Forex Practice Accounts (Part I)

Posted by Ahmad Hassam On August - 20 - 2009

Almost every forex broker offers a free practice account to new clients. This is used as a marketing gimmick by most of the brokers in order to entice new people to forex trading. All you need to do is to sign up with any good forex broker. The best way for new traders to get a handle on what currency trading is all about is to open a practice account.

Practice accounts give you the great chance to experience the forex market. You can see how the price changes at different times of the day. Practice accounts are funded with virtual money. So you are able to make trades with no real money at stake and gain experience in how margin trading works.

You can trade your practice account with real market conditions without any fear of losing money. How various currency pairs may differ from each other? How the forex market reacts to new information when major news and economic data is released.

You will also learn using different market orders on your practice account. Imagine using your real money trying to figure out how different market orders work. You will learn on your practice account how to manage an open position? This will improve your understanding of how margin trading and leverage works. You can also start analyzing charts and following technical indicators on your practice account. Without any fear of losing your money, you can experiment with different trading strategies and see how they work out in the real market conditions.

You can also test drive all the features and functionality of a brokers platform. However, one thing you will never be able to simulate on your practice account is the emotions involved in trading. Emotions will only come into play once you put your real money on the line. Controlling emotions is the thing to become a successful trader. Practice accounts are a great way to experience real forex markets.

You can use market orders like the limit orders or the one cancels the other orders. However, you can also trade the current price of the market using the click and deal feature of your brokers platform. There are many ways to pull the trigger in the forex market. Pulling the trigger means how to enter or exit a position.

Many traders like the idea of opening a position by trading at the market. Most prefer the certainty of knowing that they are in the market. They dont want to leave an order that may or may not get executed.

Most forex brokers provide live streaming prices that you can deal on with a simple click of your computer mouse. Just specify the amount that you want to trade. Click on the buy or sell button to execute the trade. The forex trading platform responds back within a second or two with a pop-up message either confirming or not confirming that the position was opened.

Attempts to trade at the market can sometimes fail in very fast moving markets. This happens when prices are adjusting quickly like after a data release or break of a key technical level or price point.

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Rollovers & Currency Trading

Posted by Ahmad Hassam On August - 19 - 2009

Rollovers are transactions in currency trading where an open position from one value date or settlement date is rolled over to the next value date or settlement date. Rollovers are unique to the currency markets. Rollovers represent the intersection of interest rate markets and forex markets.

Remember that what you are trading is in fact the good old cash. Dont forget currency is money after all. Rollover rates depend on the difference between the interest rates of the two currencies in the pair that you are trading.

It is like having a deposit in a bank account when you are long on a currency. Its like take a loan from the bank if you are short. You should expect an interest gain or an interest expense on holding a currency position over time just as you would expect to earn interest on a bank deposit and pay interest on a loan.

Think of the open currency position as one currency with the positive balance (the currency you are long) and one with negative balance (the currency you are short). The difference between the interest rates between the two currencies is called the interest rate differential.

The interest rates of two different countries apply because your accounts are in two different currencies. You should look for the base or benchmark lending rates in each country. You can find the interest rates of different countries from Wall Street Journal Online, Financial Times online or that matter any good financial website.

The larger the interest rate differential, the larger the impact from rollovers! The narrower the interest rate differential, the smaller the impact of the rollovers! Rollovers are usually carried out by your forex broker if you hold an open position past the settlement date.

Some online forex brokers apply the rollover rates by applying the rollover credit or debit directly to your margin balance. Other forex brokers apply the rollover rates by adjusting the average rate of your open position. Rollovers are applied to your open currency position by two offsetting trades that result in the same open position.

Rollovers are not applied if you dont carry a position over the change in the value date. Rollovers do not apply for day traders who usually close their positions at the end of each trading day. Rollovers are applied to open position after 5.00 PM EST change in value date. Rollovers only apply to your over night open position carried over to the next day.

Rollovers can earn you interest income if you are long the currency with the higher interest rate and short the currency with the lower interest rate. Rollovers will cost you money if you are short the currency with the higher interest rate and long the currency with the low interest rates.

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Forex Robots Why We Need Them

Posted by Jo Sal Nancy Jons On August - 18 - 2009

One common problem with forex trading is that we dont know when to stop, if you are a forex trader you know what I mean. Sometimes we open a deal and suddenly the graph starts to go exactly the way we want it to go. And we start to see the green number getting bigger and bigger. But we are greedy; we start to change the take profit parameter in order to earn more money from this deal.

Then the graph change direction and the green number start to decrease, we hate it when it does that, but we do nothing because we hope it will change a gain, but without even knowing it the green number turns to red and started to increase.

We could earn $50 from that deal but we wanted more and ended up losing a $100. And the possibility of earning make us open a ruche deal again, we want we want to earn our money back. And we lost more.

What makes most of the people loss money with forex is two elements, they dont know when its enough, and they minimize the stop loss to loss as minimum as possible. With forex trading you need to be cold, analyze the data and if you think that the graph will go up; open a deal and give it good range of stop loss, most of the time it will go up and down up and down before making the jump. I am trying to make it simple! Thats why I love software, it cannot feel, get angry or get greedy. It does exactly what I ask it to do and will not make any changes in the way.

We use Forex robots not to have better trading deals, we use them because they can handle what human fails to handle. Some good forex robots can analyze data, and forecast changes, you only need to set the amount and press OK. This makes some robots very easy to use and bring back great results.

