Author: Keiran

Forex trader, media, marketing, entrepreneur and father

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Crypto Videos

Five Of The Best Trading Strategies For Trading Part 1

https://youtu.be/YVrJOWf6M6g

https://youtu.be/YVrJOWf6M6g

Five trading strategies for trading crypto during turbulent periods – part 1/2

The cryptocurrency market is known to be quite volatile. Volatility brings a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of risk to the traders. These are five of the best ways to make a profit when markets are turbulent.


Scalping

Scalping is a well-known strategy amongst traders. This strategy takes advantage of small market movements and requires precision and decisiveness. Traders are quickly entering and exiting positions during an hour, a minute, or even just a few seconds. The key to this strategy is making many small trades. There is no need for high returns per trade, as there are many opportunities for scalpers. You should rather be aiming to maintain or increase your win/loss ratio. With this strategy, the size of winning and losing trades is almost the same as there is no opportunity to maintain a high reward-to-risk trade setup. Therefore, in order to profit, you need to win more often than to lose.
Scalper traders usually want to avoid high volatility because this trading strategy does not cope well with unpredictable moves. The best time for a scalper to trade is during a ranging market bound by strict support and resistance levels.
While scalping is considered relatively safe, it requires patience and discipline as well as some experience in reading the charts. Scalpers may utilize trading algorithms and bots to make trades for them, therefore avoiding any emotion-based trades.


Buying the Dips

This strategy may seem counterintuitive to some people, but a drop in any asset’s price is a great time to buy it, as long as the asset is known for being volatile. Assuming we are talking about a strong asset, the price will revert and reach the previous highs as soon as the market regains its confidence.

When taking a quick look at the Bitcoin price over the past decade, we can see a strong upward trend, but also times when the price was over and undervalued. As most buyers and sellers are just regular people and not professional traders and investors, the crypto market is extremely sensitive to news stories and media hype. When the good news gets published, people rush to buy already overvalued cryptocurrencies. On the other hand, when something bad happens, people panic and sell their holdings at below their true value.
Times such as these are the perfect opportunity for investors to buy the undervalued cryptocurrencies. Using their expertise to assess the market conditions and fundamentals, they predict when the market is most undervalued. When they determine that the market is likely to make a recovery, they buy.

As an opposite strategy to scalping, buying the price dips doesn’t require much precision, but rather expertise and “feel” in order to recognize when an asset is undervalued. You only need to make a single trade and wait for the profit from the upward trajectory to kick in. However, you probably won’t see any quick profits. On top of that, perfect market timing is everything with this strategy as you need to recognize market reversals.

Check out part 2 of our trading strategies to find out more about how to trade during volatile periods of the crypto market.

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Forex Videos

Make Money In Forex Using The Ichimoku Cloud indicator!

https://youtu.be/EiKJfcVBU7w

https://youtu.be/EiKJfcVBU7w

Simplifying the Ichimoku Cloud indicator for trading the Japanese Yen

The Ichimoku Cloud technical indicator was developed by Goichi Hosoda, a Japanese journalist, in the late 1960s. It is favoured by Japanese traders who use it to predict areas of support and resistance and it also shows momentum. It produces its data on historical price action and is therefore considered to be a lagging indicator.

All types of traders use the indicator for various currency pairs, however it is predominantly used for trading the yen. The Ichimoku Cloud is composed of 5 lines of calculations and where clouds form on charts along with moving averages and lines showing momentum.
The basic principle is that if price action is going on underneath the bottom section of the cloud, it is confirming an area of resistance is above and that a downtrend is likely or happening and if price action is going on above the top section of the cloud it is confirming that the cloud is supporting price action, or that an uptrend is in progress. Another key feature of the cloud is that it should ideal be moving in the direction of the trade that you wish to take.

Example A


Example A, is the cloud component only on a 1-hour chart of the USDJPY pair. We can see various clouds forming on the chart in areas 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Example B


Example B shows us that if we were trading this chart and waited patiently for the above methodology to kick in we have a downwards move on the cloud at position ‘A’ which is followed by subsequent price action to the downside producing 65 pips.
While later on, at position B we have an upward moving cloud and where price action is supported by this set up producing 62 pips. This is simply using the cloud only component of the indicator.

Example C


In example C we have added the moving average components and we are looking for the price action to be above the black MA, and where the black MA is above the green MA, and where our cloud must be ascending to support our buy side trade. Or we need price action to be underneath the the green moving average and where the green MA is below the black MA, and supported by a descending cloud to support our sell-side trade. It is important to note that the calculations for the MA’s in this chart are calculated differently than the usual simple moving averages. The cloud MA’s are based on highs and lows over a period, and then divided by two.

In order to keep things as simple as possible, we have elected not to use the final momentum part of the indicator, because it throws up an awful lot of noise on the chart. One of the biggest criticisms of this indicator is that there are too many components on the chart, thus making it difficult to read. The best way to identify trend is by analysing the shape and size of each candlestick. The larger the candlestick, the greater the momentum.
It is also important to point out that if the indicator is predominantly use for trading the yen currency and we would suggest that you stick to this if you decide to use the indicator because at the very least it shows you you what other yen traders are looking at on their charts. And the bottom line is we want to be trading the same way as the big guns in order to be successful.

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Crypto Videos

Five Tips For Entering The Cryptocurrency Bull Market – Avoiding Common Mistakes

https://youtu.be/OzwDYX_LzbU

https://youtu.be/OzwDYX_LzbU

Five tips for entering the cryptocurrency bull market

 

With the cryptocurrency market being on the verge of a bull market, it is good to know what to do when that happens.

1. Withdraw from the crypto exchange after you’ve finished trading!


Exchanges are notoriously insecure, and with all the security breaches, mismanaging of the user funds, exit scams, or a surprise AML/KYC to seize the investors’ funds, you’re always at risk with your holdings being held by the exchange. There are many valid reasons why “Not your keys, not your Bitcoin,” became a mantra among traders. Many traders lost substantial amounts of money to hacks, unethical exchanges, and exit scams.
When it comes to surprise AML/KYC seizures, it could be possible to recover funds by doxxing yourself, which is not ideal. However, some platforms simply make the demands for personal information that are so appalling that you may never get your cryptos back.

2. Stop talking about your portfolio!

Operational security is the king in the land of cryptocurrencies. During the last bull market, some people that were talking about their outrageous gains got kidnapped, become victims of home invaders trying to find their crypto-keys and devices. All this because they wanted to brag about their portfolio gains on social media. Advertising your gains on social media (or anywhere for that matter) is like painting a red dot on your forehead.

3. Keep your holdings on a hardware wallet!


Another security consideration should be to store your holdings offline on a hardware wallet. Preferably, it would help if you kept the hardware wallet and recovery seed in different and secure locations. Hacking, as well as ransomware, is, sadly, an epidemic online. Therefore, keeping your coins off your laptop or mobile phone is an easy way to sidestep the risk of losing your holdings this way.

4. Don’t use trading signal services!


Countless trading coaches popped up on the internet during the last bull run. They offered courses, trading signals, and paid trading signal groups without any testimonials of what they did prior to being coaches. While it is obvious that these trading coaches are scam artists, many people fell for their scam and lost quite a lot of money.

There are many ways to learn how to trade safely. Taking free courses or reading free ebooks about trading, as well as practicing on a demo account, all fall into this category.

5. Perform in-depth research before investing!

The cryptocurrency industry is young and full of scammers, as most of the retail investors are young and have never tried themselves in the traditional markets. This attracts the most unscrupulous scammers that are trying to take the funds away from the investors in any way possible. During the bull market and the ICO craze of 2017, many scams and terrible investment opportunities started popping up.
The scammers in the crypto field basically forced the world’s regulatory agencies to step in and put an end to the “scammer’s free for all.” As a fun fact, there was even an ICO that used a picture of the famous actor Ryan Gosling as their supposed “graphic designer.”
Even if the projects are not scams, it is important to do the research in order to gauge whether it is worth your money or not. Do your due diligence and always make sure you are fully aware of what you’re actually investing in.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Surviving a Bear Market! – Crypto Money Making Strategies Part 2

https://youtu.be/UKIf7hxe7Y8

https://youtu.be/UKIf7hxe7Y8

Cryptos in a bear market – what to do? – part 2/2

This article is picking up where the first one left off, which is explaining various things a trader can do while the cryptocurrency market is in a bearish trend.


Holding

The second strategy would be holding, or “HODLing.” This is often a confusing term for a lot of newcomers, as most of them think that it is a misspelling. Interestingly enough, “HODL” became an acronym for “Hold On for Dear Life,” which means that investors will not sell their holdings even if the market goes into a deep downtrend.

The term represents a trading strategy, if it may be called a strategy, that is used by those who are willing to wait for greener pastures. Holding is a long-term strategy but also a philosophy of numerous investors. Since the crypto market is still young and new, it is widely believed that the current volatility, prices, and market crashes are just regular occurrences that happen on the path to stabilization and maturity. HODLers often think that the key to making a profit with cryptos is to stick to their holdings and endure the pressure. When the market stabilizes, and cryptos reach widespread adoption, it is expected that the HODLers will be rewarded for trusting in their cryptocurrencies.
HODLing is a huge part of the crypto culture nowadays. This strategy has gained a lot of support from investors all over the globe. As the overall opinion is that cryptocurrencies are here to stay, HODLing has a big potential in the long run. This strategy, just like short-selling, did not get created by crypto traders. The best example of failing to HODL, as well as the true testament of HODLing working, is Ronald Wayne’s sale of Apple shares in 1970. Back then, he made $800 from selling the shares. If he had waited a few decades, his $800 gain would have become $100 billion.

Everyone knows that predicting the future is impossible. However, popular investors such as Jay Smith think that holding is always the best option if you trust in the asset. He is convinced that cryptocurrencies will replace the old stock markets. He also said that they would power machines, the Internet of Things, governance, and voting systems, maybe even the internet itself. While he understands that it might take years, maybe even decades before this prediction comes true, he is convinced that cryptos are the future and that there is no better way to invest in crypto than by buying and holding.

Buy Low – Sell High

Naturally, investors always want to make a profit. For that reason, when the value of cryptocurrencies goes down, many investors decide to cut their losses. Only a rare few are willing to risk it and keep buying, even if their prices are going down. Most of the people tend to buy near the top and sell near the bottom of the move. This occurrence is not limited only to crypto; it is rather the human nature of risk-aversion.

While many investors panic-sell their holdings that they have bought near the top, some others are trying to average down the price of their holdings. As always, any and every investor must do proper in-depth research before buying any coin.


Diversification

Finally, the last so-called strategy for aspiring investors is always to diversify their holdings. Since predicting the future is impossible, any investment is a risk, especially cryptocurrencies. However, investing in a few projects that you are interested in increases the chances of making the right call.
Traders can diversify by investing in projects they like, but the main thing is to diversify by investing in assets with low correlation. By investing in such assets, the price drop of one asset will not affect the price of the others.

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Forex Videos

How To Make Profit Using The Box Trading Strategy – 144 Pips Made!

https://youtu.be/bFx6Mz7OcC4

https://youtu.be/bFx6Mz7OcC4

Simplified trading using boxes produces 144 pips

One of the biggest areas where new traders fall down is because they overload their screen charts with too many indicators. Many professional and institutional size traders will often use price action only to trade. Or may supplement their charts with a minimal amount of indicators, while many prefer draw lines in order to calculate areas where price action has consolidated into a sideways movement. They can then trade where the breakout will occur.

Example A


Example A is a one hour chart of the USDJPY pair, with only price action in the form of Japanese candlesticks. Blue for bullish, or up, and red for bearish, or down. On the face of it, although there seems to be a general bias to the downside, it would be fairly difficult to pinpoint where to enter as the hours roll by.
In order to confirm consolidation or sideways trading, a simple rule applies: price action must have touched at least two areas of resistance and at least two areas of support.
Traders will confirm this on the charts by simply adding a couple of horizontal lines, once they have identified this consolidation, as per the price action. They will then make the necessary trading decision based on the information they see.

 

Example B


Now let’s look at example B, we always read our charts from left to right, because they tell us a story, and at the beginning of the session in question we can see that at position A, we have a confined area of resistance and support, where we can see that both lines have been touched by price action on at least two occasions. In the example, we have closed off the end of the parallel lines, and thus, we can now identify this area as a box, And where we can see that at position price action punches through the support area, and traders will have gone short at this position.

Example C


If we move on during the course of the training session, we can identify another two boxes, in example C, firstly at position B, and then position C, we’re both have the minimum requirements of 2 touches of the support and resistance lines.

Example D


In example D, we can drill down a little bit more and identify that this pair is consolidating at position A, and then taking a move lower, then consolidating again at position B, before taking another step lower and then consolidating again at position C, and where traders will have picked up on the bias to the downside, and traded accordingly at breaks in the support lines.

 

Example E


Finally, in example E, let’s take a closer look at the false breakout to the downside at position X. There will always be times when traders are wondering if the market has topped or bottoms out, and this will cause breakouts from our boxes to be quickly reversed, and this happens at position X where we see a break of the support line and where the selling action has run out of steam, and the buyers have come in and reversed price action back into box C. However the move lover still produced 18 pips to the downside on this occasion, which is not an unreasonable amount.

But importantly, price action does not continue up to the area of resistance and begins stalls at position Y, before fading back to the support line and where the second breach at position Z is much more enhanced and producers 45 pips to the downside before price action looks to form the basis of another consolidation period.
The total move lower, just by using this simplified box trading, produced a total of 144 pips.

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Forex Videos

Forex – How To Trade The USDJPY Right Now

https://youtu.be/GXWe3aBr1OU

https://youtu.be/GXWe3aBr1OU

What on earth is going on with the USDJPY pair and how to trade it?

The USDJPY pair is one of the most volatile major currency pairs. In the last 12-months, we have seen highs of 112.40 to lows of 105.00 and where current price action has become volatile, difficult to predict and therefore difficult to trade. Or has it?


Let’s look at a naked 15-minute chart of this pair, with only price action on our chart, as in example A. On the face of this, it seems exceptionally volatile, unpredictable, with wild swings and where no particular directional bias is evident. This is a typical time frame for an institutional trader to use when trading this pair..


Let’s drill down a little further and try and analyze what is really going on with this pair. In example B, we have broken down the trading exchange rate from the 5th to the 7th of February 2020, which includes two days of trading in the European and American sessions, which is where you would expect to see the most volume going through.

In section A, we can see the overall price action has been using the 1.10 as an area of resistance, while price action it was confined in a 23 pip sidewards moving consolidation period.
We can then see a drop in the form of a spike lower, in area B, which has a range of 20 pips, before price action is again pushed up into area C, and trades into a narrow range of only 14 pips.

Area B’s spike is attributed to the release of the US non-farm payrolls, which had an upbeat 225,000 jobs added to the US labor force, which caused some initial strength in the US dollar before price action consolidates in area C.
But the real elephant in the room with regard to this pair, and the reason for the spikes higher and lower, can be attributed to news flow, including rumors and speculation around the Coronavirus epidemic. The Japanese Yen is favored as a currency that gets bought in uncertain times due to its safe-haven reputation, and it is therefore very sensitive to any information, real or rumors, which are prevalent in the market at this time. The pair also runs in correlation with us stock indices, and as long as the virus situation continues, we can expect spikes in both directions during news alerts, and potential yen strength should be situation worsen.

Therefore trading this pair should take into account the sentiment around the virus crisis, and bias could form for further downside. And due to the extreme volatility and huge swings in the pair over the last 12- months, it should be treated with the utmost care while using tight stop losses.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Surviving a Bear Market! – Crypto Trading Strategies Part 1

https://youtu.be/DbtJs7LljaI

https://youtu.be/DbtJs7LljaI

Cryptos in a bear market – what to do? part 1/2

Ever since Bitcoin got created (over ten years ago), investors have learned how volatile the cryptocurrency market can be. As the years passed, bull and bear trends have constantly replaced one another, with little to no way of predicting or preventing them. Even the smallest details were enough to change the situation of the market completely.


The biggest growth that cryptocurrencies have ever seen came in 2017 when the bulls took over the market and brought coins to entirely new heights. Those that have invested prior to the bull run, made quite a fortune. However, those that invested while the prices were up — lost a fortune. This was due to a massive market crash that happened in early 2018. The downtrend continued throughout the year, all the way until now.

These days, experts predict a new bull run, as they believe that cryptocurrencies follow an established market cycle. Considering the situation and the state the crypto market was in, investors needed to develop various strategies in order to survive the bear market. These strategies were not necessarily about making a profit but rather preserving money. We will present four strategies that might work in such a situation, and these are as follows:

Shooting
Holding
Buy low – sell high
Diversification
Shorting


Short-selling, or “shorting,” occurs when traders predict that a market is about to decline. If their prediction is correct, they earn a profit as they bet on the market going down. This method works in many different markets and is not limited to just crypto markets.

