Hedging is defined as holding two or more positions at the same time, where the purpose is to offset the losses in the first position by the gains received from the other position.
Usual hedging is to open a position for a currency A, then opening a reverse for this position on the same currency A. This type of hedging protects the trader from getting a margin call, as the second position will gain if the first loses, and vice versa.
However, traders developed more hedging techniques in order to try to benefit form hedging and make profits instead of just to offset losses.
In this page, we will discuss, some of the hedging techniques.
1. 100% Hedging.
This technique is the safest ever, and the most profitable of all hedging techniques while keeping minimal risks. This technique uses the arbitrage of interest rates (roll over rates) between brokers. In this type of hedging you will need to use two brokers. One broker which pays or charges interest at end of day, and the other should not charge or pay interest. However, in such cases the trader should try to maximize your profits, or in other words to benefit the utmost of this type of hedging.
The main idea about this type of hedging is to open a position of currency X at a broker which will pay you a high interest for every night the position is carried, and to open a reverse of that position for the same currency X with the broker that does not charge interest for carrying the trade. This way you will gain the interest or rollover that is credited to your account.
However there are many factors that you should take into consideration.
a. The currency to use. The best pair to use is the GBPJPY, because at the time of writing this article, the interest credited to your account will be 24 usd for every 1 regular long lot you have. However you should check with your broker because each broker credits a different amount. The range can be from $10 to $26.
b. The interest free broker. This is the hardest part. Before you open your account with such a broker, you should check the following: i. Does the broker allow opening the position for an unlimited time? ii. Does the broker charge commissions?
Some brokers charge $5 flat every night for each lot held, this is a good thing, although it seems not. Because, when the broker charges you money for keeping your position, the your broker will likely let you hold your position indefinitely.
c. Equity of your account. Hedging requires lots of money. For example, if you want to use the GBPJPY, you will need 20,000USD in each account. This is very necessary because the max monthly range for GBPJPY in the last few years was 2000 pips. You do not want one of your accounts to get a margin call. Do not forget that when you open your 2 positions at the 2 brokers, you will pay the spread, which is around 16 pips together. If you are using 1 regular lot, then this is around 145 usd. So you will enter the trades, losing 145 usd. So you will need the first 6 days just to cover the spread cost. Thus if you get a margin call again, you will need to close your other position, and then transfer money to your other account, and then re-open the positions. Every time this happens, you will lose 145 usd!
It is very important not to get a margin call. This can be maintained by a large equity, or a fast efficient way to transfer money between brokers.
d. Money management. One of the best ways to manage such an account is to monthly withdraw profits and balancing your positions. This can be done by withdrawing the excess from one account, take out the profits, and depositing the excess into the losing account to balance them. However, this can be costly. You should also check with your broker if he allows withdrawals while your position is still open. One efficient way of doing this is using the brokerage service withdrawals which is provided by third party companies.
by Yannis Karamanakis
http://www.myfxreport.com
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Automated Trading Systems for Financial Markets and Recommendations for Their Usage
1. Introductions
Today, using information and trading platforms has become a de facto requirement for successful trading in the financial markets. Their advantages as compared to conventional trading schemes include, for example, an unprecedented speed of processing and delivery of information to end users, the level of integration with data providers, and a wide array of built-in technical analysis instruments.
At the same time, an investor opening an account with a brokerage firm simply cannot simultaneously manage the real-time analysis and trade in more than 4-6 financial instruments in several markets 24 hours 7 days a week. This brings about the need to employ automatic trading systems in the form of runtime environment with client and server parts and the programs to control these systems (scripts).
2. Comparative Analysis of the Problem Area
Various software components embrace the entire target sector of the market-from analytics and forecasting to complex trade and administration. The components of a trading platform provide its clients-brokers, dealers, traders, financial analysts and advisors-just the service they need at the very moment they need it, from immediate round-the-clock access to information of concern by means of mobile devices, to multi-move trading operations in the major client terminal.
The software market offers a great many of information and trading platforms that differ, first of all, in the functionality of the client and server parts, and the list of services provided by the financial company once an account has been opened. However, only a relatively small number of software solutions include the components that automate trading.
2.1. MetaTrader4-based Solutions
One of the world's most widely used trade platform products is apparently MetaTrader4, developed by MetaQuotes Software Corporat?on for Forex market trading. The platform includes an integrated development environment (IDE) MetaEd?tor, intended for writing scripts in a programming language called MetaQuotes Language, or MQL4 for short. The language's syntax is based on the classic C language syntax, and the flow logic has not been significantly changed since the previous version of the platform that used MQL II as the programming language. The new automated trade framework is, undoubtedly, an evolution of the previous one. Both languages feature good functionality, with an optimum set of built-in trading and utility functions which is quite sufficient to implement the basic operations, and a facility to define custom functions to help implement non-standard ideas.
From the programming point of view, MQL4 is much more convenient that its predecessor; this language is more oriented at professional programmers, while MQL II, in my opinion, will rather suit financial experts wishing to build trading programs (or trading advisors, in the MetaQuotes terminology) of their own.
2.2. Omega Research-based Solutions
In the New World, the vast majority of companies use the Omega Research platform developed by TradeStation Securities, Inc. This platform has long ago proven its worth at the worldwide market, and to date experts consider it to be the best system for technical analysis. The provided IDE called Omega Research PowerEditor is intended to create control programs in EasyLanguage (EL).
The language's major advantage that strikes the eye is the easiness (hence is the name) of placing opening and closing orders. The corresponding program instructions can be written such as if we were formulating an order to our broker in the plain human language. In MQL4, for example, placing an order to open a position would involve specifying about a dozen of various parameters. In EasyLanguage, the same can be expressed in a short statement using a few words. Working with technical indicators is about that simple, too. But don't fall under an illusion: when creating these simple commands, language developers sacrificed the functionality and limited the possible ways of using a particular function, therefore effectively depriving the IDE users of the opportunity to accurately implement their own algorithms.
TradeStation decided not to create extensive libraries of built-in trading and utility functions but to limit to only an essential set. As the platform advanced, the number of functions written by both in-house and third-party developers grew, and TradeStation simply included them as user-defined functions into the repository of its scripts. As a result, the functionality offered to users is not in the least scarcer than that of MetaQuotes product.
PowerEditor provides a built-in dictionary that lets user search and get help on the available functions. Another handy tool worth mentioning is the strategy builder. Using the strategy builder, the user can easily create a basic algorithm for his or her trading program, and then modify and adjust it as necessary.
EasyLanguage is an old-timer and pioneer in the field of creating automated trading systems for the stock market. It was the basis for the development of MQL II. EasyLanguage will be a good choice for programmers, but still a better one for financial experts more oriented at analyzing the market than trading.
2.3. ProTrader-based Solutions
Professional financial experts can choose the ProTrader2 or ProTraderFX platform as their working tool, depending on the type of the financial market-stock or Forex, respectively. The two platforms are developed and supported by PFSoft LLC. While featuring the specially developed ProTrader Language (PTL), the provided IDE named PTL Builder offers also the opportunity to create scripts in MQLII, MQL4 and EasyLanguage. For this, the text of the program is translated to a language-independent code. Therefore, at runtime it does not matter in which language the script was written. This technology does not only enable creating new scripts, but makes it possible to use freely the entire accumulated collection of scripts that many experienced traders possess.
The main idea put into the new scripting language was to ensure maximum reliability and predictability of the scripts being run. The PTL language is built so as to minimize the possibility of making a mistake in the text of a user's script-the potentially dangerous points will be detected even before the script is tested or launched.
Regardless of the programming language chosen, the platform works with verified managed code while running the script. This Microsoft-developed technology enables proper handling of errors that cannot be detected before the script is run. This means the program will not fail and will not perform any unwanted operations that might be due to critical errors or damage caused by another program, for which the account holder would eventually have to pay.
The PTL Builder IDE will serve well both financial experts and programmers thanks to its support of different programming languages and provided tools such as tester and debugger.
2.4. Solution Comparison
The above IDEs have their specific feature sets. The table below provides a summary comparison of the capabilities offered by each.
3. Approaches for Creating Automated Trading Systems and Recommendations for Using Them
It hardly needs mentioning that choosing an information and trading platform should be taken with all seriousness. For those who plan to use an automated trading system in their business, below are some points I would recommend considering, based on my personal experience.
3.1. Choosing a Working Environment
First of all, define the type of tasks the automated trading system is to perform. These could be:
Actual trading: opening and closing positions in selected instrument(s).
Secondary support-type functions. These could include placing protective orders, creating and sending out reports of notifications.
Analyzing the market with different technical analysis tools using your own algorithm.
Now, after you have studied user comments on the Internet and perhaps consulted your broker, proceed to getting the feel of the products offered. I strongly encourage you not to just have a cursory look, but to test the system for a day of two, thankfully, most of the large companies will let you sign up for a demo account for testing. Pay attention to both the convenience of the IDE and the tools that go with it, and to reliability and security of the control programs created with the IDE.
3.2. Creating a Control Program
If you are planning to create your own scripts, take the time to study the documentation for the programming language and the IDE. Naturally, for an automated trading system to be expertly organized, the scripts should be written by qualified professionals in the field of programming and finance. In case you wish to use one of the classic programs, remember that most of them are of trial, demonstration nature. They are good for testing the automated trading system or to be used as a basis for your own programs, but as self-sustaining, ready-to-use solutions they are of little avail.
If you decide to use programs written by third-party developers, keep in mind that good solutions will have to be paid for. The cost of one innovative strategy varies between $300 and $500, but the price for fine-tuned strategies that use advanced mathematical and economic techniques and especially for winners and runners-up of automated trading championships may exceed $1,000.
3.3. Testing Scripts
When using an automated trading system, always test your scripts. The procedure can be as follows:
1. Test the program in a script tester (if such facility is available in your IDE) several times, varying the chart period, the instrument being traded, and the program settings. Try to model the conditions close to the actual state of the market.
2. Test the script in a demo account (if such an opportunity is available). At this stage, it is important to let the program run for a sufficiently long time (it is defined by the period of the chart). Do not stop the test if the program has at once produced a big gain or a big loss. The usefulness of the script can only be estimated after it has worked for a significant amount of time.
3. Run the script in the live account. At this stage, it is not advisable to interfere with the script-for example, close the positions it has opened or modify their settings-or you can upset the internal logic of the program.
3.4. How Not to Fall Prey to Tricks When Choosing a Script
Remember that there are no absolutely perfect advisers. So, do not let them sell you the Brooklyn Bridge-if you had a system that brings in fabulous profits, would you sell it? There is only one advice-a rigorous comprehensive testing will help you get the right impression about the script offered.
Usually, script vendors describe their products with the results of their own testing. In most cases, however, such results are very slanted. Remember that testing should always be performed on several histories, or you can simply adjust to one history fragment and show sky-high results. Based on the NFL theorem, it is fair to say that it is impossible to create a script that would the best of all those existing, in all instruments.
Some professional programmers use sophisticated mathematical tools to endow their programs with artificial intelligence-neural networks, forecasting and evolutionary algorithms are no longer surprising. I would not recommend overestimating such systems-complex forecasting algorithms are very sensitive to errors and parameter settings, while simple schemes are not of much help to the advisor when it comes to generating trade signals, and can only be used to raise the price of the script.
4. Conclusion
In this article, I neither discuss any programming rules for creating the advisors, nor the specifics of writing scripts in a particular language. On these subjects, there are whole books written as well as a number of articles. My aim was to present several points which I think to be quite important but which have not been sufficiently covered in existing publications.
So, are automated trading systems your ally or enemy? When used carefully and without hasty judgments, an automated trading system can facilitate the financial expert's work and bring in certain profits. But when used incorrectly, incompletely tested, or having settings changed frequently, the automated trading system can lose the money you entrust to it.
Remember that an automated trading system is not going to do your job for you without any effort on your part. Use it to solve your existing problems and not add new ones.
5. References
1. MetaQuotes — developer of MetaTrader, MQL2 and MQL4
2. TradeStation — developers of TradeStation and EasyLanguage
3. PFSoft — developers of ProTraderFX, ProTrader2 and ProTraderLanguage
by Nikita Laukhin
Automated Trading and Scripts Analyst of PFSoft Company.
Today, using information and trading platforms has become a de facto requirement for successful trading in the financial markets. Their advantages as compared to conventional trading schemes include, for example, an unprecedented speed of processing and delivery of information to end users, the level of integration with data providers, and a wide array of built-in technical analysis instruments.
At the same time, an investor opening an account with a brokerage firm simply cannot simultaneously manage the real-time analysis and trade in more than 4-6 financial instruments in several markets 24 hours 7 days a week. This brings about the need to employ automatic trading systems in the form of runtime environment with client and server parts and the programs to control these systems (scripts).
2. Comparative Analysis of the Problem Area
Various software components embrace the entire target sector of the market-from analytics and forecasting to complex trade and administration. The components of a trading platform provide its clients-brokers, dealers, traders, financial analysts and advisors-just the service they need at the very moment they need it, from immediate round-the-clock access to information of concern by means of mobile devices, to multi-move trading operations in the major client terminal.
The software market offers a great many of information and trading platforms that differ, first of all, in the functionality of the client and server parts, and the list of services provided by the financial company once an account has been opened. However, only a relatively small number of software solutions include the components that automate trading.
2.1. MetaTrader4-based Solutions
One of the world's most widely used trade platform products is apparently MetaTrader4, developed by MetaQuotes Software Corporat?on for Forex market trading. The platform includes an integrated development environment (IDE) MetaEd?tor, intended for writing scripts in a programming language called MetaQuotes Language, or MQL4 for short. The language's syntax is based on the classic C language syntax, and the flow logic has not been significantly changed since the previous version of the platform that used MQL II as the programming language. The new automated trade framework is, undoubtedly, an evolution of the previous one. Both languages feature good functionality, with an optimum set of built-in trading and utility functions which is quite sufficient to implement the basic operations, and a facility to define custom functions to help implement non-standard ideas.
From the programming point of view, MQL4 is much more convenient that its predecessor; this language is more oriented at professional programmers, while MQL II, in my opinion, will rather suit financial experts wishing to build trading programs (or trading advisors, in the MetaQuotes terminology) of their own.
2.2. Omega Research-based Solutions
In the New World, the vast majority of companies use the Omega Research platform developed by TradeStation Securities, Inc. This platform has long ago proven its worth at the worldwide market, and to date experts consider it to be the best system for technical analysis. The provided IDE called Omega Research PowerEditor is intended to create control programs in EasyLanguage (EL).
The language's major advantage that strikes the eye is the easiness (hence is the name) of placing opening and closing orders. The corresponding program instructions can be written such as if we were formulating an order to our broker in the plain human language. In MQL4, for example, placing an order to open a position would involve specifying about a dozen of various parameters. In EasyLanguage, the same can be expressed in a short statement using a few words. Working with technical indicators is about that simple, too. But don't fall under an illusion: when creating these simple commands, language developers sacrificed the functionality and limited the possible ways of using a particular function, therefore effectively depriving the IDE users of the opportunity to accurately implement their own algorithms.
TradeStation decided not to create extensive libraries of built-in trading and utility functions but to limit to only an essential set. As the platform advanced, the number of functions written by both in-house and third-party developers grew, and TradeStation simply included them as user-defined functions into the repository of its scripts. As a result, the functionality offered to users is not in the least scarcer than that of MetaQuotes product.
