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Forex Basics

CADPLN Asset Analysis

Introduction

In the CADPLN currency pair, CAD is the major currency Canada and PLN is the currency of Poland. In this exotic currency pair, CAD is the base currency, and PLN is the quote currency.

Understanding CADPLN

This pair’s price determines the value of PLN, which is equivalent to one CAD. We can quote it as 1 CAD per X numbers of PLN. For example, if the CADPLN pair’s value is at 2.7983; therefore, we need almost 2.7983 PLN to buy one CAD.

CADPLN Specification

Spread

Spread is a trading cost, which is simply the difference between the Bid price and the Ask price. The broker controls the value of Spread; therefore, traders don’t have to do anything with this. This value depends on the execution model used for the trade.

Spread on ECN: 13 pips

Spread on STP: 18 pips

Fees

The trading fees that forex brokers take are similar to the stock market. It is automatically deducted from traders’ account. Note that, the fees has no impact on STP account.

Slippage

In the case of high volatility, it creates a difference between the execution level and the price open level, which is known as Spread. The main reason to occur slippage is the market volatility and the broker’s execution speed.

Trading Range in CADPLN

The trading range is the representation of the minimum, average, and the maximum volatility of this pair on the 1H, 4H, 1D, 1W, and 1M timeframe. Using these values, we can assess our profit/loss margin of trade. Hence, this proves to be a helpful risk management tool for all types of traders.

Procedure to assess Pip Ranges
  1. Add the ATR indicator to your chart
  2. Set the period to 1
  3. Add a 200-period SMA to this indicator
  4. Shrink the chart so you can assess a large time period
  5. Select your desired timeframe
  6. Measure the floor level and set this value as the min
  7. Measure the level of the 200-period SMA and set this as the average
  8. Measure the peak levels and set this as Max.
CADPLN Cost as a Percent of the Trading Range

As per the volatility values of the above mentioned table, we can see that the cost changes with the change in volatility of the market. Later on, we have got the ratio between total cost and the volatility and converted into percentages.

ECN Model Account 

Spread = 13 | Slippage = 5 | Trading fee = 8

Total cost = Spread + Slippage + Trading Fee

= 13 + 5 + 8

Total cost = 26

STP Model Account

Spread = 13 | Slippage = 5 | Trading fee = 0

Total cost = Spread + Slippage + Trading Fee

= 13 + 5 + 0

Total cost = 18

The Ideal way to trade the CADPLN

The CADPLN is an exotic currency pair that has enough liquidity and volatility in the price. As a result, a trader may find it easier to trade this currency pair.

Wee can see that the percentage values did not move above 288%. It is an indication that the cost of trading in the lower timeframe is higher, and in a higher timeframe, it is lower.

Moreover, with the increase of trading cost, volatility is another risk that a trader may face.

Therefore, the best time to trade in this pair is when the volatility remains at the average value. If the volatility decreases, trading will be ineffective. On the other hand, if the volatility increases, there is a possibility of an unwanted stop loss hit. Therefore, sticking to the average value is suitable for this pair.

Furthermore, another way to reduce the cost is to place a pending order as ‘limit’ and ‘stop’ instead of ‘market.’ In that case, there will be no slippage in the calculation of the total costs. Therefore, the total cost will be reduced by five pips.

 

Limit Model Account

Spread = 13 | Slippage = 0 | Trading fee = 0

Total cost = Spread + Slippage + Trading Fee

= 13 + 0 + 0

Total cost = 13

Categories
Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Why Forex Traders Must Value Their Time

All traders at the end of the year always take stock of their own trading activity. There still exists an element that is never taken into account and therefore we tend to forget… How much value do we give to our time? Although it seems obvious, time cannot be “preserved”. It just passes. It is said that when we are born we are full of time, because we have a life ahead of us, but no one can quantify this wealth and no one can know how long a person’s life will last.

Even so, this wealth is a certainty, since time can be devoted to all things that free will allows. Bearing in mind that our choices will show us the way because at each decision we take new paths and leave others. This leads to a consequence: we spend more time on what motivates us the most. This motivation can be effective, economic, labor, sense of duty, etc. It is very interesting to know that on many occasions we use time as a currency of exchange.

Traders Exchange Time Continuously

This concept applies particularly well to a trader. He exchanges part of his time to have more availability of it, later. What does that mean? Invest money in the financial markets to get more of it and so have more time to live your life according to your desires and goals. Let me explain in detail what this phrase means.

Time and money are surely the two most important resources we have available to invest and make a profit. However, it is money that is really valued as an investment because it allows us, as a system of payment, exchange, and reference, to receive something in return.

Otherwise, when we invest our time, it is not so easy to quantify the return we will get, only in some cases will it give us a profit in the form of money. For example, in the event that we exchange our time with work to be rewarded with a salary. In others, the exchange is not tangible, for example, when we want to increase our knowledge through study.

Paradoxically, these resources have great similarities: both can be managed, lost, wasted, saved, they are not infinite, but the substantial difference is that only money can be earned. If money is lost, it can be recovered over time, but if time is lost, it can never be recovered, even by buying it.

Unconsciously, money is valued more than time, except by increasing age: older people value time more because they realize their lack. Time is available at no cost and is available at will. Moreover, it is the most equitable resource that exists: a priori, we all have it. The problem is your administration.

Different Uses of Time and Money

The same amount of money and time in the hands of different people will not match their uses, even if the source from which they come is the same. If it is easy to answer that time is the main resource we must fight for, we must be aware that money is decisive for our future. Buying new experiences or particular desires requires a significant monetary expense and an investment of time to enjoy them.

The needs of life and the time in which we live mark the future of events:

well-spent money costs little, while well-spent time is scarce and unwittingly spent

It is a good dilemma.

Time measurement precedes the creation of money and is often related to productivity. Benjamin Franklin said that “time is money” and explained that the time spent working to earn money was time well spent; otherwise, if time has been spent on other matters, the money has been lost. This reflection is correct only in its own context, outside it makes no sense because well-spent time not only generates money but also generates many benefits that go beyond money.

Both time and money are consumed even if nothing is done with them. If time passes, it is spent. If we do nothing with the money, like leaving it in a non-productive place, then inflation, over time, will despise its initial value. And this is one of the main theories of finance: while the price of money remains constant, its value fluctuates over time.

Time Must Be Devoted to Investment

In the world of investment, the results are obtained after having devoted much of our time to them. The paradox that to make money I have to invest my time and that if I have money I will have more control over my time, does not go beyond the fact that the reward of both is not proportional. Having a lot of money is not synonymous with having a lot of time.

Time is indifferent to the amount of money. Those who have obtained a significant amount of money have invested a lot of time in it and will also need a lot of time to manage it.

It is clear that everyone is happy in their own way, but those who have less money and more time to devote to themselves and their families may be happier. A study by the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science reveals that 64% of respondents prefer to have money for free time, even if the results changed when asked about happiness. In fact, it has been concluded that the amount of money accumulated is not proportional to happiness.

When a certain money limit is reached, by earning more, that additional amount is not proportional to the increase in happiness. In this sense, it is said, and rightly so, that the rich do not enjoy the same happiness as money. According to experts, this limit is at 60,000 euros per year. 60,000 euros a year? Someone will think: and how to reach them? But here an important reflection must enter.

Investing Time to Buy Time

The trader invests his time because more money improves the ability to use his time. Very true, but how do you use this time invested for this purpose? The trader must be really good at managing the time he dedicates to this profession. If the study of trading requires much of our time and dedication, it is also true that we should not launch it in a 10-hour session that brings nothing good.

Some will say it depends on how much you earn. That’s true, but only in part. If I have to destroy my psycho-physical balance to make money, there’s no point in working like this. Trading is said to be freedom, but this statement is the subtle line between good and evil.

If for the freedom we intend to spend money on totally useless luxury items or sit in front of the computer for many hours to end up repenting and burning our human contact with the outside world, happiness will never be there and this is clear to all. If instead, we refer to the possibility of having quality time, for example, staying with our loved ones or having experiences that enrich us as human beings, then everything changes.

Trading As a Process of Growth

Trading can be seen as a grand ladder: a path where we grow step by step first as people and then as operators. A continuous exchange of time and money that must have a higher quality of time available, but above all awareness of ourselves and how we want to live our lives.

Life… we know well that it is unique and we will never know the exact moment when we will leave. We must therefore be very responsible to ourselves throughout this journey. Negative emotions, the lack of objectives, and the inability to react in the difficult moments of this work must be prohibited.

Time is the most precious thing we have. Unfortunately, we rarely evaluate it consciously: it continues to diminish, inevitably tending to run towards a zero balance. Only in the future will we lose the past and this can never be recovered. Therefore, it is necessary to manage time: if you want to achieve something, the first thing is to realize it. It would be sad and illogical not to do so, it would be an act of self-denial.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

How to Correctly Deal With Forex Losses

For most traders, the toughest aspect of trading in Forex is dealing with financial losses. It’s not just a matter of pain and anguish, but it’s also a latent reality that losses are very often the trigger that drives traders to make their worst mistakes, which can cause even greater losses and start a vicious circle in which the trader’s account is out of control.

It follows that a trader has to have a defined strategy to cope with losses and have the ability to execute that survival strategy. There is no point in “knowing” that your losses are controlled and how to keep them under control if you are not able to apply what you know. Your loss strategy has to be real. You have to know the logic behind your knowledge of losses and believe in your truth with total faith.

The Losses Are Inevitable

Loss-making positions are inevitable; in fact, it is usually more difficult to make money with strategies that try to ensure a very high rate of profit. This is simply the natural form of market movements.

There are some traders who follow a methodology that tries to greatly reduce or even completely eliminate losses. There are only two methodologies that can achieve this and it is important to understand them perfectly:

1- Add to a position with losses by believing that he was right when he placed the original position and that he was only wrong when he opened it. You can even add a larger amount in the next position to make recovery easier. The reality is that, while this may work as a method, it is usually not optimal and we will usually have better results simply by accepting the first loss and closing the position instead of trying a “rescue”. After all, if your original stop loss was touched, why is the second operation going to be better than the first.

2- “Change with the wind” and open a position in the opposite direction. This is not really “avoiding” a loss, it is actually crystallizing a loss by changing the net position. If you go long with a 1 lot and then short with 2 lots, you will be going short with a 1 net lot with a crystallized loss in 1 long lot.

There is another thing you can do: do not close the position that is losing and let it run more and more against you. If he does, he’s liable to burn his account. Hopefully, maybe I’ve already convinced him that we should accept some losing operations. If I haven’t, please go back and read that over and over again until I’m convinced. If you are not convinced, you can write to me and explain your reasons: perhaps I could convince you by email!

Know What Losses You Can Tolerate

Once you have accepted that you will have operations with losses and go through streaks of losses (known as “drawdowns”), you have to decide how much you can psychologically tolerate losing without losing your nerves as well. For that, you have to have an honest conversation with yourself. You might think you can deal with something like a 50% drawdown on your trading account, but you might actually find yourself unable to cope with even a 25% loss when it takes place in reality. Try to visualize this happening, close your eyes, and get in position.

A second factor that has to be considered is that as you increase any drawdown on your account, it increases the amount you need to win back to reach the amount you started with. For example, if you lose 10%, then you must grow the remaining 90% by 11.11% just to return to the original 100% amount. When we have a very deep drawdown of 50%, you must earn 100% just to return to the original amount of 100%. It is a vital fact that the deepest their losses, the more difficult it will be to get back to square one. Having considered this, on the other hand, it is also true that the less you risk, the less you will win when trading progresses in a favorable way.

Credit: https://the5ers.com

Maximum Losses

A good goal to consider is never to ever, in any case, lose more than 25% of the value of your trading account, because once you lose 25% you will have to make 33.33% profit just to get back to where you started, and when you lose more than 25% of the amount you would later have to earn to return or even to increase very quickly: once you have dropped 50%, you have to earn 100%, for example. In a crazed market, your stop loss might not work at all and you could be completely eliminated if you use too much leverage.

Use A Trading Method

Once you have established what the maximum loss you can tolerate is, you need to be sure of the method you are going to use to choose when to enter and exit operations and what financial asset you are going to trade, and this method should be a proven method that produces a positive “hope”. That is, by analyzing a lot of positions, he earns more money than he loses. You need to believe that it is a cost-effective method by itself, and also subject it to a review or backtest over several years of historical data.

This is very important because, when you have a streak of unavoidable losses, you have to have the courage to continue trading. If you do not do it and stop operating, or if you lose your nerves and operate in excess, you will miss the winning streak that will come after the losing streak.

Another great advantage of a backtest is that you can use a great one in a long-term review to determine what was the worst performance in terms of drawdown and the number of consecutive losing operations. You can use this to have the assurance that you will be perfectly able to survive the bad streaks. For example, if the worst outcome of your strategy in the last 10 years and thousands of operations is 50 consecutive losing operations, and you believe that the maximum drawdown you’re going to be able to tolerate is 25%, that suggests that, if you risk 0,50% of your trading capital per transaction, you are likely to experience such a drawdown in the next 10 years. If you reduce the risk to, for example, 0.25% per operation, this drawdown depth will be less likely.

You should also use a strategy to manage fractional risk, this gives you peace of mind with the knowledge that there is a cushion to minimize the total loss of evil seasons. You will also be able to decide that, if you ever experience a reduction worse than the worst case in the last 5 years, you will have to stop trading and revisit your strategy.

Catastrophic Losses

Sometimes events happen on the market that triggers such large, sharp movements at the price that even if you are working with a stop-loss your agent will not be able to run. This means that when the stop is well activated, you can encounter much greater losses than you had anticipated. When the bond of the Swiss franc was withdrawn in 2015 we had a good example of this. The vote in favor of Brexit was a much softer example.

You can avoid this problem by ceasing to operate any currency whose central banks have a policy of swimming against the tide of the market by tying its value to another currency, and not having open positions right before there’s a huge risk of an event being scheduled, such as a referendum.

Tranquility Will Help You Weather the Storm

Once you have taken the steps outlined above, you may have the confidence to risk money on operations within the parameters you have defined. You will know more or less what percentage of operations tend to lose, the duration of the streaks, and, most importantly, that over time tends to go ahead. At this stage, it must be accepted that loss-making operations are natural, and are the only necessary sacrifices that you must make in the market to earn money. In other words, the cost of doing business.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

7 Horrible Mistakes You’re Making With Forex Trading

If we are going to be completely honest, we all make mistakes and when it comes to trading, we have made many, and we are sure that you have too. Some of them are not too bad, some of them though, are pretty horrible and have thrown off our trading quite a bit. If you look back, we are sure that there are some mistakes that you have made in the past, especially when just starting out that you are most likely not too proud of. We are going to be looking at some of the horrible mistakes that we have made and that other trades have made during their forex trading careers.

Spending Too Much Time Trading

One that you probably would not expect to see, but spending too much time can be just as bad as spending not enough. The majority of traders have other things in their life too, maybe a job, maybe a daily, anything else that gives you some form of responsibility. What you do not want to do is to use every minute that you have spare, or even to take away from the other things in your life. This can lead to a lot of problems, we have known traders to lose their job or to lose their families just from spending too much time on their trading. Do not let this happen to you, make sure that you divide your time up between the things that are important and don’t let trading take over.

Continuing to Trade a Losing Strategy

A lot of traders have a lot of pride, they like to think that they are correct, while it is good to be proud of what you do, it is not good to let that pride cloud your judgment. If you are trading a strategy that is losing, why would you want to continue doing it? Maybe you believe that it will eventually work, maybe you blame the markets, but one thing is for sure, these traders do not want to admit that maybe their strategy just doesn’t work at the moment. If something is not working, work out why and make changes, do not keep trying to force it to work or trading and waiting, you will only end up losing money, so you need to admit when something isn’t working and then make a change.

Trading Without Stop Losses

This one is common amongst both new traders and experienced ones and it has the same effects on the accounts of the traders and that is that they will eventually blow. Stop losses are one of the first and most simple forms of risk management that you should learn about and certainly use. The stop loss is there to protect your account, it will automatically close the trade when it reaches a certain level, yes it will lose in a negative, but it will be protecting your account. It also allows you to properly implement your risk to reward ratio. Ensure that you are using stop losses with every trade, every single trade, and your account will be a lot safer, without one, a single trade can blow even the largest of accounts.

Trading with More Than You Can Afford

One of the things that you will always be told is that you should never trade with more than you can afford to lose, what this means is that if the money that you are using is needed for something else, like bills, rent, or food, then you should not be using it. As soon as you use this money you are basically saying that you may not be able to pay the rent this month, not a situation that you want to be in. Even worse are the people who are borrowing money, getting a loan just for the purpose of trading it. This is not something that you want to do, do not put yourself into debt just to be able to trade. You should only trade what you can afford to lose, money that won’t affect your life if you lose it. Not only does it help protect your finances and life, but it also helps you to reduce the levels of stress that would come with potentially losing money that you need.

Trading It All

Emotions can have a huge effect on our trading, especially when we come across losses. When we experience those losses, we sometimes want to win it back, we do this by placing larger trades, or more trades that are not in line with our strategy for risk management. This is not something that you want to do and it is known as chasing your losses. You place larger trades in order to try and win the money back, but what happens when that trade also loses? You will end up placing an even larger one, then larger until eventually you cannot afford to make any others and you have pretty much blown your account. Avoid doing this, it is not smart and lots of people have actually gone bankrupt trying it.

Guessing the News

News events can be very lucrative, you can make a lot of money from them if you get things right, especially things like the Non-Farm Payroll announcements. The problem is that if you get it wrong, you can lose a lot of money. What some people try to do is to guess the direction that the news will make the markets move, this is never a good idea. The news can be unpredictable, the markets also do not always move in the direction that the news suggests it should. With news events the markets can jump quite a lot, so even with stop losses in place the markets can actually jump past them and you can end up losing more than you expected. Avoid trading the news unless you really know what it is that you are doing, it is far safer to avoid it than to guess at it.

Trading Without a Plan

This one is more relevant to those that are just starting out in their trading careers. Trading without a plan basically means that you are placing trades without any reason, this is the part of trading that could best be compared to simple gambling. You need to use a plan, otherwise, ask yourself why you are placing the trade that you are. If you cannot answer it properly, with analysis and things like that, or you just simply say because you think it will win, then you should not be placing it. Do not place trades without a plan, at any time in your trading career.

Those are some of the horrible mistakes that you and a lot of other people may be making. They can have a real negative effect on your trading or your life as a whole, try and avoid doing them at all costs. If you are currently doing one and can recognize that, then see what you can do to help yourself get out of doing it, you will see some huge improvements to your trading results and even possibly your personal life too.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Forex Trading: Expectations vs. Reality – Part Two

Let’s be honest, we all came into trading thinking that we were going to be rich, that is simply the expectation that a lot of new traders come into trading thinking, they have seen all the advertising spells with the present but often hidden warnings about the number of people who lost money. Due to these adverts and people on social media, people feel that trading is easy and that they will make a lot of money very easily and very quickly Or there are those that know very little about it that see it as gambling or a risk to do. Both of these expectations come from what they see from the outside, yet when we get into the actual facts, things are very different in reality than they are in their expectations. We are going to be looking at some of the differences between the realities and expectations of trading.

The Work Involved

If you go onto social media you would get the impression that there isn’t really that much work to put in in order to make a bit of money, if you have watched a trading film, which is the only reference that a lot of people get, you will either think that there is an incredible amount of work or none at all. Either way, whatever your expectation is, it is probably wrong. Those coming into trading thinking that they won’t need to put on a lot of work will be in for a shock. There is in fact a lot of work involved. In fact, it can take a very long time to put on a single trade, if you want to be profitable then this won’t happen overnight. Instead, it will happen over months or even years for a lot of people. If you want to succeed then you need to ignore the idea that it is quick and easy and instead come to realize that you are going to have to put in a lot of time and effort.

Is It Gambling?

From the outside, forex trading can look like a bit of a gamble, let’s be honest, the markets will either go up or they will go down which makes it a 50/50 chance right? Pretty easy to guess then, well not exactly. The markets are influenced by hundreds of different things, each pulling the market in one direction or another, it is up to you to work out which way it will go. You cannot however simply guess, if you do that, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose overall. Instead, you are going to need to take your time to analyze all the different indications and influences of the markets. This will enable you to see which is the most likely direction that the markets will move in. This can then give you the best chance to trade correctly, so it certainly is not gambling. It is all about weighing up the different probabilities and then trading in the most likely direction.

Required Funds

Many people seem to be coming into trading thinking that they will be able to make a lot of money off a $100 account, this is simply not the case though. Much like with anything in life, you need money to make money, the larger your account is the more profits you will be able to make. Those adverts that are promising you that you will make $100,000 on a $100 account overnight are simply trying to scam you out of your money. If you want to make a lot then you will need to start with a lot. Otherwise, you will need to slowly build up your account over a longer period of time. If you have a $100 account then you can expect to make a few quid per week, not double it up every single week.

Winning Formula

There are hundreds of strategies out there, loads of variations of each one, so why some people come into trading looking for that magic formula that will make them profits all year round is very confusing. If there was one strategy that worked, then we would all be using it and all those other strategies simply would not exist. Not to mention the fact that if there was one strategy, the markets would simply cease to function, as everyone would be using the same strategy and putting on the same trades, meaning that the markets would come to a standstill. For this reason, there cannot be a single strategy that always works, instead, you need to learn a number of different ones in order to remain profitable all year round.

Is It Random?

The simple answer is no. The markets are far from random but they certainly look like it sometimes. From the outside it looks like they simply do what they want, moving up and down whenever they want for no apparent reason. When in reality there are a lot of different things that can cause them to be and to influence the way that it moves. Trader sentiment, news events, natural disasters, and economic data are just a few of the things that can influence it. When they do take effect, the directions and the effects can be predicted, however even though it can be predicted to a certain extent, it can also move out of sync, moving against what would be expected. This is why trading is not a guaranteed thing, while it can be predicted to an extent, it does have a very small essence of randomness to it, but not as much as it may look like from the outside.

Is It A Scam?

Another popular opinion amongst those that do not actually trade is that forex is basically a giant scam, it is full of people wanting to take your money and you can’t actually make any profits. The sad truth is that this is partly true, there are a lot of scammers out there, from traders, account managers, signal providers, and even brokers. There are ones that are there to simply take your money, but this is not what all of them are doing. There Are genuine people out there that are actively trying to help you to make money, there are some great brokers that are only there to help, signal providers offering genuine signals, you get the point. So while there are frauds out there there are also some great opportunities too.

Those are just a few of the expectations that we see people have and what is actually going on. There are some similarities in places, what we see is sometimes what we get, however, there are also a  lot of differences, once you actually get into trading you will come to find that there will be a lot of differences in what you experience compared to what you were thinking you were going to get.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Forex Trading: Expectations vs. Reality – Part One

When you tell someone about trading and forex, what do you tell people? Most likely you are telling them all the best things about trading, these good reasons are the reason why you trade in the first place after all. These stories that you are telling other people are what is creating an expectation in them of what trading and forex actually are. If you look anywhere on the internet, there will be people talking about forex and how much you can make, how easy it is, and how life-changing it is, very rarely do you hear horror stories or the opposite feelings. This creates a certain expectation from people outside of the trading circle, expectations that do not really match up to the reality of what trading is and what it involves. We are going to be looking at what some of the realities are when compared to the expectations that a lot of people have and seeing whether the general expectation is right, or if reality is completely different.

It’s Incredibly Easy or Hard

When all you hear about is the fact that people are making a lot of money or that people are making some great returns then it would make it seem like trading is easy, thousands if not millions of people are making money doing it, this is true, but they are putting in a lot of effort in order to get to that level, they did not simply sign up and then place trades in order to be successful, a lot of work needs to be put in. On the other hand, looking from the outside, it can look like it is incredibly complicated, with numbers all over the place, charts, indicators, and more. It can seem very complicated which would make it seem hard to do. When in reality, it is quite straightforward, it does take time and work, but it is nowhere near as complicated, most indicators are self-explanatory and when you actually start using them, they make a lot of sense.

You Need A Lot of Money

If you have watched any trading films, it would make it seem like you would need a couple hundred thousand to trade properly, and to be honest, this would be true if you went for a 1:1 leverage account. The thing is that a lot of brokers these days are offering far higher leverage. In fact, some go as high as 2000:1 which is a little extreme, but even the popular 500:1 makes it so that trading is far more accessible to the average person. Many brokers allow you to sign up with a minimum deposit of $10, which will allow you to trade, you would need a couple hundred to trade properly, still a far cry from the hundreds of thousand that you otherwise may have thought you would have needed.

Forex Is A Scam

When something seems too good to be true, then most people would consider it a scam, and many people see forex as too good to be true, a way of making money by sitting at home in your underwear. It is Perfectly understandable why people think that trading is a scam, but in reality, it is not. Yes, there are people who try to scam newcomers into trading or to take advantage of what they believe, making quick profits, but trading in itself is not a scam. It really is a way to make money at home, even in your underwear, but it takes time and effort, so don’t believe the huge and instant returns that are promised and work on your own trading. Oh, and you should also keep an eye out for those dodgy brokers, but choose a good one and you should be fine.

It’s All the Same

From the outside, all the different currency pairs look pretty much the same, the charts look pretty similar and they all work the same way. Fortunately, that is not the case, in fact, every single currency pair acts completely differently, they have different levels of liquidity, different levels of volatility and offer a new trading experience when compared to another. For this reason, it is recommended that you learn a single currency at a time, then move on to a new one, if you start with a load you will be confused and make losses. With so many different currency pairs to choose from, it ensures that trading will always be interesting and there will always be new challenges to look for.

The Gambling Aspect

For some trading and forex simply looks like a gamble, there are only two outcomes, after all, the markets will either move up or they will move down. While technically true, there is a lot more behind it than simply that. There are thousands of different things that can influence the markets. News events, natural disasters, Donald Trump tweeting something, or just other traders thinking the markets will move a certain way. You need to take all of this into consideration, once it has been analyzed you can work out the most likely direction of the markets, it is not simply a 50/50 chance of it moving one way or another. Some people do of course come into it and gamble, but they very quickly learn that you cannot be successful by trading that way.

Managing your expectations is vital when it comes to trading, many people come into it with expectations that are far too high, thinking that they can make a lot of money overnight, this just won’t happen. If you have your expectations in the right place then you will be in a much better place to achieve your overall goals. Managing your expectations is vital for a successful trading career.

Those are some of the differences in the expectations that people have compared to the realities of trading. From the outside forex looks like a very different beast than it is from the inside. You don’t really know what is involved until you are in it and when you are, your expectations will be quickly broken as you realize what it is really about.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Advantages of Forex Trading – Leverage, Liquidity, and Volatility

There are a lot of advantages to trading forex over some of the other methods of trading such as stocks, some of these advantages are the leverage that you can use, the liquidity in the markets, and the volatility that the markets can give. Each of these gives you a huge advantage as a trader and can help boost your potential earnings. Of course, they can also add a bit of risk to your trading too. We are going to be looking at some of the advantages of trading forex today.

Leverage

The first advantage that we are going to be looking at is leverage, but before we work out why it is good, let’s get a little understanding of what it actually is. Leverage basically allows you to borrow the money that is needed to make a trade from your brokers. It allows you to place trades that are far larger than your balance would otherwise allow you to make, this is one of the reasons why it is so sought after. So if we take a simple example, let’s imagine that you have a balance of just $100, you would not be able to place much with a 1:1 leverage on the account, so we go for a 100:1 account. This means that for every $1 that we have in our account, the broker will top it up to $100, so will add $99 themselves. So that $100 account is now acting like a $10,000 account, allowing you to make far more trades. Of course, some brokers go higher, at 500:1, 1000:1, or even 2000:1, the latter two are a little too high and the 500:1 seems to be the sweet spot.

So that is what leverage is, but how is it helpful to us as traders and why is it one of the major advantages of forex trading? To put things simply, leverage allows us to trade a lot more and thus make a lot more profits. After all, why would you trade with an account with just $100 in it when you could be trading the equivalent of a $10,000 account. You should bear in mind, that while the brokers are giving you this money to trade with, it is not yours to keep, you will have to return it, and should you lose, you may have to pay it back, although most brokers now offer negative balance protection to help this. The main advantage is that it lets you trade with more and so they can earn more in profits. Larger trades mean larger profits and that is the main advantage to it. It does come with risks, but with proper risk management it is very manageable, so do not be afraid of taking larger leverage, just bear in mind that it does come with some risks.

Liquidity

The forex markets are one of the most liquid markets in the world, this simply means that there is a lot of money available to be traded at any one time. Liquidity is basically defined as the ability for a currency or asset to be traded on demand. As the forex markets are so liquid, this basically means that you are able to trade at any given time whenever you want, and the more liquid that a currency pair is, the lower the spread cost that comes with it. With high levels of liquidity also comes a certain level of calm, the markets will not jump up and down as violently when there is a lot of liquidity in the markets, making it a slightly safer investment opportunity. While the forex markets as a whole are incredibly liquid, there are some pairs that are a little less liquid and so the spreads may be higher and there may be larger jumps in those currency pairs.

Some of the higher liquidity pairs include EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, EURGBP, AUDUSD, USDCAD, USDCHF, and NZDUSD. Some of the lower liquidity pairs include the exotic pairs such as PLNJPPY, these sorts of currency pairs cannot be purchased in huge lot sizes due to the lack of liquidity, however, with smaller trade sizes they can offer large jumps and large potential profits and losses.

Volatility

Volatility within the forex markets is basically a measure of the frequency and the size of changes to a currency’s value. If something is described as having high volatility, this simply means that that currency or currency pair has frequent movements within its market price and those movements can be sharp and large, whereas a currency that is considered to have lower volatility will simply move up and down at a more controlled pace and those movements will not be as sudden and the price is far less likely to simply jump up and down.

Both high and low volatility pairs can offer us some advantages as a trader, if we take high volatility, the profit potential of these pairs is far higher than low volatility pairs. Imply due to the fact that the markets will be moving a lot more and when they do move, they move a much larger distance. So a single trade on a highly volatile pair has a lot higher profit potential in a shorter period of time than one on a low volatile pair. Having said that, there are advantages to a low volatility pair too, they are much safer to trade, you do not need to worry about any sudden jumps in the wrong direction and they are often considered as being a lot easier to predict. The slow movements allow you to constantly analyze the markets and changing conditions, allowing you to get in and out at a much more comfortable level. Which one works for you the best will simply come down to your own preferences and your own trading style.

So that is Leverage, Liquidity, and Volatility, all three offer you very different advantages to trading forex, and combined they are the reason why forex trading is becoming so popular for both professionals and retail traders. Ensure that you get an understanding of how each one works, this will enable you to much better maintain your account and to understand the risks and advantages that you are getting from your account and the markets that you are trading. Do not be afraid to experiment with different pairs that offer different volatility and liquidity, part of being a good trader is trying out new ways to make a profit.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

How to Correctly Use an Economic Calendar

The Economic News Calendar, also known as the calendar of economic events, plays an important role in the life of every trader and investor in the world, whether this is a minor trader who speculates with a personal account or an operator trading as part of an institutional trading network (institutional operators). An economic calendar is a tool that shows the fundamental events that affect the trading environment of financial markets.

In financial markets like Forex, there are certain announcements that are made with some frequency that highlight very important events in the socio-political and economic world. These announcements come from government agencies, central banks, private organisations, lobbyists and others, and can sometimes serve as reference points on which economic policies are based and strategic movements are made in the business and political landscape.

For example, the onset of the global financial crisis led Governments around the world to respond in a political manner in accordance with how their countries and Governments were affected by the events from 2008 to 2010. In the eurozone, the sovereign debt crisis has boosted the change of governments, the implementation of economic policies and decisions. In the United States, we saw the birth of the Asset Rescue Program in Trouble (TARP), several major bailouts, and the easing policies of the Federal Reserve Bank. Several of these decisions were made around the world, changing the aspect of the calendar of economic news as we know it, forever.

The globalized nature of the world today means that these announcements directly affect the global economy, with far-reaching effects on how we live our lives and how future events will shape our future. Financial market operators have had to come to understand how these announcements affect the investment climate in a country, region, or global markets, and depending on the content and tone of these economic announcements, positive or negative sentiment in a currency, market or economy can develop. This in turn leads investors to operate in different markets in a certain way, as a result of the volatility that occurs. These ads are known as market news.

