reason to trade forex

reasons to trade forex

While Forex trading is becoming more popular in the United States, the vast majority of investors still do not understand the massive advantages offered in the foreign currency market when compared to equities or fixed income trading. When you fully grasp the following concepts, you'll understand why you might want to reconsider your current investment strategies.

1. Currency prices are not heavily influenced by institutional investors. In stock trading, there is a limited amount of volume on a daily basis. Each stock has a specific number of shares on the open market and trade prices are governed by the number of people attempting to buy or sell shares at a specific point in time. This makes the market vulnerable to price swings when a large investor is attempting to buy up or unload large amounts of shares. For example, if some pension fund owns 10% of a company and suddenly decides to liquidate their position, the market is now flooded with sell orders. Since the amount of shares attempting to be sold will outnumber the amount of buy orders, the price of the stock will start to drop as the number of buyers days up. This creates losses for the remaining shareholders. On the other hand, the forex market is so massive and has so many investors that no single investor can possibly have a major impact on pricing. There are too many units of Euros, Dollars, Yen, etc for any single institution to hold even close to a controlling interest in any currency.

2. Margin requirements are significantly lower in forex trading than equity trading. While the exact amount of margin allowed is determined by each broker, the restrictions are usually much less stringent when trading forex. Margin allows the investor to "play with house money." In essence, you're borrowing money from the broker to invest in your own account. While this can be risky, it can also be insanely profitable. For example, let's say you have $10,000 of your own money to invest. If you open up a margin account at an equity broker, you can usually margin up to 50% of the value of stock. So if you buy $10,000 in Microsoft stock, you can borrow another $5,000 to own a total of $15,000 in value. With your forex account, the margin requirement is often as low as 1%. Which means that if you buy $10,000 in Euros, you can use your broker's money to buy another $1,000,000. So you now own over $1 million in Euros. Now lets say that the value of each investment increases 10%. Your $15,000 in Microsoft stock is now worth $16,500. You sell it, pay back the $5,000 you borrowed, and you pocket $1,500 in profit (minus any fees or interest). Your return on investment is 15%. If your Euros went up 10%, your $1 million is now worth $1.1 million. After selling and repaying your broker, you profit $100,000 before any interest. That's a return on investment of over 1,000%. Of course, you need to be extra careful when trading on margin. Imagine if the transaction went the other way. You'd be in a much bigger hole in the forex scenario. But the potential for enormous gain is there and is one of the major reasons why forex trading is so attractive to serious investors.

3. Forex trading is open 24 hours a day. Unlike the U.S. stock markets, you can trade forex any time of day from Monday through Friday. If a major news story breaks when you're holding stock, and it's after hours, you're stuck holding onto your position until the market opens the next day. By the time this happens, everyone else knows the news and there's thousands of buy/sell orders waiting when the opening bell rings. This will dramatically influence your trade price and negate any advantage you might have had by being one of the first to react. Keep in mind that many corporations withhold major news such as earnings reports and personnel moves until after the market closes. They do this to minimize emotional trading, which is smart for them to do but also hurts savvy investors. Since Forex trading is open 24 hours, you can place your trade order whenever major events occur.

4. The foreign exchange market is more liquid than the equity market. Forex is the largest market in the world. Every day, an average of $1.4 trillion dollars is traded, and the amount of securities (foreign currencies) is minuscule when compared to the number of companies traded in the equities market. This means that there are always buyers to be matched with sellers, which means that you'll have a much better chance to get a fair and accurate price on your trade than if you were trading a low volume stock where the bid and ask spreads can be very large.

5. Forex trading offers the advantage of limited risk. This is one of the large advantages over the futures market. When you buy a futures contract, you are obligated to buy or sell a specific amount of a specific commodity at a specific time for a specific price. Which means that if disaster hits, you're out of luck. For example, lets say you buy a futures contract to sell corn. If news breaks that reports an outbreak of deaths caused by a pesticide used in corn crops, the price on your contracts will drop through the floor, limits will drop, and you could be stuck in your position and end up taking massive losses. This would not happen in the forex market since you can leave your position at any time.

things to note in forex

things to note in forex market

There is an ideal mindset, character, and mental attitude that traders need to acquire. I say acquire because few people have the innate personality that makes this mindset natural. With respect to your trading, this involves being free of anxiety, fear, despair or regret. It also involves being able to remain calm, confident, focused and disciplined in the face of adverse trading outcomes.

Trade with a Disciplined Plan
The problem with many traders is that they take shopping more seriously than trading. The average shopper would not spend $500 without serious research and examination of the product he/she is about to purchase, yet the average trader would make a trade that could easily cost him/her $500 based on little more than a feeling or hunch. The plan must include stop and limit levels for the trade, as your analysis should encompass the expected downside as well as the expected upside. Be sure that you have a plan in place before you start to trade.