PowerEditor provides a built-in dictionary that lets user search and get help on the available functions. Another handy tool worth mentioning is the strategy builder. Using the strategy builder, the user can easily create a basic algorithm for his or her trading program, and then modify and adjust it as necessary.
EasyLanguage is an old-timer and pioneer in the field of creating automated trading systems for the stock market. It was the basis for the development of MQL II. EasyLanguage will be a good choice for programmers, but still a better one for financial experts more oriented at analyzing the market than trading.
2.3. ProTrader-based Solutions
Professional financial experts can choose the ProTrader2 or ProTraderFX platform as their working tool, depending on the type of the financial market-stock or Forex, respectively. The two platforms are developed and supported by PFSoft LLC. While featuring the specially developed ProTrader Language (PTL), the provided IDE named PTL Builder offers also the opportunity to create scripts in MQLII, MQL4 and EasyLanguage. For this, the text of the program is translated to a language-independent code. Therefore, at runtime it does not matter in which language the script was written. This technology does not only enable creating new scripts, but makes it possible to use freely the entire accumulated collection of scripts that many experienced traders possess.
The main idea put into the new scripting language was to ensure maximum reliability and predictability of the scripts being run. The PTL language is built so as to minimize the possibility of making a mistake in the text of a user's script-the potentially dangerous points will be detected even before the script is tested or launched.
Regardless of the programming language chosen, the platform works with verified managed code while running the script. This Microsoft-developed technology enables proper handling of errors that cannot be detected before the script is run. This means the program will not fail and will not perform any unwanted operations that might be due to critical errors or damage caused by another program, for which the account holder would eventually have to pay.
The PTL Builder IDE will serve well both financial experts and programmers thanks to its support of different programming languages and provided tools such as tester and debugger.
2.4. Solution Comparison
The above IDEs have their specific feature sets. The table below provides a summary comparison of the capabilities offered by each.
3. Approaches for Creating Automated Trading Systems and Recommendations for Using Them
It hardly needs mentioning that choosing an information and trading platform should be taken with all seriousness. For those who plan to use an automated trading system in their business, below are some points I would recommend considering, based on my personal experience.
3.1. Choosing a Working Environment
First of all, define the type of tasks the automated trading system is to perform. These could be:
Actual trading: opening and closing positions in selected instrument(s).
Secondary support-type functions. These could include placing protective orders, creating and sending out reports of notifications.
Analyzing the market with different technical analysis tools using your own algorithm.
Now, after you have studied user comments on the Internet and perhaps consulted your broker, proceed to getting the feel of the products offered. I strongly encourage you not to just have a cursory look, but to test the system for a day of two, thankfully, most of the large companies will let you sign up for a demo account for testing. Pay attention to both the convenience of the IDE and the tools that go with it, and to reliability and security of the control programs created with the IDE.
3.2. Creating a Control Program
If you are planning to create your own scripts, take the time to study the documentation for the programming language and the IDE. Naturally, for an automated trading system to be expertly organized, the scripts should be written by qualified professionals in the field of programming and finance. In case you wish to use one of the classic programs, remember that most of them are of trial, demonstration nature. They are good for testing the automated trading system or to be used as a basis for your own programs, but as self-sustaining, ready-to-use solutions they are of little avail.
If you decide to use programs written by third-party developers, keep in mind that good solutions will have to be paid for. The cost of one innovative strategy varies between $300 and $500, but the price for fine-tuned strategies that use advanced mathematical and economic techniques and especially for winners and runners-up of automated trading championships may exceed $1,000.
3.3. Testing Scripts
When using an automated trading system, always test your scripts. The procedure can be as follows:
1. Test the program in a script tester (if such facility is available in your IDE) several times, varying the chart period, the instrument being traded, and the program settings. Try to model the conditions close to the actual state of the market.
2. Test the script in a demo account (if such an opportunity is available). At this stage, it is important to let the program run for a sufficiently long time (it is defined by the period of the chart). Do not stop the test if the program has at once produced a big gain or a big loss. The usefulness of the script can only be estimated after it has worked for a significant amount of time.
3. Run the script in the live account. At this stage, it is not advisable to interfere with the script-for example, close the positions it has opened or modify their settings-or you can upset the internal logic of the program.
3.4. How Not to Fall Prey to Tricks When Choosing a Script
Remember that there are no absolutely perfect advisers. So, do not let them sell you the Brooklyn Bridge-if you had a system that brings in fabulous profits, would you sell it? There is only one advice-a rigorous comprehensive testing will help you get the right impression about the script offered.
Usually, script vendors describe their products with the results of their own testing. In most cases, however, such results are very slanted. Remember that testing should always be performed on several histories, or you can simply adjust to one history fragment and show sky-high results. Based on the NFL theorem, it is fair to say that it is impossible to create a script that would the best of all those existing, in all instruments.
Some professional programmers use sophisticated mathematical tools to endow their programs with artificial intelligence-neural networks, forecasting and evolutionary algorithms are no longer surprising. I would not recommend overestimating such systems-complex forecasting algorithms are very sensitive to errors and parameter settings, while simple schemes are not of much help to the advisor when it comes to generating trade signals, and can only be used to raise the price of the script.
4. Conclusion
In this article, I neither discuss any programming rules for creating the advisors, nor the specifics of writing scripts in a particular language. On these subjects, there are whole books written as well as a number of articles. My aim was to present several points which I think to be quite important but which have not been sufficiently covered in existing publications.
So, are automated trading systems your ally or enemy? When used carefully and without hasty judgments, an automated trading system can facilitate the financial expert's work and bring in certain profits. But when used incorrectly, incompletely tested, or having settings changed frequently, the automated trading system can lose the money you entrust to it.
Remember that an automated trading system is not going to do your job for you without any effort on your part. Use it to solve your existing problems and not add new ones.
5. References
1. MetaQuotes — developer of MetaTrader, MQL2 and MQL4
2. TradeStation — developers of TradeStation and EasyLanguage
3. PFSoft — developers of ProTraderFX, ProTrader2 and ProTraderLanguage
by Nikita Laukhin
Automated Trading and Scripts Analyst of PFSoft Company.
5 EMAs FOREX SYSTEM, Exponential Moving Averages Full Potential
Among one of the important concepts a new forex trader should know is what a Moving Average means, how it's calculated and what its use as a trading indicator is.
Moving Average is defined as a technical indicator that shows the average value of a particular currency pair over a previously determined amount of time. This means, for example, that prices are averaged over 20 or 50 days, or 10 and 50 min depending on the time frame you are using at the moment of your trading activity.
As an averaged quantity, MA's can bee seen as a smoothed representation of the current market activity and an indicator of the major trend influencing the market behavior.
The basic mechanics of how Moving Averages can tell you where the forex market is moving (up or down), at the moment of your analysis is by considering two different time frame Moving Averages and plotting them on the forex chart. It is very important that one of these MA is over a shorter time period than the other one; let's say one will be over a 15 days period and the other over a 50 days period. Most trading station software available by a number of brokers will let you do this plotting and much more.
Recently there has been the realese of a new forex trading system called "The 5 EMAs FOREX SYSTEM". This system will allow you to identify both entry and exit points with incredible accuracy. He even claims you can convert $1000 into $1000 000 in just 24 months. He may be exaggerating a bit on this, but his plan of action and use of moving averages is quite outstanding and accurate.
Depending upon the exit strategy selected, the system generates monthly returns of between 30% and 55%. Which is more tha enough to make a living trading the forex markets with the 5 EMAs Forex System.
by Adrian Pablo
http://www.1-forex.com/5EMA-Forex-Trading
Moving Average is defined as a technical indicator that shows the average value of a particular currency pair over a previously determined amount of time. This means, for example, that prices are averaged over 20 or 50 days, or 10 and 50 min depending on the time frame you are using at the moment of your trading activity.
As an averaged quantity, MA's can bee seen as a smoothed representation of the current market activity and an indicator of the major trend influencing the market behavior.
The basic mechanics of how Moving Averages can tell you where the forex market is moving (up or down), at the moment of your analysis is by considering two different time frame Moving Averages and plotting them on the forex chart. It is very important that one of these MA is over a shorter time period than the other one; let's say one will be over a 15 days period and the other over a 50 days period. Most trading station software available by a number of brokers will let you do this plotting and much more.
Recently there has been the realese of a new forex trading system called "The 5 EMAs FOREX SYSTEM". This system will allow you to identify both entry and exit points with incredible accuracy. He even claims you can convert $1000 into $1000 000 in just 24 months. He may be exaggerating a bit on this, but his plan of action and use of moving averages is quite outstanding and accurate.
Depending upon the exit strategy selected, the system generates monthly returns of between 30% and 55%. Which is more tha enough to make a living trading the forex markets with the 5 EMAs Forex System.
by Adrian Pablo
http://www.1-forex.com/5EMA-Forex-Trading
Forex Trading: The Perfect Forex Trading System
Trading the Forex market has became very popular in the last few years. But how difficult is it to achieve success in the Forex trading arena? Or let me rephrase this question, how many traders achieve consistent profitable results trading the Forex market? Unfortunately very few, only 5% of traders achieve this goal. One of the main reasons of this is because Forex traders focus in the wrong information to make their trading decisions and totally forget about the most important factor: Price behavior.
Most Forex trading systems are made off technical indicators (a moving average (MA) crossover, overbought/oversold conditions in an oscillator, etc.) But what are technical indicators? They are just a series of data points plotted in a chart; these points are derived from a mathematical formula applied to the price of any given currency pair. In other words, it is a chart of price plotted in a different way that helps us see other aspects of price.
There is an important implication on this definition of technical indicators. The fact that the readings obtained from them are based on price action. Take for instance a long MA crossover signal, the price has gone up enough to make the short period MA crossover the long period MA generating a long signal. Most traders see it as "the MA crossover made the price go up," but it happened the other way around, the MA crossover signal occurred because the price went up. Where I'm trying to get here is that at the end, price behavior dictates how an indicator will act, and this should be taken into consideration on any trading decision made.
Trading decisions based on technical indicators without taking price action into consideration will give us less accurate results. For example, again a long signal generated by a MA crossover as the market approaches an important resistance level. If the price suddenly starts to bounce back off that important level there is no point on taking this signal, price action is telling us the market doesn't want to go up. Most of the time, under this circumstances, the market will continue to fall down, disregarding the MA crossover.
Don't get me wrong here, technical indicators are a very important aspect of trading. They help us see certain conditions that are otherwise difficult to see by watching pure price action. But when it comes to pull the trigger, price action incorporation into our Forex trading system will definitely put the odds in our favor, it will generate higher probability trades.
So, how to create a perfect Forex trading system?
First of all, you need to make sure your trading system fits your trading personality; otherwise you will find it hard to follow it. Every trader has different needs and goals, thus there is no system that perfectly fits all traders. You need to make your own research on various trading styles and technical indicators until you find a concept that perfectly works for you. Make sure you know the nature of whatever technical indicator used.
Secondly, incorporate price action into your system. So you only take long signals if the price behavior tells you the market wants to go up, and short signals if the market gives you indication that it will go down.
Third, and most importantly, you need to have the discipline to follow your Forex trading system rigorously. Try it first on a demo account, then move on to a small account and finally when feeling comfortably and being consistent profitable apply your system in a regular account.
by Raul Lopez
www.straightforex.com
Most Forex trading systems are made off technical indicators (a moving average (MA) crossover, overbought/oversold conditions in an oscillator, etc.) But what are technical indicators? They are just a series of data points plotted in a chart; these points are derived from a mathematical formula applied to the price of any given currency pair. In other words, it is a chart of price plotted in a different way that helps us see other aspects of price.
There is an important implication on this definition of technical indicators. The fact that the readings obtained from them are based on price action. Take for instance a long MA crossover signal, the price has gone up enough to make the short period MA crossover the long period MA generating a long signal. Most traders see it as "the MA crossover made the price go up," but it happened the other way around, the MA crossover signal occurred because the price went up. Where I'm trying to get here is that at the end, price behavior dictates how an indicator will act, and this should be taken into consideration on any trading decision made.
Trading decisions based on technical indicators without taking price action into consideration will give us less accurate results. For example, again a long signal generated by a MA crossover as the market approaches an important resistance level. If the price suddenly starts to bounce back off that important level there is no point on taking this signal, price action is telling us the market doesn't want to go up. Most of the time, under this circumstances, the market will continue to fall down, disregarding the MA crossover.
Don't get me wrong here, technical indicators are a very important aspect of trading. They help us see certain conditions that are otherwise difficult to see by watching pure price action. But when it comes to pull the trigger, price action incorporation into our Forex trading system will definitely put the odds in our favor, it will generate higher probability trades.
So, how to create a perfect Forex trading system?
First of all, you need to make sure your trading system fits your trading personality; otherwise you will find it hard to follow it. Every trader has different needs and goals, thus there is no system that perfectly fits all traders. You need to make your own research on various trading styles and technical indicators until you find a concept that perfectly works for you. Make sure you know the nature of whatever technical indicator used.
Secondly, incorporate price action into your system. So you only take long signals if the price behavior tells you the market wants to go up, and short signals if the market gives you indication that it will go down.
Third, and most importantly, you need to have the discipline to follow your Forex trading system rigorously. Try it first on a demo account, then move on to a small account and finally when feeling comfortably and being consistent profitable apply your system in a regular account.
by Raul Lopez
www.straightforex.com
How To Loose Everything — The Worst Forex Trading Strategy Ever That You Might Be Using
You may be wondering, `Why would David Jenyns write about the worst Forex trading strategy around?`
There are a couple of reasons:
First, to warn you about the worst Forex trading strategy, because you really don`t want to end up using this system.
Second, because once you know the worst possible Forex trading strategy, the one that is designed to maximize your losses over the long run, then you can reverse it to craft a strategy which does the exact opposite.
With what you learn from the worst Forex trading strategy, you will be able to create a system that will produce some tremendous long-term gains. The worst Forex trading strategy I`m referring to, which is simply the worst Forex trading strategy I have ever encountered, is known as averaging down. This horrifying Forex trading strategy is the process of buying more shares that you had previously acquired, as the price drops.
Traders often purchase shares this way in an effort to reduce their initial entry price.
Only bad investors average down by buying shares of a sinking assests to decrease their overall average price per share. This Forex trading strategy is hardly ever effective, and is often like throwing good money after bad. It also magnifies a trader`s loss if the share keeps dropping. Remember, just because a share is cheap now that doesn`t mean it`s not going to get any cheaper. However, let`s examine how this devastating Forex trading strategy works. Say you bought one thousand shares at $40.
The novice investor may not have a stop loss in place, and the share price falls to $30 dollars. Here comes the stupidity of this Forex trading strategy — to average down the novice trader might by another thousand shares at $30 to lower the average cost per share that he`d already purchased. So, his average cost per share would now be $35.
Unfortunately, the share price may fall even further, and the novice trader will again buy more shares to reduce the average cost per share. They end up buying more and more into a share that`s losing their money.
Now, imagine this Forex trading strategy being applied to a portfolio of assets. In the end, all the capital will automatically be allocated to the worse performing assets in the portfolio while the best performing assets are sold off. The result is, at best, a disastrous underperformance versus the market.
