Posts Tagged ‘Forex Trading’

What’s the Difference of Trading Mini Lots Vs. Full-sized Lots in Forex.

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

In Forex trading there is something called, a Mini Account, and it uses a different leverage calculation than a regular (100k) account. This is, instead of trading full-size currency lots (100,000 units), you’ll trade in lots that are just 1/10 the size (10,000 currency units), which in turn greatly reduces your risk. Pips in a Mini Account are worth, on average, $1 instead of the $8 to $10 value they have in a regular account.

The Mini Forex account offers up to 200:1 leverage, this means that just a $50 margin deposit will allow you to trade lots worth roughly $10,000 , but the smaller lot sizes, with correspondingly smaller pip values, means that you’ll be assuming less total risk. For example, while a 20-pip loss on a 100,000 USD/JPY position would be $200, the same loss on a 10,000 USD/JPY position in a Mini account would amount to $20.

Here you have an overview of leverage (Margin, Account Size) on each of the two accounts discussed above:

100K (Regular Full-sized Account)
- Minimum required account deposit = $2,000
- Recommended required account deposit = $5,000 to $10,000
- Traded in 100,000-unit currency lots
- Default Margin: set at 1% ($1,000 per lot)
- Leverage = 100:1 or 50:1 (if margin is set at 2%)

Mini Account……..You can Read more Here

What’s Fibonacci Forex Trading?

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Fibonacci forex trading is the basis of many forex trading systems used by a great number of professional forex brokers around the globe, and many billions of dollars are profitable traded every year based on these trading techniques.

Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician and he is best remembered by his world famous Fibonacci sequence, the definition of this sequence is that it’s formed by a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers; 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 …But in the case of currency trading what is more important for the forex trader is the Fibonacci ratios derived from this sequence of numbers, i.e. .236, .50, .382, .618, etc.

These ratios are mathematical proportions prevalent in many places and structures in nature, as well as in many man made creations.

Forex trading can greatly benefit from this mathematical proportions due to the fact that the oscillations observed in forex charts, where prices are visibly changing in an oscillatory pattern, follow Fibonacci ratios very closely as indicators of resistance and support levels; maybe not to the last cent, but ……..You can Read more Here

What is Forex Trading?

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

FOREX, (FOReign EXchange market) or FX, is an international exchange market where stocks and shares are not traded, but currency. The return for the investor is not in the value of the currency per se, but rather the relative exchange value of one currency against another currency. Therefore, Forex trading is always expressed in pairs such as Euro/US Dollar (EUR/USD) or US Dollar/Japanese Yen (USD/JPY).

By simultaneously buying and selling pairs of currencies, the investor, or speculator, hopes to profit from a favorable exchange rate change. Unlike the American stock exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System (NASDAQ), Forex trading is more predictable than stocks.

One strategy that the Forex investor uses is a technique that stems from the assumption that all information about the market and a particular currency’s future fluctuations is found in the price chain. In other words, an investor simply looks at what has happened to that currency in the recent past, and predicts that the small fluctuations will generally continue just as they have before. Another strategy for the Forex investor is to analyze the country of the currency’s economy, political situation, and other possible rumors. The investor can also anticipate such things as political unrest or change that will also have an effect on the market……..You can Read more Here

What is an Online Forex Trading?

Monday, May 31st, 2010

For-ex stands for Foreign Exchange; it is a global market for dealing currencies at floating exchange rates. The foreign exchange is world’s biggest currency market, on an average everyday dollar one to two trillion is traded in the foreign exchange. The trade is mostly done over the internet and telephone lines. Online forex trading is a fast, safe and easy mode of investing. It offers huge returns like twenty to thirty percent every month, yes unbelievable but truth, however that’s only in some cases and you need a lot of experience to be able to extract that amount of interest!

There is no fixed centre for the trade so all the trade is done over telephone, internet and fax. The foreign exchange trade witnessed a massive boom only after online forex trading systems were introduced, internet and telephone has helped the trade grow from $70 billion a day in the 80s to around $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion today.

The currency market is made up of around five thousand institutions most of which are international banks, central government banks, commercial companies as well as big brokers and all these are connected with each other and do business on the go through online forex trading system. The major centers for online forex trading are New York, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bombay among others, and all these centers also communicate and deal through online forex trading.

The benefits of online forex trading are……You can Read more Here

Why use a Mini Forex account.

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

The world of Forex trading, due to its very high profitability potential, has attracted a lot of people around the world to enter the Forex market. The Forex market as compared to other capital markets has many other advantages.

But one of the main worries of the new trader is if he will need lots of money in order to be able to access this market and start placing trades. However, with the convenience of the Internet, anyone can enter the forex markets and place trades. In reality, you don’t need to be super-rich or the owner of a big corporation to enter the Forex market, you just need a few dollars and the right strategy to start profiting from Forex trading.

