses). When you're trading hundreds of thousands of units, even that one pip spread can mean big money.

Let's say you're dealing with just 100 US dollars. Selling your hundred dollars for 10,652 yen and buying them for 10,656 yen only amounts to a four yen difference. But most Forex traders will be dealing with amounts of 100,000 US dollars (or many multiples). So now we know, when reading a Forex quote, that even such an unimpressive little four-pip spread amounts to considerably more (at 4,000 yen, and probably several multiples of that).

And of course, similar trades may be repeated throughout the day and the week. This means that anytime you're reading a Forex quote, you'll recognize that this tiny little spread is more important than its meager size at first suggests.

10 factors to consider when choosing a forex broker

There are a number factors to consider when you choose a Forex broker and to help you do so here is a list of 10 of the key factors you should consider when you select a Forex Broker that will suite you.

1. Reputation This may seem like an obvious place to start but surprisingly this is quite often overlooked in people's quest for profits. A simple place to start is to check out several Forex forums to see what other traders have said about their experiences with brokers and this will help you to get a good idea of the general user experience as well as details about the level of service and support you are likely to get from particular brokers and probably most importantly, payments.

2. Foundation and legitimacy Most Forex brokerages are usually either associated with or are part of a bank or large financial organization but with the rising number of online Forex brokers there are a number of checks concerning their foundation that should be made. Brokerages that are associated with large financial organizations or banks are not only backed up by funds from their Forex trading but also have other income streams and investments which means they don't have all their eggs in one financial basket. Having fund insurance against fraud or bankruptcy is good to have as this means you aren't relying just on being paid from their backup investments which might otherwise mean a longer wait for your money should they be experiencing any financial difficulties. Are they registered with the appropriate regulatory organizations? Legitimate Forex brokers should be registered with the Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Note: It is also worthwhile checking out any parent company's website for any financial information that can assure you that your funds are covered and secure.

3. Execution Quite simply this is how they conduct their business. There are two main business models that Forex brokers use, Electronic Communication Network, (ECN), and Market Maker. The ECN model is one where a Forex Broker provides a marketplace for Market Makers, traders and banks to enter their competing bids and offers into this trading platform and have them filled by liquidity providers. All trades made in this environment are made in the name of the ECN broker which means that your trades are all performed completely anonymously. The Market Maker model provides pricing and liquidity for a particular currency pair and then stands ready to buy or sell that currency at the quoted price. A market maker takes the opposite side of whatever your trade is and has the option of either holding that position fully or to partially offset it with other market traders in order to manage their aggregate exposure to their clients. Other aspects of the Forex brokers' execution of their business are: Do they use automatic execution for trades? If they do not have this as part of their model then how fast is their average order execution? How much are you allowed to trade without having to request a quote? Do they offset client trades?

4. Trading Platforms Forex trading is a rapidly moving environment and it pays to have a home computer that can keep up with the processing involved because time lag could mean you are not trading on the latest figures. If your current computer is not as up to date as you would like it to be and you are not in a position to bring it up to a faster processing specification or replace it with a faster workstation, then it is worth considering only using Forex Brokers that operate the ECN platform because this software requires less processing power to run at full speed as it is simpler software Some Forex brokers have restrictions on the number of currency pairs you can trade so check how many of these you are allowed to trade. Get used to the trading platforms and the features they have, such as one click trading, mobile trading, orders types and other features. The best way to do this is to sign up for a Demo account as these use the same software you would use with a live trading account. These accounts are free and if you are considering several Forex brokers then why not try them out with a demo account to see which one you prefer?

5. Account Size If you are starting out you aren't going to go gungo-ho and open large live trading accounts that have high minimum trades, but having said that you might want to increase your amounts later and so need some flexibility. Ascertain what the minimum trade size is as well as whether or not you can adjust the standard lot traded. Unsurprisingly the minimum account opening balance a broker requires is important in deciding which broker to use. It is also very worth checking whether or not unused equity will earn you interest.

6. Spread The spread is the difference between the ask price (the price you buy currency at) and the bid price (the price you sell it at). These are quoted in pips. An example of this is: If you are trading the currency pair US dollars and Euros you might see a spread like this, 1.2700/05, the spread is the difference between 1.2700 and 1.2705, or 5 pips. In order to make the most from your trades you need to know the brokers spread so find out if they use a fixed or variable spread? How tight is the spread? Is the spread larger for small accounts?

Note: Fixed or variable? This choice depends on your trading pattern. If you make trades only or mostly influenced by news announcements--when markets tend to be volatile--you might be better off with fixed spreads. Although this is only if the quality of execution is good. Some brokers have different spreads for different clients. Clients with larger accounts or that make larger trades can receive tighter spreads. Clients that are referred by an introducing broker might receive wider spreads so as to cover the costs of the referral. Other brokers though might offer everyone the same spread regardless of whom they are or the size of their account. It can be difficult to determine a company's spread policy so the best way to find out is to try various brokers, or talk to other traders who have, and of course check out the forums.

7. Slippage Slippage is the time between when your order is placed and the transaction is completed, so find out how much slippage can be expected for fast and normal moving markets.

8. Commissions This is probably the simplest thing to find out. Check your prospective Forex broker's commissions to see if they are built into the spread, as with most Market Makers, or if they charge a separate commission.

9. Margin The margin is the amount of deposit required to either open or maintain a trade position. Margins are either "free" or "used". A used margin is the amount which is being used to maintain a position that is open, and a free margin is the amount that is available to open a new trade position. Check what the broker's margin requirement is. Is this margin the same for both standard and mini accounts? Does the margin change for different currency groups or change for different days of the week?

