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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Profitable Forex Trading Strategies

By far regarded as the largest and the busiest market, the Forex market has tremendous profit potential. The Forex currency market is a lot different from the stock market and you need to have a very good understanding about the way this market functions. Its not surprising that there's a lot being said and written about Forex currency trading. In fact, those who are keen on mastering Forex trading skills can actually take up a Forex trading course and get formal Forex education. Before you set out to trade in the Forex market or the Foreign Currency Exchange Market, you must make sure that you have done plenty of research, studied historical trends, analyzed existing trends, and worked out profitable Forex trading strategies that can boost your Forex trade.

There is no standard strategy that can be safely applied when it comes to Forex currency trading. Basically, what may work for one may not necessarily fit your trading needs and you must therefore devise your own strategies that can guarantee success in the long run. You need to first analyze the market using a technical analysis approach or the fundamental analysis approach to plan your moves. While technical analysis refers to forecasting future movement based on past performance, fundamental analysis refers to studying current accounts and impact of imports and exports on currency flow.

Understanding how volatile this market is, every experienced trader understands that it is not practically possible to generate profits from every trade. However, as you study this market closely, you will be able to work out better strategies that can minimize your risk levels.

Use surplus money for trading

This market is speculative and "timing a trade' is crucial. Even a slightest mistake can cost you a lot of money. So, make sure that you use only surplus money in order to save yourself from financial wreck. One of the biggest mistakes many traders do is staking all their money in a single trade. If you are not sure, go for margin trading to enjoy more leverage.

Do some market research

Consult your financial advisor or a Forex broker who can tell you the exact status of the Forex market. You need to understand whether current trend is upwards or downwards, is it strong or weak, and how long has this trend been going on or is a new trend in the making. A trade without prior market research can lead to financial disasters.

Decide the time frame for trading

As a smart Forex trader, you must have a time frame in mind beyond which you wont like to trade and also decide an approximate exit price. This gives you a proper perspective and helps you to plan your Forex trade more efficiently. You need to therefore decide whether you would like to go for long term trading or intra-day trading. This will help you to determine which approach you must adopt for research and analysis. For instance, for someone trading several times a day, a daily graph analysis will be useless and the trader will require thirty minute or hour graphs to plan his exit. Another important factor that you need to take into account is the time periods when different financial companies enter and exit the foreign exchange market in order to study the market trends.

Choosing the right time to trade Timing is everything when it comes to Forex trading and once you have understood the market trends you need to immediately plan an entry. Rely on technical analysis to time your move and predict market movements.

If you are not sure about which Forex trading strategy to use, find a good Forex broker who can handle your financial portfolio for you.

The Best Forex Trading Platforms

Forex trading platforms are software through which online brokers and investors can perform daily forex trading from anywhere around the world.

New age forex trading platforms offer you advanced, unique features that can actually change the way one used to perceive online trading. The best forex trading platform presents the blend of functional usage combined with ease of use.

The best forex trading platform will be designed to help the investor in executing the trading most effectively by employing strategies to maximize the return. Most of the forex trading platforms are powered with unique analysis and strategy-testing features to test all buy and sell rules.

With a click of your mouse you can access strategy performance reports with simulated results like profit versus loss, annual rate of return, etc. Based on them you can modify your trading strategies without incurring losses.

The best forex trading platform always comes with fully automated real-time online streaming data from the market to take the advantage of the liquidity of the market. The best forex trading platform connects your monitor to the markets.

This also ensures that you get the execution prices on every order type available without any slippage. The best forex trading platform should provide the robust backbone to handle transaction of heavy data and information traffic.

The best forex trading platform must offer more than one type of account like standard, institutional or mini. The platform should come with different operating packages like Flash, Java, or WAP. These software provide firewall protection to maintain the security and integrity of your trading.

You can perform your trading from home, office, laptop on the go or even from an internet café with equal ease. The best forex trading platform will facilitate you to use the system without downloading any program, which presents perfect mobility to the traders or investors.

The best forex trading platform should offer:
Tight spread on all major currency pairs with cutting-edge trading technology
Quick execution with unlimited transaction amount
No slippages and no requites
Constant margin requirements in all volatile market condition
Multiple real-time charts and other technical analysis based predictions with maximum visual representation
Flexibility of placing complex orders including contingency orders
Real time margin and position monitoring.
Technical analysis for all demo and live accounts
Authentic market news and economic calendar
Performance, Security, Simplicity and Transparency
Trading history and print out any reports
With advanced mobile forex trading platforms, you can operate when you are away from your computer. Therefore the best forex-trading platform with facilities of mobile trading enables you access and trade your forex account from anywhere with your mobile phone.

These platforms come with easy to use interface, where you can easily move from one screen to the next. You can place market and contingent orders with simple steps and can have full reports including execution and open order.

