Wednesday 30 April 2008

What Tools Do I Need to Start Trading Forex and Costs

A computer with a high-speed Internet connection and all the information on this site is all that is needed to begin trading currencies online.

What Does It Cost to Trade Forex?
An online currency trading (a “micro account”) may be opened for with a couple hundred dollars. For a micro account, I'd recommend at least $1,000 to start. For a mini account, I’d recommend at least $10,000 to start off.

Why Trade Foreign Currencies?

There are many benefits and advantages to trading Forex.

Here are just a few reasons why so many people are choosing this market:
• No commissions.
No clearing fees, no exchange fees, no government fees, no brokerage fees. Brokers are compensated for their services through what is called the bid-ask spread.

• No middlemen.
Spot currency trading eliminates the middlemen, and allows you to trade directly with the market responsible for the pricing on a particular currency pair.

• No fixed lot size.
In spot Forex, you determine your own lot size. This allows traders to participate with accounts as small as $250 (although I explained why a $250 account is a bad idea).

• A 24-hour market.
There is no waiting for the opening bell - from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon EST, the Forex market never sleeps. This is good for those who want to trade on a part-time basis, because you can choose when you want to trade--morning, noon or night.

• No one can corner the market.
The foreign exchange market is so huge and has so many participants that no single entity (not even a central bank) can control the market price for an extended period of time.

• Leverage.
In Forex trading, a small margin deposit can control a much larger total contract value. Leverage gives the trader the ability to make nice profits, and at the same time keep risk capital to a minimum. For example, Forex brokers offer 200 to 1 leverage, which means that a $50 dollar margin deposit would enable a trader to buy or sell $10,000 worth of currencies. Similarly, with $500 dollars, one could trade with $100,000 dollars and so on. But leverage is a double-edged sword. Without proper risk management, this high degree of leverage can lead to large losses as well as gains.

• High Liquidity.
Because the Forex Market is so enormous, it is also extremely liquid. This means that under normal market conditions, with a click of a mouse you can instantaneously buy and sell at will. You are never "stuck" in a trade. You can even set your online trading platform to automatically close your position at your desired profit level (a limit order), and/or close a trade if a trade is going against you (a stop loss order).

• Free “Demo” Accounts, News, Charts, and Analysis. Most online Forex brokers offer 'demo' accounts to practice trading, along with breaking Forex news and charting services. All free! These are very valuable resources for SMART traders who would like to practice their trading skills with 'play' money before opening a live trading account and risking real money.

• “Mini” and “Micro” Trading:
You would think that getting started as a currency trader would cost a ton of money. The fact is, compared to trading stocks, options or futures, it doesn't. Online Forex brokers offer "mini" and “micro” trading accounts, some with a minimum account deposit of $300 or less.

Tuesday 8 April 2008

Forex Advice and Tips

I have here a few tips and pieces of advice to follow when trading spot forex, like I always say, forex trading is not for everyone so be sure you really want to go into it before you take the plunge.

1. Never add to a losing position.

2. Always determine a stop and a profit objective before entering a trade. Place stops based on market information, not your account balance. If a "proper" stop is too expensive, don't do the trade.

3. Remember the "power of a position." Never make a market judgment when you have a position.

4. Your decision to exit a trade means you perceive changing circumstances. Don't suddenly think you can pick a price, exit at the market.

THE MARKET HAS CHARACTER
5. In a Bull market, never sell a dull market, in Bear market, never buy a dull market.

6. There are times, because of lack of liquidity, or excessive volatility, when you should not trade.

7. Trading systems that work in an up market may not work in a down market.

8. There are at least three types of markets: up trending, range bound, and down. Have different trading strategies for each.

9. Up market and down market patterns are ALWAYS present, merely one is more dominant. In an up market, for example, it is very easy to take sell signal after sell signal, only to be stopped out time and again. Select trades with the trend.

10. A buy signal that fails is a sell signal. A sell signal that fails is a buy signal.

11. It's always easier to enter a losing trade.

12. If you are feeling superstitious; don't trade if something bothers you.

Thursday 8 November 2007

Why Forex

The best money maker, a lot better than buying company stocks. Its ROI cannot be compared to any other investment plan except for maybe venture capital investment which is still relatively new in Nigeria.

