Archive for July, 2010

Forex trading reports gives some traders the data that they need to make a lot of money with day-trading or scalping techiques, but for others it just seems to bring about a gigantic wreck.

check your broker’s T&Cs if you need to trade around reports reports. Some will mechanically close your currency trades on occasions of high volatility. Others won’t permit you to open a new trade. Many brokers will increase the spread at these times and you may not be told by how much. The higher spread can be anywhere up to five times the standard spread for that currency pair.

Slippage occurs when you do not get the price that you saw on your screen. It is more common with some brokers than others because it relies on their financial model and whether they have to cover the chance represented by your trade. With some market makers you can experience major slippage even in comparatively stable times. The same applies to stop and limit orders : you’re much less sure to get the price you were expecting at these times.

July 29th, 2010

Drawdown and Handling Losses

No Comments, Forex, by Escon deOjo.

In back tests you are not likely to pick up the worst possible eventuality and so most times a forex trading course will counsel at least doubling the drawdown that you find. However, if a run three times as bad occurred, our account would be wiped out. So having done a calculation like this, you could take a different view of what your risk per trade should be. Reduce that, either by moving the stop loss or reducing the number or size of lots, and you will cut back the losses during the bad run. Naturally you will also reduce profits that way there is, however, no point taking massive risks to make gigantic profits if the result will be that sooner or later all your profits and your original investment is wiped out.

So that the way to respond to losses is to know what can be expected. This foreign exchange trading course article helped you do that with the tenet of drawdown.

Following these tips in demo mode will mean you are learning something handy and passing the time without being almost convinced to leap into a real trade when the conditions are not right. Something like that may have some bizarre effects and it’s better to leave the market alone for a couple of hours. Are they converging? This can mean a breakout is coming. You can place orders outside of the range of the lines, a buy order in case the price breaks much above the lines, and a sell order in case in breaks below. Check 1 other indicator before acting. On the other hand, if the support and resistance lines are approximately parallel? If so , you can expect the market to turn when it reaches them. This can be a first signal for a short day trade.

Consider whether there are any other related currency pairs and if this is so take a look at what is happening with their prices. Do they support your proposed trade? For instance, there’s often an inverse link between EUR/USD and USD/CHF, so that when one is falling the other will rise. EUR/GBP and GBP/CHF have an inverse relation too.

It is vital to exit as fast as your profit target or stop loss fires. So do not become distracted, but watch the market conscientiously. Foreign exchange currency trade strategies in a troubled market are always going to involve short term trading.

July 27th, 2010

What Are Pips?

No Comments, Forex, by Escon deOjo.

Some brokers are now beginning to quote the other major currencies to 5 decimal places. Rationally this should mean that one pip would be 0.00001 currency units, but the potential there for confusion is huge, if a pip would be worth 10 times as much with some brokers than with others.

Most traders record their profit and loss in foreign exchange trading pips as well as in cash. This enables easy comparison of one trade with another so that you can evaluate a system.

July 26th, 2010

Drawdown and Handling Losses

No Comments, Forex, by Escon deOjo.

If you’re losing with forex, you probably need a foreign exchange trading course that may turn those losses into profits. Of course this is the aim of any currency trading course, but only in the sense of the bottom line. No-one can have profitable trades one hundred pc of the time. Even the most perfect trader who never makes a single dumb mistake will have times where the market just doesn’t follow his plan. So a specific amount of losses must be accepted. It isn’t a matter of getting rid of the losses, but of reducing them so that they come out to less than the profits.

To do that, it’s very important to learn how to lose successfully : in other words, to deal with the inevitable losses in the only way. The best way is just to record the loss on the spreadsheet where you record all your trades, together with the trigger, the stop loss that you set, and what occurred. Then push on. But aside from that there’s no point in getting wired about a loss. It has occurred and that’s it.

Quicker said than done, I know. But you can scale back your anxiety about losses by knowing your system very thoroughly. All systems go thru bad instances when they just seem to lose and lose, even when you are doing everything by the book. From those back test results you should be able to ready a calculation of the drawdown of your system. This is the most that you would expect to lose in a bad run.

So go looking for the worst run of losses in the back testing results. Before the bad run, shall we say that the highest point the account balance would have reached was 1000 points. At the worst point in the bad run it was down to 650. Then it slowly began to recover, and made it back up to one thousand. The drawdown here is the difference between 1000 and 650, i.e.

Always keep in mind that some unexpected event like a natural disaster, war or sudden death of a political leader could throw the entire market into misunderstanding. If you are risking too much on each trade then at some time or another your funds will be wiped out. All systems have their highs and lows and if your risk is too high, your account balance won’t be able to recover from the downs.