Market news is not published randomly but is published according to a well-planned month-to-month calendar, in a full-year cycle. This economic news publishing program is what is known as the economic calendar. For Forex traders, it is also known as the Forex calendar or Forex news calendar, because most of the news it shows has an immediate and direct (and sometimes lasting) impact on the currency market. Indeed, the economic calendar affects all markets, although the degree of affectation varies.

Components of the Economic Calendar

What is the Economic News Calendar made of? What is in this tool that traders need to consider? Here is a detailed description of the specific components of the Economic Calendar:

The date and time of publication of each economic news item included in the calendar. In this case, the operator can clearly see the exact time when the news will be released, which usually appears in Eastern United States time by default. Some economic calendars have tools that allow the operator to change time settings to match their local time. However, the global standard of reference is eastern time in the United States. Therefore, the operator needs to know how far from the Eastern Time Zone of the United States its own time zone is, in order to know the moments of the day when it must be attentive to the markets.

The economic news itself. Logically the trader should know what is economic news to be published and with which he is trying to act accordingly.

Below is a nice video created by Trading 212 regarding Economic Calendars…

In the case of Forex, the currency of the country of origin of each news item. This is the currency that is usually affected by the news, and therefore traders will be on the lookout for the currency pairs in question to see which pairs present the greatest trading opportunities. Usually, the ISO abbreviation of the currency will be displayed, or the flag of the country with the affected currency will be displayed.

The degree of impact on the market of the publication of the news. This is an indication of how strong the impact of the news can be on markets, measured by the degree of market volatility and the range of price movements. News on an economic calendar is classified into low-impact (green), medium-impact (amber), and high-impact (red) economic news. Some calendars will use the colour codes next to the news, while others may use stars (*) to indicate the degree of impact on the market so that the highest-impact news has a 5-star rating (*****) and low-impact news has two stars or even a single star.

Some economic calendar providers will display a «Detail» box. Operators can click here for more information on a particular news item, as well as the impact on the market in case there are higher than expected or lower than expected numbers.

Economic calendars usually show the previous value, expected value, present value, and revised value of each economic news item. This is where traders can get information about the benchmarks for each data and the actual numbers of the news as it arrives. Some providers provide a historical chart or template that shows the performance of a particular story in recent months or years for comparative analysis.

Sources of Economic News Calendars

The economic calendar can be obtained for free on the websites of almost every major Forex broker. There are also other external providers that can be useful. It is up to each trader to search the websites of Forex brokers, online market analysis sites, online forums related to markets, and analysis service providers to find a good economic calendar that offers complete and up-to-date information. Different economic calendar providers can add certain features that will make their calendar versions more attractive. This does not affect the dates and times of publication of each news item.

How to use the Economic Calendar?

Now that we know what the content of the economic calendar is, it is essential to understand how to use it correctly. While there are no strict rules on the use of economic calendars, here’s a guide on how this tool can be used to trade in markets like Forex.

Rule 1: Always study the news program on the economic calendar in a block of time of an allowance, and do this for the following month in advance. This is so that the trader can take note of the high-impact news and the dates and times on which this news is scheduled for publication. This allows you to plan your operations accordingly, so that you do not have open positions that may be negatively affected by the publication of the news, eliminating its gains or significantly increasing the unrealised losses of losing trades. It is impressive how many traders simply ignore this simple fact, at their own risk.

Rule 2: Use world time tools (showing the current time in any time zone) available in the search engines to know the time difference between the local time and the time shown in the economic calendar. This will allow you to adjust your time settings accordingly. This will help you not to miss the negotiation opportunities that will bring particular economic news.

Rule 3: Use historical data to study how a particular story affects markets. If you want to know what is the way in which a currency pair or index will react to the publication of a certain economic news item (as an important economic indicator), then the most appropriate response might be to study your past behavior using historical data and graphs. This will prevent a trader from setting a profit goal of say 100 pips, for a story that will only move the market around 50 pips, for example. It will also help to know whether an individual economic news item is unstable.

Rule 4: Trading only with high-impact news is recommended, as these are the events that move markets and create the volatility needed to produce good trading opportunities. Low-impact economic news does not create enough volatility, and therefore is not suitable for high-profit markets because it generates small-scale movements.

Rule 5: Use calendars that have automatic update tools that add the current numbers to the calendar at the time the news is published. This will help you closely monitor your operations.

Conclusion

In summary, we can conclude that an economic calendar is an important tool for traders in all financial markets. It must be used in a complete and correct manner so that operators can derive the maximum benefits from the information it provides. Sometimes an operator may have to combine two or three calendars in order to get everything they want from an economic calendar, as some may have additional features and have shortcomings in other respects.

Trading is mainly based on planning. Knowing the economic calendar well in advance can help the trader to plan his operations in such a way that he does not end up trapped in some of the surprises that may occur during economic news publications.

Also, note that the market is constantly evolving. Some economic news that was low-impact a few years ago has become more important to markets and has a high impact due to the emergence of new sectors that are now engines of the global economy. An example of this is housing data in the United States. Before 2006, some of the housing sector indicators were not very important, but as the subprime mortgage crisis was identified as the main cause behind the global financial crisis, US housing data has become a highly monitored economic news item.

Finally, the trader should be aware of adding new economic news and removing some that are irrelevant and even archaic. Some of this news can be highly impacted, such as the JOLTS employment report from the United States, which was born out of the labor sector crisis in that nation.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Forex Isn’t As Difficult As You Think: Here’s Why…

With all the warning signs that you got all over the place about trading, the little notices that say things like “Risk Warning: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 77% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with IC Markets (EU) Ltd. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.” You would think that trading would be pretty hard wouldn’t you? Well, the truth of the matter is that trading forex is simply not that difficult, at least not as difficult as you may think it is.

That is quite a bold thing to say, considering so many people have lost money. In fact, a lot of people have lost everything that they own due to trading, but is that because it is hard? Or is it due to the fact that there may have been some flaws in their plans, or even in their own personality which has caused them to lose, or maybe it was simply the unfortunate event where they signed up with a scammy broker or apparent account manager. Whatever the reason was, there are things that you can do to prevent these losses and ultimately make forex trading a lot simpler and dare we say it, easier.

The concept behind trading is simple, we are taking one currency, converting it to another, and then converting it back once the price of the currencies has changed. If they change in the right direction then we profit, if they change in the wrong direction then we lose. That is the very basic concept of trading and why it is fundamentally very easy to do. All you need to get started is a broker, of which there are thousands, a little money, some brokers allow you to trade from as little as $10, and an internet connection. You can then use your phone or computer to load up an application and start trading, that is as easy as it is to start trading.

So if it is so easy, why do so many people fail and lose money? The simple fact is that they did something wrong, it was not the markets that did anything wrong, they work how they work. It is up to use to analyse and work out what it is that they will be doing, something that a lot of these losing traders did not do due to either a lack of knowledge or simply not being bothered and wanting some quick profits. Trading and forex are not rich quick schemes, even though it is described like this in various places. It is a methodical, long-term endeavor that takes patience and understanding.

Forex is all about creating a plan and then sticking to it, if you are able to do this then there is a good chance that you could end up being a successful and profitable trader. When we start trading we always need to create a trading plan, this plan then includes a number of different things like our strategy and our risk management plans. These things combined make it so that trading can become a lot simpler, it can be a lot more straightforward and more importantly, it can become a lot easier.

Your trading plan should involve creating your strategy. It is important to understand that you need to develop a good understanding of your strategy. Simply having one is not good enough, you need to understand how it works and also why it works. Doing this will enable you to adapt things should the market conditions change, and they will change, regularly. Being able to adapt will mean that you are able to maintain your profitability and also keep risks low in multiple different trading conditions, something that a lot of new traders fail and so end up losing out.

The other and arguably the most important thing that you need to have in place in order to make trading more successful and easier is our risk management plan. This will set out the different aspects of you trading that is to do with risk Your risk to reward ratio will detail how much you will risk on each trade and how much you are aiming to profit. With this being a positive ratio, 3:1 as an example, you only need to be right 33% of the time in order to be profitable, something that is much more achievable than some people who try and be right 80% of the time. This risk management plan will also detail things such as where you will be putting your stop losses. Trading without a stop-loss, putting extra risk on your account, is not something you want to be doing at all.

Another tip for making trading easier is to keep a trading journal. This journal is somewhere that you will be writing down pretty much everything that you do. It is a little tedious and a little boring, but it is vital and doing it gives you access to a whole lot of information that is beneficial to you. You are able to use what you have written down to analyse your own trading, to find out what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. You can then use this to try and alter your trading or your trading rules to be a little more profitable. Consistency in doing this will result in much safer and more profitable trading.

The final tip to give you is simply the fact that you need to ensure that you are not taking on any scams. There are a lot of them out there, do not take people’s word for granted and if something looks like it is going to be too good to be true, it most certainly is, so beware. Trade yourself, learn yourself and you will thank yourself for it, as you will be able to trade for years to come and will be able to adapt should you need to, not something you would be able to do if you were relying on someone else.

Trading seems very difficult from the outside, especially with all the warnings about it, but when you dig a little deeper there are things and rules set in place that are there to protect you. These are there to make things easier for you and they are there to help you to be profitable. Do not rush in, plan your trades, plan your education and things will end up being a lot easier than you may think they are.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

How to Start Investing in Forex

Forex or Forex Trading is a market, also known as OTC (Over-the-counter) and is the largest market in which billions of dollars are executed daily. It’s even bigger than America’s stock markets. But given its OTC nature, no trader can really calculate the correct numbers regarding currency rotation. However, foreign exchange is in fact a large market and is therefore integrated by many participants. From your bank or from large specialized investment firms, foreign exchange markets always offer a piece of the action to whoever you are and wherever you are (even from home).

The basic concept of currency trading is very simple. You trade or speculate against other traders in the direction that you take a currency. Therefore, if you believe the euro will rise, you WOULD COMPARE the euro, or SELL the euro if you are convinced that the euro would fall. It is as easy as that.

Learn the Fundamentals of Currency

Before you prepare to deposit your funds and start trading there are some important points you must understand, each of which are described below.

Brokers of the Forex: To start trading with Forex, you will need to operate with the help of a foreign exchange broker. There are many currency brokers that allow you to open a forex account with just $5 dollars. The forex broker is the one who allows your purchase and sales orders and also allows you to investigate the markets (also known as technical analysis or fundamental analysis) to help you make the best decisions…and obviously allows you to deposit more funds or withdraw your benefits whenever you want.

Trading Venue: You need to have a trading platform from which you can conduct your transactions, which are then sent to the settlement broker. In addition, a trading platform is essential to enable it to carry out its technical analysis and also to view current market prices. Most retail brokers offer the MT4 trading platform (Metatrader 4), which is free. You can also open a Forex Trading demo account and practice trading with virtual money forex to gain the necessary experience before trading with real money.

Timetables of Forex Trading: While you may have heard that currency markets never sleep, you really do. Firstly, you will not be able to trade on weekends (Sundays and Saturdays). But for the other days of the week, the currency market works 24 hours a day. This is due to the fact that currency trading is global. At any time, you will always find an overlap of a new market session while closing the previous market. What time of day or what trading market session plays an important role if you are an intra-day trader or a scalper? Now that you already have an overview of Forex trading, here are some final tips to remember before you start trading for yourself.

Pips: Pip is a measure of the change in the value of a currency pair and is the fifth decimal place. For example, if EUR/USD changes from 1.31428 to 1.31429, the change is called 1Pip (1.31426 – 1.31427 = 0.00001). When you negotiate, the more pips you make, the more benefit you have. Example: Buying EUR/USD at 1.31428 and selling (or closing your trade) at 1.31528 would give you 100 Pips in earnings.

Quotations for the Reading: Forex quotes are presented at a Bid and Ask price (which vary in pips and from one broker to another). The price of the Offer is the price at which it can be bought and the Selling Price is the price that can be sold. Therefore, a EUR/USD quote would look like this 1.31428 (Bid) /1.31420 (Ask).

What is the Spread? Spread is no more than the difference between the price Bid and Ask. Therefore, in the above example, for 1.31428 / 1.31420, the spread would be 8 Pips.

What is an Asset Leverage? Leverage is the amount of capital by which you can ask your broker to expand (or increase) its trading value. Leverage is often quoted in relationships like 1:50, which means that when you trade with a leverage of 1:50, your $100 is magnified to $50,000. Leverage is very important both in terms of making more profits and risk management and therefore its operations.

What is a Batch? Much is a unit by which you conduct your trade. In financial terms, much is also known as a contract. There are pre-established lots (or contract sizes) that you can negotiate. For example, a standard batch is no more than 100,000 units (known as 1 batch).

Tables of the Reading: The ability to understand and read graphics is very essential for trading. Depending on your approach, you have the ability to choose between a line, bars, or candles and trading accordingly (for example, trading based on candle patterns).

Placing orders (How to buy and sell): In Forex trading, it is possible to buy or sell any currency pair. Most trading platforms give you this option. You buy when you think the price will rise and you sell when you think the price will fall. There is common terminology used in foreign exchange trading, which is Buy Low, Sell High; that is an important point to remember.

Types of Orders: In addition to buying and selling, another point to remember is the types of orders. There are two types of basic orders: market orders and pending orders. At the time of clicking on “Sell” or “Buy”, you are basically buying (or selling) at the current market price. On the other hand, a limited order tells the broker that he wants to buy or sell only at a certain price.

Find a Forex Broker

As mentioned, there are many Forex brokers in the market today and therefore you may feel extremely confused about how to choose the currency broker that is right for you. To summarize briefly, remember the following points when choosing a forex broker. Look for a regulated Forex broker, this is extremely important to stay away from scam situations.

  • See if the broker sets a minimum deposit
  • What is the advantage you have with a broker?
  • What is the minimum size of the contract you can negotiate?
  • Types of deposit and withdrawal, as well as terms and conditions
  • Trading methods allowed by the broker

Start Operating

Finally, now you have chosen a Forex broker to trade with him, it is recommended to first open a demo account or a practice account. Most Forex brokers offer unlimited demo trading accounts (but will be disabled if not used for 30 days). This is an excellent way to be familiar with foreign exchange markets and also help you understand your style of trading (scalper or intraday trading, swing trading, etc.) and approach (fundamental or technical analysis). You can look for various commercial methods and systems or you can develop yourself when you have an excellent knowledge of the technique or fundamental indicators.

Conclusion

Forex trading is one of the most dynamic and active forms of trading in financial markets. The heart of everything is the basic fluctuations in currency values that drive everything else. Learning to trade Forex and understanding foreign exchange markets can provide a good basis for trading other markets such as derivatives or equities.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Deliberate Practice Trading: What It Is and Why You Should Be Doing It

You would have most likely have been told plenty of times that if you want to be good at something, you will need to practice, practice and practice. The same goes for trading, you will only become truly good at it, or more efficient at it if you put in the work and practice. The practice needs to be focused though, you need to concentrate on a specific aspect of your trading, if you are struggling with your analysis speed, then there is no point in practicing other aspects of trading. Doing these things over and over is known as deliberate practice, the idea of doing the same thing over and over so that you improve on it.

Practicing is not all about the simple thing of doing something over and over though, in order for it to be effective you also need to have some additional aspects thrown in, if you are practicing something, how are you going to work out whether or not you are doing better now than you were before? You would of course have some form of measurement, a way of seeing your progress, and a way of ensuring that you are in fact getting better at what you are doing.

If you are going for your analysis time, simply start a stopwatch before you start and then end it when you finish, this was you can see the progress, of course, this is tricky in this regard as different analysis takes different time, especially if there is more happening in the markets, so ensure that whatever way you measure it, it is recordable and has as much information that is needed to make it relevant. So when we look at the art of deliberate practice, we can break it down into three different stages:

The Act

The act is simply doing what it is that you need to do, the result of what you do doesn’t matter, it can be either successful or not successful, this does not matter. The important thing is that you tried to do it and that you tried your best. When we think about this in a trading scenario, it is simply the act of putting on trades, either in demo or in live (although if you are just starting out then we would recommend demo trades).

Feedback

One of the things that many people find hard is to give themselves some honest feedback, people often either go too nicely or too harshly on themselves. So instead you need to be able to give yourself some third-party feedback. You can still do this by yourself, but it will require you to record everything that you have done and everything that there is to know about each action that you have taken. This will then allow you to look back at it from a new point of view to see what has gone wrong and what has gone well. Keeping a trading journal is perfect for this.

Incorporation

The third stage of trading is the incorporation of the information you have received. This is where you need to look at the feedback that you received and then put it into action. If there is something that is constantly going wrong, then stop doing it, look at what it is and adjust it to hopefully be more successful. If you do this with a new aspect every single day then you will be slowly changing your routines and your trading habits to be better suited and more successful. Constantly going through the three cycles will keep the improvements coming through this form of practice.

Those are the three stages of deliberate practice, but we need to remember that it doesn’t always start out easy, trading and this form of practice get easier and quicker the more you do it. When you first start out you will be pretty slow, working out what to write down and then working out what it actually means. The more that you do it though, the better you will be at it and the quicker the entire process becomes.

There are however things that people do, and do quite a lot which can hamper the progress of this form of deliberate trading, so let’s take a little look at what they are, remember, these are things that you need to try and avoid as much as you can, as they will only end up setting you back.

Mindlessness

The act of deliberate trading as we discussed above is all about repeating a certain action with the mind that you will be improving it. The problem comes from that old saying of doing something for 10,000 hours and you will be an expert. Unfortunately, this is not the case. If you are simply doing something over and over without understanding why you are doing it, or mindfully recording what you’re doing, then the work that you are putting in is pretty much useless. Simply repeating something does not mean progress, you need to have a focus on the errors and then rectify them, not simply doing it over and over again.

Inconsistency

Being consistent is important, at the start of the process you need to be consistent in order to properly work out where the weak spots are and what it is that you need to improve. Once you are past that initial stage then consistency is important in order to ensure that you are constantly doing the right thing and that you will not end up falling back into the bad habits which were causing the issues in the first place. Track errors, change them, and then keep them changed.

Not Tracking Progress

You need to be tracking your progress and what it is that you are doing. This cannot be said enough as even when not doing this form of practicing, you should be tracking what it is that you are doing. If you aren’t doing this, how are you going to know whether or not you have made any progress? The simple answer is that you won’t. We understand that it takes up time and that it can be boring, but it is so vital that you do it that if you manage to forget, it makes the entire process completely pointless and a waste of time. So set up a trading journal, you will thank yourself in the long run, as there are very very few successful traders without one.

Pride

Pride can be a good thing, being proud of the work that you do is always good, but you don’t want to let it take over. If you do, then it can cause you to simply stop improving If you are too proud of your work, why would you need to improve it? It’s already perfect. If you have this mentality then your progress will simply stop and you will just keep on doing exactly what it is that you are doing. So don’t hold onto things too much and remember that anything may need changing at some point, just be open and ready when it needs to be changed.

Have you been practicing or do you plan on doing it? Just remember to always be open to changes, record what it is that you are doing and you will be able to improve on your overall trading. Practice can be fantastic too, so as long as you understand why you are doing it and not simply aimlessly doing something over and over again.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

How to Balance Your Forex Investment Portfolio

From whom to copy more efficient transactions? From a trader with a high performance 2 months a year, but has a positive balance at the end of the year, or from a trader with a small but stable income throughout the year? Balancing an investment portfolio under the investor’s objectives allows the investor to reduce potential risks and increase potential earnings. Read on and you will know what balancing methods exist and what you should take into account when choosing a trader to copy Forex transactions.

Many times we have talked in previous articles about what is copying of transactions in the currency market. Today I’m going to try to talk to you about how and under what criteria choose traders to make their investment portfolio as balanced and optimized as possible in terms of risk and profitability.

Optimising Risk and Profitability

The greater the potential benefit, the greater the risk of loss. A strategy, involving the opening of 2 operations per week (conventionally) is riskier than the strategy with 10 operations per week with the same weekly profit. The first one saves time, though.

Before you start building your balanced investment portfolio, answer the following questions:

What’s more important to you, low risk or maximum benefit?

Do you prefer a strategy with a quick one-off profit, but with high risk or a stable income with low risk, but slower? What is more important to you, save time but risk or spend more time but with less risk of loss?

There are two approaches to optimising the investment portfolio:

“Don’t put all the eggs in a basket”. Create a balanced investment portfolio. Most of the assets here are financial assets with an average yield level and moderate volatility, their portfolio share can reach 60%-80%. Assets whose price is less dependent on Forex market fluctuations and key factors prevail. The rest comes from conservative and high-risk/high-yield instruments. For example, cryptocurrencies and refuge assets (gold/US treasury bonds).

“Put all the eggs in a basket, but take care of the basket itself”. Creating multiple portfolios: venture capital, with a high level of risk, for those who are willing to risk money painlessly, but dream of big quick wins. Or several conservative portfolios, for investors interested in lower risk and a stable long-term income. Similar approaches can be applied when creating an investment portfolio when copying transactions.

Criteria for Balancing

The basic criteria for balancing and optimizing the portfolio of traders are:

Level of profitability of the trader. Traders who show very high profitability in financial markets tend to use Martingale and other high-risk trading strategies. The following screen shows the radical difference in profitability levels in the last 4 months.

Type of strategy used. Traders are unwilling to disclose the strategy they applied, but it could be partially deciphered by the nature of equity. Learn more about it and evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy here.

The volume of the trader’s own assets. The higher the amount of the trader deposit, the more likely you will be to trade cautiously.

Frequency of Transactions

How to optimise the risks of an investment portfolio:

  1. Compare the requirements of the trading strategy of the trader with its capabilities.

This is the deposit amount used for leverage/volume of position, etc. If your deposit is USD 100, the trader deposit you copy is USD 1000. Thus, the trader can withstand a big downsizing, while their trades will close under stop out. The same applies to the volume of the position. If you use leverage, place a large volume of trades, your positions could close earlier under a stop out.

Council. If your deposit differs greatly from the deposit of your trader manager, change the type of copy trading, set the parameter “Proportionally to my funds” or “% of the volume of each transaction”. The second option is much more convenient if you are copying the transactions of multiple traders simultaneously. Consider the minimum amount of investment specified by the trader.

  1. Diversify traders’ strategies according to the following criteria:

Profitability and risk. These parameters are commonly inversely correlated, but not always. If you look at a return of 100%-200%-500% per month, keep in mind that it can only be once. (“Good luck”, otherwise, everyone would already be millionaires). But if the trader can get such a return again, you are lucky to find such a trader!

Stable earnings are important. The low performance of a trader does not mean low risks, it may indicate a lack of professionalism. And vice versa, a stable high income does not always mean high risk but speaks of a professional trader.

Amount and time of open transactions. Select traders and strategies so that you do not create a simultaneous deposit charge. In other words, operations according to different strategies must be opened at different times (for example, in different negotiation sessions) and not simultaneously.

Type of strategy. Add long-term and short-term strategies to your portfolio simultaneously.

Instruments. Add to your investment portfolio traders trading not only currency pairs but also other types of assets, such as stocks or commodities.

  1. Pay attention to the following parameters:

Trader Commission. The first trader with an average return of 100% per month charges a 50% commission. The second trader has a return of 70%, but a commission of 20%. What would be the risk? Undoubtedly, the second option is rather more profitable.

Account Life. In a perfect situation, the account of the trader you want to copy should have existed for at least one year. There must be no interruptions in trading on this account.

Maximum reduction over the lifetime of the account and reductions over individual periods. A prolonged reduction means that it does not work in a stable way.

Performance stability every month. The greater the difference between monthly performance, the less stable the strategy and the greater the risk.

The number of people who copy the signals from the trader. The more investors, the better. The total amount of money in the accounts of copying investors is also important. But we must always bear in mind that all investors do not have a sensible approach to selecting a trader. There can be a lot of copying investors because the trader’s commission is low and profitability is high (i.e., high risks).

Frequency of deposits that a trader makes. If the trader gradually increases trading volumes, it means that he has confidence and a serious spirit of success.

And finally, one more tip. No strategy can be profitable forever. If a trader changes strategy, approaches trading or even takes a break, it will have a direct impact on the structure of the investment portfolio. If you notice a further reduction in deposits, a sharp drop in profitability, or another sign of stability, rebalance your portfolio.

Conclusion

There is no perfect investment strategy on how to create an optimally balanced investment portfolio, but there are ways to optimize your portfolio according to your personality, objectives, and risk. It’s up to you!

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Top 10 Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier About Forex

Hindsight is a fantastic thing for those of us that have been trading for a long time. We made a lot of mistakes or didn’t do things quite the right way when we started out, things that we wish we had known or done differently. For those just starting now, you can take advantage of the fact that we have learned a lot of new things about our trading and the things that we can do, meaning that you can start off where we are now, rather than at the very start of a trading journey. So here are ten things that we wish we had known earlier in our trading career.

1. No single best time to trade: When I started out trading, I was told that there are certain times during the day that you need to trade at, and should pretty much avoid the rest, this is simply not the case Yes there are times where there is a lot more liquidity and movements in the markets, such as during the changeover of the different markets (London and New York for example). This does not, however, mean that this is the only time that you are able to trade, but this is what we thought, of course, we don’t mean that we weren’t able to, just that it would not be as beneficial for our strategy, now, however, we know that we can trade at pretty much anytime and it can be effective, bar some special circumstances or random news events.

2. The majority of traders lose money: If you are just coming into trading now then you probably already knew this, but a number of years ago, forex brokers did not have to have the disclaimer about the majority of traders losing money as they do now. In fact, they purposely hid it, which is why the requirement came into lace. Due to this, we believe that everyone could make a lot of money, but we now have the understanding that it is a hard thing to do, and this makes us more cautious and careful with the trades that we make.

3. Some currencies are linked: A number of the currency pairs and different assets are linked together, think about oil and CAD for instance, when the oil prices change, so does the CAD currency. Knowing which assets work with each other can give you a real advantage when it comes to knowing how the markets will move and how certain things like news events will affect other currencies, ones that say not necessarily be involved in the news.

4. You can profit with more losses than wins: Losses are a part of trading, in fact, it is something that all of us will experience and experience a lot of them. What we did not understand before is that you are actually able to be profitable by winning only a fraction of your overall trades. Our current strategy means that we only need to win 25% of our trades, something that is certainly achievable. Get your risk management and risk to reward ratio right and you can profit with just a small number of wins overall.

5. You can lose with more winners than losers: The other side to the coin mentioned above is the fact that you can actually lose money, even if you win 80% of your trades, if you do not use proper risk management techniques, then even if you have a number of winning trades, when you have a losing one, without the proper things in place, that one losing one could take away all of your profits and leave you out of pocket. This shows us how you need to get your risk management right, no matter the strategy that you are using.

6. Big news can be bad news: News events can be a little scary, yet we were not told this when we first started. Instead, we just traded whenever, with little regard to what news events were going on around us. This is where we went wrong, we wish we knew about the effects that news events can have on the markets, we have been trading through them and seeing ht markets jump massively up or down which has caused us both large wins, but also large losses, far more losses. So now we know not to trade during the news events, which has saved us a lot of money.

7. Don’t quit your job: Not something we actually did, at least not to begin with, but quitting your job was the goal of a lot of people, and we were told that it is certainly possible due to this, a large number of people took the leap a little too early. Unless you are really ready for it, with a lot of time and work behind you, then you will not be ready, no matter how well you are doing, you are not ready to quit your job unless you have been successful for at least a year in a row and are making more than you do with your job, only then should you do it. We weren’t told this before, and many learned it the hard way.

8. It can be good not to trade: A quick one at this, but you don’t actually need to trade. If the conditions aren’t right, then there is no need to actually put on any trades. It can be best to sit back and be patient. Better opportunities will come up and if the markets are not in line with your entry requirements, then putting on a trade would be considered a bad trade, something that we want to avoid doing as much as we possibly can.

9. You don’t need loads of indicators: Indicators can be fantastic, they can show you a whole host of information, but do you really need all of it? If you have too many indicators it can actually slow down your trading, each one that you add is another bit of information that you need to check before putting on a trade, the more you have, the more time that will take. Not to mention the fact that it could simply confuse you seeing so much information on the screen. Instead, choose just a few, this will enable you to get the info you need while still streamlining your trading and making it much quicker. Oh, and make sure they are at least relevant to your strategy and not just simply random indicators because they look cool.

10. Forex is long term: We came into trading like many others did, with the idea that we can make a lot of money and make it very quickly, we now know that this is north e case and instead Forex and trading are long term things where we can build for our future. Trying to make a lot quickly will only cause you to lose your deposited capital, so take your time and slowly build your balance rather than going for the big bucks.

Those are 10 of the things that we wish we had known when starting out our trading carers. You probably know most of them already as the information is much more accessible and people have been through the same experiences as us and shared them online. There will of course be learning opportunities and things that you will develop that you wished you knew before, but ultimately that is life and will happen with everything that we do.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Addicted to Forex? Us Too. Here’s 5 Reasons Why We Just Can’t Get Enough!

Forex can be exciting, it can be exhilarating, it can be amazing but it can also be devastating, no matter what it is doing, there is one thing that will remain true, we are absolutely addicted to it. For whatever reason, once we started trading we just could not stop, and there are a lot of other people out there too that have the exact same feelings. We are going to be looking at some of the reasons why we are completely addicted to trading, as well as some of the reasons that have been given by those of you on various websites around the internet.

The Profits

Let’s be honest, a lot of you probably started trading because of the potential profits that you could make, and then as soon as you started making them you simply did not want to stop. This is a perfectly natural reaction and thankfully, it has a positive outcome to it. When those profits start rolling in you will do what you can to make more, to keep it consistent, and to ensure that you continuously earn those big bucks. When you achieve what it is that you set out to do it can give you a great feeling and so we will want to continue to feel that, hence why these profits keep us coming back for more.

The Highs…And Lows

Forex is full of highs and lows, and it is mainly those highs that give us the adrenaline, it gives us the feeling that we can do anything, that we are invincible, and that we can make a lot of money. However, with forex, there are also those lows, when things aren’t quite going right for us, when we have made mistakes and even losses. However, the next trade, we could be on a high again, this is a rollercoaster, trading and forex is a rollercoaster, and it is a rollercoaster that we do not want to get off. When your feelings and emotions are up and down rapidly, it gives you a real yearning, it makes you want more. Those highs that we experience can be similar to those that you experience when traveling 100 mph on a rollercoaster, those coasters are popular, and so is trading.

It Gives Us a Feeling of Belonging

Forex traders often act as a community due to this it can actually give you a sense of belonging, to be a part of a group. Many traders sit at home by themselves, it can be lonely, loved ones may not understand things and neither do your friends or maybe you don’t have friends, either way, it is a pretty lonely thing to do. However, there are a lot of trading communities out there, communities where traders come together to help each other, to share ideas, and to simply meet one another. These sorts of communities can give us a new home, somewhere where we can talk to like-minded people about things that we enjoy, we can get ideas from them, new trades, test our analysis on people and more, these communities are fantastic and the sense of belonging can be addicting all by itself.

Hitting Milestones

Milestones are little goals that we set ourselves, if you are setting them properly then they will be set up in a way that will make them easy to achieve and also in set increments, increments that work with one another to lead us to the next one. When set up in this way we feel that we are always achieving something, this helps us to motivate ourselves and to push us to continue. Each time we achieve one we feel great, we feel that we want to continue, to push to the next one, and with each milestone being hit we get a little more addicted to trying to hit the next one, not to mention that fact that with each milestone we are being a little more successful and we are making a little bit more money, the main reason why so many of us started trading in the first place.

It Gives Us A Better Life

This kind of takes in a lot of the other things that we mentioned above, when we trade, we make a bit of money, that money can then be used on the sweeter things in life, to allow us to treat ourselves and to give us a little more financial freedom than we otherwise would have had, heck, it even lets us treat our significant other. Of course, it can have the opposite, cause us to lose things, but when it comes to our love of trading, we of course think about the good things it brings us and the improvements that it allows us to make to our everyday life.

Those are some of the things that make us addicted to trading, we love it, it gives us highs, it gives us profits and it gives us a community to be a part of, things that make it worthwhile for us, even though those losses and lows that come with it.