Forex Tips – 5 Simple Ones to Increase Your Profits

The forex tips below are all easy to do and all will help you achieve one aim increasing your overall profitability. So here are 5 forex tips for greater profits.

1. Use the Weekly Chart

I am amazed that most traders never bother looking at weekly charts but if you want to separate out “the wood from the trees” the weekly chart gives you a much clearer perspective.
The big trends are clearly visible on the weekly chart and if you are long term trend follower, start with this chart first and you will have a clearer view of support and resistance levels and entry points.

2. Cut Your Trading Frequency

This Forex tip addresses a major problem that most novice traders have – they trade too much.
They think they have to be in the market all the time and chase profits but the fact is, if you cut your trading frequency, you stand a better chance of success. Keep in mind; you only get paid for being right in forex trading - NOT for your effort and how often you trade!

By cutting your trading back, you can concentrate only on the high reward, high odds trades which give the best potential profits.I know traders who only trade a few times a year yet - they make between 120 – 430%! Annually.

Their simply trading the cream of the trades and ignoring the low odds, high risk ones and there are plenty of those.
If you cut your trading, you will probably see your profits soar.

3. Risk More Per Trade

This is directly related to the above point.
If you have a high odds trade take this tip and risk more.

You will read a lot of nonsense on the net about risking 2% per trade and no more.
Well, that’s fine if you are trading 100k but if you’re a small potato trader, trading 10k or less, that’s a maximum of $200!

If you have a small account you need to load up and risk 10 -20% on the high odds trades. Keep in mind if you don’t risk much you won’t make much!

To make meaningful gains you have to take risks – if you don’t like taking risks don’t trade forex.

4. Don’t Diversify
If you are trading a small account don’t diversify!
You need to load up as we have said above and concentrate on one trade only.
Diversification is simply another word for diluting profit potential and is something a small trader should not engage in.

5. Use an Account Profit Target
What s a realistic target to make per annum in forex trading?
You may have your own ideas - but if you made 100% that puts you up there with the best fund managers in the world.

You will often see people look at risk per trade but looking at your account overall and using a profit target is highly effective.

You will often see trades that give you big profits in short periods of time and if they are a substantial – i.e. more than 25% of your 100% bank them.
Have a break and start again.

If you hit your profit target for the year early - decide whether you should trade again at all or at the very least give yourself a deserved break.

The tips above are really saying:

Focus only on the best trades with the best odds, load them up and have a target -if you do the above, chances are you will make bigger profits.

Forex Education – The 4 Major Mistakes That Cause 90% of Traders to Lose

If you want to trade Forex and win the odds are against you – 95% of traders lose and only 5% succeed. If you want to win at forex trading (and the rewards are huge) then don’t make these 4 trading mistakes.

If you make any of these mistakes you will never achieve long term profitability in forex trading.

1. Predicting Market Movement

This is the one major error almost all new forex traders make and it’s a critical one.
If you try and predict then you are simply hoping or guessing and the market will destroy your equity.

Hoping or guessing is not a way to make money in any business – forex trading included!

For example, traders spot a support level and think it will hold so they buy – what they should do is:

Wait for proof that the level will hold by looking for a change in price momentum that shows prices are moving back up – this is the proof.
Check out and start using momentum indicators in your trading.

2. Using Logic That Does Not Work
Trader’s very often use methods or systems which can never work.
Here are some examples:

Day trading
Is popular but you will NEVER win.
All short term volatility is random - therefore you can’t get the odds in your favour and lose.

The Appliance of Science
Many traders think markets move with scientific accuracy and use cycles or Fibonacci numbers – they don’t work and never will, yet traders still use them.

Obviously they can’t work:
If markets moved to a scientific formula, we could all work out the price in advance and there would be no market.

Two Many Inputs
Many traders try to be too clever and have systems with huge amounts of indicators.
After all, 12 indicators must be better than 2 or 3 – Wrong!
Too many indicators, simply means the system simply breaks in real time trading and are not as robust as simple systems.

The above are just a few examples and there are many more – look them up in our other articles.

3. Poor Money Management
Most novice traders are paranoid about losing - they place stops so close their guaranteed to get stopped out.
On the other hand, when they have a profit they get so excited, they bank it early by moving their stop too quickly!
If you want to make money you have to take meaningful risks to make big rewards.

To do this you must keep your stops outside of normal volatility - if you want to hang onto the big trends, that make the big profits.

4. Lack of Confidence and Discipline
The reason most traders lack this is because they try and buy success.
They think someone can give them success for a few hundred dollars and buy an e-book or system from a vendor.
When the system starts to lose, they have no confidence in it and throw in the towel.

An important vital part of your forex education is:

Only you can give yourself success.
Most systems sold on the net are junk if they were that good the vendor would trade them himself and not bother you for small amounts of money!
You need to build your own system and know how and why it makes profits, have confidence in it and this will give you the discipline to follow it through inevitable losses in the short term and hold on for long term profitability.