The most well-known example of shorting happened in 1992 when an investor called George Soros predicted the drop of the British pound and made nearly $1 billion in profit.
Shorting has proven itself to be quite an effective way of making a profit. This way of trading is possible through CFDs (Contracts For Difference) as well as cryptocurrency margin exchanges. By employing this strategy, traders can sell assets that they do not own. Instead, they borrow assets and sell them at current prices, and then rebuy them at (hopefully) lower prices.
If the market moves down, their position goes up, which then lets traders buy the asset at a much lower price, and make a profit. Exchanges such as Bitmex offer its users shorting options based on how much Bitcoin they own.
Shorting doesn’t have to be used for just making a profit. It can also be used for hedging purposes.


If a trader is holding large amounts of a certain asset, such as Bitcoin, they can open a short position to decrease the risk of losing money in case the asset moves in the opposite direction.

Check out part 2 of our How to trade in a bear market guide to learn more about the strategies that can be employed in a downtrend.

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Forex Videos

Forex – How To Trade The EURUSD Pair Right Now!

https://youtu.be/Gwl66UZJaGg

https://youtu.be/Gwl66UZJaGg

What on earth is going on with the EURUSD pair and how to trade it!

In 2011 the EURUSD was way ahead of other currency pairs being traded in the Forex market and was traded with almost 50% more in volume than that of the USDJPY and GBPUSD combined.
Indeed it was only a couple of years ago that you might expect the daily swing in the EURUSD pair to be well over 100 pips per day. And yet, in recent months, we have seen the daily price action of the pair restricted to around 25-30 pips on many occasions during the European and American trading sessions, when its volumes are at their peak.

Example A


Let’s take a quick look at example A which is a 15-minute time frame of the pair, where the two vertical lines indicate where the majority of the volume will have been traded. This time frame is a fairly typical choice for an institutional trader to use. So let’s take a more detailed look at what is going on in example B.

Example B


From the 5th of February 2020 through to the 7th, which contains two complete trading days, we can see that the total amount of pips traded is just 61, giving us our average of 30.5 pips per day. In terms of volume, it is almost nothing.

 

Example C


Let’s drill down further, in example C, to try and define what is going on. We have broken the time period down into three sections. Firstly, in section A we can see that where was sidewards trading, which was consolidating and restricted to only 21 pips and where price action was fluctuating very tightly around the key 1.10 exchange level.

Finally, traders threw in the towel with regard to expectations that the key 1.10 level would act as an area of support, and price action then falls lower to area B, again where it consolidates into a restrictive range of only 19 pips.
Again price action moves lower initially in area C, but again we see a fairly restrictive price action of only 33 pips including the most volatile session in the middle of this area which is associated with the release of the US nonfarm payrolls, and where the much better than expected 225,000 jobs were added to the labor force, and where previously one might have expected dollar strength to move this pair 100 pips to the downside with such a number, but it was relatively unaffected.

So what is happening, and how can we trade this pair? First and foremost, it was only a couple of months ago that big institutional players were suggesting that this pair could be heading for the 1.15 level, such is the belief in the strength of the Euro. Obviously, that has not happened, and this is largely due to a weakness in the Euro area and which is particularly affecting growth in the German economy, which some say is in borderline recession, and where the German economy is pretty much the backbone of the European Union.

We also have fallout from Great Britain formally leaving the European Union and where uncertainty will prevail with the European model, due to losing income from the UK and whereby no formal trade agreements have yet been set in place and where the restrictive timeline to implement this leaves many wondering whether it is achievable by the end of December 2020.
The Coronavirus is also keeping worries with regard to a potential contraction in growth and all of this can

only mean one thing the big institutional players are uncertain with regard to directional bias for this pair in the short to medium-term and are pretty much standing on the sidelines waiting for clear evidence of where the Euro is heading.
Therefore, should you be standing on the sidelines as well? This pretty much depends on your flavor for risk. You might be better off looking at other major currencies such as the USDJPY, the GBPUSD, if you want volatility. But if you want to trade the EURUSD pair, we suggest that you use simple add price action boxes such as we have drawn onto our charts and look for breakouts when they occur, or simply drop down to a lower time frame such as the 5-minutes chart in order to scalp the pair to try and make a few pips here and there throughout the day.

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Forex Videos

Forex Black Swan! Look Out For The Signs Before It’s To Late!

https://youtu.be/DLCH9oHjUOM

https://youtu.be/DLCH9oHjUOM

Are we about to become embroiled in a Black Swan event?

A financial black swan event is usually a catastrophic event such as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, or events such as disease breakout, such as the Sars epidemic in 2002/2003, Avian flu, or the Ebola breakout in West Africa in February 2014, none of which can not be predicted, and which have potentially severe consequences for the global economy. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, and severe impact, and the overall failure of analysts to predict them.


But of course, we are now in the midst of the Coronavirus, or COVID-19 to use its formal name, and there is chatter going around that this could turn out to be a major black swan event, which could severely impact the global economy.
During the 2003-2004 Sars epidemic, the S&P tumbled 14% over the span of 2 months from mid-January to mid-March. While all of this was recovered in the subsequent two months. The avian flu crisis in 2006 wiped 11.66% off of the S&P 500, and again this was shortly recovered. The Ebola crisis in March 2014 saw a 5.33% knocked off the S&P 500, and again this was also shortly recovered after the epidemic.
And so history tells us that the markets are prone to short jolts during such events, but they go on to recover, and in many cases make further gains than were lost.


This leads us to the Coronavirus, which began in January 2020, and no sooner had the ink dried on the China and US phase 1 trade deal. Initially, there was a spike lower in global equities when the virus began to take hold, and where typically safe-haven currencies such as Yen and the Swiss franc were bought along with gold, and where oil was sold off due to a possible economic slowdown, as traders opted for risk-off.
However, traders have returned to the Equity markets, where the Dow Jones and other US indices have surged to record highs. They seemed to have shrugged this event off, or are looking at the long term picture. And while the yen is acting as somewhat of a barometer when good or bad news is coming out of China, the Swiss franc has generally been sold off, while the US dollar is surging in strength, such is the strength of the US economy.
While this particular virus still has many unknown aspects to it, and where any potential cure could be over a year away, we find ourselves in a situation where no economic data is yet available to confirm the impact of this virus on the Chinese economy and where nearly 20% of this makes up for global gross domestic product.


Also, the Chinese government has committed to honoring the trade pact with the rest of their partners across the globe, and where they tell us that their gross domestic product will only be very marginally affected, and they remain extremely proactive in trying to control the virus. All of this and where the US economy is much stronger than the previous epidemics, and where the Fed’s members maintain that any impact to the US economy would be restricted to around 0.3%, we can only determine that at the moment there is not enough information to cause a black Swan event. But we will look at this again in part 2 as things progress.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies During The Coronavirus Outbreak – What We Know & How To Trade!

https://youtu.be/aD724p8fJnY

https://youtu.be/aD724p8fJnY

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies during the coronavirus outbreak

Since the first patient was diagnosed on Dec 8 in Wuhan, the virus has claimed over 800 lives. There were nearly 34,000 confirmed cases.
Given China’s status as a cryptocurrency investment hub, professionals are concerned, to varying degrees, about coronavirus’s potential to disrupt the business as well as the impact on prices.


Optimistic market?

While Chinese cryptocurrency investors are a considerable market force, statistics say that it’s difficult to conclude a one-to-one correlation between the moves and the outbreak in the crypto market.

The whole market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is small when compared to the stock market, which means that many factors could make an impact on the market.
Most crypto investors from Asia seem to be retail investors, and they have (historically) become more active during major holidays such as the Chinese New Year. No one can predict the market prices, but based on past experiences, the prices tended to get more volatile around Chinese holidays. The virus outbreak could potentially lead to more cryptocurrency trading when it comes to retail investors as they would just stay at home and have more time to check the market.


It is also difficult to predict the market prices as digital assets such as Bitcoin have a unique set of return drivers, told Kostya Etus, senior portfolio manager at CLS Investments.
“Bitcoin isn’t viewed as a safe-haven asset like gold or cash and doesn’t have much in common with risk-on assets such as stocks either,” told Etus. “While most assets are specific to both risk-on and risk-off environments, in which you could predict the price reactions to certain events, Bitcoin is not one of such assets.”

Fluid situation

As crypto is highly speculative, the coronavirus could possibly have a significant impact on the global market, said Samuel Lee, a financial advisor at SVRN Asset Management.
“The crypto market could overreact to the outbreak since it tends to be quite irrational compared to the traditional financial market,” said Lee.
On the other hand, Lee also said that the outbreak is more likely to have a limited effect on the markets.
“We had seen Bitcoin go up at the time when there was a possibility of a war between Iran and the U.S.,” Samuel Lee announced. “However, the coronavirus might not have such a geopolitical influence.”
The World Health Organization was debating on whether to declare this outbreak as an international public health emergency but finally did after many deaths struck the infected.
The S&P 500 turned positive even after the WHO summoned an emergency meeting on how to tackle the coronavirus outbreak. However, the market is dropped slightly in recent days.
“Most previous regional epidemics seem to have had very limited impact on the equity market, except for SARS,” said Wilfred Daye, senior advisor of Bardi Co. However, coronavirus ended up surpassing SARS in deaths.
“When prolonged epidemics become a market-driving factor, the cryptocurrency market will surely react more sharply,” said Daye. Daye also worked as the former head of financial markets at OkCoin.

Conclusion

While there is no sure way to determine whether coronavirus will affect crypto trading, it is almost certain that it will not affect it negatively. The markets will either not be affected by this event, or have an increased volume due to Chinese investors staying at home and having more time to trade.

 

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Win More Forex Trades – Synchronised Indicators!

https://youtu.be/yWLqVactpPc

https://youtu.be/yWLqVactpPc

Synchronized indicators equal more winning trades

A little bit of care and patience will enhance your trading. One area where new traders fall down is because they have a system, but do not stick to it. And one of the most common traits is using indicators in a haphazard way, so as to set up a trade to fail.

Example 1

Let’s look at example 1, which is a one hour chart of the USDJPY pair for some examples. In this chart, we are using two commonly used indicators, the stochastic oscillator, and the moving average convergence and divergence or MACD indicator.
For a brief recap, the stochastic indicator tells us when an asset is overbought when the two moving averages cross above the 80 level and when they move beneath the 20 level the acid is considered to be oversold.
The MACD uses one or two moving averages – in our case we are using one, and when the MA is moving from a low and subsequently rising towards and then through and above the 0-axis it is considered to indicate that an asset should be moving higher, and especially if it is supported by and almost mirroring the histogram, which is the second component of the MACD the. The opposite action applies to a descending asset.


At position A, we have drawn a vertical line, which shows us that the stochastic is suggesting that this pair is overbought and due for a move lower. However, the MACD is moving higher and thus not working in unison with the Stochastic, and where the MACD’s moving average is going up above the 0-axis and the histogram is following suit, having come from underneath, to move above the 0-axis also. In this scenario price action has ignored the stochastic and moved higher. Here our indicators are at odds with each other. Selling this pair based only on the stochastic indicator would have resulted in a losing trade.


At position B, the stochastic is moving up, having been below the 20-line and on this occasion the MACD histogram is moving underneath its 0-axis and now higher, having pierced through its moving average, which is an indication that divergence is occurring and indeed the price action does move higher from this point. Here our indicators are synchronized, and the pay off is that buying the pair based on both of these indicators would have been rewarded with a positive winning outcome.
Position C, is similar to position A, in that our stochastic he is suggesting that the pair is overbought and due for a move lower and where the MACD histogram is starting move higher, quickly followed by the MA, and had we gone short at this point we would have entered a losing trade.
At position D, our stochastic is showing that the pair is oversold, and our Macd is showing that the pair is due to fall lower and where we see a slight move lower in price action, before a reversal. Again we have seen mixed messages from our indicators, and where we can see from our charts that when our indicators are working on a synchronized basis, they throw up more winning trades than losers.

Be patient and wait for your chart indicators to be synchronized and keep an eye on the price action, which is the most important indicator of all, and where all of your indicators are working together only then should you be thinking about pulling the trigger on a trade.

Categories
Crypto Videos

eToro Platform Review Part 3 – Copy Trading Pros!

https://youtu.be/HTq3z2brk7k

https://youtu.be/HTq3z2brk7k

eToro platform review – part 3/3

The last part of the eToro platform review will cover the social aspect of the platform as well as deposit and withdrawal methods.

eToro usability

eToro offers some essential features that make life much easier for novice traders. The platform provides a Virtual Portfolio, which basically is a ‘demo mode’ that lets users play a game of trading without actually trading and without staking any real money. This mode allows you to buy as much ‘virtual’ Bitcoin or any other crypto as you like and watch how each cryptocurrency performs. This is also a great way to test trading strategies.

eToro also provides a feature called copy trading. This feature is excellent for traders that aren’t confident in their ability to select winning trades consistently. This feature allows you to copy the best-performing traders in any asset market. You choose the trade amount, and the platform will mirror every single action the trader takes. Users, however, can make adjustments such as copying only new trades and not all currently open positions.

The layout of eToro’s platform is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and suited for casual investors. The control panel is located on the left-hand side of the screen, while the right-hand side shows charts, data, as well as profiles you’ll need to trade properly. eToro’s also has a mobile application mobile that allows you to do everything you can do on your desktop. The platform app is available for both Android and iOS devices.

eToro social trading

eToro’s copy trading, as mentioned before, enables you to copy the actions of profitable traders of your choosing. This feature makes you trade like any seasoned trader you want. You can follow specific traders, monitor their actions as they happen, and opt-in to copy everything they do if you want.

This feature makes eToro the social media platform that bridges the gap between new and seasoned traders and their favorite markets.

eToro deposit and withdrawal methods

Users can deposit funds on eToro by transferring fiat currency into their eToro account. You can use your credit or debit cards as well as a variety of other options, such as wire transfer and PayPal. However, one thing to note is that all fiat funds held by eToro are held in US dollars. If you deposit funds in EUR or GBP, eToro will convert it to USD, which will incur a conversion fee. If we are speaking about crypto, getting funds on the platform is much simpler. eToro wallet has the option to store cryptos that will be traded on the platform, so all you need to do is send the cryptos to that wallet.

Withdrawals work almost exactly the same as deposits. To withdraw fiat currencies, you can use credit and debit cards, bank transfer, and PayPal. However, there is a flat withdrawal fee of $25 for every withdrawal. As this is a pretty steep fee, make sure to plan your withdrawals to avoid extra costs. Withdrawing cryptocurrencies is as simple as transferring them out of the eToro wallet and onto another wallet.

Final thoughts

eToro is quite a unique social investment platform that offers a diverse variety of investment products to people that want to trade on the go. Although it does have much higher fees compared to regular crypto trading services, the benefits may justify the costs. All in all, eToro is an excellent place to get used to trading and learn the basics.

Categories
Forex Videos

Why You Will Never Make Money In Forex! Hard Facts!

https://youtu.be/q2tG5vXlzXc

https://youtu.be/q2tG5vXlzXc

What is it that successful traders have, that 75% of retail traders do not?

Regulated forex brokers are now required to advertise the percentage of losing accounts, and where this information can usually be found at the bottom of the broker’s website landing page.
If you have the time to flick through a few of these, you will notice that the average amount of retail traders who lose their funds trading CFDs or spread betting runs at well over 70%. So just what are these people doing wrong?
Well, there is no single formula for success in trading Forex, but most new traders do not appreciate that there is a steep learning curve before one can jump in and start trading. Many of them will see a couple of videos on YouTube about trading and think that they are off to the races. When, in fact, trading in the financial markets requires great skill and knowledge.

 


There is an old adage that: failing to prepare is preparing to fail, and never has that been more true than in the forex market. But let’s say that you have learned about fundamental analysis and how economic factors can affect the value of a currency, and whereby economic data releases can also cause extreme exchange rate fluctuations and where you have done your homework and learned about some technical indicators, and yet you have hit a brick wall and are not trading successfully. What are the professional traders doing that you are not?
Professional Traders are rigid in their approach to trading. They will have developed a trading methodology, and they stick to it like glue. And this is one of the biggest mistakes that new traders fall into: they chop and change their routine, they do not have a designated methodology, developed through trial and error and use many different technical indicators and timeframes, and flit from one currency to another and even one asset class to another such as turning from Forex to stock indices and oil, etc.


It is essential that you choose a time frame to suit yourself and your lifestyle. If you have a busy life and are looking to trade Forex as a supplemental income, do you really want to be trading on a long-term timeframe, such as daily, weekly or monthly charts, where positions could run against you for weeks at a time and cause you stress, worry and sleepless nights? If you do not have a problem with this, fine. But if you are looking for quick in and out trades, on an intraday basis, then you need to be looking at a 5-minute or 15-minute timeframe and certainly no longer than an hourly chart.

And therefore, psychology really does play an important factor in your trading. This is another key area that new traders do not take into consideration when they start their journey into Forex.