Good Execution Good Anticipation
Everybody knows that trading is a number game. I mean, our success is not depend on the outcome of the next trade, our success is depend on the overall profitability of many trades. So, while we are trading, whether the last trade we did was profitable or not is definitely not important. There is no point drawing conclusions on the outcome of just one?or even a few-trades.
We can only access our anticipation skills when we have made a reasonable number of trades and see the longer-term result of our action. It is so important that when we are trading, our goal should be focus on executing our trades with ruthless efficiency and to judge only that. If you consider the ways that you lose money trading, you will find that it is down to poor execution, rather than poor anticipation.


Cut Your Losses Early and Let Your Profits Run
This simple concept is one of the most difficult to implement and is the cause of most traders demise. Most traders violate their predetermined plan and take their profits before reaching their profit target because they feel uncomfortable sitting on a profitable position. These same people will easily sit on losing positions, allowing the market to move against them for hundreds of points in hopes that the market will come back.
In addition, traders who have had their stops hit a few times only to see the market go back in their favor once they are out, are quick to remove stops from their trading on the belief that this will always be the case. Stops are there to be hit, and to stop you from losing more then a predetermined amount. You simply allow your profits on the winners to run and make sure that your losses are minimal. What is it about cutting a loss that is so hard?


Do Not Over Trade
Do not bet on the farm. One of the most common mistakes that traders make is leveraging their account too high by trading much larger sizes than their account should prudently trade. Leverage is a double-edged sword. Just because one lot of currency only requires $1000 as a minimum margin deposit, it does not mean that a trader with $5000 in his account should be able to trade 5 lots.
One lot is $100,000 and should be treated as a $100,000 investment and not the $1000 put up as margin. Most traders analyze the charts correctly and place sensible trades, yet they tend to over leverage themselves. As a consequence of this, they are often forced to exit a position at the wrong time. A good rule of thumb is to never use more than 10% of your account at any given time.


Do Not Marry Your Trades
The reason trading with a plan is the #1 tip is because most objective analysis is done before the trade is executed. Once a trader is in a position he/she tends to analyze the market differently in the hopes that the market will move in a favorable direction rather than objectively looking at the changing factors that may have turned against your original analysis. This is especially true of losses. Traders with a losing position tend to marry their position, which causes them to disregard the fact that all signs point towards continued losses.
So should you before you trade. In order to start the trading day in the optimum state of mind you should take 15 to 20 minutes to prepare. Treat each day like an elite athlete prepares for a competition. Here is how to do this:
#Get yourself in a comfortable sitting position and close your eyes.
#Breathe in and out slowly, pushing your stomach out each time you breathe in.
#Consciously relax all your muscles.
#Focus your entire attention on your breathing.
#When your mind starts to wander (as it will) re-focus on your breathing so that you eliminate from your consciousness whatever your mind had started to think about?including bodily sensations.
#Become aware of being exclusively?in the present moment. Exclude memories or thoughts about past events, and worries or anticipation or planning about the future.
#Do this past the point of boredom, until your restless mind settles down and you enter a peaceful, relaxed state. This usually takes 15 to 20 minutes, but it can be longer for some people.
Good luck and happy trading!

tips of good forex

6 tips for good forex trading system

If you are a trader and you have tried to find a forex trading system that might work for you and have curiously looked up the words forex trading system in Google, havent you been surprised and annoyed at the amount of rubbish and useless material on this subject out there? I know I have.

It seems everybody is a forex expert these days. Or a Internet Marketer? difficult to decide.

If you are genuine in your quest to make money currency trading, you cannot trade without a system or without a plan. It is true that these systems are important and valuable. As a retail trader you are competing against institutions with armies of risk analysts, risk managers, portfolio supervisors - all contributing to their efforts and their profits. You as an individual you do not have this luxury, so you must be professional about your approach.

So how do you differentiate between good online forex trading systems and poor ones? I have selected 6 criteria to sort out the quality from the rubbish. If you are a forex trader or a beginner looking to buy an online forex trading system, make sure that it has all of these attributes.

1. Choose a forex trading system which is suited to the individual: either risk profile or trading style. Some traders are swing traders others day traders

for example. Make sure that the system can cater for both styles.

2. Choose a trading system which has a strong focus on money management and risk management techniques. Money management is the golden rule of successful traders.

3. Choose a system which is promoted by professionals with proven years of trading experience. Don't buy anything off anyone!

4. Choose forex trading systems which are simple, easy to understand and based on sound logic. Only these will force you into discipline when it comes to implementation.

5. Choose a system which will ultimately give you the tools to develop skills and your own online forex trading system and strategy that works for You!

6. Lastly choose a system which is value for your hard earned money dont pay anything over $US150. You will find a good forex trading system with all these qualities for $150 or less if you choose wisely