On the other hand, if your leverage is too low, you will not make much money even from a profitable system. And if your stop loss is too near to your entry point, it’s going to be caused too shortly. So risk must be optimized for your system. It is dependent on drawdown and average profit or loss per trade, but a good rough rule is to chance between 1 percent and 5% of your funds on each trade. Generally, the more cash a trader has in their account, the more careful they’re with it. Some traders consider that having a set risk per trade is too rigid and the risk should rely on the strength of a signal. What you want to avoid is varying the danger depending on intuition, or depending on the result that you had from the last trade.

July 23rd, 2010

Best Currency Trading Systems for Profit

No Comments, Forex, by Escon deOjo.

If we take a scalping system that makes a median of 20 pips on a rewarding trade and loses a standard 30 pips on a losing trade, with 80% of its trades being moneymaking and only twenty percent losses, this is the edge for this system:

Edge = (80% x 20 pips) – (20% x 30 pips) = 10 pips

That’d be a profitable system and a really good one to use if you were interested in changing into a scalper. Nevertheless you may find a totally different type of system that had results that were just as good. For instance, you may come across a system that worked the opposite way, with a lot of little losses, say 60 percent losses of 10 pips each time, and then some larger gains, making say 40 pips average profit on successful trades. For this system,

Edge = (40% x 40) – (60% x 10) = 10 pips

So these 2 totally different systems have precisely the same results, and the choice on which was the best foreign exchange trading system for you would be wholly dependent on your trading style. A good way to check this out is usually to operate both systems in a demo account, say for one month each. At the end of the month you could analyze the theoretical results from a back test over the month to see how your own results varied from the back tests. This could be a helpful comparison when picking the best foreign exchange trading system from a bunch of systems that are lucrative in theory.

July 22nd, 2010

Euro Currency Trading Fundamentals

No Comments, Forex, by Escon deOjo.

Euro currency trading against the dollar is the way that most foreign exchange traders start out, and yet in many cases they know virtually nothing about the EUR. The euro is a special (some might even say unusual) currency because it is not the historical currency of any nation. Instead, it was dreamed up by european bureaucrats after the formation of the European Economic Community (now the European Union). It’s the 2nd most heavily traded currency (after the USD), so it is a critical force in the forex market. Over time it has expanded to include nations in Eastern Europe and just as significantly, it has enlarged its temporary. Most important for Euro trading is the formation of the EU Monetary Union (EMU) and the introduction of the EUR, which happened in the years from 1999 to 2001.

July 13th, 2010

Best Forex Trading Systems for Money

No Comments, Forex, by Escon deOjo.

If we take a scalping system that makes an average of twenty pips on a profitable trade and loses a standard 30 pips on a losing trade, with eighty percent of its trades being profitable and only twenty percent losses, this is the edge for this system:

Edge = (80% x 20 pips) – (20% x 30 pips) = 10 pips

That would be a profitable system and a really good one to use if you were interested in becoming a scalper. For instance, you could come across a system that worked the other way, with plenty of little losses, say 60% losses of ten pips every time, and then some bigger gains, making say 40 pips average profit on successful trades. For this system,

Edge = (40% x 40) – (60% x 10) = 10 pips

So these two totally different systems have the same results, and the decision on which was the best forex trading system for you’d be entirely dependent on your trading style. A good way to check this out would be to operate both systems in a demo account, say for one month each. At the end of the month you might investigate the theoretical results from a back test over the month to discover how your own results sundry from the back tests. This would give you an idea of how successful you’d be operating that system in reality. Comparing with back test results for a similar period would stop you from throwing out a system just because it happened to have a bad month. This could be a handy comparison when selecting the best forex trading system from numerous systems that are rewarding in theory..

In this currency trading tutorial we will look at how to manage your money in order to have the highest chance of making profits, rather than losses. We all know that currency exchange or fx trading is risky, but there are numerous things that we will be able to do to cut back the hazards. Most new traders spend too much time trying to find the perfect system and not enough on other aspects of their trading. Having a system that ‘works’ isn’t a guarantee of a smooth ride to millionaire status, just as having an auto that works isn’t a warranty of a smooth ride to the next city. You also need to know how to drive it and which road to take. 2 different folk won’t drive that vehicle in the very same way and they may not have identical results. Then we have 2 noobs. Let’s forget about the driver’s licence for an instant. One beginner takes a course in driving before he ever gets within the auto. But the other newbie jumps straight in the automobile with no schooling, heads for the 1st road that he sees and ends up either in the wrong town or more likely, in the ditch. And remember, that was the same car. In the same way we are able to take the same foreign exchange system, give it to three different traders, and see 3 completely different results..