Professional traders have discipline, where new traders tend to be eager and haphazard in their approach to trading. A professional trader will be patient and wait until the price action reaches an area that he or she has defined as being the correct level to instigate a trade in order to maximize their profits. Professional traders will have tested their methodology and tuned it to perfection and stick to it without deviation. Therefore, what new traders must do is to find a trading formula that works for them, having first tested it on a demo account. Because if you cannot make money there, you will not be able to make it on a real money account. Once your methodology is working consistently, only then should you consider risking your real money trading Forex.

But the number one key feature that professional traders use consistently is risk control, by implementing stop losses. And the number one feature where new retail
traders lose their money is because of poor risk control, and where a lack of stop losses will see account balances wiped out

Categories
Forex Videos

How to trade the Swizz Franc! A Ruthless Safe Haven…

https://youtu.be/i2rVI0Grvc8

https://youtu.be/i2rVI0Grvc8

How to trade the Swizz Franc

The Swizz Franc, known among traders as the Swissie, is one of the major currencies, with the USDCHF being the sixth most traded currency pair. It is considered to be a safe haven currency, where investors will often buy the currency in times of Risk-off, or market uncertainty. The Swiss National Bank decided to artificially peg the Franc at 1.20 against the Euro in 2011 because the Swizz policymakers wanted to stop the Franc from being too strong because it was hurting its exports.

However, in January 2015, the SNB suddenly severed this artificial cap, without fair notice, which sent shock waves through the market and where the Franc currency spiked in value and where the EURCHF plunged from the artificial cap of 1.20 to 0.85. Many investors, traders, and institutions were caught out, with the broker Alpari going bankrupt and where some traders had their accounts blown and where they went into negative equity due to this unprecedented move.

Since then, the currency has stabilized and where the USDCHF pair is nowadays less volatile compared to other currency pairs, and this, of course, makes it difficult to trade from a technical standpoint. Things that affect this pair are decisions by the US Federal Reserve and the Swiss National Bank and their respective gross domestic product estimates, unemployment data, industrial growth figures, and national debt.
Despite previous turmoil with the currency, the bottom line is that investors continue to see the Swiss Franc as a safe haven currency, and this is being born out in the markets at this time because of the Coronavirus epidemic.
And while the risk associated with trading this currency, from a historical standpoint, would be that the SMB has proven to be ruthless and unsympathetic when setting policy decisions and clearly they do not want a strong currency, nevertheless the markets have decided to heavily buy the Swiss Franc which is at a 16 month high at the moment, where the USDCHF pair decreased 0.0060 or 0.62% to 0.9634 on Friday, January 31 from 0.9694 in the previous trading session.

Example A


In example A, which is a daily chart of the USDCHF going back to April 2019, the pair has, for the majority of this period, been stuck in a sideways action after rejecting the high of 1.02 at position 1. This keeps in line with our notion that this pair has been fairly steady throughout this period. We can see clear support and resistance at position 3 and position 4. However, when we come to position 5, there is no bounce higher from the support line back up to the resistance line. We simply see price action fairly muted and then having a second attempt to pierce through the support line at position 6, which was short-lived. But the bullish candlestick and more convincing pierce of this support line at position 7 falls into line with our theory that the Swiss Franc is being bought as a safe haven currency at this time. And therefore, traders should be looking to this support line, subsequently becoming an area of resistance and with a possible continuation to the downside perhaps to 0.95.

 

Example B


Example B is a daily chart of the EURCHF pair. Having looked at the previous chart, it is fairly straightforward to see what is going on with this pair. We have an overriding move lower with the pair at position 1, and where a support line has subsequently become a resistance line, with sideways price action at position 2, and where at position 3, price action has continued its move lower and reached the support line, which temporarily became an area of resistance before being breached and then moved lower.

Therefore this chart backs up our beliefs that we should be looking for opportunities to buy the Swiss Franc in the short to medium term. Perhaps during pullbacks, because we do not want to be entering trades, for example, the two pairs in question, which under any other circumstances than the current coronavirus outbreak, might be considered to be oversold.

Categories
Crypto Videos

eToro Platform Review – part 2

https://youtu.be/jlhHdGuXjuw

https://youtu.be/jlhHdGuXjuw

eToro platform review – part 2/3

This part of the platform review will take a look at the fees eToro charges to its customers. It will also take a closer look at the crypto security of the platform.

eToro fees

Compared to the ‘standard’ crypto platforms (such as Coinbase or Binance), eToro’s fee structure differs a bit.
As eToro is a brokerage service rather than an exchange, it doesn’t charge trading fees the same way regular crypto exchanges do. eToro users will have to pay something called ‘spread fees‘ when selling crypto, and when buying cryptocurrencies using leverage. To sum it up, if you want to sell (or margin trade) a cryptocurrency, you will have to pay a percentage of the sale price. This percentage fee derives from the ‘spread’ of the asset itself, which constitutes the difference between its ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ price.

As an example, selling one Bitcoin at a market price of $10,000, you’ll also have to pay 0.75% of the Bitcoin’s value (0.75% being the current BTC spread value). Assuming that 1 BTC equals $10,000, you’ll have to pay $75.
Also, traders that are taking out a leveraged position on a cryptocurrency will have to pay ‘overnight fees,’ which are also referred to as ‘rollover fees.’ As the trader is borrowing money from the company to hold a trading position, eToro charges them interest.
eToro Spread/overnight fees
The table below will show the spread and overnight fees of the platform:
Cryptocurrency

eToro Spread Fee


As shown above, the overnight fees for Bitcoin are pretty steep. As a comparison, traditional crypto platforms are much cheaper. Kraken charges 0.01% every four hours of holding a leveraged BTC/EUR or BTC/USD position. So, if someone would hold a position of 1 BTC for 24 hours, they would have to pay around 0.00056 BTC on Kraken, while eToro users would pay $0.0075 BTC.

Similarly, the spread fees on eToro make it more expensive than trading on traditional exchanges and platforms. Binance and Bitstamp each charge only 0.1% for every trade a user makes. On the other hand, eToro’s spread fee of 0.75% for BTC is noticeably more expensive.
On top of all this, eToro also charges withdrawal fees as well as inactivity fees. The withdrawal fee is a flat $25, with users being allowed to withdraw amounts of $50 or more. The inactivity fee is $10 per month and is charged to users whose account hasn’t been used for 4 or 12 months, depending on whether they have deposited any funds.

Security of the platform

Unlike many centralized, traditional exchanges, eToro has experienced no significant scandals in the past. However, security isn’t eToro’s major selling point. Up until 2017 and 2018, cryptocurrencies weren’t directly traded using eToro. Instead, users held and traded a contract for difference (CFD), which allowed eToro to hold no crypto whatsoever.
There was no need for any additional security measures which competing crypto platforms had to have.

Today, when it does offer direct cryptocurrency trading, the additional security layers are unknown to the public. The website doesn’t specify the crypto security measures it uses to protect customers’ assets.
One thing to note is that the eToro wallet, just like other major exchanges, keeps your private key. This means that you have to trust the platform to protect your funds. That being said, eToro is one of the most secure platforms when it comes to general compliance with financial regulation. The platform is being regulated by CySEC in Europe, FinCEN in the US, and the FCA in the UK.

Make sure to check out the third part of our eToro platform review, where we will talk about the platform usability, social trading as well as withdrawal and deposit methods.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Crypto Exchanges VS Crypto Brokerages Part 2 – Are You Getting The Best Deal?

https://youtu.be/b7e8dz6eDgk

https://youtu.be/b7e8dz6eDgk

 

Crypto exchanges VS. Crypto brokerages – part 2/2

 

Trading Exchanges

Trading on a crypto exchange is quite straightforward. All you need to do is select the desired trading instrument and then open your trade. As the chart unveils, you will watch your position. You can place buy as well as sell orders. Most exchanges try to offer some form of different orders, such as limit orders.
One of the advantages that exchanges have over brokerages is that you can pick among a lot of different cryptocurrencies to trade.


Brokers

Brokerage platforms will usually have more analysis tools that will benefit traders to achieve their goals. Most of them have advanced analysis tools, as well as several variations of orders. However, the brokerage platforms will not offer you as many cryptos to trade as an exchange. Brokers have different cryptocurrency pairs available, but they mostly offer only the most popular cryptos.

Brokers also tend to have quite tight spreads, unlike some of the less liquid exchanges. This feature prevents slippage from happening.
Another great advantage is that the brokerage platforms have many more features to offer in general. Unlike most exchanges, brokerages offer the option to put multiple charts in your view-window, track the quote flow, use sets of indicators, etc. Some brokerages even offer the option to create automatic trading strategies without any previous knowledge of coding.


Safety & Security Exchanges
Crypto exchanges can be divided into two:
Centralized exchanges! Decentralized exchanges!
Centralized exchanges are considered relatively unsafe. You can create a very strong password as well as enable 2-factor authentication. However, this does not guarantee 100% safety of funds. The main thing is that the account owner is not the owner of the keys that hold the funds. As the exchange holds all these keys, hackers only need to hack one account – the exchanges, rather than each account individually. Many exchanges got hacked, and most of these funds never got back in the hands of the original owners. While exchanges are increasing their security levels as well as introducing forms of insurance, this is far from what brokers have.
Decentralized exchanges are considered the safest way to trade cryptocurrencies, as you hold your own wallet keys. However, these exchanges are not yet big enough to have good liquidity, which creates large spreads and slippage.


Brokers

Trading cryptocurrencies with a regulated broker will guarantee some degree of safety to the clients. First of all, most brokers are regulated with a reliable authority, such as CySEC, FCA, SEC, etc. If a broker is regulated, its business is strictly audited. Regulated brokers are also members of investor compensation schemes, which ensures claims of clients and against brokerages that are unable to meet obligations due to financial downfall or bankruptcy.
However, one thing to note is that almost no brokers trade with real cryptocurrencies, but rather with derivates. While this is not necessarily bad, traders should know that using brokers will often result in trading with contracts that derive their value from cryptocurrencies, rather than with cryptos.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while cryptocurrency trading is considered high risk and due to their volatility, people can choose safer ways to ensure that their funds are always in the right hands. Exchanges and brokers have their advantages and disadvantages, and traders should pick very carefully based on their goals while trading.

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Trade The New Zealand Dollar Right Now! Corona Virus Continued

https://youtu.be/ouTfj6zK3SA

https://youtu.be/ouTfj6zK3SA

How to trade the New Zealand Dollar

New Zealand’s gross domestic product is largely derived from its international exports of milk powder, butter, cheese, meat, edible offal, and lamb as well as sales of beef, logs, and wood, crude oil, cereals, flour, and starch. It has an extremely efficient agricultural system. Its exports rose 4.8 percent over the previous year to NZD 5544 million in December 2019, after rising 7.3 percent in November. Exports to China rose by +5.8 percent and now running at 18% of its total exports. And while it is not as exposed to the same level as Australia to the Coronavirus crisis in China, it is seen as a perceived risk to the market and where the NZDUSD decreased 0.0025 or 0.39% to 0.6463 on Friday, January 31 from 0.6488 in the previous trading. The New Zealand dollar is one of the six major currencies. So let’s take a look at a daily chart of the NZDUSD pair, and try and find some directional bias.

Example A


In example A, we can see that daily price action has been largely contained within the resistance and support lines as noted on the chart, however, when price action failed to reach the resistance line at position A, we see a pullback lower in the pair and where price action has pushed below the support line at position B or 0.64870, and where this push lower coincides with sentiment and risk pertaining to the outbreak of the Coronavirus. It is highly unlikely that this outbreak will be contained any time soon and where no vaccine has yet been made. And therefore, we can presume that price action will be driven down to the 0.640 key level, and if breached, we may see a continuation down to our support line at position C and which should be considered a target.

Example B


To try and backup our Theory, we now turn our attention to example B, which is a daily chart of the New Zealand dollar against the Japanese yen. We have a similar situation in this chance where price action has been contained within an overall level of resistance and to periods of support that go back to May 2019. we are more interested in the recent activity as defined by position a price action failed to reach the resistance line at 73.40 on two separate occasions. Recently we can see that the New Zealand dollar has fallen against the Japanese yen and breached the support line at position C, and wear this price action coincides with a weakening in the New Zealand dollar due to its dependence on exporting to China coupled with the fact that is being bought because of its safe-haven status. Traders should be looking for opportunities to short this pair on their preferred time frame and where a target should be sought at around position the which is the 66.8 one support line held previously.

Traders should be looking out for New Zealand building permits and employment figures, which will be carefully analyzed for directional bias, but the key event to consider will be how the market responds to the Chinese markets opening after an extended Lunar New Year closure. This coincides with the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Trade balance and PMIs are due to be released.

Categories
Crypto Education

eToro Platform Review – Part 1

https://youtu.be/3PB4917lntM

https://youtu.be/3PB4917lntM

eToro platform review – part 1/3


eToro is one of the most popular trading platforms in the world. It lets users trade various assets, such as traditional stocks, shares, as well as major cryptocurrencies. When compared to other crypto trading services, it is a fully regulated exchange with a user-base of more than 10 million registered users.

eToro in a nutshell


eToro is aimed at investors who are new to the investment world, as their interface does not consist of many analysis tools. They are rather a simple platform that gives people the option to buy or sell assets on the go. It is a great one-stop-shop as it offers a variety of assets. However, advanced traders may also benefit from eToro by using margin trading. Less experienced traders have the option to use eToro’s social trading where they can follow seasoned investors, their research, as well as insights.

eToro offers various instruments, including:
16 cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, BCH, XRP, DASH, LTC, ETC, ADA, EOS, NEO, XLM, IOTA, TRX, ZEC, BNB. XTZ).

47 currency pairs (including EUR, USD, CAD, GBP, AUD, PLN, SGD, SEK, JPY, and many others).

13 stock index CFDs (SPX 500, UK100, NSDQ100, China50, AUS200 and others).
Over 1300 stock CFDs.
83 commodity CFDs (including oil, gold, silver, copper, natural gas, and platinum).
The U.S. customers are allowed to trade cryptocurrencies only for now.

eToro background

The company was founded in 2006 by Yoni Assia (Chief Executive Officer and Founder) and Ronen Assia (Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder). eToro can be proud to say that it has a history stretching further back than the whole crypto industry itself. It started its life as an online FOREX brokerage.

It made its first move towards crypto in January 2014, when it started to offer Bitcoin trading to their user base of three million. At the time, the crypto trading they offered was trading CFD’s, which meant that traders didn’t purchase the underlying asset. However, eToro (slowly but surely) switched to offering direct crypto trades in September 2018. When buying crypto on eToro, you actually own it as well as withdraw the cryptocurrencies you buy into your eToro wallet.
eToro boasts over ten million users today, with its growth primarily driven by the smart marketing moves and the crypto industry. On top of that, its accessibility and great customer support make eToro expand even further.
Check out part 2 of our eToro platform guide, where we will talk about the fees, spreads, and security of the platform.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Crypto Exchanges VS Crypto Brokerages Part 1 – Are You Getting The Best Deal?

https://youtu.be/mic-T4wSX4c

https://youtu.be/mic-T4wSX4c

 

Crypto exchanges VS. Crypto brokerages – part 1/2

There are two ways that people can trade cryptocurrencies:Over an exchange Or With a broker.

This article will touch upon the basic things a trader has to do when trading cryptos over an exchange, as well as by using an online broker.
Extreme volatility and virtually unlimited profit potential that the crypto market brings got people going crazy about it. As a result, a lot of products and services appeared in the market. Trading via a broker or via an exchange has some differences, and they are not completely clear to the general public.


Signing up/Verification

Exchanges
The process of signing up to a crypto exchange is (in most cases) is as simple as registering on their website. Users are required to provide their email, create a password, and confirm the email address. Some exchanges might require a KYC verification, where you would be required to submit a valid ID as well as a proof of residence. The exchanges usually respond to verification requests within a day. There are, however, some cases where you don’t have to get verified once signed up.

Brokers
Signing up with a broker is, just like with exchanges, not a very difficult thing. In fact, the signup process is almost the same as on a regular exchange. On the other hand, in order to deposit funds and start trading, you will need to verify your account. As a rule, you will have to submit scan copies of either one or two documents: A valid ID or Proof of address.
The verification process is done much slower than on exchanges, as the average time of the verification is 15-days.


Deposits and Withdrawals

Exchanges
Depositing fiat to crypto exchanges can often be a hassle. Most exchanges do not accept fiat-to-crypto purchases. While there are many ways to buy cryptocurrencies out there, these transactions often have high fees and commissions.
On the other hand, withdrawing funds from exchanges can go two ways. If you want to withdraw your cryptocurrencies to a non-exchange wallet, this can be done easily and cheaply. However, withdrawing cryptocurrencies to a fiat currency account can be quite a hassle. Withdrawing cryptocurrencies to a bank account can be an issue as quite a lot of banks don’t accept money from crypto exchanges. The reason for this is that they can’t determine the origin of such money and transactions.