While trading is great, and we speak about how we love doing it, we do have to mention one thing though, those with an actual addiction, not just a real fondness of trading should try and seek help. Being addicted to something can actually ruin lives and when it comes to anything that involves finances, from gambling to forex trading, it can devastate lives. If you think that you or someone that you know is actually addicted to trading, then you should do what you can to try and seek help for them, try to do this as soon as you can, the earlier to catch it, the earlier that you can help that person get out of it.

Trading addiction can cause you to spend all your money, to use the money you cannot afford to use, so do what you can to get out of it, and most importantly, do not be afraid to ask for help, help is out there, and waiting for you.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Top 15 Undeniable Reasons to Love Forex Trading

When it comes to trading, there are a lot of things that we love about it, we would not be trading if we didn’t love it after all. We are going to be looking at 15 of the reasons why we really love to trade and how those different loves affect our outlook at our trading.

1- You can make money.

Who doesn’t love this aspect of trading? The fact that you can make a little extra money, or even a lot of money is a real draw-in for a lot of people and it is for us too. For a lot of people, the fact that you can make money is the initial draw in and the reason why a  lot of people trade, if there was not an opportunity to make money then there would be far fewer people actually trading.

2- Anyone can do it.

The great thing about trading is that pretty much anyone can do it, of course, there are a few limitations like needing to be over the age of 18 and to have access to a computer or phone, but otherwise, there is pretty much nothing stopping you from taking part, brokers are accessible, the markets are too. If you want to trade, there is always a way of managing to do it.

3- It’s very accessible.

As with the above, trading is getting more and more accessible and it has never been easier to get involved. You only need as little as $10 or even $1 for some brokers to get started. You can also access it from anywhere that has an internet connection using a desktop computer, a laptop, or even a smartphone, heck even some fridges have the capability of doing it now too. If you want to trade, there are more than enough ways to get involved and it is very easy to get started.

4- You can do it on your phone.

As we mentioned above, your smartphone is not a full-fledged trading terminal, years ago people would never have thought that they would be able to trade on their phone, now you can. On the train, on the couch, on the toilet, no matter where you are, as long as you have your phone with you and an internet connection, then you can very easily start trading.

5- It doesn’t take long.

You don’t need to be sat in front of the computer to make trades, it can be done in a few minutes, of course when you are first starting out it will take quite a bit longer, and you need to do the initial learning, but once you know what you are doing, you can get through your trading pretty quickly. That is something that we love as we do not want to spend 5 hours a day putting on trades.

6- It provides good reading material.

There is a lot of information when it comes to trading which is great for those that have the time to read. You can read up on things pretty much anywhere you are and there will always be something new for you to read and learn about. No matter the sort of writings you like from fact to fiction, there will be some related to trading that will suit your tastes.

7- There is a great community.

The trading community is one of the best, once you get past the plastic traders or those trying to get other people’s money, the community is fantastic. They are always there ready to help, to share ideas, and to discuss different things related to trading and the markets. There are a number of different communities out there so it shouldn’t be too hard to find one that suits you. They are also a great place to let off steam and the frustrations from trading.

8- You can work from home.

One of the main draws for a lot of people is that you can work from home, you can choose your own times to trade, you can trade as much or as little as you want and you can have a nice lie each day. It is fantastic being able to trade from home and to avoid the long daily commute that you used to do when you worked your previous 9 to 5 job.

9- You don’t have a boss.

Most of us hate having a boss, it is something that pretty much any job comes with and it is something that we strive to get away from. Trading is the perfect place to get rid of your boss and to basically be your own boss. Lots of freedom to do what you need without someone peering over your shoulder is a fantastic feeling and one that trading can very much provide you.

10- There are a lot of assets to trade.

There are a lot of options and assets to choose from, you will always be able to find one to trade and one that suits your style of trading. If one is going slow, fund another, there will always be options. That is the fantastic thing about trading, there are currency pairs, oils, metals, stocks, and more to choose from, so you will always have things to do and it will always be exciting.

11- It’s never boring.

Trading is never boring, things are always happening and this makes it so good to trade. Just when you think you will have a quiet period, something will happen, a news event, a disaster somewhere, whatever it is it can really shake up the markets and move things about. Even when you have trades open, you will need to keep an eye on them simply because anything could cause the markets to move. Some currencies can be slow, but there are others that will certainly be doing something.

12- Helps you control risks in life.

A part of trading is risk management, if you’re able to do it during your time trading then you can certainly take that into other aspects of your life too. Take what you learn and start reducing the risks that you are taking in other aspects of your life too.

13- It’s a profitable hobby.

Hobbies often cost you a lot of money, trading is a little different, it can actually help you to make money, not many people can say that their hobby brings them additional income rather than costing it. It takes time and work, but it can certainly help you to make a little extra on the side.

14- You can trade at any time.

There are no limits as to when you can trade. You can trade first thing in the morning, late in the afternoon, or in the middle of the night, the markets are always open. They close over the weekends but otherwise, they are a 24/7 opportunity to make money that you certainly should be taking advantage of.

15- It provides a shot of adrenaline.

Trading can be exciting, it can really boost your adrenaline levels, especially when the trade is doing the right or wrong way, it can really pump us up and that is a great feeling, for many, it is what they trade for. If you find trading boring then you won’t get this, but for the rest of us, the excitement is enough, the money is a bonus.

Those are some of the reasons why we love trading forex and why you should too. There are of course more reasons out there, but these are the main ones that come to mind. Think about why you love trading, and keep that in mind next time you get frustrated or bored. We will always love trading, and so should you.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

How Much Can You Really Earn from Trading Forex?

How much can I make trading forex? This is a question that you hear quite a lot being thrown around or asked in various trading communities. The problem is that there isn’t a set answer for it. Forex is one of the most popular forms of trading and also one of the most profitable, most likely the reason why it became the most popular method in the first place. Forex trading takes place during the week, 24 hours a day which gives you a lot of opportunities to make some money. If you are here then you most likely know a little about the forex markets and how it works, but many simply just want to know how much they could potentially make, and so we are going to be looking into this, to try and work out what sorts of profits you will be able to bring in.

The problem is that there isn’t a simple answer. In fact, there are countless factors that will affect the amount of potential profits that you can make. Things like your account size, the risk management that you have in place, your trading strategy, and how much time that you have available to trade, these variables are different for each and every trader, so one answer won’t be the same for them all. There are no guarantees when it comes to profits, there are possibilities and probabilities, things that you need to take into consideration that will help to dictate how much you can make or more importantly, how much you can safely make. You also need to understand that you won’t make the same profits each month, it is variable, so you may be a profitable one, in a loss the next, or make $1000 one month and $3000 the next, there is no set income, all we can do is try to maximise the opportunities for profits.

Education

Have you ever tried to do something that people consider to be quite complicated and then get it perfect the first time? Probably not if you have, then there was most likely an element of luck involved in it. It is incredibly hard or in some cases completely impossible to make a successful career out of something that you understand very little of. You wouldn’t start installing a new boiler into your house if you had no idea about gas or water plumbing, it would most likely end in disaster if you did. The exact same thing can be said for forex trading, if you jump in with very little to no knowledge, then it will only end up as a disaster with you losing whatever money you had put in. It has happened to many people before and will continue to any other person that tries.

The forex markets are one of the most complex things to look at, with many different factors taking effect and influencing h movements, some within your control, but many more out of it. There are also a large number of ways that you are able to educate yourself about the markets and how they work. One of the most popular methods is by trial and error, it is, however, also one of the most costly, as each mistake has the potential to cost you money (unless you are sensible and using a demo account of course). This method involves you doing things, making trades, and then looking at the results, working out what worked and what did not, altering something, and trying again. It is easy to do but can take a booking time to master any form of trading this way, simply because you will be constantly making mistakes and adapting over a very long period of time.

There are also a number of different online learning platforms, websites that offer insights, information, and learning materials that you can use. Some of these sites are free and are a fantastic resource, giving you the basics of trading plus some ideas on different trading styles and strategies, well worth taking a look at, especially if you are not yet ready to jump in and make some actual trades. There are also paid websites, these often offer greater depth as well as some personal training, you must be wary of these sites though, they are often hidden behind a paywall with all sorts of marketing on top to make you want to jump in. Get some genuine reviews before you do, but if you find a good one, the amount of knowledge and information that you can get from them can really help to boost your initial trading knowledge.

There are also a number of different trading communities out there, these are places where different kinds of traders come to discuss their trades, their ideas, and what is going on within the forex markets. These are often fantastic places to receive feedback on your ideas, as well as to understand others’ viewpoints, which can give you a better insight into the markets and a viewpoint that you may not have otherwise considered. You need to remember though, that often the members of these sites are not experts and the majority are most likely in the same position as you, so use if your information and ideas, but do not consider what people say to be gospel.

Regardless of how you get your information, if you want to be a successful forex trader and to actually make a profit, you need to indulge yourself in information, you will never stop learning throughout your career, but the most vital point of education is the start, get a basic understanding before you trade, then build on that foundation as you go.

Discipline and Patience

Discipline and patience are probably two of the most vital traits that you can have as a trader and without them, you will be led down a road of bad trades and ultimately losses. Once you have gained some education and worked out a trading strategy, you would think that it would be a good idea to stick to what you have. Yet so many traders seem to forget this, an idea comes up in their head or they see someone is doing something and so they do that instead, going against what it is that they have been working towards, this ends up with a loss and another ross, not sticking to your plan is vital to your success.

Being patient and being disciplined allows you to wait for the correct moments to trade, sometimes there just aren’t opportunities, and if you want to make as much money as possible then you need to only take the opportunities that match what you have learned and what you strategy details, not doing this will lead to losses and ultimately will cause you to make less money or even a loss.

Starting Balance

Much like anything in the world, you need to have money in order to make money, the more you have the more you can make, it really is that simple, of course, you need to continue to use what we have mentioned above too. The higher your starting balance, the larger trade sixes you can make which will then lead to higher profits with each trade. If you start with an account balance of $100 then you won’t be able to make $1,000 a month, however, if your balance is $10,000 then it will be far easier and far more likely that you will be able to make $1,000 a month. Once your balance begins to grow, compounding will take effect and your profits will increase. However, it is important to remember that even with a large balance, you can still make very little or even a loss each month, so there is no guarantee that a large balance means large profits.

So the bottom line is that we are not able to accurately predict or guess how much you can make each month, it all comes down to the work that you put in, what you learn, your discipline, and how much you start your account with. If you are prepared to put in the work, to learn all that you can, to stay disciplined then you can certainly make a profit and become a profitable trader, however, we still can’t comment on exactly how much, that will be down to the work and the time that you put in.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

10 Things Steve Jobs Can Teach Us About FX Trading

At the onset of the digital awakening, Steve Jobs emerged as a symbol of innovativeness. His legacy precedes him but is no less of a wonder than his own set of traits. He was a true creative, a visionary, and a master salesman who set the grounds for how business was going to be done in years to come. He bestowed the world with not just amazing products but also with lasting lessons that we can and should apply to Forex trading as well.

  • Clear Vision & Focus

“Focusing is about saying no.” When Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997, he immediately stopped all experiments on products he considered futile. He diverted the company’s attention to the things that really mattered. “Focus on a few products because others would drag down the company.” As traders, we can sometimes get torn between our everyday life, developing our trading systems, and our hopes for the future. Steve Jobs made Apple take fewer projects to direct energy to what deserves improvement. More trades won’t make you a good trader but the right focus and prioritization will give you the impetus to become one. 

  • Results & Reinvention

Steve Jobs didn’t believe that people had to follow a system just because things had always been done that way. He often explained how we have “an opportunity to always question what we do.” This is a necessary approach in trading because we tend to read so much material on how to become successful traders but we may not be as devoted to testing and journaling to make this dream a reality. Each product Apple launched was a more supreme combination of features the market needed, which is a reflection of the effort put into their development. 

  • Passion

Steve Jobs believed that we should all do what we feel passionate about so that we can make changes around us. As an exceptionally passionate individual, he was able to motivate his company and employees to make history. This special love for his job was transmitted to the products and, hence, to the customers as well. As a trader, you are too making history and changing your (and/or your family’s) everyday life. We cannot become great with a half-hearted attitude. Go all the way now to build confidence and render results gradually.

  • Personal & Career Development

The man we know recognize as the face of digital expansion was once a college dropout. He also managed to get fired from his own company. Life wasn’t always easy and Steve Jobs certainly wasn’t an easy person to handle. Besides his genius and the success his attention to detail generated, he was also a human who made mistakes. His products and his mindset revealed how he always believed in innovation and improvement. Still, he didn’t rest his business’s growth solely on intuition; he made changes in the company, in the people he hired, and most importantly in himself. 

  • Perseverance

Steve Jobs himself said that passion fuels a person’s journey and any ordinary person would certainly quit unless there was any passion. If you see trading as a means to run away from your current boss or a way to finally prove to your ex-wife that you are the man, you won’t last the hurdles that come your way. Persistence needs vision; sustainability requires internal motivation. Don’t rely on the rose-colored glasses to cross the bridge for you. Also, accept your failures as lessons. As Steve Jobs said, “I didn’t see it then, but being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.” Sometimes, the best lessons are the most painful. Just power through.

  • Leadership

Steve Jobs was known for not wanting to delegate. He strived to be interwoven in every business facet. He knew about technology and sales which helped him translate his vision into products that are still sold around the globe. As traders, we need to understand different aspects of trading; while beginners will focus more on the vocabulary and understanding new terms, as they grow they will start to realize that other topics (e.g. news and elections) are of significant importance for trading accomplishments. Traders cannot say that they are only interested in one side of trading because they are owners, the CEO, and the employees all in one. As Steve Jobs put it, “The greatest people are self-managing.” 

  • Confidence

“You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust something – your gut, destiny, life,  karma, whatever – because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.” If you doubt your every step as a trader, you won’t get far. You need to believe in what you are doing. Learning and improving will additionally help build your stamina because positive self-talk is not what Steve Jobs relied on (at least not solely) to build an empire.

  • Facing Challenges

Steve Jobs was always able to pinpoint a problem and present it to others in looking for a way to resolve it. He never wavered thinking that it would go away. Traders too need to address any issues and not procrastinate because of their severity. Great minds charge forwards solving problems on the way. Steve Jobs took the responsibility for growth and so should you. 

  • Tech-savvy 

Mangers may not be that good at understanding the technical side of the business, but Steve Jobs was different. In the years that he wasn’t part of Apple, the company is said to have struggled immensely. Steve Jobs certainly wasn’t the best engineer but he was a man who knew how to get to what he wants. He always found ways to translate his ideas into reality. Traders may not know all instruments there are, but they do need to know how to use what they have properly or where more learning and training is required to reach perfection. 

  • Talent

As we said above, Steve Jobs wasn’t a top engineer but he knew how to recognize talent. He explained how “it doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Likewise, traders need to find tools that can assist them in trading as well as tell them what to do at key points in a trade. You don’t want to have to tweak your settings constantly or micromanage your trades all the time because this means your toolbox is flawed. 

Steve Jobs never feared failure. When he was fired from Apple, he went on and created NeXT, a computer platform development company. What turned out to be one of his monumental contributions was that he helped drive the development of Pixar, thus boosting the troubled animation industry. Steve Jobs understood his talents and passions and didn’t stop after his failure. Traders often get discouraged because they take losses.

The key ingredient is learning through one’s mistakes and taking the knowledge from one busies to another. We can derive so many lessons from him and his experience. Traders can learn about extremely important topics such as diversification and investment that we often believe is only possible for the wealthy. Steve Jobs never believed in money alone but experience and the message. What is your storyline? What is that great motivating factor that makes you go back to trading? And, finally, how is your routine able to support your vision?

“The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person.” 

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Check Out These Go-To Forex Resources

Knowledge is power alright, but where do you build that knowledge matters more. There is nothing worse than learning the wrong. Many successful investors are not really different from average people, they are just well informed and act. They are willing to put their capital to risk based on the information they have. Having valid and relevant information also requires the right timing, and this is the secret sauce. 

We are about to share with you one of the best sources of forex trading information sources you can find online, it is up to you to decide if you want to act upon them. These will be diversified on different aspects of trading, some are fundamental, others deal with technical analysis while some are specialized. Note that we will also try to provide less known resources since the majors are easier to find, and some other resources not mentioned before in our articles.

BabyPips.com

We must start with the beginners’ resource for learning all about forex and trading, even though it is popular. Of course, there is nothing for the seasoned investors here however, beginners would need an easy to consume resource to get literate about something serious as forex. It all starts here and it is important to deliver indulging content, forex and trading are not as complex as many people think. BabyPips portal does the job with good lined-up lesson follow-ups that just urge you to keep learning. 

Statista.com

Now let’s go into the world of statistics. If you want to get the picture, look at the picture. Charts about every market segment are on this website, pick any economic area and there it is under the magnifying glass. Many of Statista.com charts are used in other publications and the sources are credible. There is so much variety and so much information here it is easy to get lost, so it is advised to have a plan for what you want to research. Also, if you just want general articles they are also available, for example, a report on 2020 by the numbers covers the COVID-19 stats, economy, politics, and society. Investors take special attention to trends in certain markets and based on these one could understand the long-term implications on state currencies. 

finviz.com

A great resource if you want customized currency heatmaps, performance charts, and other stats scaled to different timeframes. Additionally, this portal provides more information on other related markets, not just forex. A free subscription covers most of the needs but if you want specials like backtesting, advanced charting, alerts, and more, you will have to subscribe. If your forex trading is based on basket correlations and price action, this portal is a must resource. 

dailyfx.com

A well-known company with great content not found on other portals, mostly because of its sentiment index indicator on many markets, but focused on forex. The sentiment index is not an easily found indicator as precise calculation requires a good sampling of traders’ positions only larger brokerage can have. Dailyfx sentiment report is just one of many other tools forex traders find useful. It is a great resource for strategies, currency data, education, market news, and more. 

fxcodebase.com

A fantastic resource for indicators and technical analysis if you do not mind the lack of website makeup. Custom-made indicators are the main takeaway however the forum gold nuggets could be found in other sections. Most traders have MetaTrader clients but Station II/Marketscope 2.0 is not far behind by use. Custom indicators for this platform are made daily so be sure to check it out. Of course, it does not end with custom indicators, find automated trading solutions, strategies, and coder help if you want to learn to code and make your own indicators. MetaTrader freebies have a separate section, with equally deep and fresh content. 

barchart.com

Barchart does not focus only on the currency majors but on exotics too. The forex market coverage is very wide and deep where you can find a good overlook of all things forex. One of the more interesting analyses is The Commitment of Traders Report and The Commitments of Traders Financial Traders (TFF) Report. They are both structured overviews that answer who are the major movers of the specific currency or market – large speculators, commercial or other small actors. If you want to look where the “smart money” is going, this is a good window.

Barchart has many other interesting tools that are worth checking out, such as the Forex News section for fundamental analysis and Long term Trends charts within the Market Pulse section. 

fxssi.com

Another interesting website featuring the sentiment type indicators like on DailyFX except there are a few additional tools to complement it. These tools are about Stop Loss clusters, similar to what some crypto exchanges feature with their charting. Then the OrderBook indicator, CurentRatio, and more. Some of these are not for free but the strategies that can be made with these are something not seen elsewhere. FXSSI is a specialized website for such contrarian trading strategies made for the MT4 platform, on top of that you will also see additional MT4 utilities for forex trading such as Sessions, Spread warner, Calendar (events), etc. Combining these will transform how your platform looks and more importantly, add analytical value to your trades. 

desynced.net

A rare find with thousands of indicators and the code behind them. This means that if you happen to be a coder you can also create and mix your own creations using the published coding lines. The only problem is the somewhat poor structure of the website, it is almost a list of indicators without really explaining their trading purpose. So some coding and trading knowledge is required to get some value out of the text but still a great resource, for Expert Advisor creators especially. 

The Secret Mindset YouTube Channel

If you are into indicators, this channel is one of the best when it comes to presenting them what they can do, their purpose, and what could be composed with them. The website, thesecretmindset.com has great articles too, but their videos are very well made (if you do not mind the accent) and will present trading ideas better. The videos are not biased, are not marketing anything, and very deep if you want to nerd out on strategies and indicators. Maybe the best value of this channel is that each video inspires listeners to try something of their own. Beginners will like how everything technical is explained easily but scientifically while experienced traders will enjoy new approaches that could be utilized for their strategies.

Categories
Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Why You Should Focus on Improving Your Trading Skills

Well, understandably, there are quite a few practical benefits you get from polishing your skills in trading:

While these are just a few perquisites you get from improving your trading skills, you should ask yourself what it is that you feel comfortable with or that you really need in your life.

Some people are fine with doing things halfway. They are at peace with what they have and they are not looking for more.

If you are not one of them, then great – we are going to go deep today.

Ok, so the first step is always to see what type of trading you are interested in.

This is a crucial point because depending on your trading style, there are many additional questions we can ask. For example, if you are a naked chart reader, we would not be focusing on your ability to test different indicators but on your ability to understand what the chart is suggesting.

Most of the time people don’t make any changes because everything is going well on the surface. As Idowu Koyenikan said, you must have a level of discontent to feel the urge to want to grow. Still, do we need to get there? Do we need to take a major loss just to see that something in our system is not working? It’s like with beginner traders who manage to get some unbelievable returns month after month only because of reckless money management. This, of course, is never sustainable and, just because they lack experience and don’t listen to experts, they face the consequences of their actions and choices real soon. 

You don’t want to get more than you bargained for and you don’t have to suffer. You need to be attentive to what your style of trading requires.

Therefore, the next step would be to see how you understand risk and how you manage it. This is vital for trading because, as a trader, you will soon learn that it’s not about winning but protecting your account from losses. The better you are at keeping your leverage balanced, the more in control you are of your emotions, but we will discuss this aspect of trading soon enough.

An excellent way to mitigate risk is to diversify your wealth structure (portfolio). As a trader, you have many different options – you can trade forex, stocks, bonds, ETFs, and so on. We cannot predict market behavior, but we can all agree on one thing – change is the only thing we can be sure of. The more you expand your portfolio, the further you are from putting all of your eggs into one basket. 

Now, to get to this point and level of expertise, you do need to invest in your analytical skills. And, even if you say that you are more of a learner from my mistakes type of person, you truly need to acknowledge your ownership in your growth. It simply isn’t enough to say that you made a mistake. The trading world is not that forgiving and your account will prove it sooner or later. 

So, how can we work on our analytical thinking? We journal our trades and we commit to backtesting and forward testing with diligence and a sense of purpose. You don’t have to like it but you do have to recognize its potential for it to work on a regular basis. Your notes are your strongest weapon because they help you track your progress, make conclusions, and think of additional tools, indicators, and strategies you can include in trading to improve your system and render better results. 

Also, make sure not to be too quick to make changes. Developing one’s skills is a process, not a pill you can take for everything to turn to gold. If you see that your trading plan is making you feel concerned, you should give yourself some space and base your judgment on a bigger sample size. You need more trades and much more notetaking to make such vital changes in your trading.

This, of course, will teach you how to do research. In the same way you had to discover different resources on how to trade, now you need to be a detective and investigate how your actions and decisions generated specific results. This process does not have to be dull if you don’t build up unnecessary tension inside and attach negative meanings to it. This approach will help you tackle one of the key trading challenges – ensuring that you have fewer, not more, losses. What you come up with after such research may differ from other traders, but it is nonetheless relevant for you as we are all essentially different people.

Additionally, as traders, we really need to develop an insight into what the market needs. We may think something is relevant but if our everyday trading experience points at some other areas or skills, we cannot turn a blind eye and expect the problem to resolve itself. Similarly, we should strive to learn the conditions under which the market is the most permeable and agreeable with what we aim to achieve. For example, you should learn that unfavorable periods, such as elections, are there to be avoided because we do not need any excess volatility; we need flowing waters and a supportive breeze, not full-blown hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcano eruptions. Unless you adore these risky opportunities.

And, last but not least, you should really devote energy and attention to understanding yourself. Traders are often their own greatest sabotage. If you don’t know what you react to compulsively and why you are like a baby on its own – innocent and dangerous to yourself. Luckily, we are very predictable beings, so if you just take a little time and focus a little more on your emotional reactions, you can learn a great deal about what you do to hinder your personal development and financial growth. Psychology is a fundamental step in becoming a professional trader and ensuring a consistent money flow.

Still, remember that even if you can tick all of the points we listed at the beginning of this article and throughout the previous paragraphs, there is always room for improvement. Often we procrastinate to a large extent because we feel that what we need to do is big – sometimes in terms of the time and effort, we need to invest and, other times, in terms of the importance of what needs to be done.

In case you didn’t know…

We want things to be so perfect, but what we don’t understand is that this lack of confidence won’t go away unless we do something about it. And, the more we push things aside, trying to ignore whatever seems to be bugging us, the more they resurface. It’s like with the Hydra, the monster from Greek mythology – if you cut one head off, two more would grow back immediately. This is how you alone let yourself play out a part in this vicious circle.

Now, we have two major contemplative questions for you:

Who benefits from you staying in this loop of never progressing?

What is bigger – the fear of success or fear of failure?

The psychological benefits are no less impressive or significant than the increase in money in your account. Always keep in mind that what is essential is invisible to the eye (Little Prince).

Trust the process and trust yourself

Still, if you ever feel overwhelmed with the improvements you need to make, just take one thing at a time. Take that notebook and write down one—three things that you can do each day to improve your trading skills. 

Good luck!

Categories
Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

You’ll Kick Yourself for Not Knowing This About Forex…

While many stock enthusiasts who turned forex traders assume that currencies behave in the same fashion, this is far from true. First of all, currencies, unlike stocks, run from any money influx. If you take a look at any currency pair in the chart, you will see that the price eventually always goes in the opposite direction from where most traders are found. This happens because the forex market does depend on money flow as the stock one does.

The currency market is only governed by big baking institutions that make a profit when traders lose. They always step in when they find that most traders are going to give up so they can earn more. This often happens with reversal traders because they are so bent on trying to call a reversal that they chase the price going in one direction. However, the price won’t move until most traders give up. This is the essential mechanism of how prices change in this market – through big banks’ manipulation. That is why it is absolutely necessary that you build your system and do not do what the majority does. Of course, this article is just an observation.

Can we beat the big banks?

Our short answer is no. You cannot and you should not even attempt this because it is pointless. Many traders already tried to achieve this by acquiring volume information. They thought that the DOM indicator, for example, could tell them how to play the big banks’ game. Unfortunately, they failed to understand the numbers concerning volume. The DOM will never tell you anything about the type of orders that comprise the volume, whether they are limit or stop orders, or if the majority is entering long or short trades at the time. Not only is the missing information a crucial component but this approach will inevitably put you in the losing group. 

The majority of traders attempted to do exactly what the big banks were doing, which is the reason why so many traders lost most trades and accounts. The role of the big banks has always been clear and attempting to outsmart the one entity with more information than anyone else in the forex market possesses at any given time is a sure way to experience great losses. Hence, to beat the game, you should learn how to use and interpret the information you come by so that you can rise above their radar and focus your attention elsewhere.

Are there any indicators forex traders shouldn’t use?

Spot forex as we know it was created in 1996. Today, just over a decade later, we have about 10 thousand indicators at our disposal. Interestingly enough, we still use tools that were either designed specifically for stock trading or so old and outdated that using them makes no sense. Let’s see which ones made it to our top worst list (most will be surprised).

ADX (average directional index) is still pretty popular. It is also worth mentioning that it was created in 1978 (!) and that it lags so badly that it can barely do what it’s supposed to – measure volume. 

Trend Lines are also one of the more favored tools traders use to this day. Still, as different traders can draw different trend lines, the variations can be so drastic that no consensus can be made. This approach leaves too much room for mistakes in particular because most trends are over by the time we discover them.

Stochastics dates back to the 1950s. It’s interesting to note how even stock traders, for whom this indicator was firstly designed, avoid using it. Most signals are false and traders can hardly follow trends because of inaccurate information.

Price Levels may not be an indicator per se but they still attract a lot of attention. Traders seem to believe that there is something more to round numbers in trading, but they fail to see how many options this thinking leaves. Price levels won’t be able to tell you where the price will go, but they will probably pique the big banks’ interest.

CCI (Commodity Channel Index) developed in 1980 is not your best choice because it will probably force you to make a move too early.

Support/Resistance Lines are quite easy to draw, which only makes you a part of a much bigger crowd if you use them. The moment any group activity is noticeable in the chart, you will see the price go the other way, so this approach definitely isn’t worth the effort. 

Japanese Candlesticks are the oldest indicator of them all (XVIII century) and also one that will directly get you under the big banks’ radar. Mind you, even if you got an occasional win here and there using this tool, it happened because these banks want you in the game for as long as it’s possible.

Bollinger Bands, another stock-trading tool from the 80s, will most probably make you exit trades too early, so you definitely won’t be able to enjoy long trades.

Fibonacci is similar to support and resistance lines in that you can draw different lines and you can hardly know which line the price is going to balance off of.

RSI (Relative Strength Index), created in 1978 for trading stocks, is still widely used. Let’s just say that even stock traders refrain from using it nowadays. 

MAs (Moving Average Crossovers) won’t give you an exclusive insight into market activity. What is more, it won’t get you in the game on time and you will often be too late.

Chart Patterns focus on sentiment, which is absolutely the least favored option for any forex trader. They are exceptionally easy to spot so after big banks take traders’ orders, they will trigger them and whipsaw the price.

Can we fix any old indicators?

Some indicators have different varieties, like Stochastics that has a slower and a faster version. Still, what you will often see is that some basic problems do not change. While one problem is tackled (e.g. lagging), another one remains (e.g. inaccurate information). 

Some traders like to combine different indicators from this list to yield better results; for example, ADX and MAs are often combined for improving the volume indicator. Nevertheless, this is still pointless when you can in fact find one indicator that can give you what you are looking for without having to go to great lengths. 

Is the USD the best currency to trade?

The USD is one of the most traded currencies as well as a global reserve currency. Besides the forex market, all commodities are generally traded in this currency. All this points to is the currency’s liquidity. Did you know that the EUR/USD pair accounts for 37% of all trading volume in the world? However, there is one thing they rarely tell you – the USD is the absolute first when it comes to the big banks’ radar. Big banking institutions love this currency and they will track traders twice as much as in any other currency. Does this mean that we should avoid USD pairs? No, but we should pay extra attention to money management and risk management. Novice traders, however, may consider delaying any trades involving this currency to a later date when they gather more experience because of the expected volatility that the USD entails.

This article is a small contribution to the forex community in an attempt to make things more clear. Just don’t believe everything you read and demo test every tool and currency pair before risking your own money. Just because one thing works for someone else does not mean that you have to use it.

Categories
Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Let’s Get Real: Is Day Trading Really Profitable?

Day Trading or also known as Intraday Trading can be very profitable. But, many ask: Is Day Trading really profitable? But, it is not such an easy method to perform. And that is, the frustration of losing money can discourage more than one. Although with enthusiasm, a positive mind, a lot of discipline, and a good methodology, everything is possible and you can get good results at the end of the day.

Day Trading is one of the most complicated and complex strategies that exist, so the vast majority of investors or users lose their money trying. But, for those who are more wrestling, skillful, and consistent, your luck will come and you will have very good wins.

What is Day Trading?

Intraday trading is known as a strategy that is applied in a financial negotiation, especially of purchase and sale, which is carried out on the same day of the business. Day traders or intraday traders use this quick trading strategy to try to make daily profits and not have to wait for long-term investments. These traders must close all their positions before the end of the day in the market.

Financial instruments that are included in the day trading include currencies, stocks, options, and futures contracts. If you would like to be a Day Trader, in the beginning, the fundamental thing is to have a good formation.

What is the Profitability of Day Trading?

On the same day of trading, it makes it possible for high profits to occur or, conversely, large losses. Therefore, the profitability of Day Trading is very variable. It can be around an annual average of between 10% and up to 50%.

Although the most pessimistic say, that every day you lose money and at the end of the year, you get less return than making a long-term investment. But, if we get carried away by the statistics of some big investors in history, such as Peter Lynch (in 13 years) and Warren Buffett (in 32 years or so), the average annual return was 29 and 24% respectively.

If you are a person who only trades and does not invest in stocks in the long run or survive the day-to-day, it is said that you do not possess financial freedom. This means that financial freedom is obtained when the income that is received for the assets, manages to properly maintain the lifestyle and you can live from it every month without problems. Therefore, a well-known phrase for determining financial health is how much passive money is received from assets.