Its the biggest singular market in the world today, trading is in excess of 2 TRILLION Dollars,. can u imagine that ???. How much in naira....

The future is coming quickly upon us, very soon millions will be on the Internet trading foreign currency. Forex trading is gaining momentum by the day. Now is the best time to join the wagon to success. Just make your own money from the daily 2 trillion changing hands everyday.

You do not have to sit in front of your computer all day long to trade the Forex, although once you see the power of Forex trading you might want to. My teaching methods will show you the correct entry and exit points. All you have to do is glance at the charts occasionally to see if correct entry point is approaching, and if it is then get in on the trade.

Everything you need to trade in the Forex market will be provided to you.

The world is getting more complex, but getting smaller at the same time. The Internet has made information accessible to anyone on the planet. I urge you to educate yourself in the techniques of Forex trading, as it is already becoming the best way to increase your income from your own computer.

Thursday 1 November 2007

Trading Patterns and Methods

1. Trade the Breakout
The principle behind trading the breakout is to enter a trade when the price
‘breaks out’ of a tight range, because often it tends to keep moving in the
same direction. We use our our charts to spot this trading opportunity.

2. Trading Tops and Bottoms
Trading tops and bottoms can be more risky than the other two strategies
because you are trading against the trend i.e anticipating that the market is
overbought/oversold and might turn in the other direction. It is best to use
the 10 or 15 minute charts for this method. It is more risky using the 5 min
charts, but you still can apply the same techniques.

When to EXIT trades
The goal of this trading guide is to teach traders to take 5-20 pip profits at a
time. You can set profit LIMIT orders to achieve this, or you may want to move
your stops as your position becomes more and more profitable.
**Make sure that you don’t let a winning trade become a losing one, by using
trailing stop orders.

How to use HEDGING to your advantage
Hedging can be a useful tool to the Forex trader. When you have an open
position, for example, you are long on a USD/JPY trade and you right click your
trade on the platform, a menu will pop up and you have a choice to Hedge
your trade. If you click Hedge, you will automatically open up a position in
the opposite direction at the current market price without canceling out
your other position and without margin increase!. In the above example you
would now have a USD/JPY trade long and short. You will now neither gain or
lose any equity in your account because the gains and the losses will cancel
each other out.
Hedge in an emergency: Hedging a losing trade won’t solve your problems, but it will
1. Keep you from more losses
2. Give you time to think about what happened to your bad trade and
3.Give you a second chance.
Some traders will hedge losing trades instead of stopping out there position, because they have a chance to win back the losses of the original bad trade.

Example: You are looking to ‘Trade the Trend’ so you go long on the
EUR/USD, using the indicators. The indicators signaled BUY
so you opened up a position. In case of a bad trade, you choose to
hedge instead of using a stop loss (be careful when doing this). Your
‘Trade the Trend’ indicators didn’t work and your position goes against
you, you hedge your trade. Now you have a losing position and a winning
position going in the opposite directions. You didn’t use up any more
margin. What do you do now?
My recommendation: When your position is hedged, you are safe and
you won’t lose any more money in your account. Here is what you should
do:
1. Wait until another chart set up occurs and proceed to step 4. or Exit
the trading platform.
2. Wait till the next trading day or session
3. Look for the DTF indicators the next day.
4. Instead of opening up another position, simply get rid of the bad
position that was hedged. So if the indicators the next day signaled
long in the EUR/USD, like in the above example, then you would get
rid of the short, losing hedge and hope that the price will rise enough
to erase the previous days losses to make a profit.
5. If your position moves against you again you can hedge that position
again and repeat steps 1-4.
Hedge a winning trade: You may also hedge a winning trade to protect your
gains, if you don’t want to completely close your position. When you do this you
won’t gain or lose any more money with that position. The advantage to this
would give you the opportunity to keep trading those positions in the future and
give you a break. You can always right click on your position and choose ‘close
with hedge’ to close both positions at once. If you hedge a winning position you
can follow the above steps 1-4 to keep trading your position the next trading day.
** Please note that hedging can get complicated. Try to keep it as simple as
possible and try not to have a web of hedged and unhedged positions open at
the same time—as it becomes exponentially more difficult to keep track of, and
what positions to let go etc...
** Hedging is also optional and you don’t need to learn how to use this tool if you
choose not to. You can be a successful trader by simply using stop and limit
orders.
Understanding Risk Management