Brokers
Unlike cryptocurrency exchanges, depositing with a broker is much easier. A broker’s client offers a large number of ways to make a deposit. This includes credit cards, e-wallets, bank accounts, etc. You can deposit US dollars, euros, and often times, some other currencies. The ease of depositing simplifies the whole process quite a bit. On top of that, there are no deposit fees whatsoever on almost all brokerages.
As for withdrawals, broker terms are often more attractive than the terms that a cryptocurrency exchange has. While many exchanges pride themselves with low trading fees, they earn money on high withdrawal fees. However, brokers usually charge a fee of between 0% and 3%. This number can vary depending on the withdrawal method.

Check out our part 2 of Crypto exchanges VS. Crypto brokerages to find out more about the differences between the two in terms of trading as well as safety protocols.

 

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Trade The Australian Dollar – Is It Time To Sell?

https://youtu.be/jLnzORuZbHA

https://youtu.be/jLnzORuZbHA

How to trade the Australian Dollar

The Australian Dollar is one of the six major currencies traded against the USD and is also popular with cross pairs, such as against the British pound, Euro and Yen.
So far this year, the Australian Dollar has been one of the worst-performing assets among major currencies. A combination of domestic weakness and other external factors such as, more recently, the Coronavirus in China has heavily impacted on this currency.

While Australia’s gross domestic product growth has been recovering since and a low point in 2018, the only expanded very moderately in 2019, the international monetary fund has lowered its forecast in 2020 from 2.8% to 2.3. This may be further impacted the longer the coronavirus goes on because Australia’s gross domestic product is heavily influenced by its commodities exports to China: its largest trading partner with 29.2% of total exports in 2018.

If the virus is contained quickly, Australia can fall back on its low unemployment rate, which has been steady around 5% and it’s housing market which has been turning around since a drop in 2018, and where the more recent upturn is supported by rising house prices.
The Royal Bank of Australia has been doubled in its stance and hinted at depot rate cuts growth remain subdued. It is possible that the Central Bank could roll out extraordinary policies including negative interest rates and large-scale quantitative easing in order to stimulate the economy.

Therefore, the overall sentiment against the Australian Dollar should be considered dovish.
Let’s look at a couple of charts to try and determine the short to the medium-term direction for this currency.

Example A


Example A is the daily chart for the AUSUSD pair. After a rally to the key resistance line of 0.70 in December, the pair has been on the back foot and has declined to a key area of support at 0.6880 at the time of writing. We predict that because there does not seem to be any improvements with the Coronavirus situation and where 50 million people are in lockdown in China. And with no vaccine in sight, we see short to medium term problems for the Australian Dollar continuing. Especially where this major pair is concerned, we expect major stop losses to be breached at its current level and a continuation to the downside due to weakness in the Australian Dollar and strength in the US dollar.

 

Example B


Example B is a daily chart of a popular cross pair: the Euro against the Australian Dollar.
This pair has been fluctuating from two areas of support and resistance in this time frame at 1.5955 and its current position at 1.6577 since May 2019. The rather sharp uplift in this pair over the last two days from the 1.6227 level, confirms general weakness in the Australian Dollar. Again this is an area where we would predict stop losses to be triggered should it move above the 1.66 key level. In the short term, we believe that traders will recognize this is a major level of resistance and where we might expect a pullback in the short term. And whereby Fibonacci technical analysis may help to determine if the pair will continue moving higher. Remember that the euro area has its own problems in terms of growth slow down, which may curtail this move much higher.

Example C


In example C, we get even further clarification of a general weakness in the Australian Dollar with a daily chart of the Australian Dollar against the Japanese yen. After rejecting the resistance line at position A around the 76.50 level, traders failed to reach it again again at position B, and where we have seen an acceleration to the downside. Traders will now be targeting the support line at around 71.80 level, and if

this is breached, stops will be triggered and price action will drive the pair lower to their next target which is around the 70:50 level. The hypothesis is based again on the weakening Australian Dollar and the fact that the market is buying Yen as a safe haven currency, and therefore the emphasis and sentiment is that this pair is due to declining further.

Categories
Forex Videos

Forex Academy Education For Absolute Beginners Session Six – Advantages Of StartingA Forex Business

https://youtu.be/X80G4uW_BqA

https://youtu.be/X80G4uW_BqA

Forex for absolute beginners; The advantages of starting a Forex business

The foreign exchange market, also known as Forex or FX, is a decentralized global market where all the world’s currencies are exchanged and is the biggest business on the planet, with over $5 trillion dollars traded each day by banks, financial institutions, traders and investors and since the advent of the internet, retail traders who make up an ever-growing proportion with over 9 million retail traders currently getting involved every day.


Foreign exchange currency rates constantly fluctuate, and essentially, forex traders bet weather exchange rates will go up or down. If they bet a currency exchange rates will move up, and it does, they make money, while if It moves down, they will lose money. Traders can control how much they lose on a trade if they are wrong, but they cannot control how much they win because there is a great deal of skill involved in judging where to exit a trade and take a profit.
The advantage of trading in the forex market is that you can start with minimal investment with some retail brokers allowing you to commence trading with as little as $10, although, you would probably need at least a couple of thousand dollars to realistically make any kind of positive impact to your bank account. You can trade Forex full time, where the market operates 24-hours a day five days a week, or you can just commit to a few hours per day in order to supplement your income or to suit your lifestyle. All trading accounts have a stop loss software feature so you can stop your losses running out of control, and a designated take profit feature, which allows you the ability to not have to be sat at your PC screen all the time monitoring your trades.


Other benefits are that you do not have to buy stock; you do not need an office; you do not need to employ staff. All you need is a computer and a broadband connection. And what’s more, this industry is recession-proof. It simply keeps churning over, day after day. This makes it one of the lowest start-up costs in opening a new business and is one of the main reasons that retail traders have chosen to get involved. What’s more, if you are in the UK you don’t need to pay business rates for an office, you do not need to complete reams of new business start-up documentation or form a new company. All you need to do is trade Forex via a spread betting account, and any winnings are classed as gambling under the current laws and, therefore, not subject to income tax!


However, in order to succeed, there is a steep learning curve. And just like any other profession, you will only get out what you put in; in other words, you will need a Forex education. But do not be alarmed, because here at the Forex Academy we have all the educational tools at your disposal in order to teach you all you need to know about how this market works, and what you will need to do in order to be a consistent winner.

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Forex Videos

Forex Real Money Trad Set Up – When To Pull The Trigger!

https://youtu.be/aHE9Yo0OQ64

https://youtu.be/aHE9Yo0OQ64

Real money trade set up

In our editorials from the section on Recurring shapes and patterns, part 1 and 2 we looked at how shapes and patterns offer up trading opportunities and where some of these patterns may seem subjective and others stand out like a sore thumb. But when we keep a close look out for them in our technical analysis we give ourselves an extra edge.
In this editorial piece we are going to put our methodology into practice and use some of this to set up and execute a real money trade on our own trading account and where we will be trading in a half of a standard lot, while incorporating a tight stop loss.

Example A


Example A is a 5-minute chart of the GBPUSD pair . After a push higher from the 1.3060 level, we observed certain shapes and patterns that led us to believe there might be a reversal. And where we subsequently took our real money short position of 5 x 0.10 shorts, which is equal to £5 per pip, as shown on the diagram.

Example B


First of all as per example B, we have set our stop loss a couple of pips above the highest point of the move. This is essential for tight money management purposes.

Example C


Example C, is a wedge formation where we have a high, but where the base acts as an area of support, and an eventual breakout above the descending side of the wedge leads us to believe there will be a continuation in price action. We could have gone long at this point but needed further clarification either way and it was not available at this stage.

Example D


Example D throws up 7 ‘wave’ formations, where price action is encompassed by patterns resembling half circles and which were strictly observed.

Example E


Example E, presents us with an overriding wave which is arch like, and which is mirrored by the 13 and 17 period moving averages, which price action is adhering too and which provides us with another signal that the overall move higher was flagging.

Example F


Example F, presents another wedge shape where the top of the move can be seen to be falling away as price action continues to decline, as shown by the resistance levels on our wedge and where the base is generally showing support. Our short entry is at the thin end of the wedge and when executed it goes straight into profit.

Example G


Example G, presented us with an opportunity to protect our trade by dragging our stop loss from a few pips above the closing high of this move to just underneath our entry which is permitted on the Metatrader mt4 platform, thus protecting our trade from loss. We have effectively got a free trade with some profit locked in just incase that price action does reverse and move higher.

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Crypto Videos

Changelly Exchange In Depth Review Part 3 – The Cheapest Way To Buy Crypto?

https://youtu.be/fRThtymSTXU

https://youtu.be/fRThtymSTXU

Changelly exchange in-depth review – part 3/3

This is third (and the last) part of the Changelly in-depth review. This part of the review will touch upon the exchange’s fees, deposit methods as well as security.

Changelly Fees

The platform’s fees consist of:
Deposit fees, Trading fees, and Withdrawal fees.
Deposit fees may vary depending on the way a user deposits the funds.

Trading fees

When choosing an exchange, you must take a look at how the trading fees are structured. Every trade occurs between two parties the market makers, whose order already exists on the order book, and the market taker, who takes the maker’s order. While makers create market liquidity, takers reduce it. Most exchanges differentiate between the fees they charge to takers and the fees they charge makers.
However, Changelly opted for a different route. The exchange charges the takers and the makers the same fees, which is called the “flat fee rate.” The platform offers a flat trading fee of 0.25%, which is considered the industry standard. This fee structure might be an attractive trading model for traders who prefer to take already existing orders from the order book, rather than having to wait for their orders to get filled.

Withdrawal fees

Many exchanges try to maximize their profits by having low trading fees while maintaining extremely high withdrawal fees. Changelly is, however, not one of them. The company charges only 0.0001 BTC for withdrawals.

Deposit Methods

Users can deposit their funds through the regular fiat transfer via the platform’s corporate partners using credit cards (such as VISA and MasterCard). This feature is extremely helpful to novice crypto investors as one of the main things they want is fiat deposits. There are many exchanges that offer no fiat currency deposit support at all, which makes Changelly stand out.
Changelly has also lowered the entry barriers for crypto-to-crypto exchanges recently. This makes traders able to deposit with as little funds as possible.

Changelly Security/Account Verification

Changelly does not submit every single user to its verification protocol. If you want to use the platform’s conversion services, you don’t need to submit any of the KYC-documentation (such as passports, utility bills, or ID photos). The only thing you need to use the conversion services is a valid wallet address. However, if you would use Changelly to purchase cryptocurrencies by using some form of fiat-based deposits (such as a credit card), then you will need to submit additional documentation in order to pass the KYC process.

General

Changelly states that security is one of its main priorities. When tested on the Mozilla Observatory test, the platform received a score of B, which is a great score for a cryptocurrency exchange. While it can be improved, many popular exchanges score as low as F on this test.

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Crypto Videos

Changelly Exchange In Depth Review Part 2 – The Cheapest Way To Buy Crypto?

https://youtu.be/AVc0g7KD9Ig

https://youtu.be/AVc0g7KD9Ig

Changelly exchange in-depth review – part 2/3

 

This is the second out of three parts of the Changelly in-depth review. This part of the review will touch upon the exchange’s tools, its user interface as well as supported countries.

Changelly Tools

The platform released a new version of their mobile app with the feature of a fixed-rate mechanism onboard for both Android and iOS in October 2019. This feature allows users to swap their assets while avoiding the risks of market fluctuations. However, to those who would like to exchange cryptocurrencies at a floating rate, Changelly offers a market fee of 0.25% for all crypto-to-crypto transactions. This rate is considered the industry average at the moment. In addition to these features, users have the ability to buy the desired crypto assets by using their bank card right from the Changelly mobile app. They have the option to explore crypto exchange trade rates in real-time mode.
The app features do not end here. Changelly mobile app gives its users the ability to log in to their original Changelly website account, track the transaction history, store an address list for the most used wallets on the account as well as get assistance from the Changelly team in the support section.

The platform also offers its API as well as a customizable payment widget to any crypto service provider that wishes to broaden its audience by implementing new exchange options. Many wallets are using this feature on top of their web/desktop/mobile applications.

Changelly User Interface

The user interface is one of the most important things for traders, and one of the main characteristics of different exchanges. The user interface at Changelly is quite simple and more intuitive than what you could see with regular centralized exchanges. The reason for this is because:
Changelly is more of an exchange service rather than an actual exchange;
Changelly is made to be used by the inexperienced individuals, which requires user interface simplification.

Restricted Jurisdictions

While Changelly is available in many countries, it restricts users from many countries as well from joining. The platform is not accessible to traders from the USA, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Crimea, Sudan, Syria, Bangladesh, or Bolivia. Users from other countries that are subject to United Nations Security Council Sanctions List, as well as its equivalents, are not allowed to the user the platform.

Changelly implemented AML/KYC procedure into their service. This means that the platform has the option to ask its users to show “proof-of-funds” as well as to go through the KYC check. The KYC procedure is done only if the Changelly’s automated risk management system marked some user’s transactions as suspicious.
Check out the third and last part of our series on Changelly, where we will discuss the platform fees, deposit methods as well as security.

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Crypto Videos

Changelly Exchange In Depth Review Part 1 – The Cheapest Way To Buy Crypto?

https://youtu.be/ZM8lXErwEoc

https://youtu.be/ZM8lXErwEoc

 

Changelly exchange in-depth review – part 1/3

This is the first out of three parts of the Changelly in-depth review. This part of the review will touch upon the exchange’s background, how it works exactly, and what its advantages are.

General Info

Changelly is not an exchange like the others. This platform is an instant crypto exchange that started operating in 2015. While it was previously headquartered in the Czech Republic, it is now based in Hong Kong. It also has offices around the world, including Malta, Great Britain, and Brazil.
The group that founded Changelly is MinerGate, a team with a long track-record on the crypto market. However, MinerGate has no involvement in Changelly’s current operations. The current CEO of Changelly is Eric Benz, who has five years of experience working in the industry of innovative financial technology as well as the blockchain field.

How does Changelly work?

This platform is best at finding the best available rates for different trading pairs on the market. Changelly actually shouldn’t be considered exchange per se, as it is a crypto exchange service. The platform is non-custodial, which means that you are not purchasing crypto on Changelly, but rather buying crypto from another exchange. The platform provides users with a window into other exchanges (such as Binance, Bittrex, Poloniex, and HitBTC).

The platform has over 150 cryptocurrencies listed. It focuses mainly on crypto-to-crypto trading. However, it is also possible to buy crypto with fiat currencies using Changelly’s card payment partners, which are Simplex and Indacoin. Users that want to use the fiat-to-crypto transactions need to comply with the KYC policy. They will also be subject to higher service fees

Primary Advantages of Changelly

The platform lists five primary advantages of its trading platform on the landing page:
The best rates on the market;
Transparency in fees;
Fast transaction speed;
High limits and
24/7 support.

All five of these advantages are crucial for its users.

Changelly Affiliate Program

The platform also has an affiliate program. If you refer another user to Changelly, you will be eligible to collect 50% of the fees from every transaction they make within the promo period. This deal is not time-limited, but rather permanent. There are two ways you can join the Changelly affiliate program:
Through the Changelly widget;
By using the exchange button with a referral link.

The 50% revenue share model will work for 90 days from the referred user’s registration. We have to note that this is an unusually short referral period, as most exchanges offer permanent commission payments. This means that some other exchanges offer affiliate programs where you will never stop receiving commissions, as long as the referred user keeps on trading.

Check out the second part of our Changelly in-depth review three-part series, where we will talk about the platform UI and supported countries.

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Forex Videos

Forex Hacks – Recurring Shapes & Patterns Part 2 of 2

https://youtu.be/-XMECvm4Jp0

https://youtu.be/-XMECvm4Jp0

Recurring shapes and patterns Part 2 of 2

 

Continuing with our theme of looking for recurring shapes and patterns in technical analysis, we now turn our attention to example A, which is a one-hour chart of the GBPUSD pair.

Example A

 

Here we can see price action without technical indicators, but where we have drawn on two wedge shapes on to our chart.
The wedge-shaped pattern on the left began when price action was fairly muted but began to become more volatile throughout the period, with the bottom of the wedge holding firm as an area of support. Only when the ascending area of resistance in the wedge shape is pierced at the top, as volatility increases, do we see the pair come back down and breach through the area of support, offering a pullback for the bears.
To the right of the screen, we have the opposite effect where, after a period of volatility within the wedge shape, price action becomes more muted as it falls down to the area of support — this time when price action becomes contracted due to consolidation within the market. Price action rejects the support line and exits the wedge shape and where the bulls traders have hold of the action.

Example B

Example B is a 15-minute chart of the USDJPY pair. This is a classic head and shoulders shape. After a period of consolidation, which forms the basis of the left shoulder, price action is followed by a spike higher, which becomes the head, and where subsequent price action will consolidate by the right shoulder before traders look for a sell-off, which indeed does happen in this case, and is the basis of the right shoulder. Traders are particularly fond of this particular shape and closely look out for it.