If you are losing money with forex trading try to use a good robot to manage the trading for you and you will see the results. However robots cannot do all the trading, you need to be in charge, so even when you are using a robot you must be able to analyze the data and figure out how the graph will behave.

Forex trading is like a sport, training and skills are required to give good results, robots can cover the skills but you need to cover the trainings

There are a lot of software and robots online, and sometimes it will be difficult to tell the difference between them. Some robots were designed by very professional traders, that gives them the advantage of analyzing the data and behave exactly as their designers. Others were designed by marketers only to bring them commission from forex broker that they work with, or by selling these robots to naive traders.

The only way for you to choose is by testing yourself, and it can cost you a lot of money, or by trying to ask others to recommend a robot for you.

I personally work with Forex robot called Fap turbo, its very popular online and very reliable, my experience with this robots shows that it require more understanding of how it works, but it is giving me great results. It plays in the safe zones which result with minimum earnings; but its a lot better than losing. If you can guarantee minimum earnings it great, and thats what this robot does.

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Forex Trading Software – Scam Or Easy Moneymaker

Posted by Kurt Naulaerts On August - 18 - 2009

It is because of the development of automated forex trading systems! The market which was once accessible only to bank and larger financial corporations, is now attracting smaller investors. This type of trading is all about one currency being traded for currency of another country. Transactions worth trillions of dollars take place here every day without a break; no wonder then that this is one of the largest and most alive financial markets.

With the internet coming over and advancing telecommunications, anyone with internet access, a forex trading brokerage account and good trading knowledge can participate. However to remain on top, it requires constant monitoring as global markets are open round the clock. You could choose a currency and its price before hand with the help of these automated systems. Your buy and sell orders can get instantly executed so all you need is your seed money and a broker to help you.

The automatic systems can help you enjoy the profits from this forex trading without having to be a specialist. The trading program built in the automated systems, can easily execute all your trades for you. A lot of time is saved since you do not do the actual trading; the auto system does it for you. When you monitor the market well, the auto trading system can help you trade multiple accounts simultaneously; this was never fully possible ever with manual trading. These trading programs allow you to play in any number of markets trading multiple systems.

The auto forex trading system allows you the flexibility of trading at any time without your presence. Even when you are absent from your computer, you can not miss a single trade. You can then take full advantage of several forex strategies and varied systems. Each system is designed to be activated by some specific trade factors so you can spread your investment and get maximum returns with minimum risk accordingly.

The automated forex trading system also does away with all human emotions which often affect rational trading decisions. It enables you to manage and monitor many currency pairs and trade them as you deem fit.

To enjoy a long term income from forex trading, you have to learn the basics of trading and the fundamental study of market indicators; simply using auto systems can not help you. No automated system can guarantee you regular profit because the market is controlled by many variables. You can customize the automated forex trading system according to your specific requirements.

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Some Trading Secrets

Posted by Ahmad Hassam On August - 18 - 2009

Trading is not investing. Trading is speculating. Trading can be challenging. Speculating is defined as taking business risk in the hope of profiting from market fluctuations. Successful speculating requires predicting outcomes and analyzing different market situations. It also requires putting your money on the side of the trade on which you think the market is going to go up or down.

Trading can also be the appreciation of the fact that if you apply the correct techniques for analyzing trades, managing your money and protecting your account, you can be wrong 70 percent of the time and still be a successful trader.

Opportunity keeps on shifting from one market to another. For example, forex and gold markets are really hot while stocks are down. Gold prices are going up. Those who entered the trend at the right time and ride the trend for maximum profits will make a lot of money in the gold markets. Right now countries, institutional investors, retail investors, in fact almost everyone is running and buying gold as a hedge against turmoil in the global markets.

Last year in 2008, oil prices had reached almost $140 per barrel in a matter of few months. Many hedge funds had made a lot of money by investing in crude oil futures in the year 2008. Then the bubble burst and oil prices came tumbling down to almost close to $35 per barrel. This situation may continue for some months or some years but suddenly you will find that crude oil futures have become a great investment opportunity again. Right now oil prices are down due to the reduced demand in the global markets.

Oil prices will again go up in a few years time as the global economy recovers and demand for oil increases. In trading it is the timing that is of essence. Timing for entering the market and the timing for exiting the market!

Investors and traders make the mistake of focusing only on one market. Many end up spending time on only one market. In reality all the markets are interlinked. Futures, options, forex, stocks, commodities, all markets are effected and in return effect other markets. If something happens in one market, you will find the repercussions in the other markets. Successful trading requires mastering a strategy that enables you to trade multiple markets and multiple time frames.

Many traders get stuck up with one market. They want to master that market. They trade only one instrument. They do testing and development. They put on a million indicators. Then they go and trade live that instrument. While they do everything they can while spending all kinds of time trying to figure out one market and one timeframe. But then what almost happens is that the market starts to go sideways. The opportunity shifts to another market.

You really have to have the ability to be able to adopt the market conditions and not waste your time to really master one market which is critical. There were so many stocks just a few years ago that were incredible to trade that either dont exist anymore or would not trade successfully today.

Many gurus will teach you that you really need to learn the ins and outs of one market. They will tell you to focus only on one market and then stick with it. But the problem with that philosophy is that opportunity keeps on shifting from one market to another. Mastering different markets is counterintuitive. Always remember a good trader always follows where the money goes. In other words, follow where the opportunity goes.

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