Understanding risk management is a very important reality when trading the
Forex Markets. Losing trades will happen, and managing those losses are the
key to success. A good rule of thumb when setting your stop losses is the 5-7%
rule. If your trading account is at $2000, then set your stop loss so that you don’t
lose more than 5-7% of the total value of your account. If you used this rule in
this case, you would stop out a losing trade when you were down $100-$140.
This is important, because if you don’t manage your losses well, you can easily
lose 50% of your trading account on 1 bad trade. You do that a couple of times
and you will lose all of your risk capital. It is better to take smaller losses and try to maximize your winning trades. So be careful and deliberate when setting your
stops on your trading platform.
Step 6. Open a Live trading account
Now that you understand the basics and have been demo trading, you
are now ready to open a live trading account and join the Trade
trading team.
If you have found this step-by-step currency-trading guide useful and helpful and
if you decide to open up a live trading account through me, I will personally give you the customer service and support to assist you with your new account.

Wale Ketiku
COO forexnigeria.com

Wednesday 31 October 2007

Six Steps to Success





The goal of this guide is to instruct and teach potential traders how to trade
the currency markets. The objective of trading is to trade the forex market and move to try to gain small to medium sized profits in any given trading
day. This is how this guide will help. Most readers will not have the time or
resources to ‘position trade’ like the major institutions and banks do. They (major institutions) tend to look at the big picture holding onto trades for weeks or months.

The Forex Profit System FPS, is specifically designed for use with the 1, 5 or 10
minute charts, with the goal of taking 5-20 pip profits per trade—closing
bad trades out using tight stops, or hedging any losing trades. The following steps will show you how to do this.

Step 1. Choose an online Forex Firm

What to look for in an online Forex Broker:

A. Low Spreads.
In Forex Trading the ‘spread’ is the difference between the buy and sell price of any given currency pair. The lower the spread saves the trader money. Most firms offer 4-5 pip spreads in the Major Currency pairs. The best firms offer clients 3-5 pips.

B. Low minimum account openings.
For those that are new to trading, and for those that don’t have thousands of dollars in risk capital to trade, being able to open a mini trading account with only $250 is a great feature for new traders.

C. Instant automatic execution of your orders.
This is very important when choosing a Forex firm. You want instant execution of your orders and the price you see and ‘click’ is the price that you should get. Don’t settle with a broker that re-quotes you when you click on a price or a broker that allows for price ‘slippage’. This is very important when trading for small profits.

D. Free charting and technical analysis
You need a firm that gives you access to the best charting and technical
analysis available to active traders. The firm that I recommend gives clients FREE professional charting services and even allows traders to trade directly on the charts.

E. High Leverage
You want high leverage—the ability to trade a large amount with a small
margin deposit. The brokers I recommend offer .25% or 400:1 such leverage.

F. Hedging Capability
You want the flexibility of opening positions on the same currency pair in opposite directions without them eliminating each other and without margin increase.

After a lot of research and personal experience, I have discovered forex brokers that will ensure your return on investment and enhance your stay on the trading floor of the forex market.

Step 2. Open a ‘Visual Trading’ Demo Account

The first step to trading the currency markets is to open a demo account. It is
important that you learn how to buy and sell the currency pairs, set stop losses,
set profit limits, and understand how leveraged margin works when you trade. I
found the best way to learn this is by constant practice.
To set up your FREE charting from FOREXNG, simply go to their website and open a demo account. The charting package in this demo account rivals any Forex Professional charting service and you will be able to set up the technical indicators that will aid you in your trading decisions. You can also reach me by email to send you a demo on CD.

Stop Order: Is a price you enter into an open position, where the trading platform automatically closes your position when the Exchange rate touches
that level. If you are in a winning trade, you can move your stop up or down
to protect profits. If the exchange rate never hits that level, then the Order
doesn’t get filled.

**tip1: If you are in a winning trade, you can move your stop to your entry
level, so that if your trade moves against you, the platform closes your
position without any losses.
**tip2: You should be comfortable setting your stop Order at 15-20 pips. If
you can’t handle a 15-20 pip loss, then you are need to trade smaller
amounts. This will help you from over leveraging your trading account.