Example C


Example C is of the USDJPY 15 minute chart, where we have another chart which is called the butterfly. In these circumstances, we have a sell-off where the price action consolidates at a very narrow section before we see the bulls come in and drive price action back to similar levels as previously.

Example D

And finally, Example D, which is a one hour chart of the EURUSD pair. And just to re-emphasize from part 1, price action does not move in straight lines. When studied on a chart, it is clear to see that price action will regularly move in waves or half circles.

Keep a look out for the shapes and patterns we have identified in part 1 and part 2, because they are a regularly recurring feature of price action when trading the forex market. When viewed like this, it is much easier to pick out how price action is evolving on your charts.

Use drawing tools that may be available on your chart software and Identify chart patterns and then use them to calculate support and resistance lines and where price action might possibly break out, stall and consolidate, or reverse.

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Forex

Forex Hacks – Recurring Shapes & Patterns Part 1 of 2

https://youtu.be/2Hl6SxOjTdI

https://youtu.be/2Hl6SxOjTdI

recurring shapes and patterns Part 1 of 2

When trading from charts, one often finds at certain shapes and patterns recurring time after time. This is because the forex market, just like other financial markets, tends to retrace price action. In fact, over 80% of the movement in price action, within the forex market, is price action retracing.

Some pattern formations in price action, such as price seemingly complying with moving averages, MACD, and stochastics, for example, are very self-evident. However, we know that price action does not move in a straight line, and therefore we need to be looking elsewhere for help in determining the possible future direction in price action movement. Some patterns and shapes are somewhat subjective, but, nonetheless, when a trader realizes that these other patterns and shapes, which recur time after time, exist, it will help add another dimension in the art of forex trading.

Example A


Let’s take a look at example A, which is a one-hour chart of the USDJPY pair. Picking up the price action from the left-hand side of the screen, we can see that after an initial push higher the volatility slows as the pair’s move takes on a more gradual move higher and where we can see the price appearing to arch through 90 degrees to the right. We then find a slight pullback lower where there seems to be a wave encompassing the price action as it moves higher. Other examples have been added and which, on a subjective basis, might show further waves and arches acting as makeshift support and resistance areas.

Example B


Now let’s take a look at example B, which is a 4-hour chance of the GBPUSD pair. This time the shapes are slightly less subjective, and we can see clear examples of triangular formations. They tend to form when there is a spike in the price action in either direction and where the price action fades back to the original levels of the spike and where the base of the triangle is often an area of support and resistance.

Example C


Example C is a 4-hour chart of the CADJPY pair. This is a sight that you may be more familiar with: the box or square. To conform there must be at least two similar exchange rate levels of support and two similar levels of exchange rate levels acting as areas of resistance. The longer that price action is contained in boxes, the more likely of a volatile breakout at some point.

Example D


An example D, we stick with the 4-hour chart of the CADJPY pair, and this time we have added tracks, which are simple moving averages, acting as areas of support and resistance to price action. Traders often draw these tracks on their charts and look for areas where price action breaks out of the tracks, to try and determine future price direction.

Look out for more shapes and patterns in Part 2.

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Forex Videos

The Best Way To Trade The NFP

https://youtu.be/q9Qa97yJetU

https://youtu.be/q9Qa97yJetU

How to trade US Non-Farm payrolls like the professionals do

The United States Non-Farm payrolls provide a picture of the country’s labor market, and the report usually comes out on the first Friday of each month at 13:30 GMT.
The report measures the number of jobs gained during the previous month and which are not farm-related. The report includes the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings. It is one of the biggest market-moving events of each month. It tells policymakers in the United States if the country is close to maximum employment and will help to determine future interest rates. If job growth is close to the maximum, the Federal Reserve will typically look to raise interest rates, assuming that inflation is where they need it to be, and vice versa.

 

Example A


In example A, let’s look at a 30-minute chart of the EURUSD for the 10th of January, when the figures were released, and where 164K jobs were expected to be added to the US labor market.
Just prior to the release of the NFP, seller’s drove price action down at position 1. We can only determine that the market expectation was for a strong number, possibly above 164K. However, as marked on our chart at position 2, with the price adjacent to the 30-minute candle associated with the release at position A after the number came out, which was 145K, less than expected, the price action spiked higher to position B before being sold again to position C, an overall move of 27 pips during this period. Buyers then drove the price action higher at position 3, before price action consolidated between an area of support and resistance at position 4. Please note that the time on our chart is set 2 hours ahead of the actual time.

Example B


Let’s now look at example B, which is the same chart, but with some trading ideas. In the run-up to the release of the NFP, we can see that an area of resistance and support has formed at positions A and B and were a sell-off happened just before the release, probably because the market expected a strong number from the United States.
There was an opportunity to go short at position B when price action fell below the support line. A tight stop loss should have been implemented. On this occasion, 17 pips were available to the downside with the possibility of bagging some profit and closing the trade just before the data release.
However, we already know that the data was worse than expected and should have anticipated that the dollar would start to lose ground. We can also see tails developing on some of the candlesticks and a classic V formation, which occurs during this event.
The next trade opportunity is when price action moves higher, and above our previous areas of support at position B, and above our previous area of resistance at position A and where position D offers a buying opportunity, as price action takes out all of the previous highs.
This setup can also be applied in reverse, should the NFP data be better than expected.
If the data is + or – a few thousand as per the expected number, expect a muted response by the market.
Had the number been much better than the 164k, which was expected, we would have likely seen a further decline in the pair. Bear in mind that when this data is released, it is dependent on how the market assimilates it. Sometimes the data may be bad, but not as bad as expected, and sometimes it could be good, but not as good as expected, and often the NFP report is released simultaneously with

the Canadian unemployment release.
Therefore it is not wise to pull the trigger on a trade within a couple of minutes either side of this very important data release. The best way to trade Non-Farm payrolls is in the hour or so before the event or an hour or so after the event.
Keep out for this classic price action formation for each payroll event as it recurs an awful lot!

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Crypto Videos

Bittrex Exchange In Depth Review Part 2

https://youtu.be/tS341fqp2Mg

https://youtu.be/tS341fqp2Mg

 

Bittrex exchange in-depth review – part 2/2

This part of the Bittrex exchange in-depth review will explain how the platform operates, the fees as well as the overall security of the platform.

Bittrex Chart view


Different exchanges often have their proprietary charts. However, all the user interfaces usually have a few things in common: they all show the order book, the price chart of the chosen asset as well as the order history. They also have buy and sell boxes. Before choosing an exchange, try to look at the user interface and determine if it will suit you.

Bittrex Fees

Bittrex has two types of fees! Trading fees and Withdrawal fees.

Trading fees
Bittrex is one of the exchanges that doesn’t charge different fees for market takers and makers. This type of fee structure is usually called “flat fees.” Bittrex offers its customer base a flat trading fee of 0.25%. Investors who prefer to take the orders from the market rather than set the orders themselves might prefer this fee model. The fees, however, do scale with trading size. The fees are divided between market taker fees and maker fees once the trading volume exceeds $200,000.

Bittrex’s flat fees the same as the majority of the industry that uses flat fees. However, more and more exchanges are now shifting to lower trading fees, ranging between 0.10%-0.15%. It is quite reasonable to believe that the 0.10% fee will be the new industry average.

Withdrawal fees

While many exchanges have competitive trading fees, they often have extremely high withdrawal fees to compensate. Bittrex does not do that. This exchange’s withdrawal fee is set at 0.0005 BTC when withdrawing BTC. This is either in line with or lower than the global industry average.

Deposit Methods

Bittrex, along with Poloniex, has been criticized for not providing fiat currency support to its customers. If you have money in a bank account and would like to start trading crypto, Bittrex is not a suitable exchange. However, this rule is not quite as strict and has an exception. If you want to deposit a sum of over $100,000, you could do that on Bittrex. The exchange decided to allow corporate clients to deposit fiat currency on 31 May 2018. When the news of partnering with the New York Signature Bank news broke out, Bittrex also announced that they would soon enable fiat currency deposits for all traders as well.

Bittrex Security

 

As exchanges store a massive amount of valuable personal info as well as assets, they need to have stellar security. The info they store can be anything, including names and addresses, government ID details, tax ID numbers, etc.
Bittrex’s hit a security score of B when performing a security test at Observatory by Mozilla. This is considered a very strong security score. When crypto exchanges go, it is far above average.

Bittrex also seems to be very committed to providing strong security to its customer base. They are stating that they “incorporate multiple layers of protection, using the most reliable and effective security technologies available.”
The exchange has a 99.95% uptime rate, which is quite an amazing proof of the trading engine reliability.

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Crypto Videos

Bittrex Exchange In Depth Review Part 1

https://youtu.be/oH6mewieDSM

https://youtu.be/oH6mewieDSM

 

Bittrex exchange in-depth review – part 1/2

This part of the in-depth review of the Bittrex exchange will touch on the basics of the platform, its team as well as the liquidity of the exchange itself. This is the first of 2 parts of the Bittrex in-depth review.

General Info

Bittrex is an exchange founded in Seattle, Washington, USA. The exchange started off its operations in February of 2014. Back when the company was founded, there were a lot fewer exchanges, so the exchange became extremely popular as the industry was not as crowded.
Bittrex is still considered a popular exchange, though its popularity dropped over time. The Bittrex team considers this exchange to be a global leader in the crypto revolution. They market their exchange as a platform designed for people who require extremely fast trade executions, secure digital wallets as well as leading industry practices.

Bittrex doesn’t just have its platform, but also a “Blockchain Incubator.” To promote global innovation in the industry, Bittrex works with various teams so they could help new tokens with potentially great use-cases to transform the industry they are targeting.
Bittrex is one of the most popular exchanges that originate from the USA. As they are operating from the USA, they permit US investors to join the platform (Unlike BitMEX, which does not allow US investors on their platform).

Team

The main people who stand behind the Bittrex exchange are Bill Shihara (the company Co-Founder and CEO), Richie Lai (which is also Co-Founder as well as the CIO – Chief Information Office) and Rami Kawach (CTO). These three individuals come from a background of cybersecurity. They have previously worked at many well-established companies in the tech-sector (such as Blackberry & Amazon).

The Bittrex Trading Engine

Bittrex notified its user base of an update to its platform’s trading engine on 25 February 2019. The update then got carried out on 27 February 2019. The purpose of this major update was to make the platform much faster, scalable as well as to pave the way for “additional, exciting upgrades and features” later on. Since the update, the order book updates faster, while overall order execution is much smoother. In fact, the orders process speed is more than 20 times faster than before the platform update happened.

Liquidity

Bittrex’s liquidity is considered decent. However, there is quite a distance to cover if the exchange wants to catch up with the top 10 exchanges in terms of liquidity. Bittrex reported its 24-hour trading volume at approximately $13 million in February 2019. On 11 June 2019, the report showed Bittrex’s 24-hour trading volume increasing almost five times, coming at $55 million. However, the past months have shown us that Bittrex’s volume reduced overall.
Check out part 2 of our Bittrex in-depth guide to learn more about the platform itself, its fees and deposit methods, as well as the security of the exchange.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Poloniex In Depth Exchange Review Part 3

https://youtu.be/sNokb4rjl1g

https://youtu.be/sNokb4rjl1g

Poloniex in-depth exchange review – part 3/3

Poloniex platform safety

Poloniex offers security to its users in multiple ways. To prevent hackers from entering the back-end of the platform, Poloniex stores the majority of deposits in an air-gapped cold storage offline.

The exchange has auditing programs that are constantly being performed. These programs are used to monitor the activity on the platform with the goal of detecting suspicious activity. If they notice anything suspicious, the results are reported and then blocked.
Poloniex experienced one security breach in 2014, but the users were refunded. This event happened when the exchange was quite new and wasn’t well versed in handling intruders. However, no breaches were reported since then.

Fees

Poloniex offers maker-taker and volume-tiered fee schedule. Users can check their Trading Tier Status in their account tab to see which level they are at. The greater your trading volume, the lower your fees are.
Fees differentiate between market makers and takers. Market makers are traders that create an order within the order book, while the takers “take the order” from the order book. Market makers have lower fees as they improve the liquidity of the exchange, while takers reduce it (and therefore have a higher trading fee).


The account trading volume is calculated every 24 hours. It is based on the past 30 days and combines both margin and spot trading.

Poloniex customer support

One of the areas where Poloniex cannot be proud of is their customer service. Multiple online reviews claim extremely long wait times, with some users reporting having to wait as much as 90 days to resolve their issues. The problem seems to be in the rising demand of the Poloniex platform rather than the quality of the customer support itself.

To make up for the slow support response time, Poloniex offers plenty of documentation that can help users resolve their issues. Most of the documents are located in the Support Center. Users can find the answers to the most common questions and hopefully resolve the issues themselves.

Poloniex Customer Reviews

Poloniex is a well-known exchange with many reviews online. As with every other popular exchange, the reviews are mixed. The slow customer support response time was one of the biggest downsides to the platform. Some traders also stated that they had liquidity issues as well as issues. Having to wait for approval on a withdrawal request for a long time is another thing that the reviewers were stating.
Despite these issues, the majority of the reviews are positive. Traders are coming back to Poloniex because of its great trading tools, high trading volume as well as and a large number of trading pairs.

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Get An Edge In Forex Using Statistical Thinking – Trade Like A Forex Titan Part 6

https://youtu.be/anlmeaWRaAg

https://youtu.be/anlmeaWRaAg

Stats for Traders VI – Evidence-Based Trading

In our previous videos on stats for traders, we came to appreciate the power of the statistical methods to assess several aspects of the price action — ranges, volatility, swing-high, and swing-low lengths.


The use of the average and the standard deviation in combination with the statistical characteristics of the Normal Distribution


allows the knowledgeable trader to establish volatility evaluation, potential excursion lengths, profit targets, stop-loss optimization, and reward-to-risk ratios.

Also, not only can stats find valuable information about our trading system, but we can apply the same SQN formulas to market conditions.

TA Trading


When dealing with the decision about how to profit from the market, technical analysts learned to plan trades based on signals. Entries and exits based on rules. If X and Y conditions happen, then buy, with a stop below this bottom and a profit target at this level.” The rules decide, bar by bar, the estate of the trade. Traders using price action rely on short patterns, from one to four bars, aided by support/resistance levels to decide entry and exit points.

The Predictive Approach to Trading

A statistical model, on the other hand, uses predictive modeling, employing mathematically sophisticated algorithms to examine historically-derived indicators such as price, volatility, volume, trends, to identify repeatable patterns that show predictable potential. A predictable model could find relations between patterns and a forward-looking target variable.

This technique has multiple benefits


The patterns found won’t be evident to TA-based trading
The patterns discovered are not apparent to humans
It will include intricate patterns with a lot more statistical significance than a couple of bars
Predictive modeling is more friendly to advanced statistical analysis. If the logic is automated, highly sophisticated algorithms can be incorporated into the pattern-discovery process.

How does it work?
The predictive modeling also relies on patterns that repeat themselves. The model studies the historical market data and tries to discover repeatable and profitable patterns. Based on past observations, the model will be able to predict if the market could soon rise, drop, or stay quiet. In the case of a price movement, it attempts to find by how much.

Indicators and Targets
Predictive modeling usually does not work with raw market data. The raw data is transformed into two classes of new data: Indicators and targets. These new data sets are used to train the model.

Indicators

Indicators are data sets whose values describe only past information. When the system is operating in real-time, an indicator will be computable if there is sufficient historical data to satisfy its definition.
As an example, we could define an indicator called trend as the percent change of market price from close five bars ago to the present bar. If both prices are known, the “trend” indicator will have a value.

Targets

Targets are variables that only look at the future in time. It behaves as a regression model, which tries to predict a future point based on past points. Thus, targets manifest future price behavior of the market. For example, a variable called daily_return could be defined as the percent from the current open to the next day open. Using historical data, this variable could be computed for all but the last two bars.

The key concept
The key idea of predictive modeling is that indicators may exhibit information that can be applied to predict targets.
Key concept image
Example: Let’s consider two indicators: trend and volatility and one target: daily_return
If we provide the model with several years of data and ask it to learn how to predict good daily_return from trend and volatility, then we may use it in real-time to calculate from the current prices that trend =0.2240, volatility = 1.5890 and a model output of daily-return = 0.1650. Therefore, based on the current prediction, the market is likely to rise considerably (16.5%). Thus we should consider taking a long position.

From Predictions to Decisions
It seems logical to think that extreme predictions are more likely to occur than short ones. If the model predicts a 0.01 percent rise for tomorrow’s session, a rational person would be less likely to engage in a long trade than when the prediction is a 5 percent move up. This intuition is correct. Large predicted movements also have more likelihood to succeed than tiny projections.

The most common method to making trade decisions is to compare the predicted value to a fixed threshold, taking a long position only when the threshold is surpassed by the long threshold, and take a short position when the prediction is below the short threshold.
It seems evident that the magnitude of the threshold is a trade-off between the number of trades and the accuracy rate of the system. Thus by choosing the appropriate level of threshold, we can decide whether to have a system that trades often with lousy accuracy or a system with a few trades but highly accurate.