If a trader uses an averaging down system and uses margins, their losses will be magnified even further. The biggest problem with this Forex trading strategy is that a trader`s gains are cut short, and the losers are left to run. My advice is — never average down. The process of buying a share, watching it fall, and then throwing more money at it in the hopes that you`ll either get back to break even or make a bigger killing is one of the most misguided pieces of advice on Wall Street. Never be faced with a situation where you`ll ask yourself, Should I risk even more than I originally intended in a desperate attempt to lower my cost and save my butt?`
Instead, design a simple, robust system with good money management rules. I can practically guarantee the results will be better than averaging down.
by David Jenyns
http://www.ultimate-trading-systems.com/forex.htm
There are a couple of reasons:
First, to warn you about the worst Forex trading strategy, because you really don`t want to end up using this system.
Second, because once you know the worst possible Forex trading strategy, the one that is designed to maximize your losses over the long run, then you can reverse it to craft a strategy which does the exact opposite.
With what you learn from the worst Forex trading strategy, you will be able to create a system that will produce some tremendous long-term gains. The worst Forex trading strategy I`m referring to, which is simply the worst Forex trading strategy I have ever encountered, is known as averaging down. This horrifying Forex trading strategy is the process of buying more shares that you had previously acquired, as the price drops.
Traders often purchase shares this way in an effort to reduce their initial entry price.
Only bad investors average down by buying shares of a sinking assests to decrease their overall average price per share. This Forex trading strategy is hardly ever effective, and is often like throwing good money after bad. It also magnifies a trader`s loss if the share keeps dropping. Remember, just because a share is cheap now that doesn`t mean it`s not going to get any cheaper. However, let`s examine how this devastating Forex trading strategy works. Say you bought one thousand shares at $40.
The novice investor may not have a stop loss in place, and the share price falls to $30 dollars. Here comes the stupidity of this Forex trading strategy — to average down the novice trader might by another thousand shares at $30 to lower the average cost per share that he`d already purchased. So, his average cost per share would now be $35.
Unfortunately, the share price may fall even further, and the novice trader will again buy more shares to reduce the average cost per share. They end up buying more and more into a share that`s losing their money.
Now, imagine this Forex trading strategy being applied to a portfolio of assets. In the end, all the capital will automatically be allocated to the worse performing assets in the portfolio while the best performing assets are sold off. The result is, at best, a disastrous underperformance versus the market.
If a trader uses an averaging down system and uses margins, their losses will be magnified even further. The biggest problem with this Forex trading strategy is that a trader`s gains are cut short, and the losers are left to run. My advice is — never average down. The process of buying a share, watching it fall, and then throwing more money at it in the hopes that you`ll either get back to break even or make a bigger killing is one of the most misguided pieces of advice on Wall Street. Never be faced with a situation where you`ll ask yourself, Should I risk even more than I originally intended in a desperate attempt to lower my cost and save my butt?`
Instead, design a simple, robust system with good money management rules. I can practically guarantee the results will be better than averaging down.
by David Jenyns
http://www.ultimate-trading-systems.com/forex.htm
How to Take Control in Forex Trading
Forex Trading is not that easy, all FX traders before they enter this business, they think that they will be rich very quickly and make $20 000 in one or two weeks, but when they begin trading currencies they discover it is not true, it is not easy to make money especially when we work with money. Very tricky business, many of us think that there is a conspiracy planned by "THE BIG GUYS", they know what we think what we plan to do and they do the opposite to steel our money, many times we think to make the opposite of our decision (if I see the market is going up then I will sell). And we begin searching for someone to help us making at least 200 or 300 pips a month, probably many of us work with signals advisors who simply took our money and probably do not help us making decent profit. Many of us thought stop trading many of us quit FX trading but I think most of us will not quit easily because we see in it a golden opportunity to have our own business and make our fortune!
Foreign exchange is an opportunity to make a fortune and in same time it is an opportunity to loose our money, we can make a fortune if we knew how to handle Forex, if we don't know how to control Forex it will destroy us, so we must be stronger than it, and if we don't know how to control it with our own hands it will destroy us too. So how I can be stronger than this ferocious beast? It is simply by learning, observing, and practicing. The FX market will not go anywhere it will be trending and ranging for ever, so learn from experienced traders how they became that good, observe charts and look for common points look for the reason why the price change direction, and when you discover the reason which influence a currency you will have in your hand the first tool that gives you control. And each new thing you discover, try it on a demo account, see if it is valid and develop it. In this Forex article I am helping you to find your way, this Forex article does not give you the fish but it teaches you fishing. There is no conspiracy theory in this business, no big or small guys, we loose because we don't know, and the first thing we must do to become good traders is to admit that we don't know and we must always learn.
In this Forex Article I will give some clues and I will leave you learn, observe and practice.
First of all you must know that you must use fundamental and technical analysis in conjunction, both complete each others, so don't rely on one and leave the other. Fundamental is one of the reasons which influence the market, so if you are in a long trade and suddenly the trading currency went down so go and see if a report was released and see what its forecast and what was the released data and compare this data to your chart and you will have your first tool to control your business.
Second, in my opinion all the technical indicators didn't help me at all, I tried all the combinations nothing work, and indicators describe the status of the market but don't give you information about the next direction. I read a Forex article about a guy who describes his Forex Trading strategy in a Forex article, I was completely lost, he uses a combination of 12 indicators EMA340, SEMA890, EMA2900 etc: and he inserted FIBONACCI in it. I was totally lost. Even if his strategy worth 95% success I will not use it because I can control the market by using simpler techniques. So we don't need to seek indicators, only one indicator I use the Bollinger Bands which is the perfect weapon in my battle against Forex trading. So I want you to look at the Bollinger Bands and see how it affects a currency, focus on it and read well this Forex article and you will discover a lot of things, and you will have your second tool.
Third, suppose you are in a long trade and suddenly for no reason the Forex Trading price went down, there are no released reports it just turned down, this is weird. But weird things are those we don't understand, but if you observe your chart and go back several hours or days and drop a break line from higher swing points you will see that the price turns down because it reached that break line, you see there is no mystery. So this break line will be your Resistance and if price breaks it, it will continue going up, but going where and till when? Observe very carefully and you will learn as I did. And no need for midnight or afternoon candles, be simple as you can, that beast is not as ferocious as you think. So breakout is your third tool.
Fourth, what timeframe to use, it is up to you to choose the suitable timeframe, H1, H4, D1: I don't know, compare the charts and you will see the suitable timeframe. Timeframe is important and when you find it you will have your Fourth tool.
And that's it, I repeat observe your charts and focus and think in these clues in this Forex article and the more you think the more you discover, read Forex article, learn strategies and get foreign exchange books.
I do good profit from my Forex trading strategy because I program it, I gave my system the data and leave it do his job. This eliminates the fear factor and gave me more time to go out and have fun.
I hope this Forex Article gave some tips and techniques which help traders in their Foreign Exchange trades.
by Joe Chalhoub
Economic Calendar, Forex Signals.
Foreign exchange is an opportunity to make a fortune and in same time it is an opportunity to loose our money, we can make a fortune if we knew how to handle Forex, if we don't know how to control Forex it will destroy us, so we must be stronger than it, and if we don't know how to control it with our own hands it will destroy us too. So how I can be stronger than this ferocious beast? It is simply by learning, observing, and practicing. The FX market will not go anywhere it will be trending and ranging for ever, so learn from experienced traders how they became that good, observe charts and look for common points look for the reason why the price change direction, and when you discover the reason which influence a currency you will have in your hand the first tool that gives you control. And each new thing you discover, try it on a demo account, see if it is valid and develop it. In this Forex article I am helping you to find your way, this Forex article does not give you the fish but it teaches you fishing. There is no conspiracy theory in this business, no big or small guys, we loose because we don't know, and the first thing we must do to become good traders is to admit that we don't know and we must always learn.
In this Forex Article I will give some clues and I will leave you learn, observe and practice.
First of all you must know that you must use fundamental and technical analysis in conjunction, both complete each others, so don't rely on one and leave the other. Fundamental is one of the reasons which influence the market, so if you are in a long trade and suddenly the trading currency went down so go and see if a report was released and see what its forecast and what was the released data and compare this data to your chart and you will have your first tool to control your business.
Second, in my opinion all the technical indicators didn't help me at all, I tried all the combinations nothing work, and indicators describe the status of the market but don't give you information about the next direction. I read a Forex article about a guy who describes his Forex Trading strategy in a Forex article, I was completely lost, he uses a combination of 12 indicators EMA340, SEMA890, EMA2900 etc: and he inserted FIBONACCI in it. I was totally lost. Even if his strategy worth 95% success I will not use it because I can control the market by using simpler techniques. So we don't need to seek indicators, only one indicator I use the Bollinger Bands which is the perfect weapon in my battle against Forex trading. So I want you to look at the Bollinger Bands and see how it affects a currency, focus on it and read well this Forex article and you will discover a lot of things, and you will have your second tool.
Third, suppose you are in a long trade and suddenly for no reason the Forex Trading price went down, there are no released reports it just turned down, this is weird. But weird things are those we don't understand, but if you observe your chart and go back several hours or days and drop a break line from higher swing points you will see that the price turns down because it reached that break line, you see there is no mystery. So this break line will be your Resistance and if price breaks it, it will continue going up, but going where and till when? Observe very carefully and you will learn as I did. And no need for midnight or afternoon candles, be simple as you can, that beast is not as ferocious as you think. So breakout is your third tool.
Fourth, what timeframe to use, it is up to you to choose the suitable timeframe, H1, H4, D1: I don't know, compare the charts and you will see the suitable timeframe. Timeframe is important and when you find it you will have your Fourth tool.
And that's it, I repeat observe your charts and focus and think in these clues in this Forex article and the more you think the more you discover, read Forex article, learn strategies and get foreign exchange books.
I do good profit from my Forex trading strategy because I program it, I gave my system the data and leave it do his job. This eliminates the fear factor and gave me more time to go out and have fun.
I hope this Forex Article gave some tips and techniques which help traders in their Foreign Exchange trades.
by Joe Chalhoub
Economic Calendar, Forex Signals.
Why do the best trading systems fail?
Why do Forex Traders fail? I have a theory.
At the time I decided to start forex trading (2 years ago) the Forex Boom was just starting. I really did think I had stumbled on that legendary pot of gold, and that I would soon be on easy street.
Here was a multi-trillion dollar online business where a smart guy like me couldn't fail to make lots of easy money.
I'd read that over 90% of forex traders fail, but hey — that wouldn't happen to me — I've got a college degree! If I learned the best forex trading techniques and studiously avoided the pitfalls, I'd be a top forex trader in no time!
So I invested in the best forex training course I could find, almost entirely dvd-based training, and it cost me more than $4000. It came on 10 dvds, with 14 hours of top quality forex education, and several pieces of software, including free forex signals software which was already set up with passwords etc... and ready to go. I even got a forex spread-betting account. Mmm... better still, now I can trade forex tax-free!
I also received access to the author's web site and could see his daily forex trades. Every evening I could review his trades and listen to his commentary, and see how many pips he had made or lost. Most days he made about 20 — 30 forex pips — mostly in the GBP/Dollar market.
This was going to be be easy!
The course covered all aspects of trading including preparation, record keeping, paper trading, even the phsychology of forex trading. I watched the entire dvd set over a couple of days. Then I re-watched the dvds covering actual FX trades and particular forex techniques — he was a technical trader.
I coudn't wait to get started. So I opened my spread betting account (another $5,000 but what the hell....). Oh, and I sent for the latest Mercedes and Ferrari literature — it wouldn't be long now....
That was nearly 2 years ago.
So do I have the Mercedes or the Ferrari? Nope! Have I made my fortune? Not yet!
In fact I've lost money — lots of money!
I haven't lost my confidence in the forex market as a way to make money online, I've seen and met too many traders who make good money trading the forex markets. I know it's possible, I've seen it done.
So it must be my system! So I invested even more money.
I bought the very best online forex trading systems — but only after I had carefully checked their testimonials and ensured that people were making serious money with them. I also bought books — lots of books. Books on forex training, books on forex trading, books to compare forex trading systems. I also bought downloadable forex courses and forex guides, I studied day trading systems versus long term trading systems — I was determined to succeed and make money in forex trading.
So am I making money now? Not really!
But at last I know where the problem is and why I have failed. It hurts to admit it, but...
The problem is ME.
Yep- me! I'm the problem.
I now know that my approach, my style, my methods, were all letting me down. Even when using a proven winning trading system, I would lose money.
And for a long (and very costly) time, I hadn't even realized it. It wasn't because I didn't invest enough money either.
I now accept that I can purchase a winning forex trading system online for very little, and that a top forex course will cost very little too. Indeed, there are a whole range of very affordable forex resources and training out there.
I can quickly and easily be ALMOST fully equipped to make money on the forex markets. Almost?
So what's the missing link? What's the difference between the winners and the losers? Who else should I consult to be the complete forex trader?
Well — me... It's me!
I've identified a whole load of personal traits and deficiencies that have prevented my success — (and very uncomfortable reading they make too). Words like self-discipline, concentration, resolution, dedication and honesty come to mind.
I've also learned that MOST available forex tutorials fail to cover this topic adequately — probably because their writers are successful forex traders who already possess the vital ingredient that the rest of us lack. They just don't realize it's a problem.
What's the problem?
In a sentence — "Most forex traders are incapable of sticking to the systems they have learned". That's why most forex traders fail.
So now I have written "The Missing Link, the other successful forex trading strategy". It's nothing to do with entry or exit points, or technical analysis, or news trading. It's everything to do with attitude and mind-set- and provides a totally different set of trading rules without which even the most successful forex trading strategy can fail.
by Christopher Temple
http://www.forexfoundry.com
At the time I decided to start forex trading (2 years ago) the Forex Boom was just starting. I really did think I had stumbled on that legendary pot of gold, and that I would soon be on easy street.
Here was a multi-trillion dollar online business where a smart guy like me couldn't fail to make lots of easy money.
I'd read that over 90% of forex traders fail, but hey — that wouldn't happen to me — I've got a college degree! If I learned the best forex trading techniques and studiously avoided the pitfalls, I'd be a top forex trader in no time!
So I invested in the best forex training course I could find, almost entirely dvd-based training, and it cost me more than $4000. It came on 10 dvds, with 14 hours of top quality forex education, and several pieces of software, including free forex signals software which was already set up with passwords etc... and ready to go. I even got a forex spread-betting account. Mmm... better still, now I can trade forex tax-free!
I also received access to the author's web site and could see his daily forex trades. Every evening I could review his trades and listen to his commentary, and see how many pips he had made or lost. Most days he made about 20 — 30 forex pips — mostly in the GBP/Dollar market.
This was going to be be easy!
The course covered all aspects of trading including preparation, record keeping, paper trading, even the phsychology of forex trading. I watched the entire dvd set over a couple of days. Then I re-watched the dvds covering actual FX trades and particular forex techniques — he was a technical trader.
I coudn't wait to get started. So I opened my spread betting account (another $5,000 but what the hell....). Oh, and I sent for the latest Mercedes and Ferrari literature — it wouldn't be long now....
That was nearly 2 years ago.
So do I have the Mercedes or the Ferrari? Nope! Have I made my fortune? Not yet!