Something very beneficial for day traders is that brokers allow a higher margin for daily trade (about 25% for intraday shopping). In that case, a daily trader who has a minimum set in his account (of about $25,000), will be able to buy shares of up to $100,000 during the same day. But, in that case, half of those shares, must come out before the market closes.

Day Trading Benefits and Risks

The results of all trading operations that are carried out daily, can be very profitable or on the contrary, a total failure. In that case, day traders can get large percentage returns from their investment or huge losses, not pleasant at all.

Daily trading can be risky, especially in the following cases:

  • Poor execution of operations.
  • Not appropriate risk capital.
  • Exchange of game or operations.

A very common strategy in Day Trading is to buy instruments using funds that are not their own. This can increase gains or losses, as the case may be, and in a very short time. If we consider the high risk of daily trading, a day trader will be forced to abandon a losing position almost immediately. In this way, a fatal loss, much higher than the original investment or the total assets, will be avoided.

Categories
Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

What Should I Expect With Regard to Forex Commissions?

A commission is a cost for the trader. Brokers usually charge commissions for their work and this has an impact on our final result. These costs directly or indirectly undermine the profitability of trading. However, they are necessary operating costs, so it is important to know them in order to reduce them.

A commission is an economic consideration for a service performed. To do trading we must have the services of an intermediary (broker) that is responsible for executing the purchase-sale operations we request as well as other aspects such as money lent by leverage and, in some cases, currency changes, the cash movements we make on our account,…

Commissions and Their Importance in Our Outcomes

All financial services companies have the obligation to show their commissions before contracting the services; so that the customer is in a position to value and compare them. Almost all brokers apply the same commission rates and due to the increasing competition in recent years, these commissions are increasingly adjusted for the benefit of traders.

How Do Commissions Impact Our Trading?

We’ll start by recognizing what kind of trading we’re going to do. The most important commissions, to have a greater impact, are those that come from the sale of assets. The size of the trade (amount of money to invest) and the number of trades we make (the more trades the more fees applied) have a direct impact on this type of commission.

Therefore, the trader must determine what type of trading you do. With what investment style do you feel most comfortable? (Scalping, Swing trading,…). After thinking about our trading style we will be in a better disposition to determine if we are interested in working with a broker that offers better conditions in one type of commission or in another.

Another important aspect is the level of average capital in the account. This determines the size of our operations and therefore we may be interested in working with one or other brokers based on their commissions.

“A study of how we operate in the financial markets can be very useful to save us commissions.”

More Frequent Commissions When Trading

Spread: It is the difference between the purchase price and the selling price of a financial asset. The market price is only one. However, the broker offers the trader two prices: one to buy and one to sell. Most Forex and CFDs brokers get their fees this way. This differential is applied to us when opening a trade. That is, we must recover the spread first to enter into profits if the operation advances in our favor.

Bid and Ask:

  • Bid is the price offered to sell the currency pair or instrument it was.
  • Ask is the price offered to buy the currency pair or instrument it was.

Ask will always be a few pips more expensive than the Bid. The difference between the two is the Spread.

Position Size: Applying commissions per operation in the form of Spread assumes that this cost has a direct impact depending on the size of the position (the amount of money to invest). Therefore, the first thing we must do is to calculate the value of the pip; both to keep in mind the amount of the spread in monetary terms and to know how much our potential profit or our maximum loss can amount to.

Fixed spreads and variable spreads: When we talk about fixed spreads we are referring to the fact that, although the price fluctuates in the market, the Spread remains constant. The spread will be different depending on the currency pair. However, when a fixed spread is charged, it remains unchanged for that same financial asset.

On the other hand, there are brokers that offer variable or floating spreads. The spread between the “bid” and the “ask” varies depending on the market conditions. Depending on the liquidity that exists in the market at a specific time, a more or less low Spread will be applied. When the brokers offer us this condition of variable spread, in the rates we will put the minimum that they charge, and in moments of less liquidity the Spread will increase.

Fixed commission per trade: Outside of Spread, the broker may charge a fixed amount for opening and closing the position. Sometimes they can even apply the two commission rates at the same time (Spread plus fixed commission).

Most online brokers usually apply only the spread but there are others, especially ECN brokers, targeting traders with higher volumes, that choose to offer smaller spreads but compensate with a fixed commission each time a trade is made. Depending on the average size of our trades, we will assess whether it is convenient to use it or it is more profitable for us to trade only with Spreads.

“A very short-term trading style (scalping type) is more sensitive to this type of commissions. But if your trading style is to trade more in the medium term, these commissions are not so decisive for the final result.”

Leverage and Swap: When opening a Forex trading position it is not necessary to contribute all the money required by the transaction. The money is actually borrowed by the broker and what we leave is a guarantee to be able to open the transaction.

The margin guarantee is a percentage of the size of the trade. Depending on the asset we decide to trade, and the conditions of the online broker, this percentage will be higher or lower. It’s what’s known as leverage. This money is put on the market by the broker himself and must be liquidated before the end of the market day.

If this money is not settled before the end of the day, we will be granted an automatic extension, a refinancing (rollover) that earns interest. The Swap commission is based on these interests.

Therefore, the Swap fee is nothing more than the overnight interbank market interest rate for keeping the position open (with money borrowed from leverage). This fee varies according to central banks’ interest rate policy and interbank market conditions.

Swap: a percentage that is applied to the size of the transaction. It can also be expressed in pips, for each contract or lot traded in the operation (so it will be necessary to know the value of each pip). However, this fee can even be credited to our account instead of a fee. How is this possible? The explanation is given when trading on the Forex market, where each trade is composed of the purchase of one currency and simultaneously the sale of another.

When you sell a currency, you charge the interest rate. When you buy it, you pay us. Better explained: We will pay the Swap of the currency sold and we will pay the Swap of the currency purchased. In these situations, it may be positive to plan multi-day Forex operations if it is consistent with our trading strategy.

Commission on cash withdrawal: We are not referring to the one that charges the chosen means of payment. There will be means of payment that will not charge you anything and others that can apply some commission to send or receive money. We focus on the commissions your broker can charge you for withdrawing funds. Usually, when depositing there is no commission but when withdrawing the broker can apply a commission of its own.

Commission for foreign Exchange: This type of fee can have a greater impact if it is added with the withdrawal of funds from the account. Both can be added. A trading account is denominated in a particular currency. In most cases brokers allow us to deposit funds in the most common currencies. So, the funds in the account may or may not be in our local currency. Ideally, the trading account should be in the local currency, as not being so implies a currency conversion each time funds are deposited or withdrawn.

Commission for inactivity: There are brokers who can apply a commission of this type and others who do not. This commission is determined by the non-use of our trading account in a given period of time established by the broker. Inactivity means not trading or not logging into the trading platform.

Categories
Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Fundamentals of Forex Trading You Didn’t Learn in School

This is what trading should be about. It should give you the freedom to not depend on the money you are getting but to be in control of it. Sometimes, this is easier said than done. That is why we have selected a few critical points that need to be reiterated for every beginner trader to read. With the present-day market expansion and ease of internet access, novice traders can read about lots of things that really aren’t that relevant. We have a different agenda. Today, you will read the things they don’t teach you. We will show you the bigger picture.

“If you work for money, you give the power to your employer. If money works for you, you keep the power and control it.” (Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki)

Who runs the world?

Traders often miss this one key fact about trading – not all markets are governed in the same way. With stocks, things are quite clear. The money flow will dictate how the prices are going to be determined. But that flow can be out of the context of the free market sometimes (printing). In spot forex, however, when the money flows into the market, everything works mostly how the banks set. The prices will always go the opposite way traders go because this is how the big banks (i.e. Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Chase Bank, and HSBC, among others) manipulate the market. 

Get educated and don’t let the prevailing thought affect your critical thinking.

“One of the reasons the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class struggles in debt is because the subject of money is taught at home, not in school.”  (Robert Kiyosaki)

What’s money worth?

When we think of stocks or commodities, we think of balance sheets, assets, and products that help us assign a price to any equity. What traders often fail to understand is that currencies act differently. So, when experienced stock traders wish to expand their portfolio and start trading forex, they overlook the nature of today’s currencies. The currencies we know now are fiat, which means they don’t have the value of their own like they did during the gold standard. The currencies’ value is nowadays solely determined by big banks. 

Understand what you are willing to trade as well as the essential differences between various instruments, tools, and markets.

“A person can be highly educated, professionally successful, and financially illiterate.” (Robert Kiyosaki)

Where did everybody go?

When beginners first start trading, they look for valuable content and support for development. Still, many make the mistake of following groupthink that immediately puts them in the losing group. Why does this happen? Traders who develop herd mentality don’t rely on their own analytical skills, knowledge, and experience, which is one of the main reasons why they can’t remain traders long term. Secondly, if you are a forex trader and you just look for the areas in the chart where everyone else is, you will soon be disappointed because the big banks will soon step in and change the price direction. 

Look up IG client sentiment and avoid outdated tools that are likely to give you this type of information. Your system should tell you how to avoid big banks, not how to be under their radar.

“Most people go along with the crowd. They do things because everybody else does it.” (Robert Kiyosaki)

Become rich in 30 days

Your favorite YouTuber or your trading mentor won’t be there to hold your hand forever. You must get in the game on your own. Yes, wealthy people do have advisors to keep getting the lofty return year after year, but to get there you first need to learn how to trade on your own. Even trading robots (expert advisors/EAs) can’t help you much if you don’t know which strategy or style of trading you want to use. 

Know what you care about. Explore your options and don’t believe the promises of getting unprecedented returns. You owe yourself that.

“There are no bad business and investment opportunities, but there are bad entrepreneurs and investors.” (Robert Kiyosaki)

Who are you? 

This is a deal-breaker if you want to be good at trading in any market. As a human being, regardless of your gender, you are prone to feeling different emotions that will either make you go forward or tell you that something isn’t the best choice for you. Sometimes, however, these emotions push us to do things we shouldn’t. We overleverage or under leverage; we enter too many trades; we don’t sleep and so on. This is not sustainable and you, like anyone else, will break at some point.

↳ Get to know yourself and understand your triggers so you can have control over your actions. Do the trading psychology test to get more insight.

“Emotions are what make us human. Make us real. The word ‘emotion’ stands for energy in motion. Be truthful about your emotions, and use your mind and emotions in your favor, not against yourself.” (Robert Kiyosaki)

Do you put all of your eggs into one basket? 

What do the experts do? Besides relying on experience, successful traders always diversify. They never depend only on the profit they can get from one market, and so should you. If you are a crypto trader, you will firstly diversify your coins. If you are a forex trader, you will think of different currency pairs to trade. Still, to be free of having to depend on one source of income (as one market is one source), you will look for other markets to trade. 

Make sure that you understand the similarities and differences between the markets and always have money management in place.

“When it comes to money, the only skill most people know is to work hard.” (Robert Kiyosaki)

How can traders lose the right way?

At the moment of experiencing a loss, traders are often unable to stop overreacting. They chase losses and enter new trades, which only takes their accounts further into the abyss. If you’ve been there, you know that this isn’t the right way. Therefore, the first step is to accept the loss and step away from your computer. Then, you will be smart about this experience and learn as much as you can. 

Use testing and journaling to understand how a particular trade loss can be mitigated. Then, improve your system, strategy, and money management to change your future trading.

“Wealth is a person’s ability to survive so many days forward— or, if I stopped working today, how long could I survive?” (Robert Kiyosaki)

How can you become a pro?

Leave no stone unturned. Learn about yourself, your weak points, your algorithm, and your skills, and make room for development. Don’t cry over spilled milk but shift from thinker to doer. Also, if you really want to stay in the game, get rid of the casino mentality and learn to wait patiently while working diligently. There is no instant gratification in the long game, only demo trading, journaling, testing, and revising before you invest your real money. 

Professional trading is trading real money for a living. Still, everyone can try that. Be a trader who persists in the struggles. Be the one who sees the bigger picture.

 “There is a difference between being poor and being broke. Broke is temporary. Poor is eternal.” (Robert Kiyosaki)

And, finally…

If you always see yourself as lacking, you can see neither the market potential nor the potential that comes from losing. Sometimes we fear loss; other times, we fear success. The question is what you will do about it.

Categories
Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

Gann’s 20 Rules of Trading

William D. Gann was a financier who developed a technical tool known as Gann’s angles. The trading rules with which it operated are as impressive as this tool. These rules range from basic principles of money management to the important mental game. Anyway, the impressive thing about these rules is that although they were written 100 years ago, they are as true today as they were at the time.

In this article, we will set out some of Gann’s most ambitious rules along with a brief commentary on each. Our purpose is that when you finish this article, you will have an idea that, although the market may change over time, there are many trading rules that remain unchanged.

1 – Always use stop-loss commands.

This rule goes without much explanation. The use of stop-loss is always mandatory if you want to become a profitable forex trader. By not using it, you open yourself to the potential to operate under emotions, which is never good. Operating without a stop loss is like trying to drive a car without brakes. So, make sure you put it on every time you enter the market.

2 – Never over opers.

We have already talked about not trading. The profit potential increases exponentially as soon as you reduce your trading frequency. What exactly does this mean? This means that when we talk about trade, less is more. The more patience we have becomes, the less operate, and the less you operate, the more you concentrate only on the confluent trading setups.

3 – Do not enter an operation if you are unsure of the trend. Never resist the trend.

This rule is important in 2 respects:

Only active markets operate. If a market is not trending, or you are not sure about the direction of it, stay away.

Don’t run moves against tendencies. It might be tempting to try to trap a roof or floor in some market, but swimming against the current is much more difficult than doing it in favor. Make sure you always operate with the market momentum, never against it.

4 – When in doubt, come out, stay out of it.

If you ever find yourself unsure about an open position, the best thing to do is to get out, especially if the position is at a loss. As a trader, there is no worse option than not having a plan available for the current situation.

Over the years, we’ve discovered that the number one reason why a trader stays in a losing position is because of the fear of taking the loss and then the market moves in the desired direction once it’s out.

The problem is that when you’re in uncharted territory, there’s a 50% chance of earning or losing money. In short, you no longer have a commercial advantage, and therefore you should leave the market.

5 – Only active markets operate.

This rule is extremely important but is often overlooked by many traders. You cannot make money in a market that is not moving. Still, we have seen many traders try to operate side markets. There is nothing wrong with operating price action breakouts inside markets, but trying to operate a side market is one of the fastest ways to lose money in the forex market.

Your most profitable operations will always come from biased markets. This is because it is not only possible to capitalize on the initial position, as a strong trend gives you the good opportunity to multiply your winnings using the technique of pyramiding.

6 – Do not close operations without a reason.

Have you ever gotten out of an operation because of the fear of losing unrealized profits, only to be able to observe the market as continues in the desired direction? We’re sure you do. This is something that every trader must master, the ability to control emotions in a way that allows you to operate based purely on technical analysis.

One way to keep your emotions under control, in case you feel the urge to close a position too soon is to simply ask yourself “why am I closing this position?” If your answer is anything without technical grounds, then you’re probably making a decision based on emotions.

7 – Never promise a loss.

This rule is as old as trading. You should never add to a position that may be a loser. There are many reasons why what we talk about is true, but perhaps the most important thing is that a losing position is a warning that your analysis may have been wrong. By adding this situation, you are making your risk without having first a confirmation from the market that it is not in an unfavourable position.

8 – Never leave the market because you have lost patience and never enter because you are anxious for the wait.

We often speak of patience, which is important for your success. But patience isn’t just waiting for the perfect setup, it also plays a critical role in managing your open operations.

The market has no calendar. It flows according to the news and the feeling that impacts it. This is one of the reasons why as traders we set profitability targets but do not set time limits. A market needs time for the open operation in it to reach its goal, just as it takes time to form the perfect setup. In both cases, patience is required.

9 – Avoid taking small gains and large losses.

We saw an article a while ago that said that making money in forex is hard work. While we agree with this, what we do not agree with is what he said afterward. Whoever wrote the article claimed that it’s all about quick wins, in other words, making small profits every day.

This is totally against our opinion. Becoming consistently profitable is more about letting your winning operations run wild. In essence, you must make enough money on your winners to be able to pay your losers. W.D. Gann had the right approach. He knew that being a trader consistently and profitably means taking big profits and small losses.

10 – Never cancel a stop loss after you have placed the operation.

Why? Because, once you enter the market, your judgments are skewed. Now you have something to lose, which triggers the emotional side of your brain when you make decisions. On the other hand, when you determine a stop loss before entering the market, you have the ability to make an impartial decision about your placement location. This allows you to keep disciplined by operating what the market is doing vs. what you want the market to do.

11 – Avoid entering and leaving the market too often.

Do you find yourself entering a position just to close it within the first 30 minutes in order to pursue a “better” setup? This is very common among Forex traders, the idea that there is always another setup going around that will make them earn more profitability in less time.

The most common reason for this behavior is to risk too much capital in a single operation. In order to let your winning operations run, you must give the market “breathing room”. If you’re risking too much capital on an operation, you’ll be tempted to close the position too soon, losing potential profits.

12 – Be willing to make money from both sides of the market.

For us forex traders, this rule is easy. That said, we still see some traders who prefer only to take long positions or just short positions. While this might seem harmless in principle, it is actually a problem.

If we are price action traders, our main job is to stay patient and wait for the market to show its cards before pulling the trigger. But if we’re only interested in operating long or short but not both, we could miss opportunities. Even you could try to convince yourself that the market is producing a valid signal to go on sale (because you only operate sales) when in fact a setup is being produced to buy, which would leave you on the losing side of the market.

You must there is always a need to be flexible in its approach to financial markets. We must try not to favour one side over the other, as the two are capable of producing profitable trading opportunities.

13 – Never sell or buy for the reason that the price is high or low.

The words “high” and “low” are relative when it comes to markets. What is low for one person could be high for another, and vice versa. For this reason, we are not in favour of using the terms “over-bought” and “over-sold”. Instead of looking to buy a market at a low price or sell a market at a high price, it is much more efficient to be able to use the technical levels, combining them with price action signals. This combination will give you an optimal opportunity to catch a favorable entrance.

14 – Should be pyramided only once the support/resistance levels have been crossed.

The key to a proper pyramid strategy is only to add to a trade when the market has passed a key level of strength or support. This will give you the option to have a degree of confidence in that market will probably continue in the direction intended by adding to your position.

15 – Never change your position without a good reason.

What is a “good” motive? I mean, a good motive is a reasonably valid reason. And therefore a valid reason must be based on technical facts. Entering or leaving a market because you’ve heard someone mention it as a buyer or seller is not a good reason. Similarly, entering or exiting a financial market because it has moved “too low” or “too high” is not a determining reason.

However, if you are in a selling position and the market has reached a support level and forms a bullish bar pin against your position, that is a good reason to at least consider closing the position.

16 – Avoid operating after long periods of success or failure.

One of the reasons why becoming a consistently profitable trader is considered the biggest challenge you will ever face in your life is the word consistently. Placing a winning operation, or even a series of winning operations, is not so difficult after all; we even dare to say that it is easy if market conditions are given. But growing a trading account consistently over the course of several months and years requires much more than a few good trades. A strong mentality is needed, among other things.

Part of that mental strength must include the ability to withdraw from the market after a series of winning operations, or after a series of losing operations. All scenarios can easily lead to emotional decision-making, which can be very negative for your trading account. By stepping away from the market for a while after a streak of winners or losers, you can “reset” your mind.

17 – Don’t try to guess where the roofs or floors are.

Trying to guess where the roofs or floors of a market will be found is purely a form of gambling. If we are traders, our own ability to make money consistently depends largely on our advantage, which is a conjunction of events that help us put the odds in our favor. By trying to guess where the roofs or floors are, you nullify any advantage you might have, and leave your potential winnings to chance.

Many will say that a roof or floor in the market is not clear until the opposite movement has already begun. We do not entirely agree. What is true is that we cannot know for sure whether the market has found a roof or a floor until the opposite movement has begun, what we can do is determine the probability of such movement by using technical patterns and signals. For this reason, learning price action is essential to your success as a trader, regardless of the trading strategy with which you end up trading.

18 – Do not follow the advice of a blind man.

Have you visited a forex blog somewhere? If you have, we are sure that you can relate it to the following rule. The advent of the internet has been a great invention. It not only gives us our ability to trade in forex from the comfort of our homes, but it also provides us with a lot of information about the subject of trading.

But there is the problem… With more information comes confusion, especially when most of this information comes from trading blogs in which everyone is a so-called expert. These traders like to share their convictions, which in principle is harmless, but when other traders operate based on those convictions it can be disastrous.

Information from all forex-related sites, including this one, should be used to generate trading ideas. Nothing more or less. There must be no place to be used to enter blindly operations. In order to be successful as a forex trader, you must learn to run your own technical analysis. Getting ideas from forex websites is fine, but make sure you always follow your own analysis before placing your capital at risk.

19 – Reduce your trading after the first loss, never increase it.

Revenge trading is one of the deadliest sins a trader can commit. It starts with a loser trade and ends with many more losses. One way to avoid revenge trading is either to reduce your trading immediately after a loss or to completely deviate from the market for a while.

20 – Avoid entering incorrectly and exit correctly. Or enter correctly and exit incorrectly.

Becoming a successful trader is about timing. It’s not enough to just get a good entry or a good exit from the market. You must be sure to be right on both fronts to be cost-effective in a consistent manner. Using a combination of entry strategies, correct stop-loss strategy, and key levels to determine profit-making goals, you can learn to enter correctly and exit correctly.

In Summary

What’s amazing is that after 100 years, these rules W.D. Gann has devised are as valid today as yesterday. This shows that some of the simplest forms of technical analysis, such as price evolution, are here to be taken into account always, as happens with the most elementary rules of trading psychology.

We trust that this humble article has helped you to put a little more clarity on how W.D. Gann operates and how these 20 rules can be applied to your own trading to make you a better trader.

Categories
Forex Basics

Information You’ll Wish You Had BEFORE You Started Trading Forex

When you start anything new, you are going into it pretty blind, picking things up as you go and of course making mistakes, probably a lot of them. When we have been doing something for a long time, we often look back and think about when we first started out and trading is no different. If you think back to your first days, weeks, month, or even year, you can probably think of some things that you probably wished that you had done differently, or things that you wish you had known, they probably would have saved you a lot of grief, but hindsight is like that, we all know better once something has already been done. We are going to be looking at some of the things that we wish we knew before we started trading all those years ago.

When many people first get into trading they go the easy route, they go after the advertisements about things like automated trading, hands-off trading, or signal copying. They seem like the perfect thing, simply deposit someone, sit back and let them trade for you, the problem with this is that it is the equivalent of simply giving someone your money and letting them do what they want with it. Not the smartest thing to do and also not something that you would do in any other situation. So why we thought it was a good idea back then we have no idea. One thing that we wish we had done differently would to simply not have used these services, it would have saved us thousands of dollars from the losses that were lost by trusting these traders with our money.

It would have been good back then if we understood that there wasn’t a perfect strategy out here, there isn’t a strategy that will allow you to win 100% of the time and so we should not be looking for it. Countless hours spent looking for it, countless hours and hundreds of dollars wasted trying out the so-called perfect strategies. If we knew back then that they wanted one, it would have saved us a lot of time and money. Instead, we should have been learning and developing our own strategies and also multiple different ones to allow us to trade in different trading environments and conditions.

It would have also been a good idea for us to learn a little before jumping into a live account, or at least using a demo account. Pretty much every broker now offers demo accounts, where you can trade on almost the same trading conditions without any risk to your own capital. Back in the day, they were not as regular and people didn’t seem to use them as much. Instead, we just jumped straight into a live trading account with our own money. All tests were done live, all changes were done live and the mistakes made cost us real money. If we were to start over, we would certainly be using a demo account for all of our practice, it can potentially save you a lot of money and also a lot of stress.

Avoid the news, something that is said a lot now. In fact, some brokers no longer let you put on trades during major news events and this is something that we wish we thought about back when we started. Trading the news can be incredibly profitable, the problem is that it can be incredibly risky too, in fact probably more risk than it is worth. The news can cause big movements in the markets, and the markets can even move in ways that are completely non-correlated to the news that was given, making it even riskier. We wish that we had known this before and decided to avoid trading during news events, it would have saved us a lot of money in the long run.

It would have been good to have had a better understanding of what different currency pairs are as well as the differences between them, we are talking about the difference in volatility, the difference in liquidity, and other aspects like that. Each pair reacts differently and moves differently, and this is something that we would have liked to have known a little earlier. We traded USDMXN the same as we did EURUSD, if any of you have traded both, you will know that they work very differently, but we used the same strategy on both which as you can imagine did not have the best effects and this caused us some pretty hefty losses before we worked out what was going wrong.

Learn the different order types, that is a big one, many traders simply use market execution orders by simply placing trades. Yet there are a lot of other styles of orders too, limit orders, stop orders and more, these different order types allow you to enter the markets in different conditions and at a price that it is not currently at the moment. This adds a whole new level to our trading allowing us to predict movements and to take trades on the support and resistance levels. We just wish we knew about them, or at least how to use them properly back when we started trading.

Forex and trading are not guaranteed, something that should be quite obvious, but back when we started you did not have all the warning signs on every site, that was not a requirement, all that we ask was the opportunity and the other traders stating how much they had made. Of course, now we know that those saying all the positives were simply trying to get some affiliates signed up after them, but back then, the dream was real and it seemed more realistic than it is now (of course it is still possible now too). It would have been nice for there to be more waning like there are now, and we would of course start again knowing that nothing is guaranteed and that we need to put in a lot of work to make it profitable.

Those are just some of the things that we wish we knew before we started trading all those years ago, there are of course some other things that we would have done differently, we could probably write for hours about it. Hindsight is an amazing thing, we need to live with our mistakes but also learn from them, we do not make the same mistakes that we made back then, it is all about learning from what we have done to make us a better trader in the future.

Categories
Forex Basics Forex Psychology

Weird Hobbies That’ll Make You Better at Forex

There are things that we do in our everyday lives that can actually make us better at trading. Some of them may be related, while others will have absolutely nothing to do with trading at all. Our hobbies can have the same effects, there are hobbies out there that people do that will give you the skills that you need to be a fantastic trader, in fact, they will improve aspects of your trading. We are going to be looking at some of the hobbies that people do that help to build our trading skills or develop certain aspects of us that would be beneficial to our forex trading.

Reading

This one may seem quite obvious and to be fair, it is. If you like reading then you will love Forex and trading, as there is a lot of reading to be done. Any people get bored when reading and learning, this is why there are so many video tutorials out there now, but if you actually enjoy it then you will be in a good position as there is so much information available for you to take in. There are also trading-related books out there that can be filled with relevant information and so reading those in your spare time can give you some fantastic insight into different techniques or give you ideas that you can implement into your trading. If you are not a fan of reading, there are alternatives out there, but you will find far more information in the written format than any other format when it comes to trading.

Jigsaw Puzzles

Trading can be compared to puzzles in a number of ways, the most obvious reason is the fact that when you are putting a puzzle together, you are taking lots of small things in order to make a larger overall picture. We do the exact same thing when we are trading, we are taking small bits of information from various analyses or indicators and putting it all together to give us an overall picture of what the markets may do and what we should trade. Doing puzzles helps you to take your time, to analyze each piece of information, and to have patience, afterall, some puzzles can take a long time to complete.

Playing Sports

Sport doesn’t seem like it would give you skills needed for trading, but it does. Well not exactly with your trading, but it is a fantastic way to get rid of some of the stress that can build up when trading. In fact, it gives you the perfect outlet to let off some of that steam. For anyone that sits in front of the computer for the majority of their day, it can damage your posture, can stress you out, and can ultimately make you a little bit fatter. Playing sports is a way of rectifying all three of those things. It helps you keep a good posture, it helps you to relieve stress and it can make you that little bit fitter. So even if this is not one of your current hobbies, try making it one once you start trading, especially if you are doing it full time.

Playing An Instrument

If You have learned to play an instrument in the past then you probably have a number of skills that are very desirable for a forex trader, these include things like consistent learning, patience, and being precise in your learning and implementation. It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience to learn an instrument, much in the same way that it takes time and patience to learn to trade properly. Music can also help to influence your mood or to calm you, something that is vital when it comes to trading. There are no shortcuts when it comes to trading, so being able to bring in the characteristics that were required to learn to play that instrument can be extremely beneficial to you as a forex trader.

Writing

While we don’t do much writing when it comes to trading forex apart from the little notes that we jot down in our trading journal, writing does give us a few skills that we can bring across. Firstly it teaches us to be a little more analytical, looking at what we have written in order to find and rectify any mistakes in the spelling or grammar. It also helps us to research, research is an important part of both writing and trading, so being able to do it when you are writing something means that it will be slightly easier for you to analyze different information sources when it comes to your trading.

Collecting

There are a lot of things out there that you can collect, stamps, pokemon cards, marvel figurines, whatever it is, it will teach you one main skill. That skill is patience, you need to be patient when collecting, finding the right item for the right place, and not jumping in too quickly and ending up out of pocket. This same skill needs to be used when trading, you don’t want to jump into a trade too early and at the wrong place, if you do that too much then you will be making losses, so patience is vital if you are looking to become a successful trader.

Buying and Selling

Some people just love to sell things, and this helps you to understand the value of exchanging one item for money or money for items. This is exactly how trading forex works. We are exchanging one asset for another. Getting an understanding of how this works beforehand and what to look for when it comes to price fluctuations can help you out as a trader. If you do this, you are basically trading already, just in a more physical form rather than online as a retail trader.

The thing with hobbies is that it really doesn’t matter what it is, a hobby is something that you enjoy, this is a great way of destressing yourself. If you have a hobby, do not give it up just because trading is taking up a lot of your time, make time for it, not only will it help your mental health, but it will also help you to develop certain skills that can come in handy when trading, no matter the hobby that you are doing, it will have some form of benefit to your overall trading ability.

Categories
Forex Basics

Is It Safe (and Wise) to Trade Forex? Let’s Discuss…

The global Forex market has more than $5 trillion in daily trading volume, making it the largest financial market in the world. The popularity of Forex attracts traders at all levels, from novices learning about financial markets to more professional and experienced veterans. Because it is so easy to do Forex trading – with all-day sessions, access to high leverage, and relatively small costs – but it’s also very easy to lose when trading Forex. In this article, you will see 10 ways in which traders can avoid losing money in the competitive Forex market and can safely make Forex investments.

Do Your Homework

Just because it’s easy to get into the world of Forex doesn’t mean it’s easy to operate in this area. Learning about Forex is fundamental to a Trader’s success in foreign exchange markets. Although most of the learning comes from live trading and experience, a trader must learn everything possible about Forex markets, including geopolitical and economic factors that affect the currencies to be traded. The task is a continuous effort as traders need to be prepared to adapt to changing market conditions, regulations, and global events. Part of this research process involves the development of a trading plan.

Choose a Reputable Broker

The Forex industry has less oversight than other markets, so it is very likely to end up doing business with a reputable Forex broker. Because there is a concern about the security of deposits and the overall integrity of a broker, Forex traders must only open an account with a member company of the National Futures Association (NFA) and which is registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a futures commission merchant. Every country outside the United States has its own regulatory body with which legitimate Forex brokers must be registered.

This is basic and indispensable and cannot be emphasized further, only duly regulated Forex brokers should be traded. Traders should also investigate each broker’s account offers, including leverage amounts, commissions and spreads, initial deposits, and account withdrawal and financing policies. A representative of useful customer service should have all this information and be able to answer all questions regarding company services and policies.

Using a Practice Account

Almost all trading platforms have a demo account to practice, sometimes called a dummy account or demo account. These accounts allow traders to place hypothetical transactions without a funded account. Perhaps one of the most important benefits of a demo account is that it allows the trader to become an expert in order entry techniques.

Few things are as harmful to a real account (apart from the trader’s overconfidence) as pressing the erroneous button when opening or exiting a position. This is quite common, for example, for a new trader to accidentally add to a losing position rather than close the trade. Having many errors in order entry can lead to having large losses without protection. Apart from the devastating financial consequences, this situation is incredibly stressful. Practice makes perfect: experiment before placing real money online.