Takeaways
Takeaways

Of course, this methodology is only applicable through the use of algorithmic trading. It may be out of reach of the normal trader, but the lessons learned here can help us create a similar methodology using just the tools we have understood in previous videos.
Through the use of statistically based data such as Up_range, Down_range, stat-based intraday ranges, stops, and targets, applying signal-to-noise and SQN computations to the different markets. So now, we can make a consistent trading system that is backed by stats, and which is out of the radars of the market makers and institutional traders.

—
References: David Aronson, Timothy Masters – Statistically Sound Machin Learning for Algorithmic Trading of Financial instruments.

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Get An Edge In Forex Using Statistical Thinking – Trade Like A Forex Titan Part 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXTqEmUtmtE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXTqEmUtmtE

 

Stats for Traders V – Assessing the Quality of the Forex Markets

In our previous video offering, we were presented with a way to assess the quality of a trading strategy or system. It was a modification of the T-

Test Called SQN. Essentially, the test is a measure of the signal-to-noise ratio of distribution. Being the mean of the distribution, m, the signal, and one-tenth of the standard deviation, the noise divisor. Therefore, the higher the SQN, the better the signal of the distribution. It means, also, its difference with a zero mean distribution (everything is noise) is larger.

Random Walks

Market prices, although not entirely normal-distributed, short-term, prices approach a Bell curve very much. The picture we see is the composite image of one thousand different games of a coin toss in which the player wins 1 dollar if heads and loses one dollar if tails.
The paths are the history of wins and losses over 500 coin tosses for each game.
We can see that, even it is counterintuitive, not all games end with zero gains. Some paths are luckier, whereas other paths suffer from bad luck.
The figure we see on the image is representative of what is called a diffusion process, with no drift. It is essentially saying it is a complete stochastic or random process with no trend involved.


A market depicting a potentially profitable component, usually a slightly positive trend would look like this. In this image we see that although there are some paths luckier than others, the average direction is positive, which is why the smoke cloud points slightly upwards.

Market prices can be described by a signal component mixed with noise, or random fluctuations.

Sometimes, the market shows a relatively high signal, whereas, on other occasions, it is just noise. To traders, it is essential to distinguish both market states, as it is impossible to profit long-term on a market with just noise.

SQN as a measure of the trading quality of a market

We can rank the markets offered by our forex brokers by their quality or signal to noise ratio, using SQN or a T-Test with less than 100 sample periods. We could apply this measure to our usual timeframes, using from 30 to 60 samples to obtain a quality map of our usual markets. Then we rank them by quality. This measure, together with the volatility stats and the rest of statistical information we already explained in previous videos, allows a savvy trader to choose the current best markets and discard the ones not showing adequate signal-to-noise characteristics.

Range Stats

Another interesting measurement that could help us assess potential reward to risk factors and also trim our targets properly is the intraday range measurements. We could set a 30-day, and also a 100-day and yearly stats, of what is normal market ranges percentwise for each asset in our basket. To do this measurement, we first mark the swing highs and lows and register the price differences. Then we apply the statistical measures to get the average and the SD values. A table could tell us what we could expect from the next move and set potential targets at the mean and also at the mean plus one SD.
We can also refine the information by splitting the table into swing high and swing low tables. That kind of information will give us valuable insight into the potential quality of the next trade, including the available range, its likely continuation, the possible reward-risk ratio, and the distance to targets.

Categories
Forex Videos

Naked Trading Forex – Don’t Get Caught With Your Pants Down!

https://youtu.be/gJ4Z2JJqnvQ

https://youtu.be/gJ4Z2JJqnvQ

Naked Trading – Is this all you really need for trading?

So what is naked trading? Well, it is certainly not sitting at your screen trading in your underwear! It has only really been since the advent of the internet that trading by technical analysis has really taken off. Before that, traders managed perfectly well without technical analysis, so how did they cope? Really good traders, including pit traders in the Futures markets,, knew where prices of certain assets should be in their head. They waited for levels where a Futures contract was oversold or overbought, and because they had a clear picture in their mind, from past experience, they knew when to buy or sell.

This was fairly similar in the early days of the forex market; currency exchange rates moved much more slowly than they do nowadays. Institutional forex brokers would squawk prices to the banks and institutional clients who, again, pretty much knew the levels in their heads. Some traders would simply write the exchange rate price changes on a piece of A5 paper, or a notebook, and they could then see by the changes if prices we’re moving up or down, and at what levels they had stalled, and would then trade accordingly.

Nowadays, price action in a volatile market can be so fast-moving it is almost difficult to keep up with it on a PC screen when using technical analysis. However, many profitable traders do not use lots of indicators on their charts. Some trade naked, relying only on the price action. Just like the days before the internet really took off, they take advantage of price movement on their screens only to tell them when a currency pair is overbought or oversold. Because essentially, this is what trading is all about, markets are pushed as high as they can possibly go in one direction, and when they run out of steam, because of a lack of buyers or sellers, they turn around and move in the opposite direction.

These moves can sometimes be limited to just a few pips, and sometimes the moves are much larger. This depends on the time of day and is also dependent on the number of market players; because the more traders are in the market simultaneously, the greater the liquidity in the market. And this also depends on things like fundamental reasons leading up to economic data releases, or market sentiment, and also forthcoming speeches by financial policymakers.

Example A

Let’s look at example A, and try and gauge how naked traders operate. This is a one-hour chart of the USDJPY pair, using only price action, in the form of Japanese candlesticks, to try and determine future price action. On its own, we can see that price is generally bid from the beginning of the chart, which we always read from left to right because it tells us a story.

Example B


Now let’s look at example B, where we have just added a couple of horizontal lines which help to give us a clearer picture of what is going on. Simply by adding two horizontal lines, we can now see the price action of this particular pair is centered around two levels: 109.00 and one 110.00.
Firstly at position A, we can see a bullish candle that takes the price to just above the 109.00 level, only for price action to come down and be supported at position B by the 109.00 level. And when Traders could not push the pair any lower, price action begins to move up to the next key level at position C, which is the 110.00 level. Something we see quite often in the market is price action floating around key levels, or round numbers, and that’s exactly what happened here. Price moves down to position D, but fades out because of a lack of sellers, and then moves up to position E, before pushing above the 110.00 key level to around 1:1030. Here the market runs out of buyers and price action would appear to be gravitating back down to the 110.00 level again.

Sometimes new traders rely on too many technical indicators, which means they spend too much time looking at them all and cannot see the wood for the trees. Price action is king when trading Forex. So let it be your number one priority during technical analysis.

Categories
Forex Videos

Poloniex In Depth Exchange Review Part 2

https://youtu.be/4WvIXYt4YWI

https://youtu.be/4WvIXYt4YWI

Poloniex in-depth exchange review – part 2/3
Account creation

Creating an account with Poloniex is pretty simple when compared to the account creation process of some other exchanges. As Poloniex is purely a crypto-to-crypto exchange, the lack of required regulations it must follow makes the signup process far easier. Users are allowed to make only one account, and exceeding this number can and will cause you to be suspended from the platform. After creating an account, traders get access to all the services that Poloniex supports. This includes access to their exchange, lending, as well as trading.

 

Even though Poloniex is not the most suited exchange for beginners as they cannot buy cryptocurrency with fiat directly on the exchange, its user interface is very intuitive for both beginners and experienced traders.

Account verification levels

Despite the lower fees that Poloniex offers to those who trade high volumes each day, traders should keep the withdrawal limitations. You are allowed to withdraw up to $2,000 per day with Poloniex if you passed only the first level of verification. This can prove to be quite an obstacle if you trade with high volumes. The first verification level requires only name, email, as well as your country of residence. Even this verification level provides access to every part of the platform.

However, the two-level verification is where the limits increase greatly. This level requires proof of residence, postal address, date of birth, a form of ID as well as your phone number. Once everything gets approved, your limits for both withdrawals and deposits will be increased to $25,000. A higher level of verification is available for traders who need an even higher limit. However, this level of verification requires you to contact support directly.

Trading on Poloniex

Trading on Poloniex is very simple and intuitive. After ensuring you have deposited enough funds into your account, the next phase may begin. Certain cryptocurrencies require a minimum deposit that can be checked before trading. Select the appropriate trading pair once you have enough funds deposited, and the trading may begin.


Once in the trading tab, you can choose whether you want to buy or sell simply by inputting the desired price plus and coin quantity. You can manually enter an amount, select the lowest ask price, or choose an order from the “order book.”


The order will either instantly be filled or go to the “order book” until a user that is willing to make the trade at set terms shows up. Once the order fills, you can view it in Trade History.

Poloniex margin trading

Poloniex is one of the industry leaders when it comes to margin trading. This platform feature is quite efficient to use as it utilizes peer-to-peer functionality for borrowing funds. You can use the trading platform to secure your trading funds as well as work with other traders by utilizing the lending features.

Check out our third and last part of Poloniex in-depth guide and learn more about the platform’s safety, fees, and customer service.

Categories
Forex Videos

Forex Stop Loss Hunting – Don’t Get Caught Out! Recognise The Signs!

https://youtu.be/hSg-EaWqJJo

https://youtu.be/hSg-EaWqJJo

Stop Loss Hunting

Often in a range-bound market – where traders seek direction, because of a lack of fundamental news flow, or a lack of market sentiment – we see price action which tends to drift in either direction and in small increments. That is to say, the size of the candlesticks are small, usually no more than 10-15 pips. Sometimes these types of trends present opportunities to traders who are looking to take advantage of triggering stop losses.

Professional traders, and in particular institutional size traders, who trade in large lot sizes, and who have the most to lose if the trade goes against them, tend to put their stop losses a couple of pips underneath the lowest point of the preceding candlestick when they buy a currency pair, or a couple of pips above the previous high of a candlestick if they intend to go short. Tight stops such as these minimize losses for traders who trade in large amounts.
And because professional and institutional traders tend to trade the same way overall, they know where stop losses are placed. It is important to add that professional and institutional size traders tend to use the 15 minute, 30 minute, and higher time frames for their technical analysis. This presents opportunities for all traders, including retail traders, to keep their eye out for stop-loss hunters.

Example A


Let’s take a look at example A, to see how this might play out in a real scenario. This is a fairly typical price action chart that you will see almost every day in the forex market. On the left-hand side of the screen, we can see eight small bull candlesticks of around 5 to 10 pips in size with small or no wicks, and where price action tends to just almost drift higher. Because the candlesticks are small in size, it means we have a series of 8 fairly closely situated stop losses, and we know that these stop losses are likely to be institutional size, because they are on a larger time frame, including or above 15 minutes.
Candlestick A, is a bearish reversal pattern, followed by an engulfing bear candle that will have triggered three stops in this example. The warning is pretty much written on the wall for other long traders who bought the upward move, and some will begin closing out trades while the rest are in danger of being stopped out.
When stop losses are triggered under these circumstances, they can create a void, and especially in a pair where there is a lack of overall bias, fundamental reasons, or sentiment, and this void may see an acceleration in counter price action direction.
Of course, this setup also works in the opposite direction. So look out for and be on your guard for similar setups.

Categories
Forex Videos

255 Pip Move! Can Trading The USDJPY Be As Easy As ABC

https://youtu.be/RYfd6CJwBxw

https://youtu.be/RYfd6CJwBxw

255 Pip Move! Can Trading The USDJPY Be As Easy As ABC

The USDJPY pair have been heavily correlated with the Dow Jones 30 index over the last few months as the US and China trade deal has rattled on.
However, it was only around ten months ago that this pair reached a high point of 112.40 before dropping to the 105.00 level. Big swings in a currency pair like this can catch institutions, investors, and traders completely offside and wondering where future direction might be. In situations such as this, it is obvious that many traders will have been caught out and lost money through stop losses or closing out positions that have gone against them and where they have suffered heavy losses. And when we see big swings like this in price action, it is difficult for traders to know how to value a currency pair’s exchange rate. Because traders at an institutional level tend to buy yen in times of high risk in the market, we can only presume that the yen is losing ground to the dollar-based on the fact that phase one of the US and China trade deal is complete.

Example A

Let’s turn to example A, which is an hourly chart of the USDJPY pair. We can see that since the 6th of January 2020, price action has been almost glued to two simple moving averages; the black 13 MA and the green 17 MA.
At position A, which is a key 108.00 level, we can see that price action strongly moved lower than the moving averages; however, price action was curtailed, probably because of the previous low at this level. Traders often use previous levels as targets because they are often areas of support and resistance, and especially at key-round-number levels.


Certainly, there was a lot of volatility during these few hours before price action then moves up and becomes almost inseparable from the moving averages to the key 109.00 level, where again we see some volatility at this position before price action again moves while almost sticking to those moving averages, and apart from a small dip the price action, continues all the way up to the key 110.00 area at position C.
Price action then moves underneath the moving averages, again sticking very closely to them, while drifting lower, as traders wonder where the next big move will be on this pair.
In times of uncertainty in the market, please remember that nobody knows where the price action will go to. And if in doubt, it is not unusual for the market to fall back on some very basic trading methodology: if price action is above the moving averages, which have crossed over, and are moving in an upward direction, they buy, and if the moving averages have crossed over and are moving in a downward direction they sell — keeping in mind the importance of those key round number levels.

Categories
Forex Daily Topic Forex Videos

Protect Your Assets During The Coronavirus outbreak – Whats About To Happen In Forex & Crypto

https://youtu.be/gI25X2tAE6c

https://youtu.be/gI25X2tAE6c


How to guard your financial assets against the Coronavirus outbreak

The ink is still dry on the United States and China phase one trade deal agreement, and already China’s commitment to purchase goods has been very unexpectedly hampered by the Coronavirus outbreak.


With 56 million people under lockdown in China, because isolation and quarantine is the best way to try and prevent the spread of the deadly virus, it poses difficulties for China to import and export goods, so long as their country is in a stranglehold situation.

Similar to the SARS virus, which also started in China and lasted from November 2002 to July 2003 and which caused 800 deaths while reaching over 30 countries, the Coronavirus is an unknown entity in terms of its potential mortality rate and therefore nobody knows how long this new contagion will continue to grow and accelerate in China. It is possible that it could cause a pandemic across the world. But at this stage, it is difficult to say how it will impact on global economics in the medium term. Certainly, the longer he goes on, the more of an impact it will have on the gross domestic product of China and all of the countries that it does business with.


It is important to say at this point, that the thoughts and prayers all of us here at Forex Academy go out to all of those people who are and will be affected by the virus. And the thought of trying to take advantage of this terrible situation and make money when people are suffering and dying is absolutely crass. However, those of you who are currently in trades that could be affected by this outbreak have a right to know how to protect yourself while this awful situation continues.
Firstly, as mentioned earlier, this will likely affect the gross domestic product of those countries who do business with China and, of course, China itself. Therefore we might expect that stock indices across the globe may come under continued selling pressure. Recent record highs of some are already well off their highs. And those countries which are heavily reliant on exporting goods and services to China will also be affected by their currency rates falling. But not in all cases!
So let’s take a look at what might happen the longer that this goes on. This is considered to be a Risk-off event, where investors will diversify from risky assets and move to ‘A’ rated bonds and Treasuries, gold, cash, and other safe-haven assets.


For example, Australia and New Zealand, whose GDP is heavily dependent on their exports into China, may find that their currencies come under selling pressure. While countries such as Japan and Switzerland find that their currencies’ grow stronger due to their safe-haven status, and although bitcoin is off its recent highs and is considered to be in a slight downward channel at the moment, investors might be sitting on the sidelines waiting for opportunities to buy this asset.

With the United Kingdom due to leave the European Union this week we might see the pound find volatile ground due to the uncertainty pertaining to the pressures of completing a trade deal within the next 10-months with the European Union or face the possibility of crashing out of the euro area with no deal after the transition period ends in December 2020. The virus situation could cause pressure on the pound as the market looks at the overall risk sentiment.

The Euro has also come under selling pressure recently mostly due to bad economic data and a dovish stance taken by Ms. Christine Legarde, president of the European Central Bank, whose recent comments put the Euro on the back foot.

All of this can only mean one thing for the US dollar: its directional bias will be to the upside.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Poloniex In Depth Exchange Review Part 1 – #Cryptotrader

https://youtu.be/38V_3sHjLOA

https://youtu.be/38V_3sHjLOA

 

Poloniex in-depth exchange review – part 1/3

With so many different cryptocurrency exchanges flooding the market, it’s hard to pick the right one. However, Poloniex remains a prominent exchange due to how long it’s been in the industry, and because of all the features it offers to the traders. On top of that, Poloniex is one of the few exchanges that is based in the US. Poloniex prides itself on offering its users advanced trading features alongside with maximum security.

Poloniex is a cryptocurrency exchange that started its operations in 2014 out of Wilmington, Delaware. Poloniex has been acquired by Circle, a Goldman-Sachs backed company. This got announced as great news as such a big player entered the crypto market. With Circle as the new owners, Poloniex aims to be the first fully regulated cryptocurrency exchange. They will be doing so by registering with the SEC as well as FINRA as a broker/dealer.