In fact I've lost money — lots of money!
I haven't lost my confidence in the forex market as a way to make money online, I've seen and met too many traders who make good money trading the forex markets. I know it's possible, I've seen it done.
So it must be my system! So I invested even more money.
I bought the very best online forex trading systems — but only after I had carefully checked their testimonials and ensured that people were making serious money with them. I also bought books — lots of books. Books on forex training, books on forex trading, books to compare forex trading systems. I also bought downloadable forex courses and forex guides, I studied day trading systems versus long term trading systems — I was determined to succeed and make money in forex trading.
So am I making money now? Not really!
But at last I know where the problem is and why I have failed. It hurts to admit it, but...
The problem is ME.
Yep- me! I'm the problem.
I now know that my approach, my style, my methods, were all letting me down. Even when using a proven winning trading system, I would lose money.
And for a long (and very costly) time, I hadn't even realized it. It wasn't because I didn't invest enough money either.
I now accept that I can purchase a winning forex trading system online for very little, and that a top forex course will cost very little too. Indeed, there are a whole range of very affordable forex resources and training out there.
I can quickly and easily be ALMOST fully equipped to make money on the forex markets. Almost?
So what's the missing link? What's the difference between the winners and the losers? Who else should I consult to be the complete forex trader?
Well — me... It's me!
I've identified a whole load of personal traits and deficiencies that have prevented my success — (and very uncomfortable reading they make too). Words like self-discipline, concentration, resolution, dedication and honesty come to mind.
I've also learned that MOST available forex tutorials fail to cover this topic adequately — probably because their writers are successful forex traders who already possess the vital ingredient that the rest of us lack. They just don't realize it's a problem.
What's the problem?
In a sentence — "Most forex traders are incapable of sticking to the systems they have learned". That's why most forex traders fail.
So now I have written "The Missing Link, the other successful forex trading strategy". It's nothing to do with entry or exit points, or technical analysis, or news trading. It's everything to do with attitude and mind-set- and provides a totally different set of trading rules without which even the most successful forex trading strategy can fail.
by Christopher Temple
http://www.forexfoundry.com
Forex : How To Handle A String Of Investment Losses
Everybody hates to lose and unfortunately no one is blessed with the ability of foresight, therefore losses are an unavoidable part of trading. When we enter a trade we will either be right, or wrong, and even if we broke-even we'd still be classed as being wrong — as nobody enters into a trade just to break-even! When unsuccessful traders encounter a string of losses they begin to engage in self-destructive patterns that help them escape the pain they are experiencing.
Bring to light these self-destructive actions that can help you realize what you are doing before it takes hold of your physical health. If you find yourself already engaged in these patterns hopefully this article can help you to get you back on track as quickly as possible.
What are the destructive patterns?
If you find yourself caught in a string of losses or a bad performing week/month be sure to monitor your behavior. It is during this time that you will be at your most vulnerable. You will begin to indulge in activities that at first seem harmless, but upon excessive use (or in time), begin to cause physical damage to your health.
Ask yourself the following question: during drawdown periods do I find myself over-indulging in these activities:
Food (especially junk food — e.g. chocolate, ice-cream, chips)?
Sex (includes viewing pornography)?
Alcohol?
Drugs (includes excessive smoking)?
Laziness (find it difficult to wake up in the morning)?
Entertainment?
All of the above taken in excessive doses can be detrimental to your own physical health (some even in small doses!).
These activities above during your losing period are only covering up the pain of confronting the true issue, and your body tries to rid the emotional pain by trying to "fix" it with physical pleasures. Unfortunately it is going about it in the wrong way, so what should you do?
Firstly... REALIZE WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND STOP IT!
You need to realize what you're doing and you need to STOP doing it immediately! You can either decide to stop, or you'll be forced to stop when your body eventually breaks down and prevents you from any form of movement. It will be much more beneficial to you in the long-term if you can decide to stop *NOW*.
Once you have stopped you now need to figure out a way to solve the pain — not by cutting out or neglecting it, but by staring it in the face. Bring your problems out into the light, be honest with yourself. There can be no growth without pain; you are experiencing the emotional pain, now it is time to find the error and therefore your growth.
Begin Your Review
The review process begins in two separate areas: You & Your System. Here are some checklists for you to go through to find out where the problem could lie:
"YOUR SYSTEM" CHECKLIST
Was your system thoroughly tested prior to trading it (or paper traded if you do not have the capacity to program your system into back testing software)?
Did you test with out-of-sample data?
Do you even have a system???? If you do not, how do you even know if the method that you are trading is even profitable??
Is your system's code correct?
Did you over-optimize your system? (What have we discussed about over-indulging?)
Did you paper trade your system prior to placing capital on it?
Did you trade with a small amount of capital prior to placing the rest of your funds on it?
Do you know the system's limitations?
Did you properly drill your system? (See our blog article on why I am the system designer from hell)
"YOU" CHECKLIST
Is the current drawdown you are exhibiting with your system normal?
Are you comfortable with your system's historical drawdown performance?
Are you fully aware of the risks involved with your system and the instrument(s) you are trading?
Are you trading with funds that you are comfortable risking?
Are you relying too heavily on your performance?
Have you set realistic goals?
As you can see there are generally two areas that you need to explore: the mechanical aspect — your system — and the emotional aspect — you. Both can be responsible for making the way you feel the way you do. It will either be an error on the system's side with how the system was tested and/or programmed, or it can be your own psychological profile not being comfortable with the system's performance.
Your Answers = Change = Your Growth
What steps should we now take? Now that we have begun a corrective process where we have stopped the evil nature of our over-indulging ways to take control we should continue our "corrective nature" by invoking our findings and taking ACTION in correcting our errors.
If the problem was mechanical — fix it, if the problem was emotional either go about setting up new thought patterns, or change your current system. The answers lie in whether you need to expand your knowledge in system development, or whether you need to grow emotionally as a person.
Unfortunately there is no easy road, and even if there was everybody would be doing it. Hopefully this article has made you ponder over some of your behaviors during drawdown periods, be sure to keep an eye on yourself and as always take care of your body, because there's no use in making all the money in the world when you don't have the physical capacity to enjoy it
by Amy Goodmann
frxforex@yahoo.com
www.vintagecomputermanuals.com
www.forexforexforexforex.com
Bring to light these self-destructive actions that can help you realize what you are doing before it takes hold of your physical health. If you find yourself already engaged in these patterns hopefully this article can help you to get you back on track as quickly as possible.
What are the destructive patterns?
If you find yourself caught in a string of losses or a bad performing week/month be sure to monitor your behavior. It is during this time that you will be at your most vulnerable. You will begin to indulge in activities that at first seem harmless, but upon excessive use (or in time), begin to cause physical damage to your health.
Ask yourself the following question: during drawdown periods do I find myself over-indulging in these activities:
Food (especially junk food — e.g. chocolate, ice-cream, chips)?
Sex (includes viewing pornography)?
Alcohol?
Drugs (includes excessive smoking)?
Laziness (find it difficult to wake up in the morning)?
Entertainment?
All of the above taken in excessive doses can be detrimental to your own physical health (some even in small doses!).
These activities above during your losing period are only covering up the pain of confronting the true issue, and your body tries to rid the emotional pain by trying to "fix" it with physical pleasures. Unfortunately it is going about it in the wrong way, so what should you do?
Firstly... REALIZE WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND STOP IT!
You need to realize what you're doing and you need to STOP doing it immediately! You can either decide to stop, or you'll be forced to stop when your body eventually breaks down and prevents you from any form of movement. It will be much more beneficial to you in the long-term if you can decide to stop *NOW*.
Once you have stopped you now need to figure out a way to solve the pain — not by cutting out or neglecting it, but by staring it in the face. Bring your problems out into the light, be honest with yourself. There can be no growth without pain; you are experiencing the emotional pain, now it is time to find the error and therefore your growth.
Begin Your Review
The review process begins in two separate areas: You & Your System. Here are some checklists for you to go through to find out where the problem could lie:
"YOUR SYSTEM" CHECKLIST
Was your system thoroughly tested prior to trading it (or paper traded if you do not have the capacity to program your system into back testing software)?
Did you test with out-of-sample data?
Do you even have a system???? If you do not, how do you even know if the method that you are trading is even profitable??
Is your system's code correct?
Did you over-optimize your system? (What have we discussed about over-indulging?)
Did you paper trade your system prior to placing capital on it?
Did you trade with a small amount of capital prior to placing the rest of your funds on it?
Do you know the system's limitations?
Did you properly drill your system? (See our blog article on why I am the system designer from hell)
"YOU" CHECKLIST
Is the current drawdown you are exhibiting with your system normal?
Are you comfortable with your system's historical drawdown performance?
Are you fully aware of the risks involved with your system and the instrument(s) you are trading?
Are you trading with funds that you are comfortable risking?
Are you relying too heavily on your performance?
Have you set realistic goals?
As you can see there are generally two areas that you need to explore: the mechanical aspect — your system — and the emotional aspect — you. Both can be responsible for making the way you feel the way you do. It will either be an error on the system's side with how the system was tested and/or programmed, or it can be your own psychological profile not being comfortable with the system's performance.
Your Answers = Change = Your Growth
What steps should we now take? Now that we have begun a corrective process where we have stopped the evil nature of our over-indulging ways to take control we should continue our "corrective nature" by invoking our findings and taking ACTION in correcting our errors.
If the problem was mechanical — fix it, if the problem was emotional either go about setting up new thought patterns, or change your current system. The answers lie in whether you need to expand your knowledge in system development, or whether you need to grow emotionally as a person.
Unfortunately there is no easy road, and even if there was everybody would be doing it. Hopefully this article has made you ponder over some of your behaviors during drawdown periods, be sure to keep an eye on yourself and as always take care of your body, because there's no use in making all the money in the world when you don't have the physical capacity to enjoy it
by Amy Goodmann
frxforex@yahoo.com
www.vintagecomputermanuals.com
www.forexforexforexforex.com
Learn to see the line between the trading plan and your emotional impulses
The vast majority of Forex education organizations fail to address the only true characteristic of a market place, the human nature.
You can easily find loads of charts, pivot points, moving averages, trend lines and all sorts of Fibonacci ratios, together with the latest in trading automation. Any Forex website publishes some or all of these data, along with myriads of other details, interviews and opinions.
You may even get entry and exit signals, support and resistance levels, all of which could appear as sufficient in the decision making process.
I was under the same impression as a beginner, I was at the same level as an intermediate trader and only heavy losses and low risk/reward decisions made me look for a different approach to trading.
If you are aware of the importance of having a trading plan for each trade you plan to initiate, then you must be familiar with moments of doubt, when following the opening of the trade, the market goes awry, together with your emotions and self-esteem.
Do you feel frustrated? Join the vast club of frustrated professional Forex traders.
When you see the market moving against all odds and logic, your emotional self cries for an immediate position reversal (SHORT from LONG and vice-versa), in a complete disregard of your own trading plan.
On the other hand, all your training books, videos and mentors have pumped the "trading plan supremacy" into your brain.
While the viable solution seems to reside in the robotic way of trading the plan, a professional operator must learn to listen to his or her "hidden partner", the subconscious.
Our brain is capable of storing immense quantities of data, without us being aware of it. Our five senses perceptions are in constant use and they permanently add to our overall life experience. While our subconscious is capable of dealing with all this seamlessly, the conscious mind has only a very limited operational capacity, primarily used to help us dealing with our daily tasks.
As we trade, ALL our experiences are deposited deep within our brain, slowly building up what I call the unseen analyst. This is what you may call the sixth sense or the instinct traders develop as they progress.
As the name of the game with Forex trading is VOLATILITY and 80% of all trades do not last more than 2-3 days, with the vast majority of them being daytrades, it is easy to accept that conditions can and will change in a heartbeat, rendering most trade plans obsolete.
The only way to alleviate the contradictions between your emotional self and the heavily trained brain is to learn how to give them priority over time.
As a beginner, you simply cannot have the emotional experience to "feel" anything related to the market processes and therefore it is advisable to rely completely on the mechanisms of a trading plan.
At this stage, take your time to learn how to interpret the charts, prepare yourself according to the daily economic calendar and how to construct a comprehensive trading plan. Once you took a trading decision, stick with it, no matter what. At this stage, you are a robot, implementing a trading strategy.
Your emotional weight should be nonexistent in the economy of the trade.
As you progress along the path of becoming a professional Forex operator, your unseen analyst will start adjusting your trading decisions, silently participating in your trading decision process.
It is now the time to make room to your "feel", to accommodate your growing sentiment of "feeling the market".
Your emotional weight should now become an accepted presence.
You will soon learn how to adjust this "mix" in a way to achieve the optimal trading performance.
by Bogdan Vasile
You can easily find loads of charts, pivot points, moving averages, trend lines and all sorts of Fibonacci ratios, together with the latest in trading automation. Any Forex website publishes some or all of these data, along with myriads of other details, interviews and opinions.
You may even get entry and exit signals, support and resistance levels, all of which could appear as sufficient in the decision making process.
I was under the same impression as a beginner, I was at the same level as an intermediate trader and only heavy losses and low risk/reward decisions made me look for a different approach to trading.
If you are aware of the importance of having a trading plan for each trade you plan to initiate, then you must be familiar with moments of doubt, when following the opening of the trade, the market goes awry, together with your emotions and self-esteem.
Do you feel frustrated? Join the vast club of frustrated professional Forex traders.
When you see the market moving against all odds and logic, your emotional self cries for an immediate position reversal (SHORT from LONG and vice-versa), in a complete disregard of your own trading plan.
On the other hand, all your training books, videos and mentors have pumped the "trading plan supremacy" into your brain.
While the viable solution seems to reside in the robotic way of trading the plan, a professional operator must learn to listen to his or her "hidden partner", the subconscious.
Our brain is capable of storing immense quantities of data, without us being aware of it. Our five senses perceptions are in constant use and they permanently add to our overall life experience. While our subconscious is capable of dealing with all this seamlessly, the conscious mind has only a very limited operational capacity, primarily used to help us dealing with our daily tasks.
As we trade, ALL our experiences are deposited deep within our brain, slowly building up what I call the unseen analyst. This is what you may call the sixth sense or the instinct traders develop as they progress.
As the name of the game with Forex trading is VOLATILITY and 80% of all trades do not last more than 2-3 days, with the vast majority of them being daytrades, it is easy to accept that conditions can and will change in a heartbeat, rendering most trade plans obsolete.
The only way to alleviate the contradictions between your emotional self and the heavily trained brain is to learn how to give them priority over time.
As a beginner, you simply cannot have the emotional experience to "feel" anything related to the market processes and therefore it is advisable to rely completely on the mechanisms of a trading plan.
At this stage, take your time to learn how to interpret the charts, prepare yourself according to the daily economic calendar and how to construct a comprehensive trading plan. Once you took a trading decision, stick with it, no matter what. At this stage, you are a robot, implementing a trading strategy.
Your emotional weight should be nonexistent in the economy of the trade.
As you progress along the path of becoming a professional Forex operator, your unseen analyst will start adjusting your trading decisions, silently participating in your trading decision process.
It is now the time to make room to your "feel", to accommodate your growing sentiment of "feeling the market".
Your emotional weight should now become an accepted presence.