Limit Order: Is a price you enter into an open position for the trading platform to automatically close your position at a profit. For example, you
might set your limit order at a 15 pip profit. If the exchange rate never hits
that level, then the Order doesn’t get filled.

Step 3: When to Enter and Exit Your Trades:

We will be looking at 3 different ways to trade in the Forex Market. In a
trading session, you may look for 1 or more of these approaches. The 3
techniques are as follows:
1. Trade the Breakout
2. Trade the Trend
3. Trading Tops and Bottoms
Before we look at these trading approaches, let’s answer a question or two that is often asked by new traders.

When is the best time to trade?
Because the Forex Market is open 24hrs a day, and traded on a global scale, the
question to ask is, ‘when should I trade?’. The good news is that no matter what
time zone or hemisphere you live in globally, there are always good opportunities
to trade.
The three major trading ‘sessions’ are as follows (all in Eastern Standard Time):
1. New York open 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM
2. Japanese/Australian open 7:00 PM to 3:00 AM
3. London open 3:00 AM to 8:00 AM

**Often, the best times to trade is at the beginning 3-5 hours of the above
mentioned opening times, because the major currency pairs tend to move
the most in a particular direction.

Wale Ketiku
COO Forexnigeria.com

Monday 29 October 2007

The Trading System




Foundations:
Before we begin looking at the specifics of the FPS (Forex Profit System) and how it works, let’s look at 4 building blocks that I believe to be foundations to it.

Foundation #1:

Currency Trading is not a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme.

Currency trading is a SKILL that takes TIME to learn. Skilled Traders
can and do make money in this field, however like any other occupation or
career, success doesn’t just happen overnight. Here is a great ‘formula’
for success:


Practice + Patience + Persistence = Profits


As they say, there is no substitute for hard work and diligence. Practice
trading on a demo account and pretend the virtual money is your own real
money. Do not open a live trading account until you are profitable
trading on a demo account. Stick to the plan and you will be successful.

Foundation #2:

It is highly recommended that you follow 1 or 2 major currency pairs only.
It gets far too complicated to keep tabs on all currency pairs or the majors. I also recommend that traders choose one of the majors because the spread is the best and they
are the most liquid.

The Euro/USD is the most commonly traded pair and
usually has the best ‘spread’ because of its liquidity.

The USD/Swiss Franc is usually the most volatile and moves the most during the trading week. The USD/Yen moves a lot on the news out of Japan and normally the Pound
Sterling/USD is more stable in it’s moves than the other three.

Foundation #3:

Follow and understand the daily Forex News and Analysis of the professional currency analysts.
Even though this system is based solely on technical analysis of charts, it is
important to get a view of the currency markets and the news that affects the prices. It is also important that you know and understand what the key technical ‘support’ and ‘resistance’ levels are in the currency pair that you want to trade. Support is a predicted level to buy (where currency pair should move up on the charts), resistance is a predicted level to sell (where the currency pair should move down on the charts).
Fortunately, all the best Forex news and analysis is offered free on the
Internet. Here is what you should do first:

*While you are reading the daily news and technical analysis, write
down on a piece of paper what direction the analysts are saying
about the major currency pair you are following and the key support
and resistance levels for the day.

A. Go to http://www.forexnews.com/ and you will find 24hr news and analysis on
the spot FX markets. The site will give you the big picture of how the
economic calendar and central banks affect the currency markets. A
great resource.

B. Then go to www.fxstreet.com and click on the ‘Top Forex Reports’. Here
there is a wonderful listing of all the major daily currency analysis and forecasts with support and resistance and direction forecasts.

Foundation #4:

Learn how to use the technical indicators in this course and always trade with stop losses!.
It is worth your time to be patient and learn how to use the technical indicators on the charts that you will be reading about shortly. It is important when you are trading Forex, to be disciplined and to stick to a plan. Don’t just trade your feeling. Use the technical indicators outlined and always enter in stop losses on every trade. Remember that everyone who trades has a different tolerance for losses. Depending on your risk capital, and strategy, set your stop losses accordingly.

Wale ketiku

COO

forexnigeria