Poloniex is fairly consistent in having the top trading volumes for several altcoins. The exchange also has a great number of trading pairs that are offered to the users. One of the biggest downsides of Poloniex is that it does not offer fiat-to-crypto trading.

Who is Poloniex made for?

Newcomers in the cryptocurrency trading industry may find Poloniex a little frightening at first. First of all, the exchange deals only with cryptocurrency, so you purchasing crypto via Poloniex is not possible.

Additionally, the exchange as a whole is aimed a bit more towards experienced traders than those new to the cryptocurrency space. Poloniex has no mobile app, which makes the exchange somewhat challenging to use on the go.

Poloniex features

Poloniex offers many features that experienced traders will appreciate. A broad range of efficient data-analysis tools, as well as very detailed charts, are provided by the exchange. Poloniex’s high-volume nature appeals greatly to traders, especially the ability to do lending and trade on a margin.


Traders with programming knowledge will value that almost all the trading interface code is executed on the client-side. That means it is open-source, so you can study it and learn more about how Poloniex logic works. Developers will also appreciate the avaliability of an API. The Polonex API makes it possible to develop tools for data analysis, account management, custom trading and more.

Supported countries

Poloniex is based in the United States, but anyone can use it as long as their country doesn’t have laws that prohibit the exchange of cryptocurrency. As Poloniex is a crypto-to-crypto exchange, it does not need to adhere to any financial regulation.

Conclusion

People that want a reliable exchange that supports a lot of cryptocurrency pairs and offers additional features, such as margin trading, Poloniex is a great option.
With the exchange being acquired by Circle, you can be assured that Poloniex will adhere to all regulations required in order to keep the exchange legal and relevant.

Check out part 2 of our Poloniex in-depth review to learn more about account creation, trading, and using margin on this exchange.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Is Huobi The Right Exchange For You! – Part 2 Trading

https://youtu.be/K9VoqUOyygM

https://youtu.be/K9VoqUOyygM

Is Huobi the right exchange for you? In-depth exchange review part 2/2

Huobi platform

Huobi offers its users a web-based trading platform with basic trading functionality as well as a desktop version of the application for Windows and Mac computers. The desktop application versions are currently not available in English.

The Huobi platform has a fixed layout that cannot be changed. Each section of the platform is organized into a fixed position. The sections can, however, be expanded or minimized. The biggest part of the screen is taken by the charts and the watch list. The order windows section can be seen at the bottom center of the screen. Traders are offered two main order types:

1. Market order
2. Limit order

Huobi has both their own original charts as well as Trading View charts.

Huobi has both their own original charts as well as Trading View charts.
Placing an order on the platform is easy as the value of each field is shown in USD. This can come in handy when dealing with non-fiat cryptocurrency pairs. Huobi also has a field that shows the maximum trade size which lets you drag the size slider to the desired trade size value. This is a nice feature as it provides ease of use when trying to decide on how much of one crypto to trade for another.

The Huobi web platform is user-friendly and has a modern feel, all thanks to its clean and responsive UI.
Mobile Trading

Huobi has several mobile apps which are available on both iOS and Android. The Huobi Bitcoin app is the latest application which focuses on trading capabilities. It is also available for both iOS and Android devices.


The application, just like the web platform, follows several steps for user authentication. It offers both fingerprint and security patterns to its users. Even though the layout is a bit different when compared to the web platform, the features are pretty much the same.


Charts come with just six indicators. However, they are very robust and responsive, which makes the user experience quite smooth. It is quite easy to navigate the charts by pinching and zooming on prices.


The mobile application has another great feature, where, upon logging into the mobile app, the web platform favorite trading pairs cross over to the mobile trading app. The sync between the web platform and mobile app makes it convenient to trade your favorite cryptocurrencies wherever you are.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Houbi is a well-known exchange for a reason. It is a solid platform that can be used both while stationed or on the go. It offers some great features and has stellar reviews.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Is Huobi The Right Exchange For You! Part 1

https://youtu.be/t_7qOjRLbz8

https://youtu.be/t_7qOjRLbz8

Is Huobi the right exchange for you? In-depth exchange review part 1/2

 

Huobi is a cryptocurrency exchange that started operating in 2013. It currently has over a million users as well as over $1 billion in assets under its custody. Though headquartered in Singapore, Huobi has an international presence. It has subsidiaries located in China, South Korea as well as the United States, where it is registered with the FinCen under HBUS Inc. As of March 2018, Huobi is active in 52 US states, operating as a Money Service Business (MSB).

 

Huobi offers support to nearly 280 crypto assets, including 88 Ethereum-priced pairs, 105 Bitcoin-priced pairs, 37 pairs priced in USDT, as well as over 50 pairs on its HADAX platform.
Huobi Commissions & Fees
Huobi tries to offer competitive trading fees to its users. It charges a 0.2% fee on major crypto pairs. Being a market maker or taker does not matter on Huobi.

 

Huobi offers a VIP trading commission schedule to its active traders. The VIP trading commission is tier-based. The higher the VIP membership tier, the greater the commission discount is. In order to obtain a VIP trading discount, Houbi users must pre-purchase the VIP tier they think is the most cost-effective for them. This purchase can only be made with the Huobi Token that is issued by Huobi.

The Huobi Token simply acts as a discount token for the Houbi VIP users. The number of tokens directly determines the level of VIP access. The VIP level can range from level 1, which requires 120 tokens per month all the way up to level 5, which requires 12,000 tokens per month.
Determining the most cost-effective deal is detrimental. A user looking for a 10% discount on their trading fees would need to pay 120 HT, which, with Huobi Token costing $3.23 per unit, would cost $387.6. Therefore, buying this discount level would only be worth it if the trader is willing to spend more than $3,876 in trading commissions. This would, at a 0.2% commission rate, require spending of $1,938,000. However, as the company gave away around three million Huobi Tokens for free in early 2018, the exchange’s earliest users can have access to the greatest discounts if they use these tokens to purchase their VIP memberships.

 

While Houbi’s VIP profitability “threshold” is high, its base fees seem competitive enough for regular traders.

Security

Huobi offers its users a hosted wallet solution, where users can enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). However, this security layer has become an industry standard and, therefore, cannot be considered a feature. Users are notified via SMS upon each successful login.
When talking about storage security, Huobi users should not be worried about security breaches as much as other exchange users. This is because Huobi keeps 98% of its assets in cold storage. The access to cold storage is only granted to internal staff. It is also protected by multi-sig technology.

Huobi has built an anti-DDOS attack system to keep its infrastructure as sturdy as possible.
Account security is also something Huobi is proud of, as fund withdrawals have a couple of interesting caveats. If users change their security settings and immediately attempt to withdraw their funds, Huobi will manually review the withdrawal. On top of that, they may email or call the user to obtain a withdrawal confirmation. Otherwise, withdrawals require three separate codes:

One sent via SMS to the user!
One sent via email!

One 2FA code generated on the user’s device.
In addition to these security features, Huobi created an Investor Protection Fund in January 2018. This fund is used for compensating investors in extraordinary circumstances.
Check out our part 2 of Huobi in-depth review for more on how the platform works.

Categories
Forex Videos

Forex Fundamental & Economic Indicators Part 3 – Mastering Macro Economics

https://youtu.be/PhYUOWM_wTA

https://youtu.be/PhYUOWM_wTA

Fundamental Analysis – Economic Indicators – Part 3

The study of a country’s economy is called macroeconomics. Financial policy makers within a country – and also a group of countries in the case of the European Union – look at areas such as price levels, rates of economic growth, gross domestic product, employment and inflation levels. Macroeconomics looks at how a country is performing overall, and whereby policymakers will make adjustments in areas such as interest rates and may use quantitative easing or asset purchasing, should an economy require some extra stimulus.


The areas within an economy broken down into sectors including, exchange rates, interest rates, gross domestic product, government debt., unemployment, balance of trade, gross national product, and rate of inflation. Policy makers, and traders and investors want to see if a country’s economy is growing or in recession. And this can be judged by its income as a whole – or gross domestic product, its spending, debt ratio and its output.

In all there are over 20 divisions where economic indicators are released on a weekly or monthly basis. The most important is gross domestic product. Other significant economic indicators include interest rate decisions, labour and inflation reports. One of the biggest monthly economic releases in the United States is the Non Farm Payrolls, which shows the state of employment outside of the farming sector and has a tendency to cause huge volatility in the Forex market when it is released on the first Friday of each month.


Traders and analysts also keep a close eye on on production indicators including consumer goods, construction and services. As well as commodity output for things such as crude petroleum and natural gas and motor vehicles within manufacturing.

And just as important it is to you and I to control our household economies, markets also keep a keen eye out for our earnings under Wages, our consumer prices under Producer Prices, in areas such as food and energy and Retail Sales, because these tell the markets about our spending habits and if we have more disposable income. Therefore this is also a measure of the health of an economy.


Therefore it is vital that retail traders have a reliable economic calendar to refer to on a daily basis and keep a close eye out for economic data releases pertaining to the particular currency pair which you are trading, or plan to trade, on that particular day. Remember that the non-farm payroll monthly release from the United States can cause an awful lot of volatility in the marketplace and therefore any particular currency pair that you are trading, especially if it is one of the major pairs, should only be traded with extreme caution upon the release of this data.

Please remember that the more you put into learning about the Forex market, and in particular economics, under fundamental analysis, the more you will understand how these markets moves and therefore become a more profitable trader. We have all your educational needs right here at Forex.Academy. And it is all freely available.

Categories
Crypto Videos

BitMEXTutorial & In Depth Guide Part 5 – Can Beginners Trade?

https://youtu.be/2dL7d8-6NUQ

https://youtu.be/2dL7d8-6NUQ

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 5/5) – Platform safety and security

Our last part of the BitMEX in-depth guide will dive into the safety and security aspects of the platform.

Is BitMEX a safe and secure platform?

BitMEX is considered to have an extremely high level of security. The platform utilizes multi-signature deposits as well as withdrawal schemes, which are only usable by BitMEX partners. The company also utilizes Amazon Web Services to further protect their servers with text messages, two-factor authentication, and hardware tokens. BitMEX’s security protocols are quickly becoming the industry standard.


BitMEX has a risk-check system which requires the sum of all account holdings on the platform to be zero. If the sum of account holdings does not equal zero, all trading is immediately halted until the issue is fixed.
BitMEX utilizes the multi-signature deposit and withdrawal technology. All exchange addresses are, by default, multi-signature. All funds are kept offline. BitMEX users’ private keys are never stored on any cloud servers to avoid any misuse or theft. Deep cold storage is utilized for the majority of the users’ funds. As noted in previous parts of our review, BitMEX’s withdrawals are hand-checked by at least two of their employees before being sent out; all to increase the safety of its users. Deposit addresses are verified externally to ensure that they contain the keys that are supposed to be controlled by the founders. If they do not contain the matching keys, the system shuts down immediately, and all trading is halted.

The BitMEX trading platform is written in a kdb+ database. This database is popular amongst major banks, especially in high-frequency trading applications. BitMEX’s engine seems to be faster as well as more reliable than the engines of Poloniex and Bittrex, which are considered BitMEX’s competitors.
The platform uses email notifications as well as PGP encryption for all communication. BitMEX encrypts and signs all automated emails sent by or to its users’ accounts by the [email protected] email address.

The exchange did not suffer from any form of a security breach in the past. However, their Twitter handle did get hacked in November 2019, which caused mass panic and hysteria amongst its users.

However, no funds were stolen as their platform safety was not in danger, which they confirmed on the same day in one of their Tweets.
Summary
BitMEX is certainly not a perfect exchange. It has encountered a couple of complaints, mostly regarding technical issues or the complexity of using the platform in general. Older complaints can be seen online as well, and the majority of them regard issues of low liquidity. However, low liquidity is no longer a problem with BitMEX.
BitMEX is clearly not a trading platform aimed at the amateur investor with limited knowledge of trading as well as the crypto industry. Its interface is extremely complex, which can bring adjustment problems to its users. The platform is not extremely user-friendly, as navigating the platform is not quite as intuitive as it could be.
On the other hand, the BitMEX platform provides a wide range of tools that experienced users can utilize and appreciate. By utilizing these tools, users can obtain all the information they need to maximize their trading potential.

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Forex Videos

Forex Fundamental & Economic Indicators Part 2 – How Institutional Traders Read Into News

https://youtu.be/hnNdfQFM_vs

https://youtu.be/hnNdfQFM_vs

Fundamental Analysis – Economic Indicators – Part 2

Professional traders plan ahead, and so should you too. Whether you are an institutional trader with a long-term view you or an intraday retail Forex trader looking to scalp a few pics here and there. It is absolutely necessary that you plan in advance by looking at your economic calendar in order that you do not inadvertently trade at times of potential increased volatility.

Example A


In example A, on Monday 13th January 2020, we can see from our economic calendar that there is a slew of data pertaining to the British economy, which due to be released into the market at 9:30 a.m. GMT. The data is considered to be low to medium in importance and covers things such as total business investment year on year, the trade balance and industrial production month on month, which is of medium important and gross domestic product, month on month, which is also of medium importance.

Example B


In example B, which is a 1-hour chart of the GBPUSD pair, we can see that there has been a sell-off in the pair in the run-up to these figures being released. This is somewhat due to the fact that in the last few days, the Bank of England has been quite dovish regarding future growth for the British economy this year, plus strong hints that they may reduce interest rates by a half a point by the end of the year. Therefore traders are on the back foot while expecting that the British economy will continue to slow down and they will be sensitive to any data releases that point too to a weakening in the economy, which will provide further ammunition for policymakers in the Bank of England to reduce interest rates in the United Kingdom.

Example C


In example C, of our economic calendar, just a moment after the data has been released, we can see that the figures across the board are largely worse than expected, with the most important figure; which is the gross domestic product – month-on-month – showing a worse than expected decline of – 0.3%.

Example D


In example D, we have returned to our 1-hour chart of the GBPUSD, and we can see that there was a further spike lower in the pair post announcement of the economic data release.
However, we often find in the forex market, that institutional traders will have anticipated that the market data may have been worse than expected. And in some circumstances, even though the economic data release is bad for the economy, it might be perceived by traders as not being as bad as expected.
If we stick with this example for one moment, we can see that the overall trend has been to the downside with this pair. Therefore, new traders should be on their guard, because the pair may have bottomed out, even though there was bad data, and set for a reversal in price action. And this is one of the dangers when it comes to trading around economic data releases.

Example E


In example E, we return just 4 hours later to our hourly chart of the GBPUSD pair, and we can see that indeed price action had bottomed out because traders had anticipated that all the bad news was already in the price, and they decided to buy the pair.

In part 3, we will be looking at different types of economic indicators and their importance to the financial markets.

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Forex Daily Topic Forex Videos

How To Get An Edge In Forex Using Statistical Thinking – Trade Like A Forex Titan Part 4

https://youtu.be/wCsg8rbHw6Q

https://youtu.be/wCsg8rbHw6Q

Stats for Traders IV – Determine the quality of a trading system

To determine if something is good or just a product of randomness is not easy. The pharma industry spends years and costly double-blind studies to determine if a new chemical compound is better than a placebo (distilled water, or just a pill of sugar). This kind of evidence is needed because, as we have seen, almost nothing is sure in mother nature.

How to determine the goodness of data set


Taking the example of the pharma industry, to assess the properties of the new drug, scientists basically create two data sets. One dataset contains all the data measurements of the specimens taking the placebo and another dataset recording the same data of the specimens being administered the drug. So they end up with two groups, and, basically, they want to know if both groups belong to the same statistical distribution or from a different one. The statistical test to do this analysis is called the T-Test.

The T-Test

A T-test allows us to compare the average values of the two data sets and determine if they came from the same population. In the case of Pharma, the placebo group is the equivalent of a random sample with a zero mean, and scientists apply the T-Test to see if the average parameters of the group treated with the drug are similar or different from the placebo group. In the case of a trading system, we would like to know how far is the trading system away from a random trading system. The T-Test will answer not just the question of whether the system or strategy has the edge over a random pick, but it enables us to qualify and rank systems.

For a T-Test to be valid, we need to ensure several details! Scales of measurement must be standardized in both data sets. That means, the collection of the data should be standardized with one unit of trade, and preferably also using units of a standard Risk as a description of profits and losses.

The data collected is representative of the system. That means the data should be collected under all possible conditions the system will experience. The number of samples must be as large as feasible, and to comply with point 2 from a large historical database to account for every possible market situation: Bull, bear, sideways with low, mid and high volatility.
The standard deviation on both samples – random and strategy – should be similar. Making sure point 1 is guaranteed, point 4 is also insured.