You will soon learn how to adjust this "mix" in a way to achieve the optimal trading performance.
by Bogdan Vasile
Forex Trading: The Fear Factor
Market knowledge and ability to understand analysis will only get you so far in forex trading, but without the nerve to actively compete risking your own money in the process you can never become a successful trader.
Wagering huge volumes of money in a market as susceptible to change is liable to cause a whole range of opposing emotions; fear, excitement and anxiety just to name a few. Battling against your emotions in order to complete a successful deal is one of the major hurdles, which must be overcome if you are to become a trader able to close huge deals and earn vast sums of money. If you can overcome or even use these emotions to make trades on the Forex then a successful career may be beckoning, but failure to do so will almost certainly cost you a substantial amount of money and end any lingering desires to progress in the busy world of exchange rate trading.
Initiating and closing a trade at the right times are the backbone of becoming a successful Forex trader. If a person cannot execute these deals at the right times, the psychological and financial damage can be crippling. Missing a huge trend or sitting too long on a good price, can be a demoralising experience, but one that many will encounter during a career in Forex trading.
Entering at the right time is just one thing that must be done correctly, but if you are unable to leave at the right time or hold your nerve during the course of the trade, the implications are potentially severe. For example accepting a small loss just before the market rises can lead to a horrendous huge profit/loss ratio margin. Similarly sitting on a currency price that is plummeting for too long could be financially crippling. Understanding the Forex market and having faith in your ability to judge a trend will pay dividends if you hold your nerve, backing out at the wrong time can prove to be a catastrophic misnomer.
The fear generated by investing your own personal money is the main thing that must be overcome. It is the culprit in so many failure stories, people who just couldn't overcome their anxiety investing unwisely, pulling out at the wrong time, missing a rise completely, all result in failure and are caused by fear. Accepting this fear, and using it to your potential will make you a stronger trader, able to trade freely and enjoy the thrill of the exchange. Fighting it will get you nowhere, understanding and overcoming it are the best remedies to this baseless emotion.
Trading strategies will help you ride out the rough times and capitalize on the good ones. Sometimes just taking a step back and accepting a few losses will give you the energy and the knowledge to attack the Forex with renewed vigour, and make some serious profits. Accepting that sometimes you will lose out, you need to be able to take the hits and roll with a punch, there are no guarantees in the trading market, so being able to move on and start again is a skill that is paramount to generating success.
Analysis and charts can only get you so far. You must first master these things, and be able to correctly interpret the figures that are represented in order to spot the trends and make your move. But this all means nothing if you don't have the courage of your convictions. If you are too afraid to buy and not sure when to sell then a glittering career in market trading is likely to elude you. 'The trend is your friend' but it means nothing if you firstly can't spot it and secondly don't have the courage to back it. Knowledge, strategies and overcoming fear may well be the 3 best ways to become to unlock the door to becoming a successful trader. Without all 3 you will more often than not become unstuck, so prepare, practice and evaluate everything before taking the plunge in the complicated world of Forex trading.
by Michael J Campbell
Wagering huge volumes of money in a market as susceptible to change is liable to cause a whole range of opposing emotions; fear, excitement and anxiety just to name a few. Battling against your emotions in order to complete a successful deal is one of the major hurdles, which must be overcome if you are to become a trader able to close huge deals and earn vast sums of money. If you can overcome or even use these emotions to make trades on the Forex then a successful career may be beckoning, but failure to do so will almost certainly cost you a substantial amount of money and end any lingering desires to progress in the busy world of exchange rate trading.
Initiating and closing a trade at the right times are the backbone of becoming a successful Forex trader. If a person cannot execute these deals at the right times, the psychological and financial damage can be crippling. Missing a huge trend or sitting too long on a good price, can be a demoralising experience, but one that many will encounter during a career in Forex trading.
Entering at the right time is just one thing that must be done correctly, but if you are unable to leave at the right time or hold your nerve during the course of the trade, the implications are potentially severe. For example accepting a small loss just before the market rises can lead to a horrendous huge profit/loss ratio margin. Similarly sitting on a currency price that is plummeting for too long could be financially crippling. Understanding the Forex market and having faith in your ability to judge a trend will pay dividends if you hold your nerve, backing out at the wrong time can prove to be a catastrophic misnomer.
The fear generated by investing your own personal money is the main thing that must be overcome. It is the culprit in so many failure stories, people who just couldn't overcome their anxiety investing unwisely, pulling out at the wrong time, missing a rise completely, all result in failure and are caused by fear. Accepting this fear, and using it to your potential will make you a stronger trader, able to trade freely and enjoy the thrill of the exchange. Fighting it will get you nowhere, understanding and overcoming it are the best remedies to this baseless emotion.
Trading strategies will help you ride out the rough times and capitalize on the good ones. Sometimes just taking a step back and accepting a few losses will give you the energy and the knowledge to attack the Forex with renewed vigour, and make some serious profits. Accepting that sometimes you will lose out, you need to be able to take the hits and roll with a punch, there are no guarantees in the trading market, so being able to move on and start again is a skill that is paramount to generating success.
Analysis and charts can only get you so far. You must first master these things, and be able to correctly interpret the figures that are represented in order to spot the trends and make your move. But this all means nothing if you don't have the courage of your convictions. If you are too afraid to buy and not sure when to sell then a glittering career in market trading is likely to elude you. 'The trend is your friend' but it means nothing if you firstly can't spot it and secondly don't have the courage to back it. Knowledge, strategies and overcoming fear may well be the 3 best ways to become to unlock the door to becoming a successful trader. Without all 3 you will more often than not become unstuck, so prepare, practice and evaluate everything before taking the plunge in the complicated world of Forex trading.
by Michael J Campbell
Trading Psychology: Mistakes in a Trading Environment
When it comes to trading, one of the most neglected subjects are those dealing with trading psychology. Most traders spend days, months and even years trying to find the right system. But having a system is just part of the game. Don't get us wrong, it is very important to have a system that perfectly suits the trader, but it is as important as having a money management plan, or to understand all psychology barriers that may affect the trader decisions and other issues. In order to succeed in this business, there must be equilibrium between all important aspects of trading.
In the trading environment, when you lose a trade, what is the first idea that pops up in your mind? It would probably be, "There must be something wrong with my system", or "I knew it, I shouldn't have taken this trade" (even when your system signaled it). But sometimes we need to dig a little deeper in order to see the nature of our mistake, and then work on it accordingly.
When it comes to trading the Forexa market as well as other markets, only 5% of traders achieve the ultimate goal: to be consistent in profits. What is interesting though is that there is just a tiny difference between this 5% of traders and the rest of them. The top 5% grow from mistakes; mistakes are a learning experience, they learn an invaluable lesson on every single mistake made. Deep in their minds, a mistake is one more chance to try it harder and do it better the next time, because they know they might not get a chance the next time. And at the end, this tiny difference becomes THE big difference.
Mistakes in the trading environment
Most of us relate a trading mistake to the outcome (in terms of money) of any given trade. The truth is, a mistake has nothing to do with it, mistakes are made when certain guidelines are not followed. When the rules you trade by are violated. Take for instance the following scenarios:
First scenario: The system signals a trade.
1. Signal taken and trade turns out to be a profitable trade. Outcome of the trade: Positive, made money. Experience gained: Its good to follow the system, if I do this consistently the odds will turn in my favor. Confidence is gained in both the trader and the system. Mistake made: None.
2. Signal taken and trade turns out to be a loosing trade. Outcome of the trade: Negative, lost money. Experience gained: It is impossible to win every single trade, a loosing trade is just part of the business; our raw material, we know we can't get them all right. Even with this lost trade, the trader is proud about himself for following the system. Confidence in the trader is gained. Mistake made: None.
3. Signal not taken and trade turns out to be a profitable trade. Outcome of the trade: Neutral. Experience gained: Frustration, the trader always seems to get in trades that turned out to be loosing trades and let the profitable trades go away. Confidence is lost in the trader self. Mistake made: Not taking a trade when the system signaled it.
4. Signal not taken and trade turns out to be a loosing trade. Outcome of the trade: Neutral. Experience gained: The trader will start to think "hey, I'm better than my system". Even if the trader doesn't think on it consciously, the trader will rationalize on every signal given by the system because deep in his or her mind, his or her "feeling" is more intelligent than the system itself. From this point on, the trader will try to outguess the system. This mistake has catastrophic effects on our confidence to the system. The confidence on the trader turns into overconfidence. Mistake made: Not taking a trade when system signaled it
Second Scenario: System does not signal a trade.
1. No trade is taken Outcome of the trade: Neutral Experience gained: Good discipline, we only need to take trades when the odds are in our favor, just when the system signals it. Confidence gained in both the trader self and the system. Mistake made: None
2. A trade is taken, turns out to be a profitable trade. Outcome of the trade: Positive, made money. Experience gained: This mistake has the most catastrophic effects in the trader self, the system and most importantly in the trader's trading career. You will start to think you need no system, you know better from them all. From this point on, you will start to trade based on what you think. Confidence in the system is totally lost. Confidence in the trader self turns into overconfidence. Mistake made: Take a trade when there was no signal from the system.
3. A trade is taken, turned out to be a loosing trade. Outcome of the trade: negative, lost money. Experience gained: The trader will rethink his strategy. The next time, the trader will think it twice before getting in a trade when the system does not signal it. The trader will go "Ok, it is better to get in the market when my system signals it, only those trade have a higher probability of success". Confidence is gained in the system. Mistake made: Take a trade when there was no signal from the system
As you can see, there is absolutely no correlation between the outcome of the trade and a mistake. The most catastrophic mistake even has a positive trade outcome, made money, but this could be the beginning of the end of the trader's career. As we have already stated, mistakes must only be related to the violation of rules a trader trades by.
All these mistakes were directly related to the signals given by a system, but the same is applied when getting out of a trade. There are also mistakes related to following a trading plan. For example, risking more money on a given trade than the amount the trader should have risked and many more.
Most mistakes can be avoided by first having a trading plan. A trading plan includes the system: the criteria we use to get in and out the market, the money management plan: how much we will risk on any given trade, and many other points. Secondly, and most important, we need to have the discipline to follow strictly our plan. We created our plan when no trade was placed on, thus no psychology barriers were up front. So, the only thing we are certain about is that if we follow our plan, the decision taken is on our best interests, and in the long run, these decisions will help us have better results. We don't have to worry about isolated events, or trades that could had give us better results at first, but then they could have catastrophic results in our trading career.
How to deal with mistakes
There are many possible ways to properly manage mistakes. We will suggest the one that works better for us.
Step one: Belief change. Every mistake is a learning experience. They all have something valuable to offer. Try to counteract the natural tendency of feeling frustrated and approach mistakes in a positive manner. Instead of yelling to everyone around and feeling disappointed, say to yourself "ok, I did something wrong, what happened? What is it?
Step two: Identify the mistake made. Define the mistake, find out what caused the mistake, and try as hard as you can to effectively see the nature of that mistake. Finding the mistake nature will prevent you from making the same mistake again. More than often you will find the answer where you less expected. Take for instance a trader that doesn't follow the system. The reason behind this could be that the trader is afraid of loosing. But then, why is he or she afraid? It could be that the trader is using a system that does not fit him or her, and finds difficult to follow every signal. In this case, as you can see, the nature of the mistake is not in the surface. You need to try as hard as you can to find the real reason of the given mistake.
Step three: Measure the consequences of the mistake. List the consequences of making that particular mistake, both good and bad. Good consequences are those that make us better traders after dealing with the mistake. Think on all possible reasons you can learn from what happened. For the same example above, what are the consequences of making that mistake? Well, if you don't follow the system, you will gradually loose confidence in it, and this at the end will put you into trades you don't really want to be, and out of trades you should be in.
Step four: Take action. Taking proper action is the last and most important step. In order to learn, you need to change your behavior. Make sure that whatever you do, you become "this-mistake-proof". By taking action we turn every single mistake into a small part of success in our trading career. Continuing with the same example, redefining the system would be the trader's final step. The trader would put a system that perfectly fits him or her, so the trader doesn't find any trouble following it in future signals.
Understanding the fact that the outcome of any trade has nothing to do with a mistake will open your mind to other possibilities, where you will be able to understand the nature of every mistake made. This at the same time will open the doors for your trading career as you work and take proper action on every mistake made.
The process of success is slow, and plenty of times it is attributed to repeated mistakes made and the constant struggle to get past these mistakes, working on them accordingly. How we deal with them will shape our future as a trader, and most importantly as a person.
by Raul Lopez
www.straightforex.com
In the trading environment, when you lose a trade, what is the first idea that pops up in your mind? It would probably be, "There must be something wrong with my system", or "I knew it, I shouldn't have taken this trade" (even when your system signaled it). But sometimes we need to dig a little deeper in order to see the nature of our mistake, and then work on it accordingly.
When it comes to trading the Forexa market as well as other markets, only 5% of traders achieve the ultimate goal: to be consistent in profits. What is interesting though is that there is just a tiny difference between this 5% of traders and the rest of them. The top 5% grow from mistakes; mistakes are a learning experience, they learn an invaluable lesson on every single mistake made. Deep in their minds, a mistake is one more chance to try it harder and do it better the next time, because they know they might not get a chance the next time. And at the end, this tiny difference becomes THE big difference.
Mistakes in the trading environment
Most of us relate a trading mistake to the outcome (in terms of money) of any given trade. The truth is, a mistake has nothing to do with it, mistakes are made when certain guidelines are not followed. When the rules you trade by are violated. Take for instance the following scenarios:
First scenario: The system signals a trade.
1. Signal taken and trade turns out to be a profitable trade. Outcome of the trade: Positive, made money. Experience gained: Its good to follow the system, if I do this consistently the odds will turn in my favor. Confidence is gained in both the trader and the system. Mistake made: None.
2. Signal taken and trade turns out to be a loosing trade. Outcome of the trade: Negative, lost money. Experience gained: It is impossible to win every single trade, a loosing trade is just part of the business; our raw material, we know we can't get them all right. Even with this lost trade, the trader is proud about himself for following the system. Confidence in the trader is gained. Mistake made: None.
3. Signal not taken and trade turns out to be a profitable trade. Outcome of the trade: Neutral. Experience gained: Frustration, the trader always seems to get in trades that turned out to be loosing trades and let the profitable trades go away. Confidence is lost in the trader self. Mistake made: Not taking a trade when the system signaled it.
4. Signal not taken and trade turns out to be a loosing trade. Outcome of the trade: Neutral. Experience gained: The trader will start to think "hey, I'm better than my system". Even if the trader doesn't think on it consciously, the trader will rationalize on every signal given by the system because deep in his or her mind, his or her "feeling" is more intelligent than the system itself. From this point on, the trader will try to outguess the system. This mistake has catastrophic effects on our confidence to the system. The confidence on the trader turns into overconfidence. Mistake made: Not taking a trade when system signaled it
Second Scenario: System does not signal a trade.
1. No trade is taken Outcome of the trade: Neutral Experience gained: Good discipline, we only need to take trades when the odds are in our favor, just when the system signals it. Confidence gained in both the trader self and the system. Mistake made: None
2. A trade is taken, turns out to be a profitable trade. Outcome of the trade: Positive, made money. Experience gained: This mistake has the most catastrophic effects in the trader self, the system and most importantly in the trader's trading career. You will start to think you need no system, you know better from them all. From this point on, you will start to trade based on what you think. Confidence in the system is totally lost. Confidence in the trader self turns into overconfidence. Mistake made: Take a trade when there was no signal from the system.