Keep the Graphics Clean

When a Forex trader has hired an account, it can be tempting to take advantage of all the benefits of technical analysis offered by the trading platform. Although most of these indicators are perfectly adapted to foreign exchange markets, it is very important to consider keeping analysis techniques to a minimum to be effective. The use of the same types of indicators-such as two volatility indicators or two oscillators, for example, can be redundant and may even give opposite signals. This must be avoided.

Any analysis technique that is not routinely used to improve the performance of the company must be removed from the table. In addition to the tools used for the chart, the overall appearance of the workspace should be considered. The colors, fonts, and types of price bars chosen (line, Japanese candle bar, distribution bar, etc.) should create an easy-to-read and interpret chart that allows the trader to respond more effectively to changing market conditions.

Protect Your Trading Account

While there is a lot of focus on making money in Forex trading, it is very important to know how to avoid losing balance in your account. The most appropriate techniques of monetary management are a very important part of successful negotiation. Many experienced traders would agree that anyone can enter a position at any price and still earn money – the important thing is how he leaves trade.

Part of this is knowing when to take your losses and move on. Using stop-loss protection is always an effective way to ensure that losses remain reasonable. Traders may also consider using a maximum amount of daily losses beyond which all positions would be closed and no new trading will start until the next trading session. While plans must be made to limit losses, it is equally essential to protect gains. Money management techniques, such as the use of stop drags, can help preserve profits.

Start Small

Once you’ve done your homework, spent time with a practice account, and have the Trading plan instead, it may be time to start live – that is, start trading with real money. No amount of trading in a demo account can accurately simulate actual trading, and as such, it is very important to start with a small amount when going live.

Factors such as emotions and slippage cannot be fully understood and accounted for until live trading is performed. In addition, a trading plan that was used as a champion in backtesting results or trading practice could, in fact, fail miserably when applied to a live trade. Starting small, the trader can evaluate your trading plan and emotions, and gain more practice in executing order entries – without risking the entire trading account in the process.

Use of Reasonable Leverage

Foreign exchange trading is unique in the amount of leverage offered to its participants. One of the reasons why Forex is such an attractive market is that traders have the chance to make high profits with a small investment – sometimes as little as 100 US dollars. Properly used, leverage provides growth potential; however, leverage can easily amplify losses. A trader can choose the amount of leverage he wants to use when basing the size of the position on the account balance. For example, if a trader has 20,000 USD in a Forex account, a position of 200,000 USD (two standard batches) would use leverage 1:10. While the merchant might open a larger trade if he were to take maximum leverage, a smaller position would limit the risk.

Leverage is you have a chance to use something small to control something bigger. In short, Forex trading means that you can have a small amount of balance in your account and be able to control a much larger amount in the market. In trading currencies, there is no interest charged on the margin used, and it doesn’t matter what kind of Trader it is or what kind of credit it has. If you have contracted an account and the broker offers the margin, you can trade on it.

The most obvious advantage of using leverage is that you can earn a significant amount of money using only a limited and small amount of capital. The problem is that, in the same way, you can also have a loss of a considerable amount of money in leverage trading. Everything depends on the prudence with which it is used and the conservativeness or aggressiveness of its risk management.

You have stricter control than you think; The advantage makes a pretty boring market incredibly exciting. Unfortunately, when your money’s on the line:

Exciting DOES not always = Good

But that’s exactly what leverage has brought to FX. If there was no leverage, traders would be surprised to see a 15% move in their account at a year. However, a trader who uses too much leverage can easily see 15% moving in his accounts in a day.

While typical leverage amounts tend to be too high, leverage trading five times more; it is very important for you to know that much of the volatility you experience when trading is mainly due to leverage of your Trade than the same movement in the underlying asset.

Amounts of Leverage Provided

Leverage usually occurs in a fixed amount that may vary depending on the broker. Each broker grants leverage based on its rules and regulations. The amounts are usually 1:50, 1:100, 1:200, and 1:400.

Leverage of 50:1 Percent

Leverage of fifty to one means that for every $1 you have in your account you can place a value of $50. For example, if you deposited $500, you could trade amounts up to $25,000 on the market using leverage 50:1. It’s not that you should trade the full $25,000, but you would have the ability to trade up to that amount.

Leverage 100:1 Percent

Leverage of a hundred to one means that for every $1 you have in your account, you can place a commercial value of $100. This is a standard amount of leverage suggested in a standard account. The typical minimum deposit of 1000 USD for a standard account would give you the ability to control 100,000 USD.

Leverage 200:1 Percent

A leverage of two hundred to one means that for every $1 you have in your account, you can place a value of $200. This is a frequent amount of leverage suggested in a mini lot account. The typical minimum deposit on that account is around 250 USD. With 250 USD you would be able to open operations up to the amount of 50,000 USD.

Leverage 400:1 Percent

A leverage of four hundred to one means that for every $1 you have in your account, you can place a value of $400. Some brokers offer 400:1 in mini-batch accounts. I would personally take care of any broker that offers this kind of leverage for a small account. Anyone who makes a $300 deposit into a Forex account and tries to trade 1:400 leverage could be wiped out in a matter of minutes. Not that Brokers force the Trader to deposit only $300, but if they make it possible, the suspect doesn’t?

Professional Traders and Leverage

For the most part, professional traders trade very low leverage. Having lower leverage has the ability to protect your balance when you do business mistakes and keeps your returns more consistent. Einstein once said that the definition of Madness is: “Always do the same and expect different results.” Without a business log and a meticulous log book, traders are likely to be able to continue making the same mistakes, minimizing the chances of being a profitable and successful trader in the future.

Understanding Tax Implications

It is very important to have clear tax implications and how it deals with the foreign exchange trading activity that will be prepared at the time of filing taxes. Consulting with a qualified specialist or tax specialist can be beneficial and help avoid surprises when paying taxes and can be great to help people take advantage of an existing diversity of tax laws. As tax rules often change, it is prudent to maintain a relationship with a trusted professional who can handle all tax-related matters.

Treat Trading Like a Business

It is very important to consider foreign exchange trading as a business and to keep in mind that gains and losses are not important in the short term. As such, the operators must avoid becoming overly emotional beings, no matter what the gain or loss, and treat each as one more day at the office. As with any other business, Forex trading incurs losses, expenses, taxes, risks, and uncertainty. Also, just as small businesses rarely succeed overnight, so it is for the vast majority of currency traders. Planning, setting realistic goals, being organized, and learning from both successes and failures are key to achieving a long and successful career as a foreign exchange trader.

In Conclusion

Forex trading around the world is attractive to many traders because of their low account requirements, 24-hour trading, and access to large amounts of leverage. When approached as a business, foreign exchange trading can be profitable and rewarding. In short, traders can avoid losing money in currencies and make a safe Forex trading, as long as they:

  • Are well prepared
  • Have the patience and discipline to study and investigate
  • Apply money management techniques
  • They resemble their trading activity as if they were running a business
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Forex Basics

How To Become a Better Forex Trader In Just 10 Minutes

We all want to be better traders. We want to be more successful and we want to be or be profitable. Being a great trader takes time, a lot of time, it can take years to be in a position where you know exactly what you are doing and are able to adapt properly to the ever-changing markets. So while learning a new skill can take a long time, there are some things that you can do in a very short amount of time, little changes to your trading that can ultimately help to make you a much better trader. So we are going to be looking at some of the things that you can do that will only take you 10 minutes in order for you to become a much better trader.

Start Using Stop Losses

For those that are making the huge mistake of not using stop losses, simply using them will make you a far better trader and will help you to better protect your account. Stop losses are there to protect your account, they work by being a sort of block that will prevent your trade from going any more negative by automatically closing it. You need to use stop losses if you are going to have a proper risk management plan as it is the stop losses that let you maintain the correct risk to reward ratio, ensuring that you do not lose more than you have planned to. If You are trading without them, be sure that you start to implement them into your trading, you will feel far less stress about any losses and it will also help you to become far more profitable than you probably are now.

Keep a Trading Journal

You have probably heard about trading journals, these are records where you jot down everything that you are doing, each trade that you open, the trades that you close, how long they were open, the profit and loss, the reason for the trade, any influencers and more. You are basically writing down everything that you are doing. A trading journal is beneficial for a number of reasons, it can be used for justification for your tradies, it can be used to find out where you may be going a bit wrong and it can be a way that you can check to see whether or not you are following your trading plan. Using it to find your weaknesses will mean that you will be able to make adjustments to your trading based on our findings, ultimately making you a much more consistent trader. We admit that creating a trading journal may take a little more than 10 minutes, however, once you are up and running, it will take mere minutes or even seconds to fill it in before and after each trade.

Continue to Learn

Take 10 minutes a day to focus on learning a little more about forex and trading. You will be learning for the rest of your career, but this does not mean that you need to focus on your learning 5 or 6 hours a day. Instead, break it down into more bitesize chunks, this will make the information that you are taking in a lot easier to absorb and to understand. That 10 minutes a day will mean that you are constantly learning, but you’re also avoiding the possibility of burnout from too much info. Learning is great, but too much learning is not, break it down, learn one thing at a time in small chunks in order to ensure that you are taking it all in.

Take Breaks

Taking breaks can really benefit your trading. Trading can be a stressful thing to do, it has its ups and downs which can cause stress and even anxiety. No matter your experience levels, when you do it for a long time, you will start to feel tired or stressed, so we need to do something about that. Take a 10-minute break, it can be as simple as that. Stepping away from the trading terminal in order to clear your mind or to think about something else will mean that you are able to help your mind and body to destress. A small break can bring you back with a much clearer mind which will make your trading a lot better, with less stress you will be able to better follow your trading plan and ensure that the trades that you are placing are in line with your trading plan.

Review Your Goals

When you started trading you most likely would have set out some goals, some of these would have been long-term goals and others more short-term. It is important that you continue to review these goals throughout your trading career, you need to be able to look at what you are aiming for and to adjust it based on your own ability. This may seem quite trivial, but if your goals aren’t quite set right, it can affect not just your trading but your own motivation too. If you are achieving your goals and targets on a regular basis, it can help you to motivate yourself to put in more effort or to work a little harder to keep going and improving. If you have set them wrong and are not achieving anything, it can demotivate you as you may feel that you are not good enough and not being profitable. So ensure that you review them to keep them in line with your current ability in order to help yourself motivate yourself to continue trading.

Watch the News

The news and economic events can have a huge effect on the forex markets. In fact, any news event has the potential to change the direction or to cause a small jump in the markets so it is important that you are aware of what is coming up. There are a number of different economic calendars out there which detail different economic news events that are coming up. Take just 1 minute a day to look at one before you start your trading, it will give you an idea of how volatile the markets could be at those stages of the day, so it may even tell you to avoid trading a certain currency pair when those events are coming up, which could save you from some potential losses. It does not take long to do this and it should be something that you are doing at the start of every trading or analysis session that you are doing.

Speak With Others

Trading communities can be great, they can give you an outlet to vent some of your own frustrations, to give, and to receive some new trading ideas. Being part of a community can give you that social life when stuck in front of the computer. They are great places to get new ideas and to speak to like-minded people. These communities also give you a place to vent your frustrations which can help to reduce your stress levels, getting new ideas can give you new trades and potential new profits. It doesn’t take long to look through these forums or to place a post, so try and do it, when you have some downtime instead of sitting blankly in front of the charts, utilize your time, even if it is just 10 minutes.

Those are some of the things that you can do in just 10 minutes, it doesn’t have to take a long time to make changes to your trading or to work out what you may be doing wrong. Take a little time each day or week to look at your trading, there are always things that you can do to help improve yourself and your trading, it doesn’t have to take a long time, one small change at a time and you will ultimately become a much better and more successful trader.

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Forex Basics

What Skeptics Need to Know About Forex

There are a lot of people out there that simply do not trust trading or forex, they see it as some sort of money sink that will only result in losses. #If you go onto any sort of social media, you will always get a few people shouting about how bad trading is and that trading as a whole is a scam, maybe they lost some money, maybe they just don’t understand it, either way, it is important that we get all the information before we decide whether something is good or bad. So we are going to be looking at some of the things that the skeptics of forex trading need to know which may just change their minds about it.

Forex Is Real

One thing that you see some skeptics saying is that forex is simply not real, you are not trading with other people, you are trading against the brokers and they control the numbers, not the markets themselves. Well, the thing is that with some brokers this is partly true, for market maker brokers, you are actually trading against the broker and so it is in their interest for you to lose. With many other brokers like STP or ECN brokers, you are actually trading directly on the markets and it is in the interest of the brokers that you do well as they make their money through commissions. When trading with these brokers the markets are very much real, all money being traded are from real people or institutes. Forex is very much real and you can certainly make money out of it if you trade well.

Not Everything Is A Scam

There are a lot of scams out there and if you have been a victim of one, you will most likely lose a lot if not all of your trust in the forex industry. That is perfectly understandable, but not everything is a scam. There are a lot of legitimate brokers out there that are to help you trade, they do everything by the book and can be trusted. Many peoples view of forex is what they see people posting on social media, which is full of exaggerated results, exaggerated claims, and exaggerated promises, not the best place to get any real information, Instead if you go to one of the many dedicated trading sites or communities then you will see the truth, you will see the losers, but you will also see the honest winners, those making money and those showing that trading and forex are not actually scams.

You Can Earn Money

You can certainly make money, this goes along the lines of everything being a scam again, may skeptics who do not believe that you can make money also believe that it is a scam. Yet you can certainly make money, a lot of people do and a lot of people will continue to do so. We have made money ourselves, we know people making a regular income with trading, it is certainly possible, but until the skeptics actually make something they will not believe it, and even then, some will find it hard to actually believe.

Information Is Plentiful

A lot of people are skeptical about things because they simply do not know a lot about whatever it is that they are skeptical about. The good thing about forex and trading as a whole is that there are tonnes of information out there, so much so that you can go to any sort of trading-related site and find out quite a lot about it. There are also a  lot of trading communities around which can give you a great insight into how traders actually think as well as how they are doing with their trading. If someone is skeptical about trading because they do not know much about it it will be easy to help educate them on what trading is with all the information that is available on the web.

It Is NOT Gambling

Front the outside, when you do not know a lot about reading, it can look very much like gambling, we say this simply because, in the end, you are putting money on and then hoping that the markets go the right way, at least that is how it looks. In reality, there is a lot more to it than that, we do a lot of analysis in order to look at the different probabilities and then buy or sell based on those probabilities, so there should be a higher chance of our trades being successful than not. From the outside, they do not see that, they just see the trade and the result. There is an element of gambling, as the markets won’t always go the way they are meant to or we expect them to, but we certainly would not class trading or forex as gambling.

You Are Right

A strange one, but you should be telling skeptics that they are right, they are right to be cautious, they are right to have doubts, and they are right to be interested., You cannot be a skeptic if you do not have any interest in the subject. They are right to doubt simply because a lot of what you see makes things sound too good to be true, some bits are, but some bits are very real. It is always good to question things but you also need to be open to the answers, especially as some of them will go against what it is that you believe.

So those are just some of the things that the skeptics of trading and forex should know about, there is so much out there that can make some doubt, but also just as much out there that should make someone believe, it is all down to which bits of information they are exposed to first as to which opinion they initially build. We need to ensure that those that do not believe are shown the right info to help convert them, but you should not waste your time trying to convince someone who does not believe, instead you should be spending your time and energy on improving your own trading and aiming to be more successful as a trader.

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Forex Basics

Starting to Live On Your Forex Income

It is very common for traders to dream of obtaining financial freedom through online Forex trading. No more boring jobs, no more bosses, no more wasted administration time, meaningless emails, and endless meetings. Is it a realistic ambition? If so, how can it be achieved? In this article, I will try to comment on my own experience and try to give you an idea of the challenges you will undoubtedly face if you plan to make a living in the currency market. Forewarned is worth two.

How Much Money Can You Make With Forex Trading?

This is the first question that people always ask. There’s a simple answer: no one knows! No matter how expert in foreign exchange you are, you cannot control the market. You can be so good that you usually have a winning month and each year is considered a winning year. However, the exact amount you make depends on what happens in the market, and the market cannot be predicted with certainty. For example, look at the main currency pairs in the first 10 months or so of 2012. The market was extremely flat. Even if you weren’t negotiating trends, it was hard to be profitable using a forex strategy. Later, in the final part of that year, there was a huge bearish movement in the Japanese yen that gave traders the opportunity to make a lot of money easily. The point is that financial markets are unpredictable; there may be several months of drought followed by a huge downpour of opportunities to benefit.

A sensible approach to estimating what you can reasonably expect before starting trading is to calculate in terms of probabilities. For example, in 20% of the months, it expects to make 5% profit, in 10% of the months 7% profit, etc.

For the calculation of these probabilities, you should analyze backward by measuring your average commercial return, draw-down and initial capital, and then calculate an average expectation of trade; that is to say, the amount of profit or loss that you will normally get per transaction.

How to Calculate Your Performance

The first point to start is the amount of seed money you have to trade. It is very important to understand that the more money you risk, the less money you have, and the more money you need to pay your bills, the harder things are going to get. Even if it’s all the same on paper, the day-to-day experience of online trading as a livelihood is very hard psychologically for almost everyone, especially at first. There is a huge difference between trading with money you can afford to lose, trying to earn enough money to afford luxury items, you risk your life’s savings by trying to generate income to pay bills.

You should have a very clear idea of your typical commercial performance over the full range of market conditions as if you had been operating continuously for years. One of the best systems to do this is to have a trading simulator installed and/or a Forex strategy simulator software to simulate many years of exchange operations and ideally hundreds of operations. You can then have a good statistical basis on the likely range of returns that you can achieve in a month. Of course, proving this over a long period of live trading is a superior method for determining your trading expectations. By all means, watch Forex signals for business ideas, but don’t rely on them blindly.

Once you have these numbers, you must consider the amount of draw-down that you will be able to tolerate. From here, you can determine the money handling and leverage you’re going to use, and now you can finally calculate the likely range of cash income (and losses) you’re likely to experiment in a typical month. Will it be more than enough to satisfy your financial commitments? You will be able to weather the bad times without going into debt? Don’t forget that your actual performance will probably not be as good as your performance in the simulator, this is because making decisions over long periods of time with real money at risk is more difficult than simulated trading. Remember that the vast majority of retail Forex traders are not profitable, so you have to be at the top of your game.

A very important factor not yet covered is the psychological stress of online trading for a living. It is crucial in commercial success not to become emotional about the results of each operation. When you need good results to pay your bills by the end of the month, maintaining that attitude becomes very difficult. Your “trade psychology” is very important to get it right. A perfectly smooth equity curve gives less stress but is very difficult to achieve, so you will probably have to find a way to cope with the sudden falls of the curve without losing your calm.

A Realistic Plan for Second Income and Capital Growth

If you really want to trade Forex for a living, I strongly recommend that you consider a plan that will allow you to transition to this gradually. You may believe that you will do much better when you can devote all your energies to work and live on the operations of change, but this may not be the case

You may be able to automate your trading, at least in part, by using a Forex robot, say for trading entries. You can then decide on commercial departures every few hours or even on a daily basis. This way you can keep your income or primary salary and that, added to what you can do about exchange operations will look a lot like what you would do if you devoted yourself to this activity every minute of your day.

It is a very good idea to have both a significant stable income and a reasonably long history of profitable trading. What it can do is to grow its capital and gradually increase risk by increasing leverage. So, little by little you’ll get used to pressure and stress.

If you move forward this way, you should be able to earn enough money to quit that job you hate within two or three years of “transition” commercial success. It is tempting to think that it will become much more profitable if you dedicate yourself to this full time and without distractions, but many traders have discovered that the opposite is the case. Trading for capital gains is much easier than doing it to pay the monthly bills.

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Forex Basics

Everything You Need to Know About Islamic Forex Accounts

There are many Forex brokers that offer today the option to open an Islamic account. To understand how these accounts work, you first need to understand the principles of Sharia (Islamic Law) and how it is applied in a compatible way to banking and finance. Sharia laws do not allow the acceptance of interest for monetary loans (known as riba or usury) if the payments are fixed or floating.

In 2009, there were more than 400 banks and 300 investment funds worldwide that were compliant with Islamic principles. As of 2014, Sharia-compliant financial institutions accounted for approximately 1% of the world’s total assets, totaling about $2 trillion in funds. Not all Muslims follow the laws of Sharia. According to the well-known accounting firm Ernst & Young, Islamic banking represents only a fraction of Muslims’ banking assets, but has been growing at an annual rate of 17,6% between 2009 and 2013, faster than bank assets as a whole and is expected to grow by an average of 19.7% per year until 2018.

Unlike conventional banking, Islam prohibits simply lending money with interest, so specific Islamic rules have been established in transactions to prevent this from happening. The fundamental principle of Islamic banking is based on risk-sharing, which is a component of the risk transfer view in conventional banking. Islamic banking employs concepts such as custody, profit sharing, cost pluses, and leasing.

The Islamic Accounts

Under normal commercial conditions, commodity and foreign exchange transactions are executed on the spot market throughout the day. At 17:00 New York time, all open positions will be renewed within the next 24 hours, and interest generated daily will be added to the company’s accounts every day. The broker can then pay the interest or collect the customer’s account to cover what is considered rollover fees. For traders holding overnight positions, rollovers can have a significant impact on the profitability of an account.

In an Islamic narrative, the concepts are different. This is because there should be no interest (Riba) for the entire duration of the Islamic account contract, any open transaction which at the end of the trading day automatically passes through the rollover poses a problem for those who follow Islamic Law because such transactions are considered usury. Therefore, conventional rollovers are simply not allowed.

Over the years, Islamic rules have been slightly adjusted to allow Muslims to participate in currency markets, without violating Sharia law. Most brokers now offer No-Swap accounts that can be used under certain conditions in order to allow traders, either trade as much as their money allows or take a loan from the broker on the condition that the institution does not receive any interest on the loan. In most cases, no commission or interest is charged on contracts that last more than 24 hours, and zero interest on the rollover is a constant.

The question of whether Forex trading is permissible under Islamic law is a difficult question to answer conclusively. Although the Islamic authorities certainly agree that Forex trading under certain conditions is halal (i.e., permissible under Islamic law), there is some controversy as to exactly what conditions. Let us examine the topics one by one after knowing the saying on this subject by the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him):

“Silver for silver, gold for gold, barley for barley, wheat for wheat, dates for dates, salt for salt, as for equals, equals for, hand to hand. If guys are different then sell whatever you want, as long as it’s hand-to-hand.”

So, is there halal currency trading? Is it halal forex or haram?

Forex Trading – Halal or Haram Fatwa

Of course, as we have already mentioned, usury is completely prohibited in Islam and is broadly defined. This implies that any type of agreement or contract involving an element of interest (riba) is not permissible under Islamic law. For some time, retail Forex brokers reflected the market policy of charging or paying the trader the interest differential between the two participants of any currency pair whose transaction remained open overnight. Finally, almost all Forex brokers responded to market forces (and the demands of Islamic traders) by becoming “Islamic Forex brokers” and offering “Islamic Forex accounts” that operate without standard interest payments. You could ask how they did it and maintained the profitability of their trades.

This was achieved through increased commissions on spot forex trades, and this practice has become the hallmark of almost all Islamic Forex brokers. Possibly, this in itself is just a component of camouflaged interest, and if you take this view, it makes trading Forex problematic under Islamic law. This interesting problem also discourages any possibility of trading with Forex, as on all occasions there is an element of interest involved in these transactions. However, the “regular” forex trading offered by Forex brokers, without payments or one-day interest charges, could remove the hurdle of riba.

What Islam Says About Online Forex Trading

After having reduced the problem to one of spot trading Forex and assuming that there is no element of interest is considered to be involved, we move on to the next issue. It seems to be permissible only “as long as the exchange is hand-to-hand”. So very clearly, the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) took into account the exchanges of different kinds of goods to be made between two parties, recognizing that this was a natural and fair aspect of trading.

The question here is what is considered “hand-to-hand”. In the old days, of course, there were no computers or phones, so the look of making a face-to-face (or hand-to-hand) deal was not a big question. In fact, it could be said to be natural and well accepted for an agreement made between two different parties. In current times, it can be argued that as far as Forex trading is concerned, the agreement is made between a Forex broker and a trader, so it would be qualified under the definition of two different parties, which would be admissible under Islamic law.

A widely recognized stipulation is that the actual exchange must take place during the same “session” in which the contract is made, that is, the transactions must be concluded more or less immediately. We seem to be on solid ground here, as when a trade is done with a Forex broker, which takes effect immediately. Curiously, this might suggest that all non-market trades (i.e., stop or limit orders) are haram!

This is where we come up with the biggest hurdle in trying to answer the question “Is Forex halal or haram?” In general, Forex traders do not expect to take real delivery of the currency they are “buying”, and never actually the currency itself they are “selling. They’re simply speculating that one’s value will go up and another’s value will go down.

Is such speculation permissible under Islamic law? This is a question that is not easy to answer and may be one that must be discussed with its own religious leader rather than being decided based on an Internet article. However, we have researched the topic thoroughly and will outline some points of thought below.

We can begin by saying that Islam recognizes that almost all adults focus their efforts to improve their financial investments and that life involves a great element of uncertainty. In life, we face many choices, the outcome of which is not clear, and we strive to use intelligence and the ability to choose the available option that will produce the higher result. However, we must continue to say that gambling is strictly prohibited by Islamic law, even as a form of recreation or entertainment when it is done with small funds that the player can be said to be able to afford to lose.

By measuring these two competing components, it can be concluded that it is the system of speculation that makes the difference. One author has thoroughly examined the topic and has categorically stated that speculation based on fundamental analysis is accepted, but the technical analysis is not permissible; and there is interesting reasoning: Placing operations based on technical analysis essentially amounts to betting on the bets of others and Relying on the behavior of the crowd to influence their speculation is steeped in the essence of the game, which is prohibited by Islamic law.

However, this argument can certainly be criticised as spurious in relation to market realities. To take an example, it is a speculator who has the belief that the US dollar will rise against its euros because of the economic fundamentals required to simply trade immediately, and forbidden to take any action for time trading entry to a psychologically opportune time?

Once you have done your research carefully, you can decide whether the Islamic forex accounts are right for you. A stronger argument might be that a Muslim has no business speculating on foreign exchange markets unless he or she has a firm foundation to anticipate success. This clearly means that trades must involve either some component of technical or fundamental analysis in which the trader really has a strong reason to believe.

An example could be, following trends that have an academically established track record as a cost-effective method of trading in financial liquidity Markets and trading these trends using Islamic brokers FX.

A trader can argue that a strong technical trend is easier to understand – and also likely to have an underlying reason (though invisible) behind it – a classic fundamental economic outlook that could be discussed by professional economists.

Creating a Muslim Forex Account

There is virtually no doubt that Forex trading is permissible in Islam, as long as there is no element of interest, it is done hand in hand (although this phrase can be translated in many ways), and that the exchanger has a valid reason to anticipate a probable profit based on an analysis that is not based on the psychology of the game. On a solid basis, Islamic Forex brokers can be hired for trading, which should at least possibly eliminate all riba challenges. As we have already analyzed, there are certainly gray areas within this rating that must be thoroughly investigated in good faith and conscience by anyone who wishes to start halal Forex trading with a Muslim Forex account.

Revenue from the Spread

So how does a broker win on Islamic accounts? Broker income comes strictly from spreads, which is the difference between Ask and Bid prices in a currency pair. Many brokers that offer No-Swaps accounts increase the spreads on these accounts or request an additional commission or charge so, at the end of the day, it is like paying interest earned in night positions, but very often at a higher pace.

Other brokers offer the Islamic account without commission or additional charge and maintain the same spread as in swap accounts. There are also brokers who usually offer additional benefits for Hibah-shaped No-Swap accounts. Hibah is donations or gifts given voluntarily; for this reason, the broker does allow its Muslim customers to donate a part of their profits to charity.

Conclusion

It should be emphasized that, although we have investigated the subject of Islamic trading and its validity within Islamic law in length, we are in no way trying to provide religious guidance to you, the readers of this article, or their acquaintances. As evidenced by the research presented here, there are certainly many people who believe that, under the right circumstances, Islamic currency trading is allowed. But, there may be some who are not comfortable using these solutions, and this is a completely valid approach as well.

If you are excited to further investigate this issue or consider how each Forex broker implements their Muslim Forex system, our recommendation is to evaluate the leading Islamic Forex brokers and talk to their commercial partners if you have any questions, questions, or concerns about how their practices relate to Islamic law. A solid and respectable Forex broker must have concrete and accurate answers and will make you feel comfortable, not uncomfortable.

With the expansion of the Muslim community into business, Forex brokers are doing their best to accommodate Islamic accounts. Not all brokers have gotten on the cart for the moment, but if they want to stay competitive they will have to add this feature to their offers.

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Forex Basics

Should You Be Spending Your Valuable Time in Online Forex Communities?

There are a  lot of trading communities out there, some of them offer fantastic places to get to know other traders while some of them can be a little on the toxic side, things that you really don’t want to get involved in. We are going to be looking at whether or not you should be spending some of your time in the online communities and the advantages and disadvantages that they may bring to you and your trading.

Social Interaction

One of the major advantages of being part of a trading community is that it is a source of social interaction. Those that have been trading for any period of time will be able to tell you that trading is quite a lonely endeavor. You are by yourself in front of your trading terminal, and that is it. It takes your time away from things like your family and your friends. So many people will begin to feel quite lonely. The trading communities offer an outlet for you to get back in touch with people and people who have the same interest as you which is a fantastic thing. It will help you feel more involved and will help prevent you from suffering from some of the psychological issues that can come with trading by yourself.

Get Trading Ideas

Trading communities can be a fantastic source of information when it comes to trading ideas. A lot of the communities have dedicated places within them where people can talk about and discuss the different trading ideas that they are having. This can either give you some inspiration for your own trade ideas, or it can be a way of getting complete trades from people that you have spoken to and that you know are only putting out good signals. Use the ideas that you find to broaden your own view of the markets, it may well help you look at your strategy from a different point of view which would, in turn, help you to develop your own strategy better.

Feedback On Your Ideas

Another great thing that communities provide is feedback on your own trading ideas. You can post up what your trade idea is, and what you are thinking of trading. The community will then give you some feedback, perfect for putting something up before you place the trade as others will often see flaws in what you have done (if there are any) or they can offer some suggestions to make it better, it can also be an added confirmation of your trade. Use the communities to get as much feedback as you can, whether you listen to it is another matter but getting the feedback is a good start.

Learn About Trends

More often than not, someone in the community will be posting up when different trends are starting or potentially ending, they will do all of the analysis for you, saving you a lot of money. It is a good way of finding out what potential trends are available and are coming up that you can trade.

News Analysis

Along with trend analysis, a community will also offer you a great way to get free analysis from multiple different viewpoints about the upcoming or past news events including things on the economic calendar. Learn what effects it may have on the markets or what it had done in previous years. Sometimes it can take a long time to analyse all the markets, so seeing what other people have done can save a lot of money. Not to mention the fact that the news can be quite confusing, you may not understand what it all actually means, so you could use the communities as a way of working out what the news actually means and what it will potentially do to the markets.

False Rumours

There are however downsides to the communities, one of those things is false rumours. You need to be on the lookout for these. Traders love rumours, and they love to spread them without actually looking into them. Much like many things in life people love to spread gossip and rumours, regardless of what it is or if they actually know anything about it. The same happens with trading, someone somewhere on the internet posts about something, others then spread it. These end up in the trading community and often have large discussions about it, you need to take care. Do not believe everything that you read, rumours are rumours, there is no solid information behind them and so you should not base your trades on what you have seen people posting, not without any proof or evidence anyway.

Scams

There are a lot of scams out there and a lot that are related to forex and trading. You always need to be vigilant as the trading communities also have them there. A lot of the good communities are doing a good job of preventing them from posting, but they still manage to squeeze through the gaps. Just like anywhere else, if anyone is posting things that are too good to be true, they probably are, if they are asking for a tie to do with money avoid it at all costs, and do not share any account details with anyone. Scams are out there and they are a part of the communities, so keep an eye out for them.

Exaggerated Egos

People love to make out that they are better than they are. The majority of traders lose, yet you will see people posting about how great they are doing, or how they just bought their 15th Ferrari. You need to be cautious of people posting about how well they are doing, or posting up fantastic results. People love to exaggerate and to make themselves look a little better than they actually are.