The basic formula for when the size of both groups is equal:

t = (m1 — m2) / (σ / √N )

where m1 and m2 are the averages of the two groups and sigma σ is the standard deviation of the samples (assuming equal sigma on both)
if m2 is zero (random) the formula simplifies to:

Q = m / (σ / √N )
Where we have changed the t letter for Q, meaning quality, therefore knowing the average m and standard deviation sigma (σ) of a trading system, we can compute its quality Q.

We can look at m as the signal of our system

And σ / √N as the nose of the system.

Therefore, to maximize Q, we need to make m large and the denominator σ / √N as small as possible.

Qualifying trading systems.
From the Q equation, we can see that the denominator σ / √N is the ratio of the standard deviation and the square root of N, the number of trades. This makes it hard to compare systems with a different number of trades since it will make substantially better the same trade system as the number of samples grows.

SQN
Dr. Van K Tharp came with the idea of capping N the trade number to 100, even when the test is made with a large sample number. This way, we can compute m, the mean with all available data, but cut N to 100 to calculate the Q metric. That formula modification is called SQN, or System Quality Number.

SQN is
Q = m / (σ / √N ) when the sample size N is below 100 and
Q = m / (σ / 10 ) when the sample size N exceeds 100.

The SQN reveals if the system is worth trading. Systems below 1 are hard to trade because it presents a noise figure higher than the signal. That will create lots of doubts on a trader because, on multiple occasions, the system will underperform. An SQN of 1.5 is a very decent system, that can be traded with discipline. Systems beyond 2 are sound. If by chance, you end up with a system with SQN greater than 3, you’re a lucky fellow. Please call and share it with us.

The next release will explain how to make use of the SQN to assess the health of the markets.

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Get An Edge In Forex Using Statistical Thinking – Trade Like A Forex Titan Part 3

https://youtu.be/EpQBmw2O5oY

https://youtu.be/EpQBmw2O5oY

Stats for Traders III – Z-Scores, Market Strength and Market Signal to Noise

Z-Scores


Although all Normal distributions have the same shape, each one has different mean and standard deviations. We know that the area under de curve shows the probability of a new value falling within that area. For instance, we know that the likelihood of a value falling between the mean and +1 standard deviation (SD) of the mean is 34.1%.
So to have a proper picture of where a point is in the distribution, it is essential to standardize it.

A standardized Normal distribution is called a Z-Distribution. Every value in a Z-Distribution is called a Z-Score and represents the number of standard deviations that value is away from its mean. For example, if a EUR/USD price is +1.5 SD away, the z-score of that value is 1.5.
To compute the Z-Score of a value X, we simply subtract the mean from X and divide its result by SD.

Z = (X-m)/SD,

where m is the mean.

Evaluating the Market with Z -scores
The different currency pairs tend to move in long-term trends and short-term oscillations around their average. The first measure we can do to a currency pair to detect overextension is by a z-score using a short-term period such as 30 sessions. By taking the 30-session average and standard deviation, we can convert all the pair’s values into z-scores and assess how far the price is from the consensus price of the last 30 days.

Statistically Assessing the Strength of the Trend

A trend can be described by a price change. That is, prices making a slope. The slope of the trend shows the strength of the trend. The steeper, the stronger. If the slope is zero or very close to it, the market is ranging.
We can use simple periodic price subtractions, such as used by the Momentum indicator, or we can determine that slope using linear regression formulas and, from those lines, compute the gradients.
With a sizeable historical price database, it is possible to compute the typical slope and the standard deviation of the mean and its standard deviation.


To thoroughly assess a market, we could determine values for each timeframe of interest using 10, 30, and 100 periods. After having these values, we will be able to compare the current slope against its historical model, and the z-score will tell us how far it is from the mean if it is overextended and where on the map is against the other timeframes.

Signal to noise ratio of a market (S/N)

The concept of Signal-to-Noise is to determine how much of the price action is signal versus noise.
Signal is the component that gives a direction: The Close minus the open in absolute values

Signal = ABS( Close – Open)

Noise the range outside this. Thus we can compute the ratio of signal over the total range:

S/N Ratio = Signal/ range.

A day with a 100 percent signal and no noise will occur if the open and the close are at the extremes of the range. 0 percent signal will happen if Open =Close.


By keeping a record of each forex asset, we could easily evaluate which pairs show more trendiness and less nose. These will be more likely to produce gains. We can also classify S/N information using z-scores and to find where the current signal-to-noise of an asset compares against its average, to time the market in and detect the next wave of increasing signal to noise leg on the cyclic pattern.

Our next episode will deal with ways to evaluate the quality of a trading system and also apply this concept to the markets.

Categories
Forex Videos

Forex Fundamental & Economic Indicators Part 1 – How To Understand The Strength Of A Currency

https://youtu.be/i_AO21esRws

https://youtu.be/i_AO21esRws

Fundamental Analysis – Economic Indicators – Part 1

Trading any asset in the financial markets is complicated, and there are simply no shortcuts to becoming a successful trader, it all comes down to education. One of the biggest mistakes that new traders make is to learn about technical analysis without also learning about fundamental analysis, which is just as critical, if not more so. Fundamental analysis is the study of the macroeconomics pertaining to a particular country. It measures its wealth, and in the Forex market, a country’s wealth will determine what its currency exchange rate value is against other countries’ exchange rates.


Fundamental analysis is expressed in the markets by way of economic indicators, which are released by why governments, and non-profit organizations, which monitor economic activity within a country on a regular basis. Economic indicators are in levels of importance attached to each data point where risk rises from low, medium, to high. They can be leading indicators, which tend to precede trends, lagging, which might confirm trends, or coincident, which means the current state of an economy.
Leading indicators include consumer durables and share prices. Coincident indicators include GDP, employment levels, and retail sales. And lagging indicators include the gross national product (GNP), CPI, unemployment rates and interest rates, Once collated, and calculated, the economic information is released and is usually subject to a time embargo, and this typically happens once a month at a set time and day of the week. These are then updated each month, quarter, and each year. Economic indicators are segregated into groups. The higher the rise, the more the likelihood of increased market volatility post-release. More importantly, the release of such data allows traders and investors to understand the current and future economic position of a country and to plan in advance and adjust their portfolios or positions as appropriate.


Once economic indicators are updated, financial policymakers within a country can use the data on how to change policy. Therefore information which may suggest that an economy is overheating, or has as inflation which is below or above government targets, can be critical to policymakers may be forced to make adjustments and therefore perfect a currency exchange rate. Traders will be looking out for such data in order to try and predict if major policy decisions such as interest rate changes could be about to happen in order to adjust their portfolios accordingly. Traders are strongly advised to have access to a reliable economic calendar and refer to it on a regular basis in order to not to get caught out by events such as these. Decent calendars are freely available, and offer a breakdown of economic releases times and will also include things such as expected speeches from political and economic leaders. See example A.
In part 2, we will be looking at how professional traders plan ahead for forthcoming economic data releases.

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Trade Forex In Times Of War – Iran VS America

https://youtu.be/jguKsatyrhM

https://youtu.be/jguKsatyrhM

The brief USA and Iran conflict and how it played out in the market from the 3rd to the 9th of January 2020

It was the conflict that wasn’t. Thank God. So far, anyway. In normal times, the biggest market movers are interest rates. However, when it comes to war and conflicts, and especially where a leading country in the west is involved, nothing moves the markets more. Conflicts cause immense uncertainty in global economics. And that means one thing for investors: they will release cash by liquidating from investments such as stocks and put their money into safe-haven assets such as the Japanese yen or Swiss franc. Although these two currencies return less to the Investor due to their low-interest rates, they are seen as a safe and steady long term investments. Other safe-haven investments at such times are gold and even bitcoin in more recent times.

Indeed during this very short spat between the United States and Iran from the 3rd of January, when President Trump ordered the air-strike, which killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani to the 7th January 2020. After Iran fired missiles at air bases in Iraq housing US soldiers, we saw a downside move in the major stock indices across the globe, and especially because President Donald Trump had threatened to target 52 sites of interest within Iran, should there be any reprisals. While the world waited with baited breath, extreme market jitters ran throughout the global markets. The US dollar also declined initially.

The oil market was affected during the initial phase because of the vast amount of oil passing through the Middle East region, en route to the rest of the globe, which would have been heavily affected by war in the region, thus sending the price of a barrel of oil to fresh highs. This move adversely affected the Canadian dollar, which moved lower against the USD and other major currencies.

Example A


Example A is of the Dow Jones 30 index, and we can see that the market initially collapsed when Iran fired the missiles to 2 US bases in Iraq, threatening an escalation of the war with the United States and Iran. However, because there was no collateral damage to American forces or their equipment, the Dow Jones quickly erased losses and indeed has subsequently rallied to record highs. This lift has been followed by global indices generally.

Example B

Example B shows a 1-hour chart of the EURUSD pair during the conflict, which, although declined during this period, heavy losses for the euro were pretty much contained in a very narrow sideways range and where the overall trend in the pair was lower prior to the event..

Example C


Example C is the US dollar index, where we can see that, after an initial slide when the Iranian general was killed, and the retaliation by Iran was not effective, and, also, the subsequent de-escalation of the tensions between Iran and the United States, investors have favored the US dollar which is broadly up against the other major currencies. The Yen also retraced its gains, and the USDJPY pair moved higher.
This event goes to show that geopolitics is as important as fundamental analysis when it comes to trading currencies. New traders are strongly advised to learn how all the markets are interwoven and how they react when major events such as wars take place.

Categories
Forex Daily Topic Forex Videos

How To Get An Edge In Forex Using Statistical Thinking – Trade Like A Forex Titan Part 2

https://youtu.be/PeBr1Eq8xN4

https://youtu.be/PeBr1Eq8xN4

Stats Applied To TradIng Part II

In our last episode, we discussed how to qualify turning points as a filter to validate TA signals based on the intrinsic statistical properties of the Normal Distribution.
In this video, we will continue developing ideas to improve the chances of success in Forex and Crypto trading.

Better Fibonacci Retracements and Extensions


Fibonacci retracement is a prevalent indicator to evaluate retracement entry points, and a Fibonacci extension is also a popular method to assess potential target levels. It is based in the golden ratio, coming from the Fibonacci number sequence. As you should know, the Fibonacci sequence starts by 1,1, and the following members come from the addition of the two previous numbers.


As the numbers grow, a Fibonacci number divided by its previous number in the series gives the golden ratio: 1.6180. The reciprocal, a Fibonacci number divided by the next number, provides the other golden ratio: 0.6180. 0.382 comes from the ratio of a Fibo number and the second next. 0.236 is the result of a Fibo number divide by its 3rd next. 0.1459 results from the division of four distanced Fibo numbers, and we could go on forever. To these ratios, trading software adds the 0.5 and 0.75 levels and the complimentary and extensions.

It is hardly useful to have a forecasting tool that tells you the next retracement could end at 14.6%, 23.8%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8%, 75%, 85%, or 100% of the last top, but with no likelihood associated with each level.


What if we could classify the retracements and assign them the probability of occurrence? Well, we really can. We could keep a record of all the past retracement, organized for the bull and bear movements, and then bin them in chunks of 10 percent and create a histogram and, from there, assign a probability to each bin. Or, we could just take the average and the standard deviation of all retracements for bulls and bears, separated, and use the well known probabilistic profile of the Normal Distribution to assess probabilities.

That would also apply to extensions. By keeping track of every impulsive movement following a retracement, we can typify the behavior of the asset. We could create the average and standard deviation of the last 30-50-100 occurrences and create a statistical profile similar to the retracement case.

In the case of the retracements, we can see that the average plus 1SD would be very high probability entry points since only 16% of the cases the retracement went further down.
In the case of extensions, the average minus one SD would be a sweet spot for the first take profit level, being the second the average and the third the average plus one SD.

Stop Settings

Until now, we have discussed entry and exit points taken from a statistically minded perspective. What about setting stops in the same way instead of the obvious levels everybody notices, including institutional traders?

Setting stop levels can be rather straightforward if we know the distribution of the prices. If the entry point takes place at the average +1SD retracement level, the average plus 2SD is a good stop level, as the likelihood of the retracement to reach it would be just 5%.
We could, even, keep track of the history of stops, using John Sweeney’s Maximum Adverse Excursion concept. To summarize it, The MAE method is a stop-loss setting system that tries to place the stops at the historical optimal level based on past trades.

The method tracks the price paths during positive trades to see the maximum adverse excursion taken by the trades before moving in our favor. That way, we could detect the level beyond which there is a high probability that the trade will not be profitable. That is the optimal level for the stop-loss.

For more on Stop settings, please read:

Maximum Adverse Excursion

The Case for Average True Range-based Stop-loss Settings

Masteting Stop-Loss setting: How about using Kase Dev-Stops?

Categories
Forex Videos

How To Get An Edge In Forex Using Statistical Thinking – Trade Like A Forex Titan Part 1

https://youtu.be/QcbJj5nxnLY

https://youtu.be/QcbJj5nxnLY

How to get an Edge using Statistical Thinking I

Do you know the difference between institutional traders and the average retail trader?
Well, there are many obvious differences, including the capital available to them. Still, the most significant factor is that you blindly believe in technical analysis, whereas they use other higher-level techniques to be ahead of them, ahead of you.

The mathematician is highly paid in the financial markets for a reason: They make the real difference. The marketplace is a battlefield, and quant analysis is analogous to smart drone attacks, whereas trading using TA is like fighting with spears and arrows.

But I don’t have that software!

Of course, pros use large databases and sophisticated analytical software, machine learning, and so forth. If you are serious about trading, you should consider creating your custom analytical software. The use of high-level languages such as Python in combination with Pandas, a terrific statistical package, and a bit of code, would put you into the next level. Still, with patience, dedication, and a spreadsheet, you could collect your own information. Excel also included quite a decent statistical package.

Metatrader 4 to Excel

It is possible to automate your data capture from your MetaTrader 4. MetaTrader 4 has a DDE Link. It is straightforward to get it done.


You simply need to enable the MT4 DDE server and place a simple code in the corresponding Excel cells.


=MT4|BID!EURUSD
=MT4|ASK!EURUSD
=MT4|HIGH!EURUSD
=MT4|LOW!EURUSD
=MT4|TIME!EURUSD

Average Trading Ranges


Determine trading ranges can be accomplished using the Average True Range Indicator (ATR). There is no need to collect data to use it, and it will provide you the basic information to know a lot of things. Using a short-term value such as a 10-period ATR will tell you of the Forex pair you intend to trade is experiencing a period of low or high volatility, or if its current range can be considered as normal. This knowledge will show you several interesting facts that may decide if it is worth trading or not.
1.- The ATR is the average range for the period. Therefore, it tells you the expected movement of the timeframe of your chart. So it is at the same time, your risk and your potential profit per timeframe. It tells you several pieces of information:

Your stop loss pip distance divided by the current ATR will say to you the average time it will take the market to reach your stop. For example, in a 4-Hour chart, if your stop-loss is 10 pips away and your STR is 16 pips, you know the average time a bad trade will take to reach your target is 10/16 x 4hours = 2.5 hours.
Your profit distance divided by the current ATR will tell you the average time it will take your trade to reach your target.
Your trading costs, Spread+ Fee+ Slippage multiplied by the profit to ATR ratio computed above, divided by the ATR and multiplied by 100 will tell you the percentage of the projected profits are needed to break-even.
That value will help you to decide the best timeframe for your needs. If you’re aware of the overall cost of the operation, you may realize your mostly working for your broker and that a better timeframe is needed or that the current market ranges are not suitable for trading.

Determining turning points and the concept of range_stats

Now, if we collect the averages of trading ranges, we can get a lot of more exciting insights about the market.
What if we could get a real edge over the market, statistically relevant and profitable long term?
Going back to our previous video about the Normal Distribution, we talked about the Central Limit Theorem. This theorem says that the average value of a collection of samples will be normally distributed.
If we apply this concept to a collection of ranges, we will get a Bell-shaped curve, including its statistical properties.

UP and Down Ranges


If we have our data collected, we could compute the average range from the opening of our session to the low of the session. Let’s call this piece of data the Down_Range.

We can do the same for the gain data. That is the range from the opening to the high of the session. That will be called the UP_Range.
If we store the UP__Range and the Down_Range measurements, we can compute the average of the last 30, 50, or 100 days and its standard deviation (SD) and apply some statistical thinking on it.

In our previous lesson about the Normal Distribution statistical properties, we’ve learned that 68.2% of the data points belonging to a Normal distribution are located in the region between the average plus and minus one SD. That means only 31.8% of the data points are beyond that area. And looking to the right side, only 15.9% of the ranges are higher than the average plus one SD.
On this fact lies our trading edge: Our data collection of Up and Down ranges tells us how far, on average, the asset moves before turning in the opposite direction.
Thus, our TA signals will be much more statistically significant when the UP or Down typical range has been exceeded by 1SD, there is a high likelihood the currency pair is reversing.
Taking profits can also be aided by this type of strategic information, as we could compute the typical range the asset moves after turning in the opposite direction and apply it to our trade setting.

More on Statistical thinking in our next video.

Reference: Ken Long Tortoise Methods