3. A trade is taken, turned out to be a loosing trade. Outcome of the trade: negative, lost money. Experience gained: The trader will rethink his strategy. The next time, the trader will think it twice before getting in a trade when the system does not signal it. The trader will go "Ok, it is better to get in the market when my system signals it, only those trade have a higher probability of success". Confidence is gained in the system. Mistake made: Take a trade when there was no signal from the system
As you can see, there is absolutely no correlation between the outcome of the trade and a mistake. The most catastrophic mistake even has a positive trade outcome, made money, but this could be the beginning of the end of the trader's career. As we have already stated, mistakes must only be related to the violation of rules a trader trades by.
All these mistakes were directly related to the signals given by a system, but the same is applied when getting out of a trade. There are also mistakes related to following a trading plan. For example, risking more money on a given trade than the amount the trader should have risked and many more.
Most mistakes can be avoided by first having a trading plan. A trading plan includes the system: the criteria we use to get in and out the market, the money management plan: how much we will risk on any given trade, and many other points. Secondly, and most important, we need to have the discipline to follow strictly our plan. We created our plan when no trade was placed on, thus no psychology barriers were up front. So, the only thing we are certain about is that if we follow our plan, the decision taken is on our best interests, and in the long run, these decisions will help us have better results. We don't have to worry about isolated events, or trades that could had give us better results at first, but then they could have catastrophic results in our trading career.
How to deal with mistakes
There are many possible ways to properly manage mistakes. We will suggest the one that works better for us.
Step one: Belief change. Every mistake is a learning experience. They all have something valuable to offer. Try to counteract the natural tendency of feeling frustrated and approach mistakes in a positive manner. Instead of yelling to everyone around and feeling disappointed, say to yourself "ok, I did something wrong, what happened? What is it?
Step two: Identify the mistake made. Define the mistake, find out what caused the mistake, and try as hard as you can to effectively see the nature of that mistake. Finding the mistake nature will prevent you from making the same mistake again. More than often you will find the answer where you less expected. Take for instance a trader that doesn't follow the system. The reason behind this could be that the trader is afraid of loosing. But then, why is he or she afraid? It could be that the trader is using a system that does not fit him or her, and finds difficult to follow every signal. In this case, as you can see, the nature of the mistake is not in the surface. You need to try as hard as you can to find the real reason of the given mistake.
Step three: Measure the consequences of the mistake. List the consequences of making that particular mistake, both good and bad. Good consequences are those that make us better traders after dealing with the mistake. Think on all possible reasons you can learn from what happened. For the same example above, what are the consequences of making that mistake? Well, if you don't follow the system, you will gradually loose confidence in it, and this at the end will put you into trades you don't really want to be, and out of trades you should be in.
Step four: Take action. Taking proper action is the last and most important step. In order to learn, you need to change your behavior. Make sure that whatever you do, you become "this-mistake-proof". By taking action we turn every single mistake into a small part of success in our trading career. Continuing with the same example, redefining the system would be the trader's final step. The trader would put a system that perfectly fits him or her, so the trader doesn't find any trouble following it in future signals.
Understanding the fact that the outcome of any trade has nothing to do with a mistake will open your mind to other possibilities, where you will be able to understand the nature of every mistake made. This at the same time will open the doors for your trading career as you work and take proper action on every mistake made.
The process of success is slow, and plenty of times it is attributed to repeated mistakes made and the constant struggle to get past these mistakes, working on them accordingly. How we deal with them will shape our future as a trader, and most importantly as a person.
by Raul Lopez
www.straightforex.com
Forex Market Trading And The Mind Games
First, what is Forex: The FOREX or Foreign Exchange market is the largest financial market in the world, with an volume of more than $1.5 trillion daily, dealing in currencies. Unlike other financial markets, the Forex market has no physical location, no central exchange. It operates through an electronic network of banks, corporations and individuals trading one currency for another.
Mind Games defined: Mind Games are a kind of social interaction where participants try to screw with one anothers' heads. The concept is most often used colloquially to refer to deceitful, confusing or Machiavellian situations. However some mind games are described by the psychology of transactional analysis.
When it comes to trading on the Forex market, winning is a matter of the mind rather than mind over matter. Any trader who's been in the game for any length of time will tell you that psychology has a lot to do with both your own performance on the trading floor and with the way that the market is moving. Playing a winning hand depends on knowing your own mind — and understanding the way that psychology moves the market.
Studying the psychology of the market is nothing new. It doesn't take a genius to understand that any arena that rides and falls on decisions made by people is going to be heavily influenced by the minds of people. Few people take into account all the various levels of mind games that motivate the market, though. If you keep your eye on the way that psychology influences others — including the mass psychology of the people that use the currency on a daily basis — but neglect to know what moves you, you're going to end up hurting your own position. The best Forex coaches will tell you that before you can really become a successful trader, you have to know yourself and the triggers that influence you. Knowing those will help you overcome them or use them. Are you saying 'Huh?" about now? Believe me, I understand. I felt the same way the first time that someone tried to explain how the mind games we play with ourselves influence the trades and decisions that we make. Let me break it down into more manageable pieces for you.
Anything involving winning or losing large sums of money becomes emotionally charged. All right. You've heard that playing the market is a mathematical game. Plug in the right numbers, make the right calculations and you'll come out ahead. So why is it that so many traders end up on the losing end of the market? After all, everyone has access to the same numbers, the same data, the same info — if it's math, there's only one right answer, right?
The answer lies in interpretation. The numbers don't lie, but your mind does. Your hopes and fears can make you see things that just aren't there. When you invest in a currency, you're investing more than just money — you make an emotional investment. Being 'right' becomes important. Being 'wrong' doesn't just cost you money when you let yourself be ruled by your emotions — it costs you pride. Why else would you let a loser ride in the hope that it will bounce back? It's that little thing inside your head that says, "I KNOW I'm right on this, dammit!"
To most people, being right is more important than making money. Here's the deal. The way to make real money in the forex market is to cut your losses short and let your winners ride. In order to do that, you have GOT to accept that some of your trades are going to lose, cut them loose and move on to another trade. You've got to accept that picking a loser is NOT an indication of your self-worth, it's not a reflection on who you are. It's simply a loss, and the best way to deal with it is to stop losing money by moving on — and really move on. Moving on means you don't keep a running total of how many losses you've had — that's the way to paralyze yourself. This brings us to the next point:
Losing traders see loss as failure. Winning traders see loss as learning. Not too long ago, my twelve year old son told me that before Thomas Edison invented a working light bulb, he invented 100 light bulbs that didn't work. But he didn't give up — because he knew that creating a source of light from electricity was possible. He believed in his overall theory — so when one design didn't work, he simply knew that he'd eliminated one possibility. Keep eliminating possibilities long enough, and you'll eventually find the possibility that works.
Winning traders see loss in the same way. They haven't failed — they've learned something new about the way that they and the market work. Winning traders can look at the big picture while playing in the small arena.
Suppose I told you that last year, I made 75 trades that lost money, and 25 that made money. In the eyes of most people, that would make me a pretty poor trader. I'm wrong 75% of the time. But what if I told you that my average loss was $1000, but my average profit on a winning trade was $10,000? That means that I lost $75,000 on trades — but I made $250,000, making my overall profit $175,000. It's a pretty clear numbers game — but how do you keep on trading when you're losing in trade after trade? Simple — just remember that one trade does not make or break a trader. Focus on the trade at hand, follow the triggers that you've set up — but define yourself by what really matters — the overall record.
Bottom line: You can't keep emotions out of the picture, but you can learn not to let them control your decisions. Keep it all in perspective and realise that there are a lot of big boys playing this game and playing it to win...
by David Mclauchlan
http://www.forex-article-directory.com/
Mind Games defined: Mind Games are a kind of social interaction where participants try to screw with one anothers' heads. The concept is most often used colloquially to refer to deceitful, confusing or Machiavellian situations. However some mind games are described by the psychology of transactional analysis.
When it comes to trading on the Forex market, winning is a matter of the mind rather than mind over matter. Any trader who's been in the game for any length of time will tell you that psychology has a lot to do with both your own performance on the trading floor and with the way that the market is moving. Playing a winning hand depends on knowing your own mind — and understanding the way that psychology moves the market.
Studying the psychology of the market is nothing new. It doesn't take a genius to understand that any arena that rides and falls on decisions made by people is going to be heavily influenced by the minds of people. Few people take into account all the various levels of mind games that motivate the market, though. If you keep your eye on the way that psychology influences others — including the mass psychology of the people that use the currency on a daily basis — but neglect to know what moves you, you're going to end up hurting your own position. The best Forex coaches will tell you that before you can really become a successful trader, you have to know yourself and the triggers that influence you. Knowing those will help you overcome them or use them. Are you saying 'Huh?" about now? Believe me, I understand. I felt the same way the first time that someone tried to explain how the mind games we play with ourselves influence the trades and decisions that we make. Let me break it down into more manageable pieces for you.
Anything involving winning or losing large sums of money becomes emotionally charged. All right. You've heard that playing the market is a mathematical game. Plug in the right numbers, make the right calculations and you'll come out ahead. So why is it that so many traders end up on the losing end of the market? After all, everyone has access to the same numbers, the same data, the same info — if it's math, there's only one right answer, right?
The answer lies in interpretation. The numbers don't lie, but your mind does. Your hopes and fears can make you see things that just aren't there. When you invest in a currency, you're investing more than just money — you make an emotional investment. Being 'right' becomes important. Being 'wrong' doesn't just cost you money when you let yourself be ruled by your emotions — it costs you pride. Why else would you let a loser ride in the hope that it will bounce back? It's that little thing inside your head that says, "I KNOW I'm right on this, dammit!"
To most people, being right is more important than making money. Here's the deal. The way to make real money in the forex market is to cut your losses short and let your winners ride. In order to do that, you have GOT to accept that some of your trades are going to lose, cut them loose and move on to another trade. You've got to accept that picking a loser is NOT an indication of your self-worth, it's not a reflection on who you are. It's simply a loss, and the best way to deal with it is to stop losing money by moving on — and really move on. Moving on means you don't keep a running total of how many losses you've had — that's the way to paralyze yourself. This brings us to the next point:
Losing traders see loss as failure. Winning traders see loss as learning. Not too long ago, my twelve year old son told me that before Thomas Edison invented a working light bulb, he invented 100 light bulbs that didn't work. But he didn't give up — because he knew that creating a source of light from electricity was possible. He believed in his overall theory — so when one design didn't work, he simply knew that he'd eliminated one possibility. Keep eliminating possibilities long enough, and you'll eventually find the possibility that works.
Winning traders see loss in the same way. They haven't failed — they've learned something new about the way that they and the market work. Winning traders can look at the big picture while playing in the small arena.
Suppose I told you that last year, I made 75 trades that lost money, and 25 that made money. In the eyes of most people, that would make me a pretty poor trader. I'm wrong 75% of the time. But what if I told you that my average loss was $1000, but my average profit on a winning trade was $10,000? That means that I lost $75,000 on trades — but I made $250,000, making my overall profit $175,000. It's a pretty clear numbers game — but how do you keep on trading when you're losing in trade after trade? Simple — just remember that one trade does not make or break a trader. Focus on the trade at hand, follow the triggers that you've set up — but define yourself by what really matters — the overall record.
Bottom line: You can't keep emotions out of the picture, but you can learn not to let them control your decisions. Keep it all in perspective and realise that there are a lot of big boys playing this game and playing it to win...
by David Mclauchlan
http://www.forex-article-directory.com/
Emotions And Forex Trading Don't Mix
The key to making money in the currency exchange market is to avoid emotional decisions and to follow a carefully thought out strategy that takes the current market and history into account. Going with your gut is not the way to go in the Forex market. Going with your gut could cost you money. Forex trading is a highly volatile market where emotions tend to run high. Emotions can influence your trading decisions, unless you have a strategy planned in advance, and stick to it, no matter what you think you're seeing at the moment. The keys to success in Forex are system, analysis and perseverance.
Most experienced traders tell novice traders that they need to develop a system — and stick to it no matter what. Letting your emotions rule your decisions can hurt your trading in a number of ways. The system tells you when to buy, what to buy, when to trade and what to trade for. By sticking to your system you'll maximize your profits. A system based on technical analysis of historical market trends is one of the most potent tools that you can utilize if you're just getting started in Forex trading. Many traders, with years of experience, continue to use this system to keep the profits rolling in. Many traders will tell you that when their gut instinct and their system collide, the system is almost always right.
Using a mechanical system takes the emotion out of your trading, eliminating one of the reasons people fail. Your system doesn't sway with emotions. It sticks to a tried and true course. To be effective, your system — whether you develop your own or adopt one created by someone else — should identify the entry and exit point of your trade, mitigating factors, and an exit strategy. In general terms this is as follows:
Under what conditions should I acquire a currency?
For instance, you may have a buy order for when a particular currency drops more than 5 pips because your analysis tells you that that's likely to be as low as it goes.
When should I trade one currency for another and for which one?
There are two reasons to exit — to maximize your profit, or minimize your loss. That means you have a set stop-loss order and a set take-profit order at which point you cash out your trade.
What factors will I allow to change that decision?
While the money market moves in predictable patterns, there are always individual variations of a trend within those patterns. If you've taken those variations into account, it will be far easier to decide when a factor really does make a difference, and when it's just wishful thinking. If you're not careful however this is where emotion could come into play and sour deals for you.
How will I trade out of a currency?
Your exit strategy may be as simple as a stop-loss order when my loss hits 5% or a take-profit order when I make 40% profit'.
Another key is perseverance. Analysis of trends in the market will show you that the market moves in dips and spurts within overall patterns that are predictable. No trend moves smoothly in an up or down line — there are inevitable periods of time when values suddenly spiral up or down based on some outside factor. These are the times when emotion can hurt your portfolio. When a currency that you're holding takes a sudden dip south, it's tempting to succumb to panic trading, cut your losses and run even if your system tells you to hold on. On the other hand, it's easy to catch the rising excitement as a trade starts increasing in value and scramble to buy more of the same. These are exactly the times to rely most heavily on your trading system. It will tell you exactly when to trade for maximum profit.
If you control your emotions and stick to the system you'll maximize your profits andall should be smooth sailing.
by David Mclauchlan
www.Forex-Article-Directory.com
Most experienced traders tell novice traders that they need to develop a system — and stick to it no matter what. Letting your emotions rule your decisions can hurt your trading in a number of ways. The system tells you when to buy, what to buy, when to trade and what to trade for. By sticking to your system you'll maximize your profits. A system based on technical analysis of historical market trends is one of the most potent tools that you can utilize if you're just getting started in Forex trading. Many traders, with years of experience, continue to use this system to keep the profits rolling in. Many traders will tell you that when their gut instinct and their system collide, the system is almost always right.
Using a mechanical system takes the emotion out of your trading, eliminating one of the reasons people fail. Your system doesn't sway with emotions. It sticks to a tried and true course. To be effective, your system — whether you develop your own or adopt one created by someone else — should identify the entry and exit point of your trade, mitigating factors, and an exit strategy. In general terms this is as follows:
Under what conditions should I acquire a currency?