Those are some of the pros and cons that come with different trading communities, they can be a fantastic way to get to know new traders or to get new trading ideas as well as feedback on your own ideas. There are some negatives also, the people there are not always the nicest. They can try and scam and they can exaggerate results, overall it is a good idea to try and get involved in one, the worst that will happen is that you do not like them and you can stop visiting, but the best thing is that you find a new place to call your trading home and you become a part of the community.

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Forex Basics

10 Books That Can Definitely Make You A Better Trader

What’s the best trading book? This answer will depend on where you are and where you want to go deeper, whether you are starting, whether you have experience, whether you are looking for a more long-term or short-term approach.

If you are reading this article you will surely be looking for a book that can help you as a trader. There are good books about trading, some focus on the technical part, and others do it more in experiences.

I have made a list of the trading books that have brought me the most and that I think they can bring to you the most. Something like the trader’s library. Surely some of these books you didn’t know, how is this possible? If you do a quick search, most of the books you’re going to find are loaded with aspirational messages and smoke. I tell you that, as you know, my approach is quantitative and this can be seen only by looking at the books I have chosen, but I recommend to you what has served me and helped me on my way.

The ranking is divided by levels so you can choose the one that best suits your level. Although it may seem that they all deal with the same topics, what makes the difference is the focus of each of them. There really are a lot of pearls and gold nuggets. Some of these books are only available in English but are usually fairly easy to read with terms similar to Spanish in some cases.

When you start, what you read can mark you for better or worse. That’s why you won’t see any titles in all these books that are kind of “how to get your first million in 30 days”. These books are the ones I think can really bring you value and a good basis to start with realism:

Quantitative Trading Initiation Guide – Martí Castany

This book has been published recently and as its name suggests it is a very complete and basic guide if you are starting in quantitative or algorithmic trading. I have recently recommended it when you ask me because it makes a good review of all the basic concepts and explains the day-to-day of a quantitative trader (necessary equipment, programs, etc.).

Martí Castany is the author and has been able to condense the information very well and make its reading very enjoyable. It’s not a long book and you can read it in no time. I especially like the realistic approach it gives to trading as a business.

The New Life of Trading – Alexander Elder

This is one of the best-known and recommended books, especially the previous version. This is a new one that has recently come out. There is a lot of interest in psychological factors and emotions within trading and relates it to technical analysis and risk management. It deals with issues as important as they are basic.

In this book, you won’t find backtest or operational statistics, as Alexander Elder is constantly relying on technical analysis for trading and manual trading. Recommended if you’re starting out.

Be Successful in Trading (Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom) – Van K Tharp

This book focuses on the aspects that the author considers to be important to create a good trading system. He constantly points out that input is only a small part of the strategy and explains how outputs and stop-loss affect their results.

The strengths it deals with are money management (position size) and the psychology to succeed in trading. There are two versions: “Trade your way to financial freedom” (in English) and “Being successful in trading” (in Spanish).

Now yes, we get into trouble. If you master the basics of trading and want more chicha, these books can help you a lot:

Quantitative Trading Strategies – Lars Kestner

This is one of the books I liked the most in my day. Although I might have qualified it as uninitiated, I think it can also contribute to people with experience. Lars Kestner talks about basics yes, but also about the types of trading strategies in detail and following order according to their behavior (trends, reversion to the average, and with price patterns).

In this book, you will also find system evaluations, their optimization, and risk management (a classic, as you will see in most). I read it in English and I did not find it in Spanish, but if you find this or any other translated, write it to me in the comments and I can add it.

Quantitative Trading Systems- Howard Bandy

Howard Bandy is one of the best authors on quantitative trading today. He writes in a very simple and enjoyable way. In this book, he explains what quantitative analysis is, how to treat data, interpret different ratios, create detailed strategies, analyze or test systems.

The book is quite complete and every concept is explained in detail. Of course, the strategies are done by the author on the Amibroker platform. Even so, the concepts and explanations do not change and are general.

Cybernetic Trading Strategies – Murray Ruggiero

Murray Ruggiero is for me a reference in the creation and development of trading systems. In this book, he touches on classic topics such as technical analysis and more advanced ones (neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms) to demonstrate the power of trading systems based on computation. It is the common idea of the book, to make us see that with a computer we have many tools and power to do incredible things.

It is a book that is worth it for the range of topics it deals with and how it treats them, as they are accompanied by examples and practical cases that will make you understand everything better.

Building Reliable Trading Systems – Keith Fitschen

Keith Fitschen is another author I quite admire. He gives a different perspective and a twist to the creation of systems in a traditional way. In this book what he does is that he proposes a method to build and test systems in an alternative way to avoid our worst enemy: over-optimization. This method is called BRAC (“Build, Rebuild, and Compare”).

In addition, to do all this in a practical and visual way, he constantly compares two totally different trading systems that he is modifying throughout the chapters.

Technical Analysis Based on Statistics (Evidence-Based Technical Analysis) – David Aronson

The main objective of this book will be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of technical analysis with numbers. What really works and what doesn’t objectively. It has a first theoretical part and a second part where it makes the demonstrations (I warn you that it can become denser).

Although it was written in 2007, it develops very well how to statistically measure the reliability of a trading system. It deals with concepts like statistical analysis, data mining, and techniques for analyzing information, but it’s nothing basic. Its author is David Aronson.

Quantitative Trading – Ernest Chan

This is one of the first books that read about quantitative trading. It brings interesting ideas about statistical arbitration. It develops the concept of seasonality and generates a quite original mental framework.

The systems that Ernest Chan usually proposes are quite theoretical and are not easy to implement. Still, you can get a lot of ideas from everything you transmit. It also talks about risk, backtesting, cointegration, correlation, and many concepts that are important.

[Extra]: Books that can help you in your trading

Now we’re going with books that, although not trading, can help you improve it. How is this possible? Because they deal with topics that are perfectly transferable to the world of investment and trading.

Principles – Ray Dalio

Ray Dalio is one of the people who has inspired me the most. I found this book brutal, as the title indicates, it reflects principles not only at the working level but as a philosophy of life. Open-mindedness, transparency, and the ability to stand up are some of the messages it transmits and teaches. He also defends the union algorithms and people to work with and explains how he performs it.

In the book, Ray Dalio constantly shares experiences and situations that make his reading quite enjoyable, especially in the early part of life. If you didn’t know him, he’s the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund.

Antifragile – Nassin Taleb

Nassin Taleb has become quite popular in recent years and you probably know him because he has other very good books like, “The Black Swan” which develops the idea that it is positive or preferable to stress something constantly to not do and when an unlikely event happens it will take everything ahead. The concept of robustness is important in trading.

It basically tells us that anything that is not exposed to that fragility will not thrive and will end up incurring greater risk. It gives many examples of the day-to-day that will make you reflect.

I know there are very good stock market books that can be more general or focus on other areas such as fundamentals, value, or finance that you may have missed, but I have selected only those that I find interesting in trading.

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Forex Basics

Struggling With Forex? Read These Quotes Today…

Today we bring you a small collection of famous phrases of traders and personalities that with their words have helped us to improve, we hope that they also help you a lot. Then we’ll leave you with the great truths of the rockers.

– If you want to double your money the quickest, then what you should do is double the bills and put them back in your pocket. (Will Rogers)
– I soon realized that men who have succeeded ( Lawyers, Doctors, Scientists… ) have spent years of study and research in their respective fields, before trying to make money from their professions. (William Gann)
– Success is an ATTITUDE, not a matter of luck. (Anonymous)
– Luck does not exist; God does not play dice with the universe. (Albert Einstein)
– What separates the 5% you earn from the other 95% you lose is an enormous amount of effort. It’s perseverance. You have to like it. (Tom Baldwin)

For us these phrases make one thing clear, investing in the markets is a reality, a fact that anyone can do whenever he invests (and never better said) time in doing it, you need constancy, desire, and training correctly, the rest will come.

It is clear that markets are not a magical place where you double the money, the people who earn here are thanks to their personal effort and their dedication.

We also include some of the most famous and famous phrases of the famous Trader Jesse Livermore.

– When I’m not right, only one thing convinces me of it, and that’s losing money. That’s speculating. (Jesse Livermore)
– They say you never get poor by taking profits, that’s right, but you don’t get rich by taking a four-point profit in a bullish market either. (Jesse Livermore)
– We all know that prices go up and down, it happened in the past and it will happen in the future and that’s all we need to know. It is not advisable to be too curious about the causes that cause price movements, as you risk filling your head with irrelevant aspects. All we need to do is try to find the movement and try to follow the flow. Don’t argue with the trend, and especially don’t try to fight it. (Jesse Livermore)
– If you have a little moment I’ll tell you how to make money on the stock market. Buy with low prices and sell with high prices. If you’re 5 or 10, I’ll tell you when prices are low and when prices are high. (Jesse Livermore)

And, without a doubt, the best of so many who said:

– When my driver tells me he’s going to buy some stock, I rush to sell mine. (Jesse Livermore)

These phrases perfectly summarize the trading, the professionals operate with great trends and movements, holding the position until exhausting that trend, never pay attention to the advice of others, only of what they read in the market, In fact, many people believe that they lose in the market because the professionals manipulate it to their liking, this is not so, they simply place themselves on the right side. On the other hand, it refers to the difficulty and time it takes to learn to read the market, this is not a matter of 2 days, you need time and dedication.

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Forex Basics

Is the Effort of Forex Trading Actually Worth It?

This is quite a big question, yet it is one that you need to ask yourself before you jump into the world of trading. The forex markets are the biggest marketplace in the world and offer the most liquidity and profit potential anywhere in the world, but with all of that opportunity comes a cost, as there cannot be an opportunity with some form of risk. So if you have ever asked yourself questions like, “Is it worth trading?” or “Should I start trading?” this article will give you some insight into what trading is and whether or not it is worth taking it up as a hobby, or even as a potential future career.

To answer the question of whether or not it is worth being a forex trader is simple, the answer is yes, but it is also no. The answer to this question will depend entirely on who you ask and what their own experiences of trading have been. If you were to ask someone who had pulled in all their savings into trading and then lost, the answer will of course be no, they would advise you to run a mile, however,r if you were to ask a very successful trader for one of the multi-million dollar companies, then they will most likely say yes, simply based on their own experiences. So asking others won’t really give you a clear picture or idea as to whether or not you should be trading.

So we know that you will need to find out first hand whether it is right for you, but you first need to get an understanding of why you are thinking of being a trader in the first place. What is it that has made you think about trading? Are you looking to become rich quickly? Are you looking to make a little extra on the side of your job? Are you looking for a completely new career? Knowing this will give you an idea of what your aims are and whether trading will be able to offer what you want. Are you willing to learn? To spend hours and hours reading, analyzing, and practicing? If yes, then it may be something that you can work with. If you already think you know it all, or simply want to get rich overnight, then there may be a rude awakening when you actually begin to trade, overconfidence is one of the most dangerous emotions when it comes to forex trading.

What does it mean to be a forex trader?

Forex trading is all about buying and selling currencies, you try to buy low and sell high, that is all there is to it. Of course, it is a little more complicated than that. There are tonnes of variations to trading, multiple different account types, lot sizes, dozens of pairs to trade, each with its own influences and influences. With that, here are hundreds of different styles and strategies for trading, some of which you may have heard of, others you may never hear of no matter how much you trade. There’s so much variation and so many options that you should be able to find something that fits you well.

Trading can also be used to help diversify your portfolio, any investor will tell you not to put all of your eggs into a single basket, well trading and forex is an additional basket, and a potentially very good one to be involved in. It does provide the opportunity to change your career or to build a second income, but it won’t be easy.

Does forex make money?

Yes, that is the simple answer, but only if you are doing it properly. For every penny that you can make, you must also risk some, so those that come into it simply wanting to make a lot of money, will risk far too much and most likely lose it all, while those coming in with the expectation of a long term investment, over the period of years, will properly maintain their accounts and their risk and will then be on the right track to be profitable.

The problem is that we cannot actually tell you how much you will make, there are a lot of different factors which would influence this, your starting balance, the risk that you take, the market conditions, your strategy, and more. There are a lot of factors that will influence how profitable you are. If you think about it, make 5% to 10% per month for 10 years, you will be looking at a small fortune, but try to push that to 50% per month as an example, you will probably only last a month before you have lost it all, think long term, not instant profits.

One thing that you need to consider when looking at trading is the comparison to a normal career. With a normal job, you have stability, you know how much you will be bringing in or at least what the minimum amount will be, when it comes to trading there is no guarantee. In fact, you could even lose money in a month, the volatility is there, you can make a lot, and we mean a lot, but you can also not make anything, so if your current financial situation is quite tender, trading full time would not be a sensible option, however, doing on the side of a normal career job is certainly an option, and a good one at that.

Should I become a full-time trader?

Another question a lot of people ask, but they normally ask this one after having traded part-time for quite a while, there are however some exceptions who jump straight in and go full time. If You are thinking of going full time then there are a few considerations that you will need to take. Do you have enough capital to sustain things, if you have a bad month, two months, three months, will you still be able to survive? Are you currently making as much if not more than your actual job with your trading? Do you have the discipline to keep yourself on track when doing it full time? These are just some of the things that you need to consider, if your answer is no to any of them, then you should probably hold off going full time for the moment. You will also need to consider whether you actually enjoy trading, if you do then great, but many people find it boring to sit by the computer looking at graphs for hours on end, so if get easily bored, you may begin to struggle after a while.

What are the risks?

When there is the opportunity to make money, there is also a risk involved. When it comes to trading this risk can be pretty high, people have lost entire accounts on a single trade, others have lost an account over a longer more drawn-out time period of months or even years. This is why it is always stated that risk management is key. Risking 1% per trade as opposed to 10% per trade can save your account, the profits won’t be as high, but again, we are going for long-term profits rather than overnight riches. If you are planning on trading, then you will need to stay disciplined, create a risk management plan and then stick to it, as soon as you deviate, you are putting your account in danger. It is of course also possible to lose even when doing everything right, so you need to go into trading knowing that there is risk involved.

So let’s assume that you have decided that this is something that you want to do, how would you go about starting? The first thing that you want to do is to find somewhere to get a basic forex education, there are plenty of places out there in order to do this. You will then need to start reading and read a lot, there is an endless amount of information out there. You will also want to get yourself a demo account, somewhere where you can practice, if you have not got one yet, get one, it will give you an idea of what you need to do to place trades and a little insight into how the markets move, all valuable things to know. Once you have gained a bit of knowledge, put it to practice within the practice account, then eventually you will be ready to go live as a forex trader.

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Forex Basics

Problems Everyone Has With Forex (and How To Solve Them)

When it comes to forex trading, every single trade will have its own individual experiences, however, there will also be a lot of things that are similar, simply due to the nature of the markets. Some of those similarities unfortunately will be problems, problems that the majority of traders will experience. Some may see them as problems, others though may not actually class them as a problem, even though they experience them. We are going to be looking at some of the problems that every trader will experience and the different things that you can do to try and get past them.

Too Much Risk

When you are doing anything with your money, there will be risks involved, risks that could result in you potentially losing any money that you have put in, this is certainly the case when it comes to trading forex and this is a problem for many people. Not necessarily the money that you are putting in, but the emotions and stress that the potential losses can cause. Some People are simply not able to handle risk as well as other people, this is known as their risk tolerance. If you have low levels of risk tolerance then you will find it hard when trading, each and every trade that you put on is increasing the risks to your money and each trade can result in a loss. Some people will struggle with this and so they will end up closing trades early or imply not placing them.

What we need to ensure is that we have a proper risk management plan in place, one that will allow us to reduce the risks for each trade and so that we can see exactly what is being risked with each trade. Things like a risk to reward ratio will allow us to plan the maximum amount that we can lose with each trade through the use of stop losses. These will automatically close the trade when it hits a certain point, this way we can reduce and manage the losses that we are going to take. It keeps our account safe and knowing what the potential loss is before we even place the trade can help give people with lower risk tolerance a lot more confidence in their trade and can help to take some of those worries away. So ensure that you have a proper risk management plan in place to help reduce the issue of trading being a risky endeavor.

It Takes Too Much Time

Another thing that a lot of traders coming into the industry do not fully understand is the amount of time that it takes to learn and to actually begin trading. The initial periods can take a lot of your free time, you need to learn the basics, you need to create a trading strategy, you need a risk management plan for that strategy, and more. This can take a lot of time, more than most people expect as some come into it thinking they will set up an account and then trade, you can of course do that but it will ultimately result in loss.

So yes it does take a long time to get ready, however, it doesn’t always stay like that. Once the initial learning has been completed and you have a strategy ready. Depending on the strategy that you have created, they take up different amounts of time when we look at actually placing trades. If you are the sort of person that does not have a lot of free time, then you can create a strategy that only requires you to place trades once a week, this way you do not need to spend a lot of time placing trades. So yes the initial learning and starting out, but once you have passed that stage, it does not actually take too much time to trade itself. Of course, you will be constantly learning more, but that can be done in bitesize chunks.

It’s Hard to Track

Let’s be honest, when you are placing a lot of trades, not many of us think that we have the time to track everything, to write down everything that we are doing and why. One of the things that are thrown at us when we first start trading is the fact that we are supposed to be keeping a trading journal. A journal where we write down everything that we’re doing, the trades, the results, the reasoning behind it. We just don’t have time to do it all or to even keep a track of the trades we have running.

The good news is that it is a lot quicker than you might think, yes it can be a pretty slow process when you first start out, but it speeds up. It now only takes us a few seconds to write down what we are doing and why, our trading platform also shows us most of the information that we need such as the times of trades, the profit and loss, and so forth. It seems like it will take a long time to build the more that you do it, the quicker it becomes. At the start, it may be a hassle, but it really does not take a lot of time at all once you get used to doing it.

You Need A Lot of Money

When it comes to things like investing, you often hear the phrase “You need money to make money”, while to some extent that is true, if you want to make a lot, then you need a larger balance, but you certainly do not need a lot when you are first getting started. In fact, many brokers allow you to join from as little as $10, making it pretty accessible to most people in the world. Those that were once priced out of the markets can now very easily get involved. It will be hard to make much with such a small balance, for that you will need more, but it just shows that you do not need a lot in order to get started and to actually make anything.

Those are just some of the problems that a lot of people run into when they trade forex. There are others, plus there will be problems that are very individual, that only you may experience. What is important to remember, is that things that look difficult or look like they may stop you in your tracks now, may not actually be as big of an issue as you may think and there will always be ways to get around and to solve the problems that you come across.

Categories
Forex Basics

The One Question EVERY Forex Trader Should Know How to Answer

We are always attracted to the lives of successful people and eager to find out what personal traits and course of action paved their way. There are dozens of books and countless Internet pages dedicated to listing and explaining things outstanding individuals do. Continuous reading, focusing on single tasks, having SMART goals to name a few. On the other hand, such people don’t procrastinate, don’t complain and they certainly don’t give up.  So, it is not only what they do, but what they don’t do that actually counts.

Applied to trading, it poses the question: “How to be in 5-10% of traders that make money consistently?” Grasping the forex market will only get you so far. Understanding your oversights and misjudgments will get you further. Being able to avoid all the tools and behaviors that do not serve you will actually do the trick.

If your trading account is not where you want it to be, it isn’t a matter of chance. If you are doing things as instructed and it has not brought you closer to the prize, those things have to change. Set aside some time to assess where your trades go wrong and define the behaviors and instruments that are holding you back from a brighter future.  

Stay Away from Forecasting

Many wonder where a certain currency is heading as they would like to trade accordingly. Predicting the direction a currency will take is unwise and therefore not something you want to dabble in. Once they asked the elder J.P. Morgan to deliver his opinion on stock prices. His prognosis was “I think they will fluctuate”. This is the only true answer and it pertains to the forex market as well.

Political changes (such as elections of major world countries) or economic ones (like breaking down of international trade agreements) will reflect on a currency. Sometimes the “how” is clear as day like with Britain leaving the EU. Ever since 2016, the very mention of Brexit made the Pound struggle. After the Brexit withdrawal agreement and ten months of transition, the new UK – EU partnership agreement was put into force on January 1st, 2021. Once again the British Pound dropped by a percent against the Euro and 0.75 % against the U.S. Dollar. Many analysts expected a post-Brexit surge that never happened, which illustrates the volatility of the market. Still, it remains to be seen what the Bank of England intends to do about it.

Unless you are Pythia, the famous high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, you neither have to consult the oracle nor develop the gift of prophecy. Dwelling on things you have no control of is both time-consuming and unprofitable.

You Don’t Need to Be in the Pack

Herd mentality is a well-known psychological phenomenon where individuals embrace and mimic the actions of a larger group. They rely on proverbial two (or more) heads to be better than one and, despite their knowledge or experience, blindly go where the masses take them. Financial markets are no different. There it connotes a tendency to follow and copy what other traders are doing.

Countless traders racing towards an opportunity can trigger various emotional responses, but the following are most prominent:

Greed appears when the thoughts of easy money rush to your brain. The underlying belief is that others have done the research, so it isn’t imperative that you do too.

Self-doubt is sparked in situations when novices lack confidence especially when independent analysis does not coincide with the estimation of the majority. In such cases, they are more likely to believe the opinion of the many and go with the crowd.

Fear is the pervasive market-related emotion, the most common being the fear of loss. Once you lose some money, you start fearing greater losses and as a result trading less.

People also fear that the profit they’ve made may turn into a loss. If you enter a trade that is going your way and it is stagnating, you may suppose that it is coming to a halt and exit too soon. Falsely believing that the pair is overbought or oversold is dangerous for your future endeavors. In case you are right, you may start believing that you should always trust your instincts instead of reason. If you turn out to be wrong, it’s a whim that will cost you all those pips that will accumulate on someone else’s account when you leave.

Finally, there’s FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out is a syndrome usually prompted by the feeling that you might pass on a good opportunity. It happens when a trader sees a signal but does not follow up on it. He enters a trade later, after a period of being indecisive, and starts trotting after the profit. The odds turn against him and these trades invariably fail.

Stick to Your Guns

Remember Glock, a chunky, black piece that features in every other movie. It became the most sought-after gun among US police officers in the late ‘80s. Today, over 30 years later, over 65% of US law enforcement still carry it. The reason being, it is safe and dependable.

When you enter a trade you want to be covered. You do not want your pistol to shoot blanks like a superfast indicator. For one, it could be too old for modern trading. Shooting to kill a trade with it, is like aiming at a moving target, with the money moving further and further away from you. 

Despite it being among the four most used indicators, RSI is no better in our opinion. It does not present a clear picture of when a price is overbought or oversold. This is particularly true when a market exhibits a strong trend. RSI loses its value which renders it is inaccurate. It works best in oscillating markets since it is, like CCI, a momentum oscillator

These two indicators are just examples of things you have been taught to use as helpful but are at best mediocre. Even if something was there from the onset of your career, it doesn’t mean you have to keep using it if it brings sporadic results. If a tool cannot be utilized to your satisfaction, simply stop using it. 

In day-to-day practice, numerous instruments are not as good as advertised. Thankfully, there are hundreds of others to try from. Arm yourself with patience to find the combination of indicators that is just right for you.

A fine example of ammunition your smooth and slick semi-automatic weapon should fire is the Average True Range indicator. ATR tells you the average number of pips per 14 candles (default setting) for the given currency pair.  You can use the daily chart in the last thirty minutes before the candle is closed owing to greater accuracy, and then decide whether to trade. Provided you trade different currency pairs if the movement is slow for one pair you can risk more money whereas if it is fast for the other you will risk proportionately less. That is the true beauty of ATR – it keeps your money and risk management in check. Of course, this is just one way of many.

To revise, you grow as a trader not only knowing what to do but also realizing what to avoid. Your game will become way better if you steer clear of unreliable indicators. Refraining from forecasting will save you money. Staying away from herd mentality, FOMO, and generally keeping your emotions from over-interfering will aid your trading overall.

You will abundantly benefit from exchanging your bad habits for sound routines. Having a firm strategy in place and your risk and money management in check guarantee success.

How to Cultivate the Winning Answer

“If there’s somewhere you need to be, you have to plan how to get there.”

Maybe the saying wasn’t meant for traders, but it fits like a glove.  If we want to cultivate the winning outlook, we need to determine prerequisites for up-and-coming traders.  

Trading is not merely being acquainted with existing market conditions. Besides the knowledge and skills necessary to trade, there is a great deal of psychology involved. Trading psychology is no less a vital part of trading than having a good strategic approach.

One’s beliefs concerning intelligence and talent shape their mindset. When we perceive such qualities as inborn and unchangeable we speak of fixed mindset. This kind of perspective makes it hard for people to tackle problems and they are easily blocked by their mistakes. If you recognize yourself in any of these, you are on the wrong track.

What you believe to be true about yourself as a person and a trader has a bearing on achieving or failing to accomplish your goals. Have faith in yourself and stand firm in your belief that commitment and due diligence develop and strengthen your abilities over time. This is the basis of a growth mindset, a valuable tool for all true professionals. It is crucial for traders to develop one, as it will teach them how to focus on constant personal improvement, view obstacles as learning opportunities, try out different tactics, analyze the way they trade, and use their findings to refine their trading skills. 

As Cool As A Cucumber

Other than a mindset of growth, traders should have a mindset of poise. At the onset of your trading career and later on from time time, the market will throw you a curveball. It is only human to react to winning and losing, but the way you react will determine what kind of trader you are. You have to be aware that everyone loses occasionally. Loss is but a setback to be overcome with a new approach.

Instead of being apprehensive, a trader should exude the air of tranquility. That is not easy to accomplish as there is often a lot at stake. Emotions frequently interfere with making rational decisions, especially fear, impatience, greed, and anger. Impatience is particularly bad because it triggers rash behavior and envelopes the other three. It is in the trader’s best interest to stay impartial to the market. It will help increase gains and minimize losses.

Trading goes hand in hand with taking chances. As a trader, you acquire a high-risk tolerance, but it has nothing to with being hazardous. Pro traders take calculated risks, the ones that are more likely to turn into profit. They are simultaneously aware of the inevitability of losses. There’s no profit without a loss, they are just two sides of the same coin. Having that in mind, they never succumb to being exceedingly exultant about winning trades or overly despondent about losing them.

Two things that work wonders for keeping you composed are sleep and meditation. It is well-known that good sleep improves your concentration and maximizes your productivity. It is advisable for traders to start their day well-rested which benefits their attention and making a better judgment.

A trader’s internal memory is crammed with thoughts of past losses, future gains, and different kinds of trade-related anxiety. Introducing meditation, even as short as 5-minute ones, resets this computer of flesh and blood. The cache memory has to be cleared in order to stay focused on the present. Meditation dials down all the mind wandering, increases the concentration of gray matter in the brain, and is responsible for clearer information processing and better decision-making.

Loving What You Do…

The only thing you should be passionate about is the job itself. Trading works best when it generates a combination of euphoria and fascination. You start going deep into things because you find everything interesting and, before you know it, you breathe it, eat it, you even dream of candles and spikes at night. A drive to learn and be truly good at it will make it seem less like a profession and more like a hobby.

Finding mentors or role models is a big yes. Once given the chance, observe and absorb the way they operate until you become one with it. Deconstruct their actions until you master them, then implement them in your routine. As an alternative, follow other successful traders on social media, blogs, or youtube and read books on the subject. Always bear in mind the ratio of successful and unsuccessful traders, so not everyone will be the person you copy or look up to.

Be aware that the path is one of solitude and perseverance. There is no such thing as being over-prepared, so study the charts and do all the necessary background work. Be willing to try out new things, test new indicators and strategies. In that respect, trial and error are your new best friends.

Meticulous Planning and Execution

You will not learn only from others, but also from your own experience. Keeping a trading journal will help you with that. It is an indispensable tool for every aspiring trader who wants to evaluate their work objectively. Journal should contain daily entries starting before the trade and finishing after. It ought to incorporate all the minute details like date, the time frame that you trade,  the currency pair being traded, the direction of the trade, entry and exit points, two types of exit rules (one for taking profit and another for limiting your risk aka stop loss) and so on.  Apart from the factors mentioned above, you should make a note of all the indicators you are using, slowly building your algorithm.

You should also decide on the strategy you are using, whether it’s a trend following or a trend-reverse, news strategy, or a scalping one. Note down your go-to strategies and be equally prepared for profit and loss. The rudimental purpose in the core of your strategy is to keep you on course towards your long-term goals.

Jot down the result of the trade and include remarks about the forex market. Pay close attention to your emotions and write them down as well. All this data is invaluable for your growth because you can always turn to it to get feedback on your trading.  Retracing your steps can give a slew of information about one’s good or bad trading patterns. Having a neatly laid out plan will allow you to dissect each trade to see what, if anything, could have been done differently. In terms of losses, breaking down what went wrong may prevent future ones.

As you can see, a trader does not go headstrong into a challenge. Integrating journals into the daily trading routine is like having navigation for smoother sailing. It’s a reminder that you came prepared since there is no serious trading without a plan in place. Having a methodical approach to conquering the financial market is well worth the time and effort invested into making it.

The most important thing about a trading plan and this can’t be stressed enough, is adhering religiously to what you’ve outlined. You don’t enter a trade unless all those indicators with immutable signals coincide with one another. You exit neither before nor after you stop loss because you put it there for a reason. You similarly follow the book on your profit-making rule, because you are too smart to let your profit turn into a loss.  

All these things require commitment. If you’ve read this far you are ready. You have the drive necessary to strive to continually improve your game and the determination to enhance your prospects for success.

Categories
Forex Basics

Is There Such A Thing As Risk-Free Forex Trading?

Risks are the first thing to consider by anyone who wants to undertake a role as a trader/ investor. The risks of losing money due to force majeure, due to manipulations of Forex by market makers, this is due to a mistake of technical analysis or if lose something in the fundamental analysis. It is not possible to avoid 100% risk, but it can be optimized or minimized. Read the article and learn how to minimize/optimize trading risks and how to create a balanced investment portfolio.

On Thursday, 15 January 2015, the Swiss Central Bank shocked the market when it announced that the fixed exchange rate of the Swiss franc could no longer be maintained against the euro, as it had for more than 3 years. After the announcement of the Central Bank, the rate of the franc rose by more than 30% against the US dollar and the euro, the Swiss stock market, on the contrary, plummeted by 10%, which affected the exporters. The consequences for traders were catastrophic. Those who made short on the franc (keeping the pair in short positions), simply in a second lost their deposits due to the stop out. The brokers also had a hard time, because a good number of them announced liquidity problems.

On Saturday, September 14, 2019, Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities were attacked by drones, which reduced approximately 50% of the country’s total oil production, which is more than 5% of the world’s oil supply. At the start of Monday’s day, the futures of Brent oil skyrocketed by 19-20%. The intraday jump was the largest since the Gulf War of 1991. Those who failed to close short transactions before the weekend lost a lot.

Both examples are trading risks. It is impossible to fully foresee them, because, as always, there is the probability of force majeure. But it is possible to minimize the risks. Also, as the risk increases, the probability of profit is higher. Let’s take the same example of oil: if short traders made losses, those who bet on growth earned about 20% in a single day.

From this summary, you will learn:

  • What are trading risks and what types of risks exist.
  • Methods to minimize trading risks,
  • Types of diversification of the investment portfolio.

In the summary, I will try to present two main aspects of risk minimization: errors in employing technical analysis and general risks in foreign exchange trading and the creation of an investment portfolio. My opinion is partly subjective, so I suggest addressing it and discussing it in the comments.

Types of Trading Risks

Trading risk: The risk of losses arising from market factors affecting price direction or errors in the analysis (forecasting) of the market situation.

Technical risks: Risk of loss due to technical problems: platform failures, order failures, broker fraud, etc.

Psychological (behavioural) risks: Risk of error due to a person’s emotional state: stress, emotion, fatigue, euphoria, fear, greed, etc.

Trading risk is uncertainty about future price movements as a result of market and non-market factors. So, if we have an open position, we are facing a unique risk, that risk is that we have erred in identifying the price trend. If the price is directed in the opposite way to the open trade, the trader will lose.