In the Forex world there is something called a Mini Account, and it uses a different leverage calculation than a regular (100k) account. This means that instead of trading full-size currency lots (100,000 units), you’ll trade in lots that are just 1/10 the size (10,000 currency units), which in turn greatly reduces the amount of money you risk in each trade you enter. In a regular account, pips are worth $8 to $10 value but in a Mini Account they are worth, on average, $1 . The Mini Forex account offers up to a huge 200:1 leverage, this means that just a $50 margin deposit will allow you to trade lots worth roughly $10,000. The smaller lot sizes, with correspondingly smaller pip values, means that you’ll be profiting less from a successful trade and also losing less if the trade goes bad . For example, ……You can Read more Here

What Are The Order Types Used By Forex Traders?

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

During the last decade, Forex trading has become one of the most attractive business opportunities to ever hit people’s interest around the world. Every day people from many walks in life is actively considering entering the profitable world of the currency markets due to its accessibility and trading characteristics.

One of the first things you will do once you decide you want to enter and learn about the forex markets will be to choose your forex broker and then download the free trading platform software from your broker website.

When you first open your trading station software, you will find that there are a number of ways to enter the market or, said in another way, there are a number of ways to place an initial order to buy or sell any currency pair.

One of these types of orders is what is called a “Market order”; this is an order to buy or sell a currency pair at the market price considering the instant that the order is received and processed (which is usually within seconds of hitting the “OK” button on your trading platform). When a market order is placed, you are simply saying “I’ll buy or sell the currency pair at whatever price it is at when my order gets processed.”

You can Read more Here

Use These 3 Simple Guidelines to Boost Forex Profits

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

FOREX trading is nothing more than direct access trading of different types of foreign currencies. In the past, foreign exchange trading was mostly limited to large banks and institutional traders. Recent technological advancements have made it so that small traders can also take advantage of the many benefits of FOREX trading by using the various online trading platforms.

FOREX markets possess unique attributes that offer unmatched potential for profitable trading in any market or any stage of the business cycle. For starters, FOREX trading boasts a 24-hour market, giving traders the chance to take advantage of profitable market conditions anytime. Secondly, the FOREX market is the most liquid market in the world. FOREX traders can enter or exit the market whenever they want, during almost any market condition. There also exist minimal execution barriers or risk and no daily trading limits.

For all the advantages of the FOREX market, one glaring weakness emerges. The FOREX market is seen as unregulated although the operations of major dealers, like commercial banks in money centers, are regulated under the banking laws. The daily operations of retail FOREX brokerages are not regulated under any laws or regulations specific to the FOREX market. Many of these types of establishments in the United States, don’t even report to the I.R.S. To make the most of the explosive potential of successful FOREX trading, individuals should follow these guidelines.

You can Read more Here

Understanding Forex - #2 - Technical Analysis

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Technical Analysis.

Unless you are new to trading you probably know already that technical analysis is a method of forecasting future price movement of commodities, securities, etc (in this case currencies) based on chart analysis, pattern formations, technical indicators, etc. Forex can be traded technically and in my opinion it is quiet predictable.

No trading strategy will work 100% of the time. That’s why you need proper money management techniques. Anyway, technical analysis is important to determine where the price of the currencies is going, also when to enter and exit positions.

There are different technical analysis techniques that you can implement to your trading strategies. I show here how to use technical indicators which is a very common technique among most technical traders.

You can Read more Here

Understanding Forex

Monday, April 5th, 2010

This is a series of articles about The Foreign Exchange Market. You will learn here what Forex is , how it works and how profitable it can be. The whole series contain the following articles . . .

1. What is Forex

2. Technical analysis

3. Fundamental analysis

4. Money management

5. Compound interest

What is Forex?

The word Forex is an acronym for The Forex Exchange Market. This is the most liquid market on the world where you can trade or exchange one currency for another. For example, if you think that the Euro will appreciate in value and you have US dollars, you can trade the dollars for the Euros. If you are right and the Euro appreciates in value in relationship with the dollars, then you can close the position realizing a profit.

That’s the basic idea behind the Spot Forex Market. This is an interbank system which means that it is not centralized. There is no central exchange where currencies are traded. It is a global market. You can trade Forex online 24 hours per day, 6 days per week.

You can Read more Here

The forex market uses margins to increase your profits

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Forex is a nickname for the foreign exchange, a vast market of trading in which the commodity is money itself. In the forex market, traders are buying and selling foreign currencies — trading dollars for euros, pounds for yen, and so forth.

Forex is profitable because national currencies fluctuate from day to day based on predictions of the nation’s gross domestic product and other factors. As with the stock market, the idea with the forex is to buy low and sell high: Buy a lot of a particular currency when it’s weak, then sell it when it becomes stronger.

For example, bad financial news in Great Britain means that forex traders will be selling off their British pounds as fast as possible, as the pound is about to become devalued. Once the pound recovers, those traders will sell it for something else, thus turning a profit.