For instance, you may have a buy order for when a particular currency drops more than 5 pips because your analysis tells you that that's likely to be as low as it goes.
When should I trade one currency for another and for which one?
There are two reasons to exit — to maximize your profit, or minimize your loss. That means you have a set stop-loss order and a set take-profit order at which point you cash out your trade.
What factors will I allow to change that decision?
While the money market moves in predictable patterns, there are always individual variations of a trend within those patterns. If you've taken those variations into account, it will be far easier to decide when a factor really does make a difference, and when it's just wishful thinking. If you're not careful however this is where emotion could come into play and sour deals for you.
How will I trade out of a currency?
Your exit strategy may be as simple as a stop-loss order when my loss hits 5% or a take-profit order when I make 40% profit'.
Another key is perseverance. Analysis of trends in the market will show you that the market moves in dips and spurts within overall patterns that are predictable. No trend moves smoothly in an up or down line — there are inevitable periods of time when values suddenly spiral up or down based on some outside factor. These are the times when emotion can hurt your portfolio. When a currency that you're holding takes a sudden dip south, it's tempting to succumb to panic trading, cut your losses and run even if your system tells you to hold on. On the other hand, it's easy to catch the rising excitement as a trade starts increasing in value and scramble to buy more of the same. These are exactly the times to rely most heavily on your trading system. It will tell you exactly when to trade for maximum profit.
If you control your emotions and stick to the system you'll maximize your profits andall should be smooth sailing.
by David Mclauchlan
www.Forex-Article-Directory.com
The Power of Small Consistent Returns
For most of us, 'safe investments' are limited to the rate of return that we can earn on our savings accounts or long-term deposits. The return would depend on the interest rate applicable in each country. At the time of writing, November 2007, the interest rate earned on a savings account in Australia is around 7% a year. That is a return of 0.57% a month. Despite this fact, many have preconceptions regarding the type of returns they can make from trading the financial markets.
A novice trader puts on a winning trade and gains between ten to fifty percent of his trading account. He forms a belief that, by trading, he can quickly become a millionaire. Indeed, if we assume a 20% return per month on a $10,000 trading account, we can expect $89,161 by the end of our first twelve months of trading. What if we assume an estimate of 50% return per month? We would have $1,297,463 by the end of the year. Of course, the problem with expectations like these is that they are unrealistic. Even most of those who claim to have made these types of returns have only done so in simulated environments, in trading competitions using game accounts, for example, where real money was not at risk.
It is possible to make these types of returns for a short while but I have not heard of anybody achieving such steep returns consistently year after year. After testing hundreds of trading systems and ideas I have come to believe that systems, which seem to promise exorbitant returns, turn out to be over-optimized for the period they have been tested on. Or even worse, they have flaws in their logic or assumptions.
Lately, I have been looking at the performance reports of trading firms in the USA. What would you say if I told you that the top trading firm over the last ten years only made an average return of 25% a year and the median trading firm made somewhere around 15% a year? Well, this is in fact what I am telling you.
A 20% and a 15% return a year is 'only' 1.877% and 1.171% return a month, respectively. I am sure that many novice traders and investors reading this article will have a mix of reactions towards these figures. Some might laugh and scoff at such 'paltry' returns, secretly believing that they can do a lot better than just 1.877% a month. Others may be surprised or even disappointed because their dreams of living rich will not come as quickly as they hoped.
Setting aside your initial reaction to these figures however, let us refocus on what these numbers actually mean in the real world. I would like to show you that these types of returns are very powerful. With time, these seemingly small, but consistent, gains will give you enormous profits in the future.
15% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us start with the assumption of having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.171% return a month, or 15% a year, trading the market. Based on these, the projections are:
1. $11,500 (15% growth) after 1 year.
2. $13,223 (32% growth) after 2 years.
3. $20,108 (101% growth) after 5 years.
4. $40,432 (304% growth) after 10 years.
5. $163,475 (1535% growth) after 20 years.
6. $660,960 (6510% growth) after 30 years.
25% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us now assume having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.877% a month, or 25% a year, trading the market Based on these, the projections are:
1. $12,500 (25% growth) after 1 year.
2. $15,625 (56% growth) after 2 years.
3. $30,519 (205% growth) after 5 years.
4. $93,140 (831% growth) after 10 years.
5. $867,512 (8575% growth) after 20 years.
6. $8,080,034 (80700% growth) after 30 years.
It is very important to note that not all fund managers make money. Returns of 15% or 25% a year belong only to those money managers who were consistently profitable. Furthermore, these types of returns are out-of-bounds for most investors. To invest in such schemes, most of the fund managers I have been looking into will deal with you only if you are a 'sophisticated' investor with a spare $500,000 minimum to invest. In fact, the highest earner only took on investors with a minimum of $25,000,000 US dollars to invest. (I will not mention any names here, however, you can do your own research by typing "commodity trading advisors" in your favourite search engine.)
I do not know about you but I certainly do not have 25 million dollars lying around, to hand over for someone else to manage. The dilemma, however, is that life is way too short for me to be satisfied with a 7% annual return either. I guess this is why you and I have taken the decision to trade and invest in the financial markets ourselves. At least there, we have full control and responsibility over the returns we get. It has its risks, but we can all avoid being reckless if we keep realistic expectations.
(This article was first published in The Part-Time Investor Magazine, Issue 3.)
by Marquez Comelab
Marquez Comelab is a private trader in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Part-Time Currency Trader, a book on how to develop trading strategies. He is also the founding editor of The Part-Time Investor Magazine: an online magazine for traders and investors. See http://www.marquezcomelab.com.
A novice trader puts on a winning trade and gains between ten to fifty percent of his trading account. He forms a belief that, by trading, he can quickly become a millionaire. Indeed, if we assume a 20% return per month on a $10,000 trading account, we can expect $89,161 by the end of our first twelve months of trading. What if we assume an estimate of 50% return per month? We would have $1,297,463 by the end of the year. Of course, the problem with expectations like these is that they are unrealistic. Even most of those who claim to have made these types of returns have only done so in simulated environments, in trading competitions using game accounts, for example, where real money was not at risk.
It is possible to make these types of returns for a short while but I have not heard of anybody achieving such steep returns consistently year after year. After testing hundreds of trading systems and ideas I have come to believe that systems, which seem to promise exorbitant returns, turn out to be over-optimized for the period they have been tested on. Or even worse, they have flaws in their logic or assumptions.
Lately, I have been looking at the performance reports of trading firms in the USA. What would you say if I told you that the top trading firm over the last ten years only made an average return of 25% a year and the median trading firm made somewhere around 15% a year? Well, this is in fact what I am telling you.
A 20% and a 15% return a year is 'only' 1.877% and 1.171% return a month, respectively. I am sure that many novice traders and investors reading this article will have a mix of reactions towards these figures. Some might laugh and scoff at such 'paltry' returns, secretly believing that they can do a lot better than just 1.877% a month. Others may be surprised or even disappointed because their dreams of living rich will not come as quickly as they hoped.
Setting aside your initial reaction to these figures however, let us refocus on what these numbers actually mean in the real world. I would like to show you that these types of returns are very powerful. With time, these seemingly small, but consistent, gains will give you enormous profits in the future.
15% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us start with the assumption of having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.171% return a month, or 15% a year, trading the market. Based on these, the projections are:
1. $11,500 (15% growth) after 1 year.
2. $13,223 (32% growth) after 2 years.
3. $20,108 (101% growth) after 5 years.
4. $40,432 (304% growth) after 10 years.
5. $163,475 (1535% growth) after 20 years.
6. $660,960 (6510% growth) after 30 years.
25% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us now assume having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.877% a month, or 25% a year, trading the market Based on these, the projections are:
1. $12,500 (25% growth) after 1 year.
2. $15,625 (56% growth) after 2 years.
3. $30,519 (205% growth) after 5 years.
4. $93,140 (831% growth) after 10 years.
5. $867,512 (8575% growth) after 20 years.
6. $8,080,034 (80700% growth) after 30 years.
It is very important to note that not all fund managers make money. Returns of 15% or 25% a year belong only to those money managers who were consistently profitable. Furthermore, these types of returns are out-of-bounds for most investors. To invest in such schemes, most of the fund managers I have been looking into will deal with you only if you are a 'sophisticated' investor with a spare $500,000 minimum to invest. In fact, the highest earner only took on investors with a minimum of $25,000,000 US dollars to invest. (I will not mention any names here, however, you can do your own research by typing "commodity trading advisors" in your favourite search engine.)
I do not know about you but I certainly do not have 25 million dollars lying around, to hand over for someone else to manage. The dilemma, however, is that life is way too short for me to be satisfied with a 7% annual return either. I guess this is why you and I have taken the decision to trade and invest in the financial markets ourselves. At least there, we have full control and responsibility over the returns we get. It has its risks, but we can all avoid being reckless if we keep realistic expectations.
(This article was first published in The Part-Time Investor Magazine, Issue 3.)
by Marquez Comelab
Marquez Comelab is a private trader in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Part-Time Currency Trader, a book on how to develop trading strategies. He is also the founding editor of The Part-Time Investor Magazine: an online magazine for traders and investors. See http://www.marquezcomelab.com.
The Power of Small Consistent Returns
For most of us, 'safe investments' are limited to the rate of return that we can earn on our savings accounts or long-term deposits. The return would depend on the interest rate applicable in each country. At the time of writing, November 2007, the interest rate earned on a savings account in Australia is around 7% a year. That is a return of 0.57% a month. Despite this fact, many have preconceptions regarding the type of returns they can make from trading the financial markets.
A novice trader puts on a winning trade and gains between ten to fifty percent of his trading account. He forms a belief that, by trading, he can quickly become a millionaire. Indeed, if we assume a 20% return per month on a $10,000 trading account, we can expect $89,161 by the end of our first twelve months of trading. What if we assume an estimate of 50% return per month? We would have $1,297,463 by the end of the year. Of course, the problem with expectations like these is that they are unrealistic. Even most of those who claim to have made these types of returns have only done so in simulated environments, in trading competitions using game accounts, for example, where real money was not at risk.
It is possible to make these types of returns for a short while but I have not heard of anybody achieving such steep returns consistently year after year. After testing hundreds of trading systems and ideas I have come to believe that systems, which seem to promise exorbitant returns, turn out to be over-optimized for the period they have been tested on. Or even worse, they have flaws in their logic or assumptions.
Lately, I have been looking at the performance reports of trading firms in the USA. What would you say if I told you that the top trading firm over the last ten years only made an average return of 25% a year and the median trading firm made somewhere around 15% a year? Well, this is in fact what I am telling you.
A 20% and a 15% return a year is 'only' 1.877% and 1.171% return a month, respectively. I am sure that many novice traders and investors reading this article will have a mix of reactions towards these figures. Some might laugh and scoff at such 'paltry' returns, secretly believing that they can do a lot better than just 1.877% a month. Others may be surprised or even disappointed because their dreams of living rich will not come as quickly as they hoped.
Setting aside your initial reaction to these figures however, let us refocus on what these numbers actually mean in the real world. I would like to show you that these types of returns are very powerful. With time, these seemingly small, but consistent, gains will give you enormous profits in the future.
15% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us start with the assumption of having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.171% return a month, or 15% a year, trading the market. Based on these, the projections are:
1. $11,500 (15% growth) after 1 year.
2. $13,223 (32% growth) after 2 years.
3. $20,108 (101% growth) after 5 years.
4. $40,432 (304% growth) after 10 years.
5. $163,475 (1535% growth) after 20 years.
6. $660,960 (6510% growth) after 30 years.
25% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us now assume having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.877% a month, or 25% a year, trading the market Based on these, the projections are:
1. $12,500 (25% growth) after 1 year.
2. $15,625 (56% growth) after 2 years.
3. $30,519 (205% growth) after 5 years.
4. $93,140 (831% growth) after 10 years.
5. $867,512 (8575% growth) after 20 years.
6. $8,080,034 (80700% growth) after 30 years.
It is very important to note that not all fund managers make money. Returns of 15% or 25% a year belong only to those money managers who were consistently profitable. Furthermore, these types of returns are out-of-bounds for most investors. To invest in such schemes, most of the fund managers I have been looking into will deal with you only if you are a 'sophisticated' investor with a spare $500,000 minimum to invest. In fact, the highest earner only took on investors with a minimum of $25,000,000 US dollars to invest. (I will not mention any names here, however, you can do your own research by typing "commodity trading advisors" in your favourite search engine.)
I do not know about you but I certainly do not have 25 million dollars lying around, to hand over for someone else to manage. The dilemma, however, is that life is way too short for me to be satisfied with a 7% annual return either. I guess this is why you and I have taken the decision to trade and invest in the financial markets ourselves. At least there, we have full control and responsibility over the returns we get. It has its risks, but we can all avoid being reckless if we keep realistic expectations.
(This article was first published in The Part-Time Investor Magazine, Issue 3.)
by Marquez Comelab
Marquez Comelab is a private trader in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Part-Time Currency Trader, a book on how to develop trading strategies. He is also the founding editor of The Part-Time Investor Magazine: an online magazine for traders and investors. See http://www.marquezcomelab.com.
A novice trader puts on a winning trade and gains between ten to fifty percent of his trading account. He forms a belief that, by trading, he can quickly become a millionaire. Indeed, if we assume a 20% return per month on a $10,000 trading account, we can expect $89,161 by the end of our first twelve months of trading. What if we assume an estimate of 50% return per month? We would have $1,297,463 by the end of the year. Of course, the problem with expectations like these is that they are unrealistic. Even most of those who claim to have made these types of returns have only done so in simulated environments, in trading competitions using game accounts, for example, where real money was not at risk.
It is possible to make these types of returns for a short while but I have not heard of anybody achieving such steep returns consistently year after year. After testing hundreds of trading systems and ideas I have come to believe that systems, which seem to promise exorbitant returns, turn out to be over-optimized for the period they have been tested on. Or even worse, they have flaws in their logic or assumptions.
Lately, I have been looking at the performance reports of trading firms in the USA. What would you say if I told you that the top trading firm over the last ten years only made an average return of 25% a year and the median trading firm made somewhere around 15% a year? Well, this is in fact what I am telling you.
A 20% and a 15% return a year is 'only' 1.877% and 1.171% return a month, respectively. I am sure that many novice traders and investors reading this article will have a mix of reactions towards these figures. Some might laugh and scoff at such 'paltry' returns, secretly believing that they can do a lot better than just 1.877% a month. Others may be surprised or even disappointed because their dreams of living rich will not come as quickly as they hoped.
Setting aside your initial reaction to these figures however, let us refocus on what these numbers actually mean in the real world. I would like to show you that these types of returns are very powerful. With time, these seemingly small, but consistent, gains will give you enormous profits in the future.
15% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us start with the assumption of having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.171% return a month, or 15% a year, trading the market. Based on these, the projections are:
1. $11,500 (15% growth) after 1 year.
2. $13,223 (32% growth) after 2 years.
3. $20,108 (101% growth) after 5 years.
4. $40,432 (304% growth) after 10 years.
5. $163,475 (1535% growth) after 20 years.
6. $660,960 (6510% growth) after 30 years.