If the transaction has not yet been opened, the risk is in the incorrect prognosis of the trend direction or its reversal. We have to admit there’s no clear definition of the concept of “trend”, so traders understand it in their own way. Traders themselves determine the value of the critical amplitude (price reversal), which is called the risk limit and this risk will always depend on the amount of capital in the deposit. In other words, a trader is willing to endure, for example, a 100 point reduction, another no more than 20 points. They all determine the level (limit) of risk themselves but must understand the nature of the trading risks.

Where Risks Come From

Error in analysis and prognosis. Any publication of statistical information, the publication of the results of the Fed meeting, and meetings of other central banks have their effects. The best question we have to solve first is whether the investor knew how to correctly examine the importance of this or that news item. And the forecasts, made by the majority, were justified? Traders should consider these and other factors in the forecast. And there can often be mistakes. Traders often ignore or lose something important, which can result in an incorrect forecast.

Force majeure: It can be presented in different ways: a humanitarian disaster, an unexpected political decision, or a terrorist attack, discovery of new mineral deposits, release to the market of a new product that has not been previously announced, sudden bankruptcy. Force majeure often leads to immediate and generally long-term consequences. Examples of long-term force majeure include the collapse of “dotcom” and the mortgage crisis in the United States, which has become a global crisis. It must be said that there are people who were able to make a profit from the crisis. (I recommend watching the American film “The Big Short”, which describes this situation quite well).

The human factor: Incorrect interpretation of patterns, signs due to fatigue, lack of attention, stress, etc.

Another classification is the simplified division of the causes of trading risks into forecasting errors in technical, fundamental, and human analysis. We have already said what are the reasons for the most important risks in the section we call “Force Majeure”, and I will dwell on more details on the risks resulting from errors in technical analysis.

High volatility at the time of opening the transaction. The greater the volatility, the greater the breadth of price changes and, therefore, the more and faster you can gain from it. It seems reasonable, but the risk lies in assessing this volatility because if the price goes against you, you must be psyched that you can lose more than you usually win. The data of the indicators are relative, as well as the data of the volatility calculators.

Tip: Identify volatility visually. The price range can be referred to as the distance between opposite fractal ends or candle accumulation. For starters, you can train on the history. At first, it will be difficult for beginner traders (know from experience). Second tip: greater volatility, different from the daily average, is observed at the time of the appearance of fundamental factors. Just don’t open any transactions at this time.

The trading strategy of trading by levels individually: someone opens positions expecting a level rebound, someone tries at breakup. For someone that’s a loss limiter. There is the so-called zone of turbulence around fractal levels in short-term time frames, where the price moves in different directions with a narrow amplitude. Predicting price movements in this area is inefficient.

Tip: Use the levels only as a guide. Open transactions out of levels and try to avoid staging at levels of resistance and stop support, as it can be used by large traders (market makers, which will be discussed below). If the transaction is already open in the direction of levels, then it is better to leave before reaching the level. Otherwise, there could be a rebound with the possible slip, which will worsen performance.

Basically, the analysis is reduced to determine whether the break/rebound of a level is true (the trend) or false (the correction). Does it really make sense to put him at risk?

Opening of transactions in overbought and oversold areas. This is the risk of opening a position at the end of a final trend. A classic mistake is trying to enter when the trend is already underway. At the peak of growth, large traders abandon trading, reaping some less intelligent traders.

It seems reasonable to employ RSI or stochastic, but they are not efficient at minimizing risks. They are often lagging behind, they invest in extreme price zones, and so on. So even if you use the indicators to determine the zones, you can still make a mistake.

Tip: You can identify signs of trend depletion as follows. The amplitudes in the three fractal sections are compared side by side in the time frame M1 (the exhaustion of the trend is clear there before). If the amplitude is shrinking (the amplitude of each subsequent fractal is shrinking), this suggests that the trend is exhausting.

And the simplest and wisest advice is that when starting an operation at the beginning of the trend, don’t do what most. Be careful when interpreting the signals of the indicators, there are no perfect and impeccable indicators.

Opening of transactions where there is no clear trend. There are situations where a trader makes a correction or a local price change for a new trend, which often occurs on flat. It is difficult, especially inexperienced. To identify the flat end, as it often does not have a clear beginning or end.

Tip: I suggest again using the comparison of price amplitude within the flat trend. If in the short term, there is a price movement whose amplitude deviates sharply from the average value, you should be alert. Do not enter an operation immediately, the first price change could be a correction. Analyze multiple time periods at a time: the signal period is М1-М5, confirming longer periods.

Incorrect indicator parameters: This will lead to an incorrect interpretation of the signals.

Council: Before starting to use an indicator with adjusted parameters in trading on a real account, try the system (tester МТ4, FxBlue). More detailed information about testing and optimization strategies in this summary.

Application of pending orders: Outstanding orders are used in trading strategies based on the opening of transactions when the price exceeds the consolidation area. Orders are placed in opposite directions, betting that one of them will work. The risk arises from the fact that outstanding orders are set on the basis of intuition, rather than actual price movements. The distance is calculated, for example, in percentages of the average value of the price movement in the consolidation area. We will always have to take the risk that the price will leave the area, touch the order and then move in the opposite direction.

Tip: To reduce risk, avoid using pending orders.

Abrupt reduction of contributions when a long position is opened. There are several examples when the price changed by 800-1000 points in just a few minutes. Of course, hardly anyone could react, make a decision and make a compromise.

Tip: Always use a stop loss.

Market makers. A particular trader is only a tiny part of a much bigger game. The creators of the market are therefore great players, who can influence price through their huge capitals. They can create a necessary repository of information by manipulating media, forums, and other resources through forecasting, analysis, and information.

But this is not his only means. They could see levels where purchase and sale orders are concentrated, that is, stop losses and pending orders established in advance. As practice shows, most traders set stop loss in the area of the local ends, being tied to strong or rounded levels of support/resistance. Pending commands can be configured the same way. The market makers oppose the majority, push the price to the area where the orders are accumulated, then, even taking into account all the forecasts, most traders are activated to stop.

For example. Market makers want to sell a certain currency at the best possible price. You see multiple stop loss higher than the current rates (green horizontal line at the bottom of the screen), which are basically the orders requested. On the other hand, market makers see many orders pending in the same price area, which does not allow the price to rise (volume equilibrium).

The price is pushed with small orders to the necessary level, after which it satisfies your sales volumes through purchase requests (stop loss). Given the number of short requests, it is unlikely that the price will go further.

Tip: There is no point in fighting with market makers. Therefore, you should learn to identify potential areas of command concentration and try to avoid them. It should also bear in mind that indicators cannot anticipate the possible actions of market makers. Therefore, it makes sense to rely less on indicators and pay more attention to levels, patterns, and exchange of information (trading volumes, order table).

You can suggest any other risk of technical analysis, write in the comments. Let’s look for more ways to minimize and optimize trading risks together. With regard to reducing the risks of erroneous forecasts based on fundamental analysis, there are few recommendations:

  • Do not blindly trust everything that is reported in the media and be especially careful with “expert” forecasts. Check the official data reported by news agencies and official resources.
  • Use complementary analytical tools: economic calendar, action analyzers.
  • Evaluate dynamics statistics, comparing them with analysts’ expectations and previous reports.
  • And prepare to react instantly to a force majeure.

Hedging and Blocking

Coverage and blocking mean the same thing, go into two opposite operations (I won’t dig too deep into the big difference between them). Let’s imagine that a trader opens a buying position, but unfortunately, the price drops. Then, the trader has opened a selling position with the same volume. The loss from the first position is offset by the gain from the second operation.

Advantages of blocking a position:

If you set the locks correctly and unlock the positions on time (cancel the unprofitable or secure position), you can even make profits this way. There is even a trading strategy based on the creation of an order grid.

The lock allows you to manage the floating loss that does not affect the balance or spoil the trading statistics. But, there is always a defect in the locking positions. In the event of incorrect opening and closing of insurance and major positions, the trader is more likely to receive the loss resulting from both the transactions and the spread. Therefore, blocking is a high-risk strategy for a novice trader, such as trading in a similar way to Martingale, but an advanced trader can protect against unprofitable trading employing blocking and hedging.

The strategy and blocking rules should be highlighted in a separate article. If you want to do so, write in the comments.

How to Minimize Trading Risks

Diversification: So far, this is the best recommendation you can take into account when protecting your investment from certain business risks. But it is a kind of art to properly diversify its portfolio of investments and rebalance it regularly.

Types of diversification:

Asset division: It is the most widespread among the community to make a diversification. In addition, you can allocate your funds not only between different currency pairs or shares but also between deposit accounts, precious metals, cryptocurrencies, antiques, real estate, etc.

Diversification by risk level: There are assets that, in case of force majeure, increase in price (for example, gold). There are assets that, even in the midst of strong market fluctuations, hardly change prices. We have assets at our disposal with volatility, for example, of 5% per day. The way we distribute investments among assets with different volatility rates, risk (and, consequently, profitability) is the diversification of risks. I suggest you read the article on protective assets.

Applied diversification: Distribution of investments between strategies with different levels of risk: Martingale and conservative negotiation, scalping and long-term strategies, manual and algorithmic negotiation.

Institutional diversification: Here it is about working with multiple counterparts: Forex, Exchange and different brokers, trust management, etc. If we’re in a force majeure situation (we already discussed the case of the Swiss franc) a counterparty fails, it can withdraw at least the rest of the money from the second.

Statistical diversification: This is a direct and inverse correlation. For example, corn and wheat futures often have the same price direction, USD and gold trends often go the opposite way. A portfolio composed of reverse-correlated assets. will be logically less profitable, but safer because at the time when a low-priced asset, an increase in the price of a different asset offset the loss.

The diversification of investments is limited only by the imagination of the trader and his ability to conduct a market analysis, as well as the appetite for risk. The greater the risk, the greater the potential benefit. That’s why trading risks are often intertwined with psychological risks.

Trade risk insurance:

Stop-loss placement: At this point, we could comment on an example of drivers who ignore the mandatory driving rules of fastening seatbelts. It’s not easy to guess because some people don’t want to use means of protection. On the one hand, market makers can determine the areas where many stops are concentrated and can deliberately push quotes to catch them. Also, a stop loss will be very helpful if a large price difference happens as a result of a force majeure event. We can find another argument, that a trader is not able to react in a volatile market, and a stop loss may save at least part of their deposit.

Close transactions before the weekend: Sometimes, the situation in the Forex market changes drastically for an hour. From Monday to Friday (suppose a trader works 24 hours a day), one could still react to a force majeure. But the weekend, when markets are closed, can bring unpleasant surprises. One example is drone strikes in Saudi Arabia. And it’s even worse if the market opens with a price gap after the weekend.

The moderate use of leverage: That’s logical. If you use high leverage, a negligible force majeure will close your positions due to the stop out.

Calculation of the volume of the lot according to the volume of your deposit, level of risk of the transaction and deposit, and other factors More information in this article.

Conclusion

No risk-free Forex strategies. Is it necessary to minimize Forex trading risks? My opinion is no. Those who want to eliminate or minimize risks cannot participate in trading and invest their capital in a bank deposit. Risks must be optimised by properly assessing their opportunities and the capacity to withstand losses. The risk limitation and balancing policy is a risk management policy, which must be drawn up before trading in a real account begins. Only you can develop a risk management system yourself because in reality there are no recommendations that are good for everyone and that can be perfect for all investors regardless of their condition in all cases.

Categories
Forex Basics

The Correct Way to Set Objectives in Forex

Every time I have read in the various forums dedicated to foreign exchange markets to Forex traders describing their trading methods, it has reached my ears that it is very common to try to gain control over the entire negotiating process by setting targets for virtually all variables. While this could be productive, it may also be too rigid when trading in Forex. In this article, I will try to examine the trading areas to which objectives apply and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each to help you define a flexible negotiating strategy.

Number of Operations

It is very common to listen to traders who say they will stop trading after losing or winning a certain number of trades per day. Whether this makes sense or not depends to a large extent on what kind of trading they are conducting. If we are talking about reselling or short-term trading, then this is a psychological defense mechanism that will probably only limit the profitability of an effective trader. However, for the longer-term swing trader or traders, such a rule is probably useful, since if the first three or four patterns fail quickly, forming a winning pattern becomes increasingly unlikely. Moreover, if the loss-making operations take place in the same price area, it is likely not a fruitful area in the near future.

Of course, psychological defense mechanisms can protect us against large losses, even if they are not statistically acceptable, and if the nerves of a trader are altered by the loss of a number of consecutive trades, It’s probably a good idea to stop operating at least for the rest of that session, until you can recover psychologically.

Stop Loss

I often hear traders say that they apply a fixed stop loss of X number of pips, sometimes different from what is defined between currency pairs, and sometimes not. Although this may work, is an error, as the stop loss must shall be defined by technical measurements or only by volatility, both will vary. For scalpers, who usually use a tight stop loss this may not matter as much, but for longer-term traders, it is crucial to have the right stop loss. While I’m on the subject, I’m going to say that in Forex the goal of stop loss is not necessarily going to be the “correct”, but the one necessary to ensure that we get the transactions with the most adjusted profits possible even at the expense of losing a greater number of operations in general.

Objectives of Profits

The objectives of having a certain benefit can be sensible as a good trading method must provide a certain number of winning trades over time. The most important thing is that the profit targets are neither too small nor too large. Something in the range of twice or triple the risk per operation (from the entry point to the stop loss) is usually a good option. However, it may also make more sense to keep up with the pace of the market and let the operations that are doing very well keep running, at least until they show signs of turning. A productive commitment could be to make a profit when targets are reached very quickly, as such moves in Forex are often spikes that fall apart easily, but otherwise, we can apply a trailing stop, if only once the price is close to the goal. It is also very reasonable for-profit objectives to be based on volatility, for example, if a stop loss is more or less a true middle range of any time period being used so that the profit-taking is two or three times the same amount respects the current pattern of market volatility and the instrument it trades.

Pips Per Day/Week/Month

It is very common to know that traders say they have a goal to make X number of pips daily profit, week or month. This is one of the dumbest attitudes you can possibly have in trading, and it is ruthlessly exploited by scammers who promise all sorts of unrealistic goals. It’s not easy to know where to even begin to break with this approach. First, there are times when you might be able to make 1000 pips in a month and then on other occasions where even the most experienced and fast traders fight powerfully just to avoid a loss. Second, a “pip” could be worth twice as much in one currency pair as in another, not to mention that different operations should have different stop loss sizes, so risk units are a significant measure, while pips are not.

Actually, it makes sense not to have profit goals. What makes even more sense is positioning yourself to take advantage of what the market can offer us and this is made much better by being prepared to face a week or a month of losses if necessary. There are few dumber trading practices than pursuing arbitrary objectives with little or no consideration of market conditions.

Risk Per Operation

Many traders have a rule according to which they risk the same percentage of their trading capital in each transaction. This is an excellent rule and it makes sense. A variation, however small, is to risk a little less in operations that look less promising and a little more in operations that look more promising but not by much. An excellent rule of thumb is to make sure that your risk per transaction is not so great that you suffer too much if the operation turns out to be a loser, but not so small that you don’t care at all what happens. This amount can vary greatly depending on individual circumstances.

Trading with Certain Currency Pairs

Sometimes I hear traders say that they only trade with one or two currency pairs like GBP/USD and EUR/USD, which tend to be particularly favorable. It is true that each currency pair has its own peculiar tendencies and it is also true that, depending on the limitations of the time zone, it may make sense to prefer to trade certain currencies that are more active at the time. However, it is absurd to limit oneself. For example, years ago there was a strong movement of several months in the USD/JPY pair. It was easy to make money by going along with that pair, so why restrict yourself? What if your favorite pair just moves? Would you rather stay out of it?

Conclusion

It is usually counterproductive to limit yourself too much in Forex trading. Traders will find greater success by adapting to market conditions rather than by pursuing fixed objectives, although, as we have already seen, there are numerous exceptions. Beginners can have to limit themselves more as they discover they are too inexperienced to manage flexibility properly. The best answer for all traders is to start slowly and carefully be more flexible as they go along.

Categories
Forex Basics

Top 10 Fun Facts About Forex Trading

When it comes to forex and trading, there is loads of information out there, it also has a very rich history, so when we think about it, there are thousands of facts that could be spoken about trading. Today we are going to be looking at some of the fun facts about trading that you may not really know about. Of course, some are very common knowledge, others will be a little more on the subtle side with fewer people, and some may simply be surprising. So let’s take a look at some of the facts about trading.

It’s Been Around for Centuries

Forex and currency exchange has been around for centuries, of course, it never used to be about trading actual currencies. These days we are trading the GBP with the USD, back then we may have been trading some corn for a sheep. Even in biblical times, the Talmud actually records foreign currency exchanges back in biblical times. They record how moneychangers would set up various stalls where they would then change currencies for another while taking a commission for the change. These sorts of exchanges have also been recorded within ancient Egyptian papyri which date back as far as 260 BC.

The Cable

You may know that the GBP/USD currency is known as “the cable”, but do you know why it is called that? It is known as the cable due to the fact that before we had satellite and fiber optic internet, the information used to be passed between the London and New York exchanges with a giant steel cable that passed under the Atlantic ocean and was used to synchronize the rate between different currencies between the two stock exchanges. While it is no longer needed, it still has some use in modern times, but it is no longer used for the synchronization of data as this can be done quickly through more modern means such as fiber and satellite.

The Worst Currency Inflation

You have probably read about it or seen in the news or even social media sites, that the currency inflation rates in Zimbabwe went through the roof, which is out of sync with the rest of the world which often has very subtle movements in the inflation rates. The country experienced one of the worst inflation in record history where the inflation rate went up 6.56 sextillion percent, to put that into perspective, that is over 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000%, a number that many probably didn’t even know existed. Due to this, Zimbabwe had to completely wipe out the currency and get rid of it, this happened in 2009 and up until 2014, it had to use foreign currencies as its main currency. During the high levels of inflation, the banks in Zimbabwe actually had to limit back withdrawals to Z$500,000 which equated to just $0.25 USD.

There Has Not Been A Collapse

Contrary to belief, there has not actually been a financial collapse that has affected the forex markets, it has caused a bit of movement but there has never been a collapse. Unlike the stock markets which have had a number of crises where the stock values have plummeted and people have lost thousands or even millions. When those same crises have occurred, the forex market managed to withstand it, this is mainly due to the fact that the markets are made up of traders and the prices rely on them, rather than companies and shareholders, this is why those collapses did not affect the forex markets as much and they can potentially withstand anything that happens.

Printing Money

An interesting fact about American banks, before the US Federal Reserve was established back in 1908, pretty much any bank was able to print their own money. The US Federal Reserve put a stop to this as it had the potential to cause mass inflation within the USD currency should the bank have decided to start printing.

Huge Amounts Are Traded

There is an absolutely huge amount of money traded within the forex markets each day, which is why it is the most liquid market in the world. There is an estimated $6.6 trillion being traded every single day. A number that will most likely never be topped apart from the forex markets themselves. No other market comes close and no other market probably ever will.

Challenged by Cryptocurrencies

The current market prices and trade volume of cryptocurrencies is nowhere near that of forex trading, but if there is going to be any sort of market that can actually challenge that of forex it will ultimately end up being the cryptocurrency markets. Currently, the transaction volume is in the tens of billions, far behind the forex markets, but there has been a substantial increase, and it is continuing to increase each year. It will take a long time, many, many years to get anywhere near the same level, but with the constant increase and exponential growth of the cryptocurrency world, there is certainly a chance that the forex markets will be challenged years down the line.

Forex Will Always Be Here

The markets will always be here in one form or another, even if traditional currencies are no longer available and no longer around, there will be some form of currency exchange. The World will never have a single currency, it just would not work due to the different ecosystems and the different natures of the various countries within it. So even if there are not traditional currencies, there will still be a need for the exchange of currencies whatever they are. Due to this, the foreign exchange market will always be there and so there will always be an opportunity to trade one way or another.

The US Market Is Not the Center

Many people, especially those that have seen some of the Hollywood or bigger films about trading and forex will often think that the USA is the center, it is where the most trading happens. When in reality, only around 19% of trades and trade volume takes place in the US, instead, the center of the trading world is actually London, it is predicted that 43% of all forex trading transactions take place in the United Kingdom, and London, making it the main hub for Forex trading.

Millions Required

Forex trading didn’t use to be as accessible as it is today, many years ago before the rise of retail trading brokers, in order to trade you would need to be an institute with a minimum of at least $40 million in order to trade, not something many individuals would be able to do. These days, you can trade for as low as $10 which makes it highly accessible for people all over the world and from pretty much any location that has an internet connection.

Those are some interesting facts about the forex markets, some you probably knew, others you may not have. The emirate is always changing, different things are always happening within them, but one thing is for sure, the markets will be around for a long time to come.

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Forex Basics

The Most Common Complaints About Forex, and Why They’re Completely Bunk

There are a lot of complaints when it comes to forex trading, and we mean a lot. Many of them are completely legitimate while others are based on a single opinion or something that someone may have experienced. Whatever the complaint is, there will surely be ways to get around it or to help out to prevent those things from happening again in the future. It is because of this that we are going to be looking at some of the most common complaints that we hear about forex and the reasons why those complaints probably should not be happening.

It’s Too Hard

Forex trading is not hard, complicated yes, but not hard. We say this even with the knowledge that the majority of people that trade will lose money. People seem to put the term hard on everything these days, forex is not hard, it just takes time, and that’s for some people what makes things hard. Yet in reality, it is not hard at all, all you are technically doing is placing a trade, choosing whether it goes up or down and that is it, it is incredibly easy and quick to do. Yet people refer to it as being hard because of the amount of time and effort that you need to put in in order to be good at it and in order to know which way you should be placing your trade. Yet it is still not hard, it just takes time, time does not make things hard, hard shoulders mean that it takes a lot of effort in order to do the thing that you are trying to do, and that is playing the trade, which we have already discussed, is actually very simple.

People simply do not want to put in the time that it takes in order to be a better trader, they just want to get on with it and that is a mistake. If you try to place trades blind you will make losses, those losses will of course make it harder to make profits, but again, that does not make trading hard, it simply means that you need to put in more time, not more effort.

It’s All A Scam

Forex trading is not a scam, if it was there wouldn’t be over a trillion dollars being traded every single day. Forex is basically just a way of exchanging foreign currencies for each other. It has been happening for hundreds of years in one form or another and will happen for hundreds more. Businesses are run off of it and if it was a scam, the majority of businesses that we have today would have disappeared a long time ago.

We have to admit that within the forex trading world there are a lot of scams, but these are from individuals, people who are setting out to try and take your money. These are the people offering ridiculous Reuters on your investments or certain brokers that have been set up to be predatory, trying to milk money out of you. It is important to know that those are individuals and not the industry as a whole. The industry is completely legitimate, you can do it yourself, go to a foreign exchange shop, buy some currency, hold it for a while, and trade it back, you are doing the same thing on the markets, just in a more convenient way and for more money. Fores is not a scam. It wouldn’t be here if it were, it is as simple as that.

It’s Not for Individuals

Many years ago this would be completely true, you used to need millions of dollars before you could even consider trading on the global forex markets, this made it so that only the biggest businesses and institutions could take part in the markets. These days though, this is certainly not the situation that we are in. These days anyone can trade, all that it takes is a computer or mobile phone, an internet connection, and a balance of as little as $10. That is all that you need to trade which is ridiculous and incredibly accessible. There are no more excuses available for it not being easy to get into. You can go from no account to your first trade being placed in the matter of about 10 minutes with some brokers. There are millions of people trading from their bedroom at home and things will only continue to get easier.

It Takes Too Long

We mentioned above when we discussed forex being hard that it takes time, this is true, but it certainly does not take too much time, if you are finding that it is, then that is something that you as an individual are doing wrong. Actual trading, placing trades, and the analysis for each individual trade does not take a lot of time, this can be done in a few minutes up to 30 minutes, which should be more than enough time to place a trade. What can take a while is the initial learning, but that does not mean that you need to do it all at once which for some reason is what a lot of people try to do. When you try and cram in all your learning into one session then yes, it will take a while and it will be boring. Instead spread it out, learn one thing a day, do not bog yourself down with books and reading for hours at a time. If you spread it out, it will still take the same amount of time in regard to actual learning, but it will be far less boring for you and don’t feel like such a chore or that it is taking up so much of your time.

Those were some of the more common complaints that we see about trading forex, as you can see, the majority of them are simply not true, in the past there may have been a little more relevance to a lot of them, but as things have progressed they are becoming less and less an issue, but they are still things that people like to complain about.

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Forex Basics

How to Trade Forex the RIGHT Way

There is no actual right or wrong way to trade forex, there are however certain things that you can do that can make things a little easier or a little safer, these are the things that people would consider the right way to trade forex. Each individual trader will have their own ideas as to what it is that they need to do in order to trade things the right way. We are going to be looking at a few of the things that are widely considered as the right things to do when we trade. Some may be relevant to you and some may not be, but they are simply what many consider the right things to do.

The first thing comes down to your education, there is such a thing as too little information, but also too much information. There are three types of traders, those that learn the very basics and then jump in, those that try to learn everything before they touch their trading account, and those that learn as they go along. We would say that there is no right way to do it, but there are certainly wrong ways. Firstly, those that simply jump in with very little information, are setting themselves up to fail, you cannot trade with very little info, you won’t know how to manage your risks, or what certain events or patterns mean.

Then there are those that try to read too much, this can simply confuse you, there is a lot of contradictory information out there, info that makes it hard to work out what is right and what is wrong if there is a right and wrong. But if you try to learn everything, you will end up never trading, there is just too much information out there. You need to find a common ground, you need experience, such as a demo account, but you also need to read and learn a little about trading before going live. So try and find a balance of practical and theoretical learning.

You need to learn about risk management, this is how you will protect your account from losses and from the markets moving against you because they certainly will move against you at one point and on a regular basis. Your risk management plan should contain things like your risk to reward ratio, it should also contain details of where you stop loss and take profit levels are to be set. Your trade sizes should also be noted here, this will mean that you know exactly what size trades you will be making. All of these things combined work together to help protect your account, they enable you to trade in a much safer way. This sort of risk management is what can separate a successful trader from a trader that has just blown their account. So if you want to trade things the right way, you need to ensure that you have your risk management in place for the very start.

Learn one strategy at a time and learn one currency pair at a time. This goes along with the education that we mentioned but it is important that you concentrate on a single strategy to begin with. This will enable you to learn it completely and to properly understand it. If you start trying to learn multiple different strategies at once then it can cause you a lot of confusion. In fact, it can make you completely mess up the strategies when trying to implement them. We have seen this countless times in the past.

The same goes for learning different currency pairs, each one behaves differently, as if they have their own personalities, some of them you can interchange, but others you cannot use the same strategies on one as you can the other. You need to get to know the way they move and the way they react to different news events. Once you have grips of your first strategy and your first currency pair, you can then begin to try and branch out into additional ones.

Set your goals and expectations, many people come into trading with the idea that they will make ridiculous amounts of money very quickly, of course, is not the case and is not realistic. You need to set your goals at an appropriate level, think about things like your current capital and account balance, the strategy you are using, and other risk management things that you have in place. You should combine all of these to make more realistic goals. If you see them too high, then you will be risking too much with each trade, not something that anyone would recommend, so set your expectations at the right level and it will keep you grounded and will help to keep you consistent with your trading and risks.

Keep a trading journal, something you have probably been told before and also one of the things that a lot of people hate doing, simply because it takes a bit of time to do with each trade. You need to write down what you are trading, why you are trading it, and different things like the profit and loss, trade times, and more. Jot down as much information as you can to ensure that you have that information available. You can then use this journal to analyse your trades, to work out what you are doing well and what you need to improve on. It also helps you to work out whether you are sticking to your trading plan or putting on trades outside of it. You won’t know any of this if you don’t have a trading journal, so ensure that you have one, most successful traders have one, so there is no reason why you should not have one either.

The things that we have listed above are simply the basics, here are of course a lot of other things that you can be doing to trade in what you would perceive as the proper way, but this is all relative to the person that is trading. Ensure that you do at least some of them and you will be on the right track to becoming a profitable and successful trader.

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Forex Basics

Signs You’re Actually Becoming a Forex Trading Expert

We all hope that one day we can be considered an expert trader. Being an expert will mean that we know exactly what we’re doing, we know how to profit and we know how to remain safe as a trader. We all want to get there but it doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time and we will slowly start to see signs that we are on the right track and that we are slowly becoming expert traders. So let’s take a look at some of the signs that we may see that will show us that we are becoming expert forex traders.

Profits are not your main priority: When new traders start, there is normally just one thing on their mind, how much money they can make and how they are going to make it. Money is the main driving force behind their desire to trade and it is what will motivate them to learn and trade. For an expert, that priority will begin to shift, you will start to focus on securing and protecting what you already have over making more profits. You will understand that it is more important to stay in the game than to make profits, and you will focus on keeping what you have and adding to it rather than placing too many risks.

You are naturally looking at the news: Looking at the various news sites and economic calendars is not really something that newer traders do, yet when you are becoming an expert trader this should be something that comes very naturally to you. The start of each day, the evening before, anytime is a good time to check the news and the economic calendars. It can provide you with a lot of information. Eventually, you will do it naturally without even thinking about it. 

You follow your rules perfectly: The trading plan that you have created will have a number of different rules setup, these rules are what tells you what you should be trading and when. When we are new we will still get some of them wrong, meaning that we will be placing bad trades. But as we grow as traders and move more towards the title of an expert trader, we will begin to reduce the number of times that we go against them, when we no longer make mistakes surrounding the rules, we can consider that part of our training to be at an expert level.

You maximise the profits on each trade: Sometimes it is not about placing more trades, for many newer traders we see the profits and so close the trades for that profit, only for the market to continue in the same direction. An expert trader will capitalise on this, if a take profit level is set, based on further analysis this can be moved further, you can also use things like trailing stop losses that can help you to maximise profits a little bit more. You will now be trying to squeeze out more from each trade rather than placing more trades.

You no longer blindly follow others: When we start out trading, we don’t really know what we are doing, due to this, we often take the words of others with a little more attention, often we will simply place trades because someone that we think is an expert has placed them without really knowing why they have been placed in the first place. Instead, we no longer blindly follow others now, instead, we make our own trades, or if we do take another’s trading idea, we know why they are trading it and have a full understanding of the trade before we place it.

You find your exit point before placing a trade: When we start all we really think about is the entry, how do we get in, we will then think about getting out once we are in profit or loss. This is simply not what an expert would do, instead, we can sense that we are on our way to becoming an expert when we start to think about the exit point before the trade is made, sometimes before the entry point is even decided. The exit point is what will make our profit, but also to protect the account, so it is vital that we know where this will be before we place the trade.

You no longer dwell on negative days: We all hate bad days, we all hate negative trades. What we often do is find it hard to move on, those negative days or trades stay in the back of our mind, maybe we go to sleep thinking about it and wake up with it fresh in our minds, this can then influence our next day’s trading. An expert trader will not do this, they will accept that the losses were there and that they happen. You now need to move onto the next trade without thinking about the loss anymore, this way an expert trader will not be influenced by their previous losses.

You understand that not having a trade can be a good thing: You do not always need to trade, for a new trader you want to be trading all the time as that is how you make money, what they do not seem to understand is that not having a position is still a position. If there are no good opportunities for a trade, you should not try to force one, instead, you need to be patient. Not having a trade is keeping your account safe from losses, so as an expert you understand this and are happy to sit and wait for the right opportunity to arrive.

You still understand that there is still a lot to learn: You can never know everything, in fact, you can never know a lot, new traders may get the basics and then stop learning, but an expert will do the opposite. An expert will know that there is always more to learn, so much so that they spend a lot of their time still learning. New strategies, new assets or currencies, pretty much every aspect of trading has an unbelievable amount of information that is constantly evolving… So a sign of becoming an expert is the fact that you are able to continue to learn and still have the drive to continue to learn.

You never trade without a stop loss: Stop losses are there to protect your account, you should be using them with every trade. New traders don’t always use them but if you want to be considered as an expert trader, then you need to use them with every single trade, it is as simple as that.

You no longer dream about your trades: A weird one no doubt, but when we first start out we dream about our trading, we dwell on our losses and they often affect our dreams, or we dream of placing that one amazing trade that makes us rich. As an expert, you don’t really have these same dreams, your trading stays with your trading, when you step away from the trading terminal, your thoughts of trading do not come with you and so when you dream, you no longer dream of your trading.