Though we talk of “buying” and “selling” pounds, euros, yen and francs, the transactions performed in the forex are not literal. That is, if you want to buy 100,000 euros, you don’t have to withdraw the equivalent U.S. dollars from your bank account and swap them out for a big stack of euros.

Everything is done on paper only, though the resulting profits and losses are real.
Because the transactions are not done physically, there is room in the forex for what are called “margins” or “leverage.” Put simply, this means you don’t have to actually put up the full amount of the position you’re taking. Usually the margin is 1%, meaning that when you put $1,000 into it, you’re actually getting $100,000. Of course, margins multiply your losses as well as your profits, so you have to be careful.

One of the reasons for allowing a 100:1 margin like this is that the major world currencies in the forex market usually fluctuate less than 1% a day. (In the stock market, a typical stock might fluctuate as much as 10% in one day.) With changes that small, your daily loss or gain on an initial investment of $1,000 would be almost imperceptible, usually less than $10 either way. By multiplying it by 100, the gains and losses in the forex market are more pronounced.

With leverage implemented that way, the basic “lot” for buying and selling currencies is usually 100,000 (which of course only costs 1,000). Most firms that handle day-trading on the forex market don’t go any lower than that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let Your Money Work for You with Automated FOREX Trading

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

In our modern world of luxury and ease, some financial speculators are finding it advantageous to do FOREX trading the easy way: through automated FOREX trading systems.

Automated FOREX trading is exactly what it sounds like. A highly sophisticated and complicated computer program uses mathematical algorithms to determine when to buy and sell currency, and it makes the trades for you. You put an initial investment into the account, and then let the system do all the work for you.

It may sound risky to let a computer program choose when to buy and sell currency, but automated trading can often be safer than doing it yourself. Humans are subject to error, to misreading charts, and to overlooking data. Humans can also let their emotions get in the way of making smart decisions, like the gambler who loses everything because he just can’t tear himself away from the blackjack table.

An automated trading program has none of those flaws. With the software doing it for you, it’s as if you were always watching every market, noticing every trend, instantly analyzing all available data, and making the smartest decisions.

There is a cost for this, of course. Most brokers that offer it require a minimum investment of several thousand dollars or more, and they may charge a fee on top of that.

But the benefits of automated FOREX trading can be great. Whereas manual trading requires an investor to study the market intensely before jumping in to it, automated trading requires no training at all. Learn the very basics of how the market works so you can tell what your automated system is doing for you, and that’s it. Sit back and let it make your money work for you.

Automated trading is also useful for companies and other institutions that want to diversify their assets but don’t have the time or resources to devote to FOREX trading. If a computer program can do it for you, there’s no need to have one of your employees handle it, right?

It goes without saying that automated trading systems rely on technical analysis rather than fundamental analysis. That is, the algorithms examine past market performance and general trends and base their trading decisions on that, not on external factors such as politics and environmental concerns, which may affect a nation’s currency. Nonetheless, automated trading has proven to be highly effective and accurate for many investors, freeing up their schedules to focus on other things.

Forex alerts are a handy way of staying on top of the market

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Because currency exchange covers the entire world and all 24 time zones, forex is a 24-hour-a-day market. This is good in that it results in billions upon billions of dollars of transactions per day. But it also means that forex traders have a constant influx of information to keep track of, unlike the stock market, where once trading closes at 5 p.m., that’s it. So how do forex traders stay on top of things? Most of them use forex alerts of some kind.

Forex alerts are available from many online forex brokers and other companies. A forex alert is simply a message sent to the user informing him of the latest developments in the forex market, often recommending action of some kind. These alerts can be sent via e-mail or cell phone text message.

The idea behind them is that no one can follow all the markets all the time. Even if you limit yourself to just the “majors” — U.S., Eurozone, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and Switzerland — that’s still 15 currency pairs to keep an eye on. What’s more, sometimes things are steady for long periods of time, while other periods are marked by great activity.

The sites that offer forex alerts go about it in one of two ways. Some simply send out alerts every 24 hours, offering the latest info on the forex market. Others send alerts only when something crucial happens. These systems use formulas of their own to determine what constitutes “something crucial,” and they may charge a lot more for their more specific alerts. And of course it’s still up to the individual trader to act on or disregard the information send to him in the alerts.

Some brokers include forex alerts as part of their service, while others charge for them. Some are part of a wider alert program that also handles your stocks and bonds. You can tailor the type of alerts you get based on whether you’re a conservative or aggressive trader, and how actively you plan to trade.

Serious traders who use forex alerts swear by them. No system is perfect, of course, and a smart trader will always do a little browsing on his own to make sure his latest alert didn’t miss anything. But alerts are an invaluable way for busy investors to go about their daily lives without having to constantly watch the forex rates.