10. Rollover Policy Rolling over will either accrue you interest or cost you interest depending on whether you bought a currency with a higher interest rate or sold a currency with a higher interest rate. Check the broker's conditions or requirements regarding earning rollover interest. There may be a minimum margin requirement before can earn interest on overnight positions so make sure you know your position. visit www.forexandoil.blogspot.com for daily forex signal and powerful trading system

What is a forex broker?

Have you ever felt intrigued by the many advertisements on high leverage and great profit potential involved in currency trading? The golden gate of the kingdom of money, we are told, is reached by the road of forex. Are forex brokers highway robbers infesting that road, or honest dealers making our journey easier? We'll discuss the brokerage business in this article.

A forex broker is the mediator between the retail and wholesale forex markets The wholesale market is comprised of banks and similar large institutions, and the retail market, of course, includes individual traders who are seeking to acquire speculative gains. Forex brokers are not traders themselves, but occasionally they will have their own staff trading the market on their behalf.

Forex brokers allow retail traders to interact with the markets, and are compensated for their services through the bid-ask spread which is the difference between the price a trader must accept to sell (bid), and the price he must pay to buy(ask) a currency. Since forex traders suffer losses often, brokers make the utmost effort to protect themselves. First, they net out the positions of their clients with entries on the opposite side. Since the vast majority of forex traders lose money, by entering the opposite order they usually make profits. And they also protect themselves by activating margin calls in case that a trader's account value falls below a threshold level (margin requirement).

At the inception of the forex brokerage business, retail trading was largely unregulated as authorities did not possess the expertise and background for effective oversight. Today, however, numerous regulatory bodies which include the CFTC in the U.S., the BaFin in Germany, and the FSA in the U.K. ensure a healthy, legal and competitive environment by maintaining strict regulation of the business. As such, one of the most important considerations for a beginning forex trader is guaranteeing that the broker is regulated by the relevant national authority.

In general, today's laws and regulations do not protect forex traders in the same way that stock traders are protected. Accounts opened with online stock brokers are usually protected against broker insolvency by up to $100000, and yet there is no equivalent protection for forex traders. UK-based brokers are required to segregate client assets from the firm's own capital, and so, creditors cannot press claims against forex traders if an FSA regulated broker goes bankrupt.

Forex trading is a great, profitable career for the committed individual. And a carefully scrutinized, patiently selected broker can be an excellent partner for a successful forex trader. Ultimately, finding the right broker is not just about screening forex broker lists, but improving our own discipline, and analytical skills in determining what we want from trading. Set your goals right, and you can reach them in due time. Vacillate in defining your aims, and success will likewise hesitate to come your path.

Techniques for Advanced Forex Trading

Forex is a potential platform for earning substantial profit. In fact it is one of the largest trading markets of the world. Featuring an average daily trade of US$ 2 trillion and above, this market is best known for its high scale trading volume and intense liquidity. Adding to this, today with the advancement of technology it can be done from anywhere of the world. Backed up by world-wide web, you can easily trade in the forex market at the comfort of your own home. However, it is important to understand that fx trading is based hugely on speculation. You must be smart enough to guess exactly when the rate of a certain currency pair will rise and go down, and then buy or sell based on that. Indeed it is said that if you learn to study the speculation of this market, you will have a better chance of getting profit.

Today, it is more advanced and turned into an active investment arena, where only a factual understanding of the intricacies and complexities can make your capital grow every day. Moreover, like any other business, it also involves some amount of risks. There is no shot fx trading technique for success in the currency trading market, but there are some well-known techniques that can assist you formulate a good advanced foreign exchange trading strategy. Here are few essential techniques that can help you cut your losses and increases profits:

Forex Scalping: It is a latest technique of trading where profits are taken after relatively small moves in the forex market. It is a technique where trading is done over small time frames, and smaller profits are taken more frequently. As the position exposed to the market is shorter, it automatically reduces the risk of adverse market events causing the price to go against the trade. It is a different approach to most other forex strategies, but still requires you to analyze the market to ensure that the set up for a trade is present. This type of trading greatly appeals to day traders and those who look to reduce the risk involved in trading currencies.

Forex Hedging: It is a technique that helps in reducing some of the risk involved in holding an open forex position. It decreases the risk by taking both sides of a trade at once. If your broker allows it, a simple way to hedge is just to initiate a long and a short position on the same pair. Advanced traders sometimes use two different pairs to make one hedge, but that can get very complicated.

It is important to understand that much of the risk involved in holding any forex position is market risk; i.e. if the market falls sharply, your losses may escalate dramatically. So if you have an open Forex position with fine projection but you think the currency pair may reverse against you, it is advised to hedge your position.

Forex Position Trading: Forex position trading approach is yet another trouble-free technique to boost your position size without increasing your risk. This trading tactic is very effective with mini lots. The major highlight with this technique is that - with forex position trading your exposure to the market is less and so therefore is no need to monitor the market continuously. Moreover, you may even earn profit with negligible loss that can further boost your trading confidence. For Example- you might make a short trade on EUR/USD at 1.40. If the pair is ultimately trending lower, but happens to retrace up, and you take another short at say 1.42, your average position would be 1.41. Once the EUR/USD drops back below 1.41, you will be back in overall profit.

Today forex trading is all about watching your options when you make a trade. Aside from using effective risk management and extreme vigilance, advanced trading can be an alternate way to make profits and control losses. Nevertheless, these above mentioned advanced trading techniques are more about using the market behavior to your advantage. Utilizing these advanced techniques can give you the edge from other average trader.

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