So those are just some of the signs that will help to show that you are becoming an expert trader. There are of course other things and we have to ask ourselves how we would actually define an expert trader. You can never be perfect, but you can certainly start to do things a little more naturally that are in line with your strategy, that protect your account and keep you updated, as long as you are trading well, you can be considered an expert trader.

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Forex Basics

How To Practice Forex Trading Without Any Financial Risk

Let’s make something perfectly clear before we say anything else, you cannot trade without risk, there is no way to make any money without there being any form of risk. Risk is what enables us to have rewards and so when you trade there will be risks. Now that we have made that clear, there are of course a number of different things that you can do to help reduce the risks that you will be taking when you trade. Managing your risk is one of the key elements for being a successful trader and so it is certainly something that you should be putting a lot of emphasis on when you create your trading plans and of course when you actually begin trading.

The first thing that you can do is to work out how large the trades that you are going to be putting on are. Of course, this needs to be decided in line with your overall account capital. If you have a balance of $1,000 and a leverage of 100:1, there is no point in trying to put on huge trade sizes like 1 lot or even 0.5 lots, this will only result in disaster. You need to limit your trade sizes, the lower they are, the less risk you are putting your account under. If you are looking for the lowest amount of risk, then you will want to go for the lowest trade size which for many brokers is 0.01 lots. Of course, this will then limit your profit potential, so really you are going to want to look for a happy medium, somewhere with low risk but somewhere that also offers returns. In relation to just risk though the lower the trade size the better.

You then need to work out where your stop losses are going to be, yes you will be using stop losses. They are the primary way and method that we as traders can use to help limit our potential losses. If we do not use them, then even the smallest trade has the potential to blow an account, it will take a lot but it is possible, so why take the risk? Putting in your stop losses is a sure-fire way to protect your account, when your trade goes the wrong way and reaches the level of the stop loss, the trade will automatically close. Yes, it will be at a loss, but it is a controlled loss and one that was taken into consideration before the trade was even placed. What is important is that we removed any potential risk for further losses and have limited things to be within our strategy criteria.

We spoke about leverage near the start of this article, it is important to get a good understanding of how it works and if you want to keep the risks on your account as low as possible, then you will also want to keep your leverage as low as possible. Leverage allows you to trade with more spending power than the capital in your account, this, in turn, increases the profit potential of the account, which is the main selling point of leverage. What they don’t tell you is how this leverage also increases the loss potential of your trades too, the more leverage that you use the higher the losses can be with each trade and a loss can take away a much larger sum of money than it would have with less leverage. So if you have the balance for it, go for a lower leverage in order to keep risks low.

Pick the right currency pair to trade, it’s probably not a surprise to you that different currency pairs offer different levels of risk, there are three main categories, the majors, minors (crosses), and exotics. The major pairs have the least volatility and the most liquidity, the minors are in the middle and the exotics offer the most volatility and least liquidity. Due to this, it is far more profitable and also risks to trade the exotic pairs, but it takes a lot more skill to do it successfully. Due to this, it is recommended that those looking for lower levels of risk should look to trade the major pairs, things like EURUSD are extremely liquid which means that their movements are less rapid and sudden. They are easier to predict and if something does happen, you often have more time to react than with the exotics. So if you are looking to trade with lower risk, go for the major currency pairs.

One of the riskiest things that you can do as a trader is to trade during times of economic news, there are certain news events that new traders are warned away from, things like the US non-farm payroll, you should not be trading during the times of these announcements. They have the ability to cause large movements in the markets and even economic experts get their predictions wrong on a regular basis, if they get it wrong, then there is a good chance you will too. In order to avoid this risk completely, simply do not trade during the news events Obviously there is unannounced news that comes up every now and then which is unavoidable, but as long as you avoid what you can, you will be reducing the risk that you account is being put under.

The last point that we quill look at is the fact that you need to ensure that your expectations and your goals are realistic. If you have come into trading thinking that you will make thousands each month with a small starting balance then you are mistaken. Many people make it seem like you can and many people probably have, but they are risking a lot with every single trade in order to do this and have most likely lost countless accounts in the process of getting their one successful one. Bring your expectations down and you will remain motivated and feel less like you need to risk more to achieve those goals.

Those are some of the things that you can do to help reduce the risks that your account is being put under, remember that it is impossible to trade with no risks at all, there will always be some otherwise there would be no way to make any money. If you hate risks, then you will need to do what you can to help reduce them, but remember that by reducing your risks you are also reducing your profit potential, so the key is to find the middle ground where you are happy with both the risks and the potential profits that you can make.

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Forex Basics

These Mistakes Will Keep You From Succeeding at Forex

Mistakes happen, we all do them and we make mistakes when we do pretty much anything in life, even things that we have been doing for years and years. So it is obvious that we will also make mistakes when it comes to our trading, that is always going to happen, what is important though is how we earn from them and how we develop after making those mistakes. Some are pretty minor and don’t have a huge effect, some may even benefit us if we are lucky, but some mistakes will hold us back, they will prevent us from being successful and profitable and if we continue to make them, we will consistently lose out and won’t be able to become a successful trader. It is those mistakes that we will be looking at in this article, mistakes that many traders do that can hold their forex trading success back.

Taking Shortcuts

It can be very easy to fall into the trap of taking shortcuts, when we say shortcuts we are referring to the rules and the methods that you use to place trades, your trading plan will have some rules on it, these rules will dictate how and when you place your trades. These can be pretty small shortcuts, like not waiting for additional confirmation, or they can be pretty significant ones like trying to speed up the process by not placing a stop loss with a trade. While they may not seem big, those little things like not placing a stop loss could potentially end up causing some quite considerable losses which will, in turn, put your overall trading results back quite a bit. It is important that you try to avoid these shortcuts, some may work, but when they don’t they can have big effects. Ensure that you stick to your rules and that you do them fully, not doing just half and hoping things are ok, that extra minute that you save is not worth the additional risks involved.

Not Following A Plan

The plan is there for a reason, it is called a plan because it is what you are meant to be following. Yet we see so many people look at their plan and then only follow a few of the things on it. Trading plans should be pretty diverse, they will include the rules for placing trades as well as the risk management plans that are there to help protect our account. Due to this, it is important that you follow them, as soon as you deviate you are placing bad trades and you are reducing the effectiveness and the consistency of your trading. If you have a plan you need to stick to it. The more that you go against it, the more losses and larger effects those losses will have on your account. Stick to your plan at all times.

Increasing Risks

A lot of people don’t seem to stick to their risk management plans, at least not entirely. Your plan will have your risk to reward ratio which will dictate things like your stop loss distance. It will also include things like the trade sizes that you should be using as well as the frequency of your trades. Yet so many go against this, the normal reasons for going against it and increasing things like trade sizes and frequency are a recent loss that they want to win back or overconfidence, things are going very well and so they believe that they can predict the markets. If you ever feel like this, then take a step back, take a break and then come back when these sorts of emotions are not with you. Stick to your risk management plan, you set it up for a reason, it works, so every time you break it you are risking money and potentially your entire account.

Trading Tired

Something that we are all probably guilty of, we love to trade, but sometimes it is better not to and when you are tired, that can be one of those reasons. When we are tired we do not have the same concentration levels, we are far more easily distracted and we are far more likely to make mistakes. Yet we love trading so much or feel that we need to trade that sometimes it doesn’t matter how tired we are, we will still trade. This is where a lot of mistakes will be made, things missed out and potential losses gained. If you’re feeling tired, or that you cannot concentrate fully, then you should try and avoid trading as a whole, including analysing the markets and especially placing any trade.

Being Distracted

Distractions are horrible things when it comes to trading, pretty much anything can be a distraction. When you set up your trading officer room, you should have ensured that a lot of the things that could cause you distractions were removed. Things like a TV, games consoles, things like hats, things that can take your attention away from your trading. Ensure that others know that you are trading and that you do not wish to be disturbed. Distractions can very easily cause you to miss things or to place trades incorrectly, so it is vital that you eliminate as many as you can.

Trading With Emotions

Emotions are wonderful things, they can make us feel amazing but at the same time, they can make us feel pretty rotten. One thing that we want to avoid is trading while our emotions are pretty high. They can cause us to want to do things that go against our trading strategy, things like greed and overconfidence can make us trade large or more often, while things like anxiety and fear can make us not want to trade at all. When we have our emotions high or you can feel something building up then it is important that you take a break, step away, clear your mind and come back when those emotions have died down.

Those are just some of the mistakes that people make when they are trading, some of them may seem pretty small but the consequences that they can have can be pretty big. If you are in any situation, then take a step back and see what you can do to try and rectify things. It’s not the end of the world but what is important is that you are able to recognise them and then do what you can to rectify them.

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Beginners Forex Education Forex Basics

So You’ve Made Your First Forex Trade…Now What?

Congratulations, you have just made your first ever forex trade, that is a fantastic milestone. Unfortunately, your work doesn’t stop there. Regardless of the outcome of that trade, there are a number of things that we need to do afterward in order to ensure that the trade counts as a good and successful trade, and ways that we can build on what we have just done. So let’s take a look at some of the things that you can do next after placing your first trade, these are not in order of importance or order of when you should do them, just things that you should be thinking about after that first trade has been placed.

Write It Down

The first thing that any trader should do after placing their first trade is to write everything about it down on awesome paper in a trading journal if you have one. This will include things like the opening price and time, the closing price and time, how long the trade was open for, the profit or loss of the trade, what analysis you did beforehand, which of your trading rules you followed, and any other relevant information that you can think of. It sounds like a lot, but it will be worth it, this sort of information will then allow you to analyse the trade that you made (our next point) which in turn allows you to ensure that you are making even better trades in the future. This is only possible though if you remember to write things down. It does take a little extra time, time that is definitely worth it, so don’t skip this step just to save yourself a few extra minutes.

Analyse It

You can do this regardless of whether you did our previous point of writing things down, however, it is far easier to do if you have all the relevant information written in front of you. We now need to analyse the trade that we made in order to work out whether it would be classed as a good trade or a bad trade. A good trade is one that followed all of our trading plans and rules, you can then probably guess that a bad trade is simply a trade that did not follow all of our rules, a trade placed outside of our strategy, regardless of the outcome. If we placed a bad trade we need to work out why, what part of the trade went against our pre-planned strategy? Work that out and you will find it far easier to avoid making the same sort of bad trades in the future. The result of the trade in regards to profit or loss is not important at this stage, what is important is that you get used to trading in line with your strategy and that you gain experience with placing trades with your platform and broker.

Remember Your Feelings

When we place our first trade, we will have a number of different emotions flowing through us which is completely natural in this situation. We will feel nervous beforehand, during the trade we may feel a lot of adrenaline, afterward, depending on the result we may feel a high or a low. It is important to remember these feelings, however, the reason why we are remembering them is not so that we can try and recreate them, it is to show us that we need to try and get them out of our trading. The nerves that you get at the start should go with time, but if you allow them to remain it can become increasingly hard to actually place trades, the same with the highs and lows, they can become addicting or even bring on other emotions that can affect our trading like greed or overconfidence. So remember those feelings, if you then, later on, feel them becoming quite strong, that is a good time to take a break and clear your mind.

Change Things

If we did our analysis properly, we will most likely have a few things to think about, did you follow your strategy? Did you place a good trade or a bad trade? These are things to think about. If things were not entirely perfect which they probably weren’t, then we can start to think about things that we need to change. When starting out there will most likely be a lot of different things that we need to change on our first, second, third, and more trades. They may be very few things, but each change that we make is an improvement that will ultimately improve our overall trading in the long run. Remember, these changes do not need to be big, any changes are also helpful, no matter how small they are.

Place Another

So we placed our first trade, after looking at that trade, analysing it, working out what we need to change, we can then think about placing our second trade. We need to take into account anything that we previously looked at, so if we needed to make a change, this is where we can implement it, of course, if it is a huge change, then it will be good to test it on a demo account, but for very small changes it will be ok in our live account. It should be slightly easier and quicker to place this second trade as we have done one before and the majority will be exactly the same. Place the trade and then do exactly the same again, write down what you do, the same information as before, so you can then analyse the second trade to ensure you are still in line and that any changes that were made are working well. Then do the same for the third, fourth, and any other subsequent trades that you make.

Your sift trade is a huge milestone, it is the start of your trading career, it can be daunting, it can be exciting and for many, it won’t go the way that you want but that is all part of trading. Analyse it, change it and keep working and writing down everything that you do. With each and every trade you will see small improvements until you get to your 100th where you will be a much better trader than you were for your first trade.

 

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Forex Basics

A Summary of Trading For A Living by Dr. Alexander Elder

Trading For A Living is an excellent read for those who wish to learn about the many aspects of the trading world. The book was written by Dr. Alexander Elder and published initially in 1993, with a new version in 2014 (translated into Spanish in 2017). What follows is a summary of this work for those who are interested in learning more about trading. 

In its introductory section, Trading For A Living indicates that anyone can make a living by trading without relying on anyone else. Without a doubt, some very emotional lines that fill many with confidence, including numerous traders today. This book tells us that to succeed in trading, we must put emotions aside and we must also be disciplined, consistent, and very patient.

The author indicates that trading is based on some fundamental aspects: psychology, market analysis, trading system, and money management. This last point is key. If you want to get as successful as possible, it is important that we manage our money optimally, appreciating and taking care of capital at all times. We’ll give you a summary of the book Living Trading in Two Parts.

The first part of this book focuses on individual psychology and shows us that the main target of a good trader is not, as most of the world thinks, make money in the first place, but to make an efficient trade. Greed is a destructive weapon and unfortunately, many traders want to be millionaires overnight. Without measuring the consequences that this entails. A trader’s success is to be very realistic, knowing what his qualities or skills are as well as his limitations.

In addition, you should be aware of everything that happens in the market and make the best decisions when they are needed. With regard to this market analysis, the book states that it must be carried out with great effort and dedication, reacting in the best way and being very realistic at all times.

In addition, the control of emotions and money are terms on which the author makes a lot of emphases, being the key to achieve success in trading. It also denies that trading is a simple game. You have to take it very seriously!

After reading the book, the author talks about an important topic: the study of individual and mass psychology. Here it indicates the impulsiveness and eagerness of the losing trader to play or participate. Which means losing a lot of money and never letting the world know. That is why a person who invests impulsively, without the control of emotions and economic resources, will never have the success of a smart trader.

In this book, Elder indicates some tips (7 specifics), which can help you live trading. We summarize them below:

  1. Mind that you will start trading to stay for many years there.
  2. You should read a lot and listen to the experts on this topic, but keep your own criteria.
  3. Leave greed behind and your emotions. Everything in time, opportunities in the market will always be at your disposal.
  4. Create the best strategies to analyze the market.
  5. Come up with an appropriate money management plan. You need to survive long-term, grow constantly, and make the best profits.
  6. Be aware that in a trading system, you will be the weakest link.
  7. If you want to be a winning trader and succeed in the trading world, you must think and act differently from the losers.

Without a doubt, Trading For A Living is one of the best trading books in history, so we recommend reading it in detail if you want to succeed as a trader.

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Forex Basics

The Two Types of Financial Independence (Likeable and Unlikable)

There is a very wide concept of Financial Independence that I don’t like, and it would be more or less this: An investor reads Kiyosaki and his “Rich Father, Poor Father”, and likes the concepts of “rat race”, “passive income vs income from work”, “financial independence”, etc. From there, the investor draws the conclusion that to be happy, he has to earn enough money to stop working and live off income at 50.

While the concepts of Kiyosaki do not displease me at all, the conclusion drawn by the investor seems terrible to me. At the income level, wanting to maximize them will lead you to look for the job that allows you to earn more money, not the one you like to do. And probably, to give him a lot of hours, and sacrifice any personal issues for the sake of thriving on the job. At the expense level, scissors for everything; euro I earn, euro saving. Getting out is expensive, holidays are expensive, maybe even children are expensive…

If he’s lucky, the investor will have a shitty life until he’s 50 (pity his best years), and then he’ll be able to live without work… which will seem very desirable after many years of investing a very large amount of hours in a job he didn’t like; but for that, you need to have saved a lot of money and the investments have gone well, and maybe the investor does not have enough at 50 and has to continue until 60…

And then what? The investor can live without work… what a thing. That’s not as good as it sounds, I’ve seen several cases of people starting startups and selling them for millions, and these people don’t stay out of work after that, as much as they could spare; a few months off, yes, but then they look for some activity again, because it’s the way to feel fulfilled, and it’s so much better than just living on rent. And that’s the financial independence I don’t like. But unfortunately, there are many investors out there… This concept of financial independence is widespread.

Going back to the basics, Kiyosaki-san, what he says is that the lack of savings closes your options and makes you miss out on opportunities for improvement, and that’s where the key point for me is. The right aspiration is not to work, but not to have to stagnate in a bad job (it can be bad because of the salary, or for any other reason that makes you not like it). And to achieve this, you need some savings (but not far enough to be able to live without working), and something to move us in the right direction.

For example, suppose the investor is working as a private employee in a banking office, charging little and displeasing because he has to place bad products on customers. Instead of striving to become a director and collect many bonus targets, the investor starts to think about what he would like to do, and comes to the conclusion that he might like to be a photographer. So he talks to people who are working as photographers (in the press, at weddings, etc.) and he doesn’t see clearly that he can make enough money making the kind of photographs he would like, and he ends up dismissing (or at least parking) the photographer at a professional level; What else would you like to do? Maybe be a cook and have your own restaurant… Repeat the process, talking to restaurant owners cooks, and although not all is pink (restaurant schedules, paperwork for owning the business), he does see it as viable to make enough money doing the kind of cooking he would like, so he decides to try.

But as Kiyosaki says, to have options you need money; to open a restaurant is expensive, and to be able to pass without the payroll of the bank also, so the investor mounts a financial plan:

At the level of income, instead of killing oneself in the bank to earn more, what he tries is to get some job on weekends in restaurants; preferably as a cook, but also as a waiter, because if he is going to be the owner of the business it is convenient to have a global vision. In addition, he always finds a little time to talk to the business owner and tells them that he also wants to set up a restaurant in five years, so they can give him advice and tell him about their experience. What they tell you confirms that it is something you want to do, and also gives you some ideas (it seems that employee management is more difficult than it seems, and you start reading things on the internet about the subject). And in the meantime, the extra income he needed is falling; 5,000 euros a year.

At the expense level, the investor discovers that with a little consideration it is easy to reduce the electricity bill by 10 euros (25 in the winter months), another 10 euros per month on the telephone bill, another 30 euros a month canceling some subscriptions to things that didn’t really bring anything to him, puts the scissors in the car (in his case, taking the subway to go to the center, avoiding the expense in parking) and postpones to the next year the renewal of the mobile; But it keeps the holidays intact, the food, the clothes, the Netflix… the things he really enjoys. And in leisure, spending is maintained, but now spending less on cinema and more on restaurants, for seeing the market. In total he has saved 1500 euros a year, which is not too much… but it helps, and he has not had to lose quality of life to get it.

A year and a half later, the investor already has experience as a cook, knows the business, and has very good contacts in the sector. And one of them has had a casualty, and who first thinks to cover it is the investor who quickly accepts; now earns the same as he earned in the bank, but is in a job that he finally likes, which is a very important improvement, and he’s still on the road to having his own restaurant…

History may have many paths from here, but the good news is that it will almost certainly end well:

You can progress in this restaurant, or you can jump to one where they pay a lot or one where the investor learns a lot from the hand of a chef he admires.

You may discover the niche of “restaurant photographer”, and end up recovering your original vocation.

He may be comfortable as a cook in someone else’s restaurant and decide to stay (hey, dreams change!), or he may end up buying a restaurant in 3-5-10 years, or he may start a new one.

“People assume that if you try to get the maximum money, you will get the maximum money; however, the reality is that if you do what you like, you will probably do better than if you do things that you only do for money, And on not a few occasions you will end up standing out and maybe you will earn more money than if you focus only on money!”

Maybe your business is going well, maybe it’s going badly. If it goes wrong and you had a lot of debt to ride it, you will have problems (it is the only bad way). If he does badly but didn’t get into too much debt, he’ll go back to being a cook (which is much better for him than the bank), and maybe in the future, he’ll try again…

As you can see, in this new history of the investor there appear many concepts of financial independence, but not the desire to live off income without working. Oddly enough… if the investor’s restaurant is doing well, he still has enough money to live without working.

Categories
Forex Basics

The Beginner Trader’s ABC’s of Forex Trading

Is it really possible to make money in the financial markets? It absolutely is. With that being said, you must know what steps to take to be successful. The beginner’s guide that we provide here will help you to start earning straight away. 

Learning, Learning, and More Learning

Not having the right education is the main reason why we will never be the CEO of JP Morgan Stanley tomorrow. To obtain the desired position, we study at school, we study at university, we go on a refresher course, etc. If we successfully overcome all this, we will have the opportunity to occupy the desired position. Are there many people in high-ranking and highly paid positions who have no education? They are not there at all. Therefore, to achieve something, we must study.

It is the same with currency trading. If your desire is to be a trader, you must first learn how to do it. A consistent and successful trader in addition to what he once learned, is constantly improving and learning new methods and ways to increase his income. Therefore, if you want to have the opportunity to earn money on Forex, start by studying the educational materials your broker will provide you with kindness. Trade within a demo account before you start trading in a real one. And don’t save money on your education.

Test, Test, Test

Did you lose your first deposit? Do you think trading is not your thing? That’s not so. Anyone with an average IQ has enough talent to trade in Forex. However, not everyone will have enough determination. As I have already reported, the first difficulties always discourage us, and we tend to be quite reluctant to continue. Here the situation is similar, the first losses are the first difficulties. We should focus and overcome the problems.

It is essential and necessary to know very well the causes of the problems and then start again after they have been eliminated. We must know that this is the only way to succeed in trading. Do you think the advanced traders we’ve seen before have never had a loss? They have in fact, and now too. But they can overcome the losses and make sure the loss doesn’t affect the end result. Remember, no matter how the team played, the final score only matters.

Update Your Trading Strategy

As you learn and read more and more trading methods, your own methods will lose relevance. Don’t stay in one place. If you found a good approach to trading, met a new pattern, read about a new indicator, don’t be afraid to try. Modify your current trading strategy, try the new pattern. It may be something you’ve been looking for! Then, never stop there, always go further. The market changes constantly, therefore, you should be changing.

Sharing Your Experiences

The longer you trade, the more hands-on experience you get. And the hands-on experience is the most valuable trading experience. You can read a lot of trading books, but your knowledge will not give you any results if you have never traded in a real account. The community of traders is huge, and there will always be people whose experience is greater or less than yours. In other words, some traders can teach you something, and some traders can learn from you. Always share your experience with traders of your level, this can bring a lot of benefits to your own result, plus you can expand your network of contacts. These are basically the main points you should start with if you have decided to change your life and move towards success.

Common Beginner’s Mistakes

Well, we’ve defined what you must do to succeed in trading. But, as in other businesses, there are many difficulties in currency trading. Therefore, I would like to warn you about the typical mistakes that beginner traders make, to avoid them.

  1. I want to earn quickly. 

We all want to succeed as soon as possible. And often this desire plays a bad joke on us. When we want to look for big profits, we usually start not respecting the rules of our system, not complying with our business plan, and this leads to an inevitable loss of money. If your desire is to succeed, convince yourself that what you need is to achieve success little by little, it is a path that you have to travel step by step. There are many times when success can come quickly. But as experience shows, people are usually not prepared for this and cannot develop this success).

  1. Misunderstanding of leverage principles.

Leverage is a unique mechanism that brokers provide to their customers, and if you can use this mechanism correctly, it will become an ally for you. If you use it incorrectly, it will become the cause of your losses. Before you start using leverage in your trading, make sure you understand how it works, know the principle of its use, and how it will affect your performance. Simply put, don’t employ high leverage, for stable earnings, 1:100 is enough. Let’s take an example, the trader, whom we have studied in detail work before, does not use leverage above 1:30.

  1. Lack of money management.

Overall, it’s a pretty important issue. To put it briefly, money management is a complex of measures you take to better manage your funds. The basic points of any money management are the correct management of your funds, the calculation of risk parameters, the management of leverage, the recording of statistics of executed operations, the operation with a small part of its capital, and other points. Money management is basically mathematical at the level of your wallet. He always knows how much money his wallet has, how much he’s going to buy, and how much money he’ll have left after he buys it. The same goes for your Forex account. You must know the amount you want to win if you succeed and how much you will lose if you fail. The result obtained by your operation should not surprise you.

  1. Operate for a long time.

This is the time you spend trading. If your time is distributed correctly and effectively, you are always in a good mood and for this reason, nothing, in terms of psychology, prevents you from thinking correctly and making the right trading decisions. The result of such work will almost always be positive. If you are operating day and night, your brain gets tired and cannot respond adequately to current events. This results in irritation, exhaustion, inability to think rationally and make decisions, which negatively affects your trading performance. Define the appropriate period to work and do not work too much.

How to Maximize Profits

Among the benefits of being able to trade on their own, the markets offer you many opportunities to earn extra money in trading. If you’re not too tired, let’s move on!

  1. Transaction Copy System

Remember when we were studying the case of the successful trader, what I said is that this trader did his trade publicly. This is done to receive additional income from people who copy their operations. Remember, the reward? Well, the transaction copy system allows inexperienced people to make money. Simply select the trader, whose trading performance you like and copy your trades. In return, you will share a fixed share of your earnings with this trader. I think this is little compared to the fact that they will do all the work for you and make money for you. In this system you can earn as a trader, start trading, and in addition to your own profits in your account, you will receive a commission from the investors who copy it. If you want to earn money as an investor, simply copy successful trades and make a profit without any effort. You decide!

  1. The Affiliate Programme

Brokers are always very interested in being able to develop their business more and thus be able to attract new customers. They make profits by receiving commissions for the transactions made by their clients. They themselves do not always manage to attract a sufficient number of new customers. That’s why Forex brokers often turn to the help of existing customers, offering them the opportunity to make money by attracting new customers. In other words, if you operate on Forex and your friend also wants to start trading on Forex, you can conclude a partnership agreement with your broker, in which the broker will pay you a portion of the commission that the new customer you have attracted will pay. Or you can even pay him a fixed amount for each new customer attracted. I think it’s a good deal.

  1. Contests for Traders

The main brokers usually hold different contests with good prizes among their clients. For example, there are popular traders contests, in which participants are given a period of time, such as a month, during which they must trade in their accounts and display the result. The top three that performed the highest returns receive broker awards. In a recent contest, a trader from Malaysia made a profit of 314% for one month, starting trading with USD 100. And the broker, as a first prize, gave the trader a check for 5,000 USD. There might be someone in your place, for example, you.

Conclusion

I think I’ve put forward enough arguments that you can and should make real money on Forex. No matter how you do it, there are many opportunities. What you need to do is not be passive and start moving.

Categories
Forex Basics

Which Countries Ban Forex Trading?

Forex trading is certainly legal in the vast majority of countries around the world, and very few countries prohibit speculative currency trading. At present, Belgium is the most prominent case, with too many warnings to its citizens. Another very different question would be to analyze why in some countries there is more difficult than in others to carry out Forex trading, and then we would have to stop to analyze the particular situation of each one.

Researching in different brokers we have observed that there are restrictions to the opening of accounts to citizens of certain countries. The issue is not that in these countries the practice of Forex is illegal, but that the brokers themselves for different reasons do not want to open accounts with some nationalities.

In summary, the list of countries where it would be more difficult to open an account for Forex trading would be as follows:

“Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Guyana, Iraq, Laos, Yemen, Vanuatu, Uganda, Quebec, Syria, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Iran, North Korea, Burundi, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Republic of Mali, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela”

Many times, although the governments of these countries do not explicitly prohibit forex trading, it makes it difficult for various reasons, one of them may be the prohibition of bank accounts denominated in currencies other than those of the country itself. That is, as is the case of Venezuela for example, which limited the currency USD for use among its citizens. This circumstance makes complicated the payment in several gateways like Skrill or Neteller and therefore the simple task of opening an account with a few dollars becomes very complicated.

In other cases like Cuba, the limitations that the population has for good access to the Internet also make it very difficult for its citizens to practice Forex trading. Let us not forget that in Cuba and in some other countries the US economic and financial blockade still exists.

Another case apart is the countries in war, in these countries, some of them in the Middle East, it becomes practically impossible to have an account to practice Forex, as the difficulties in general multiply.

“Since tradING is extremely risky, many countries have imposed strict regulations on Forex trade to prevent financial losses for their citizens.”

Brokers are well aware of all these circumstances, and that is why many of them do not want to have relations with citizens of countries they consider “conflicting”. But as the circumstances of each country change from day to day, this list of “banned” countries is constantly being updated.

China. China and India deserve special mention, in these countries Forex trading is restricted by their respective governments, which does not mean that it is prohibited. Yes, it is legal and although China allows currency trading, Chinese traders cannot open their accounts with foreign brokers due to strict capital controls. China-based traders can only open their accounts with Chinese brokers. To attract Chinese traders, international currency brokers can open a local branch in China.

India. Forex retail is permitted in India, although it should be routed only through registered exchanges. Indian traders are not legally allowed to finalise cash transactions for foreign exchange trading. Another restriction of Indian traders is that they can only trade in currency pairs with the Indian rupee (INR), for example, EUR-INR, GBP-INR, JPY-INR, and USD-INR. This implies that Indian traders cannot trade in currency pairs without the INR. This is a big disadvantage for Indian Forex traders.

Japan. There is a lot of competition for Forex trading in Japan for smaller traders, and the market is growing rapidly. The financial services agency allows retail Forex traders in Japan to trade only through licensed brokers in Japan, they cannot register with other foreign brokers. There are also restrictions imposed on margin trading, typically 1:25 for major currency pairs.

South Korea. Forex restrictions in South Korea combine the restrictions of Japan and China. Due to capital controls, traders in South Korea cannot open their Forex account with foreign brokers. Due to strict government regulations, local brokers impose many restrictions on currency trade in South Korea. The maximum permitted leverage for Forex trading is quite low at 1:10

Turkey. The law has recently changed (relatively new regulations have only been introduced in 2017) for Forex trading and traders cannot use the services of unregulated foreign brokers. The local broker must also obtain a license to trade on Forex from the Turkish board for capital markets. The trader is required to make a minimum deposit of at least 50,000 Turkish lira.

Forex-Friendly Countries

On the contrary side to what we have been dealing with, are the countries where everything is easy for the practice of forex, and we have thought it convenient to name them also in this article because not everything will be prohibitions and difficulties!!

One of the particular advantages of becoming successful enough on Forex to do full-time trading is that it is possible to do it from any place where there is good access to the internet. There are no bosses, you don’t have to leave the house to go to work, and you don’t need to be in a specific place. You can go anywhere, so why not choose the best place? Naturally what is best depends on each person, but there are some general considerations we can use to make some recommendations.

The Right Price

Many dream of becoming rich with trading, and living in luxury in a city like New York. But the most realistic probability is to have a modest and consistent income. Earning a couple of thousand dollars isn’t exactly a bad income, but there are places where that can be a very good income.

Forex traders know that currencies vary in their purchasing power, and you have to take advantage of that knowledge. In fact, switching to another country could improve the situation of a forex trader significantly.

Basics

Trading on forex requires a good internet connection, banking infrastructure, and a friendly tax environment. It is for the latter that many immediately think of countries that do not tax capital gains. But several of those countries, like Hong Kong, Singapore, or Switzerland, have a high cost of living.

On the other hand, some of the so-called low-cost countries w-cost countries have other problems, such as lack of infrastructure and security. The ideal is to find a balance. But you also have to consider trading hours; it is not very pleasant to get up at a foul hour to trade at the best times in the market.

Candidates

If measured by popularity, Thailand would be at the top of the list. Not only for Forex traders, but many of those who work online will live or spend a good time there. They have no tax on capital gains, life is cheap, friendly people, there is good internet, and many foreigners. Another close candidate would be neighboring Malaysia, for the same reasons. Other countries that are not so well known, but still would be interesting to consider.

Panama: For those looking for a business-friendly and safe environment, in addition to being relatively close to the US. It is also an advantage that they speak Spanish and English.

Malta: It has the same status as the countries of the European Union. The weather is mild and meditative, and it does not tax most of the gains from forex trading.