25% A YEAR RETURN ON A $10,000 ACCOUNT
Let us now assume having a $10,000 account, making at least 1.877% a month, or 25% a year, trading the market Based on these, the projections are:
1. $12,500 (25% growth) after 1 year.
2. $15,625 (56% growth) after 2 years.
3. $30,519 (205% growth) after 5 years.
4. $93,140 (831% growth) after 10 years.
5. $867,512 (8575% growth) after 20 years.
6. $8,080,034 (80700% growth) after 30 years.
It is very important to note that not all fund managers make money. Returns of 15% or 25% a year belong only to those money managers who were consistently profitable. Furthermore, these types of returns are out-of-bounds for most investors. To invest in such schemes, most of the fund managers I have been looking into will deal with you only if you are a 'sophisticated' investor with a spare $500,000 minimum to invest. In fact, the highest earner only took on investors with a minimum of $25,000,000 US dollars to invest. (I will not mention any names here, however, you can do your own research by typing "commodity trading advisors" in your favourite search engine.)
I do not know about you but I certainly do not have 25 million dollars lying around, to hand over for someone else to manage. The dilemma, however, is that life is way too short for me to be satisfied with a 7% annual return either. I guess this is why you and I have taken the decision to trade and invest in the financial markets ourselves. At least there, we have full control and responsibility over the returns we get. It has its risks, but we can all avoid being reckless if we keep realistic expectations.
(This article was first published in The Part-Time Investor Magazine, Issue 3.)
by Marquez Comelab
Marquez Comelab is a private trader in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Part-Time Currency Trader, a book on how to develop trading strategies. He is also the founding editor of The Part-Time Investor Magazine: an online magazine for traders and investors. See http://www.marquezcomelab.com.
Protective Puts
Option overlays in the forex are a great way to control risk while taking advantage of the upside in trading. Options are a broad subject so I only intend on discussing one concept in this article and then will follow up with another article on a second overlay strategy. One of our trading systems at proftingWithForex.com uses option overlays, and you can follow along month by month to see how this strategy actually performs in real time. The two concepts I will talk about are very common and can be executed easily and without constant maintenance. Those are two things I like to look for in a system so I am not the one making all the mistakes for the first time and so I can have a life along with my forex trading. I will cover protective puts in this report and covered calls next.
PROTECTIVE PUTS
A put is an option with three components. The first is a contract. When you buy a put, you are buying the right to sell someone the underlying currency at a predetermined price for a predetermined period of time. You could buy a put today to sell a lot of the GBP/USD at $2.0000 any time between now and a date you choose in the future. If the currency pair falls to 1.9900, you can still sell it for 2.0000 and realize a profit. In fact, it doesn't matter how far the currency falls. If it is still within your time window, you can sell the currency for 2.0000 at will. The set price (2.0000) that you have selected for your contract is known as the strike price. The second component is time. Options are available in monthly increments. That means you can buy one that is good until next month or 12 months from now. The choice is up to you. Finally, options cost money. The price of an option is called the premium. The premium is higher the more valuable the options is. An option with a long time frame and a great strike price is more expensive than one with a very short time frame and a more speculative strike price. I think the best way to explain this is to use an example.
Example 1:
Let's assume that on January 22, 2007, you wanted to buy one contract of the GBP/USD. Let's assume it had a price of 1.9750. You are a prudent investor, and you want some protection from risk in the market so you buy a protective put that allows you to sell this contract at 1.9750 anytime before that contract expires. In this case, the contract would have expired a month later on the third Friday of February, the 16 th . That put will cost you the equivalent of 150 pips per contract. The pair subsequently dropped to 1.9502. In that case, the put will still be worth 248 pips because you can still sell the lot for 1.9750 (1.9750 — 1.9502 = 0.0248). That is exactly equal to the amount you would have lost on the contract you were long so they wash each other out. In fact, the only thing you are out is the 150 pips you paid to purchase the contract in the first place. You didn't have to set a stop because you were totally protected. Even though the contract value dropped significantly-more than the 150 pips you had planned for-you had a hedge that protected your capital.
Example 2:
The following month's trade, February to March, would have been another loss, but the March to April trade was a winner. For the March to April trade, you could have purchased the long position in the currency pair for 1.9372. You could have covered your position with a put at 1.9350 that would have cost you 120 pips, leaving you with some exposure between 1.9350 and 1.9372. However if you add those two positions, you had a level of total risk similar to what you had during the January to February trade. During the month, your long position rose significantly to 2.0027. That means you made 655 pips. What about your put? Well, there is no way you will want to sell this position for 1.9350 so you will just let the put expire worthless. That will reduce your gains by the amount you paid for the put so your new total is a net gain of 535 pips.
This strategy can appear to be slightly complicated at first, but it is worth learning more about it as it offers significant benefits. Institutional traders use option overlays, such as protective puts, all the time. It helps control risk and reduces total volatility in a portfolio. Here are a few more of the benefits, along with two of the cons, of this strategy.
Benefit #1-No stops
You do not need to set a stop on your long currency position. How many times have you been right in your direction but got stopped out on a whipsaw in the market? I am positive that this happens to most forex traders on a regular basis. With a protective put, you are in charge and can let the exchange rate drop to zero, if that were possible, without exceeding your maximum loss. By the way, this benefit is also true during announcements. You are now in control.
Benefit #2-Unlimited upside
Unlike many hedging strategies, this technique still allows for unlimited upside. Although gains are offset by the price of the put, gains can still be significant.
Benefit #3-Lower portfolio volatility
The total portfolio has lower volatility because your downside is capped. Here is an additional example. I will assume that pricing and volatility has been reasonably constant, on average, during the last 10 years and that your strategy is to buy a long position on the GBP/USD and an at the money put with total portfolio leverage of 20:1. That would have returned 10 percent per year during that period. When you combine this advantage with some prudent analysis, it is entirely possible to see much better returns than this.
Con #1 — Cost of the put
The put will cost you 150 pips if you let it run until expiration each month-whether the market goes up or down. That price eats into your upside and creates a predetermined downside. Even if the market dropped less than 150 pips, the maximum loss will be the same.
Con #2 — Cost of trading
If you purchase a put, you will pay a commission. With commission prices falling all the time, this is usually nominal but it adds another pip worth of losses to each month's trading.
The most difficult thing for most investors to do is to protect their capital. You will hear successful individual investors often say that if you can effectively protect your capital, profits will take care of themselves. I agree with that sentiment and use protective puts to help give me an edge. At ProfitingWithForex.com we maintain a model portfolio in the trades section that uses option overlays to illustrate the concept in real time. Log in, and check it out to see what we are up to and what this looks like over time.
by Jogn Jagerson, author of Profiting With Forex, a McGraw-Hill publication.
ProfitingWithForex.com
PROTECTIVE PUTS
A put is an option with three components. The first is a contract. When you buy a put, you are buying the right to sell someone the underlying currency at a predetermined price for a predetermined period of time. You could buy a put today to sell a lot of the GBP/USD at $2.0000 any time between now and a date you choose in the future. If the currency pair falls to 1.9900, you can still sell it for 2.0000 and realize a profit. In fact, it doesn't matter how far the currency falls. If it is still within your time window, you can sell the currency for 2.0000 at will. The set price (2.0000) that you have selected for your contract is known as the strike price. The second component is time. Options are available in monthly increments. That means you can buy one that is good until next month or 12 months from now. The choice is up to you. Finally, options cost money. The price of an option is called the premium. The premium is higher the more valuable the options is. An option with a long time frame and a great strike price is more expensive than one with a very short time frame and a more speculative strike price. I think the best way to explain this is to use an example.
Example 1:
Let's assume that on January 22, 2007, you wanted to buy one contract of the GBP/USD. Let's assume it had a price of 1.9750. You are a prudent investor, and you want some protection from risk in the market so you buy a protective put that allows you to sell this contract at 1.9750 anytime before that contract expires. In this case, the contract would have expired a month later on the third Friday of February, the 16 th . That put will cost you the equivalent of 150 pips per contract. The pair subsequently dropped to 1.9502. In that case, the put will still be worth 248 pips because you can still sell the lot for 1.9750 (1.9750 — 1.9502 = 0.0248). That is exactly equal to the amount you would have lost on the contract you were long so they wash each other out. In fact, the only thing you are out is the 150 pips you paid to purchase the contract in the first place. You didn't have to set a stop because you were totally protected. Even though the contract value dropped significantly-more than the 150 pips you had planned for-you had a hedge that protected your capital.
Example 2:
The following month's trade, February to March, would have been another loss, but the March to April trade was a winner. For the March to April trade, you could have purchased the long position in the currency pair for 1.9372. You could have covered your position with a put at 1.9350 that would have cost you 120 pips, leaving you with some exposure between 1.9350 and 1.9372. However if you add those two positions, you had a level of total risk similar to what you had during the January to February trade. During the month, your long position rose significantly to 2.0027. That means you made 655 pips. What about your put? Well, there is no way you will want to sell this position for 1.9350 so you will just let the put expire worthless. That will reduce your gains by the amount you paid for the put so your new total is a net gain of 535 pips.
This strategy can appear to be slightly complicated at first, but it is worth learning more about it as it offers significant benefits. Institutional traders use option overlays, such as protective puts, all the time. It helps control risk and reduces total volatility in a portfolio. Here are a few more of the benefits, along with two of the cons, of this strategy.
Benefit #1-No stops
You do not need to set a stop on your long currency position. How many times have you been right in your direction but got stopped out on a whipsaw in the market? I am positive that this happens to most forex traders on a regular basis. With a protective put, you are in charge and can let the exchange rate drop to zero, if that were possible, without exceeding your maximum loss. By the way, this benefit is also true during announcements. You are now in control.
Benefit #2-Unlimited upside
Unlike many hedging strategies, this technique still allows for unlimited upside. Although gains are offset by the price of the put, gains can still be significant.
Benefit #3-Lower portfolio volatility
The total portfolio has lower volatility because your downside is capped. Here is an additional example. I will assume that pricing and volatility has been reasonably constant, on average, during the last 10 years and that your strategy is to buy a long position on the GBP/USD and an at the money put with total portfolio leverage of 20:1. That would have returned 10 percent per year during that period. When you combine this advantage with some prudent analysis, it is entirely possible to see much better returns than this.
Con #1 — Cost of the put
The put will cost you 150 pips if you let it run until expiration each month-whether the market goes up or down. That price eats into your upside and creates a predetermined downside. Even if the market dropped less than 150 pips, the maximum loss will be the same.
Con #2 — Cost of trading
If you purchase a put, you will pay a commission. With commission prices falling all the time, this is usually nominal but it adds another pip worth of losses to each month's trading.
The most difficult thing for most investors to do is to protect their capital. You will hear successful individual investors often say that if you can effectively protect your capital, profits will take care of themselves. I agree with that sentiment and use protective puts to help give me an edge. At ProfitingWithForex.com we maintain a model portfolio in the trades section that uses option overlays to illustrate the concept in real time. Log in, and check it out to see what we are up to and what this looks like over time.
by Jogn Jagerson, author of Profiting With Forex, a McGraw-Hill publication.
ProfitingWithForex.com
The Costs Of Trading
You may have relatives or friends who trade the markets. They could be trading shares, futures, options or forex. You may have heard of their exciting trading stories and perhaps this aroused your curiosity and you wondered whether you should trade too. One of the first questions you ask before you trade would be: what are the costs of trading.
The costs of trading depend on several factors, including the instrument and market you are trading. Most of the costs you pay are to your brokerage firm. They need to make a living in exchange for the services they provide.
Generally, you would expect to incur the following costs:
Commissions
Slippage
Spread
Platform Fees
Expenses
Commissions
These costs are charged by brokers. The commission you pay is usually calculated as a percentage of the size of your trade. For example, if you are buying or selling $10,000 worth of shares, your broker may charge you 1% of that. They may also charge in tiers: for example, if you are buying or selling shares with a total market value of less than $10,000 then your broker may charge you $30. If it is under $20,000, they may charge you $50. Therefore, if you bought $5,000 worth of shares, you would still pay $30 commission. And if you bought $12,000 worth of shares you would still pay $50 commission.
Slippage
The price of a commodity is always moving as long as the market is open. Therefore, if the price of a share is quoted at $10 now, it does not mean that when you decide to buy, you will buy those shares at $10 each. When you put in your order and it gets filled, the market price may have already changed. If your order to buy the shares was filled at a price of $10.25, and you bought 100 shares, then your total slippage cost is: $25 (that is 100 shares * $0.25). If you had the same slippage when you sell, then the entire slippage costs for you getting in and out of the market would be $50 (that is $25 * 2 trades).
Spread
The spread is the difference between the bid to buy and offer to sell for the commodity. If the most eager buyer is willing to buy US Dollars for 0.7500 Australian Dollars each, but the most eager seller is only willing to sell them for 0.7510 Australian Dollars each, then there is a spread of 10 pips. These 10 pips are referred to as the spread. If you bought 100,000 USDs, the spread would cost you 100 Australian Dollars. (Pips are discussed further in the book: The Part-Time Currency Trader .)
Platform Fees
Some brokers charge you monthly for using their trading platforms.
Expenses
These costs include those associated to your trading education like buying books, trading software, data subscription and so forth.
Some people may 'brush' these costs aside as negligible costs of having fun, much like the coins they put in poker machines. However, if you want to look at trading as a business, you have to minimize them and make sure you are getting the most for every dollar you spend to ensure your long-term survival.
by Marquez Comelab
http://marquezcomelab.com
The costs of trading depend on several factors, including the instrument and market you are trading. Most of the costs you pay are to your brokerage firm. They need to make a living in exchange for the services they provide.
Generally, you would expect to incur the following costs:
Commissions
Slippage
Spread
Platform Fees
Expenses
Commissions
These costs are charged by brokers. The commission you pay is usually calculated as a percentage of the size of your trade. For example, if you are buying or selling $10,000 worth of shares, your broker may charge you 1% of that. They may also charge in tiers: for example, if you are buying or selling shares with a total market value of less than $10,000 then your broker may charge you $30. If it is under $20,000, they may charge you $50. Therefore, if you bought $5,000 worth of shares, you would still pay $30 commission. And if you bought $12,000 worth of shares you would still pay $50 commission.
Slippage
The price of a commodity is always moving as long as the market is open. Therefore, if the price of a share is quoted at $10 now, it does not mean that when you decide to buy, you will buy those shares at $10 each. When you put in your order and it gets filled, the market price may have already changed. If your order to buy the shares was filled at a price of $10.25, and you bought 100 shares, then your total slippage cost is: $25 (that is 100 shares * $0.25). If you had the same slippage when you sell, then the entire slippage costs for you getting in and out of the market would be $50 (that is $25 * 2 trades).
Spread
The spread is the difference between the bid to buy and offer to sell for the commodity. If the most eager buyer is willing to buy US Dollars for 0.7500 Australian Dollars each, but the most eager seller is only willing to sell them for 0.7510 Australian Dollars each, then there is a spread of 10 pips. These 10 pips are referred to as the spread. If you bought 100,000 USDs, the spread would cost you 100 Australian Dollars. (Pips are discussed further in the book: The Part-Time Currency Trader .)
Platform Fees
Some brokers charge you monthly for using their trading platforms.
Expenses
These costs include those associated to your trading education like buying books, trading software, data subscription and so forth.
Some people may 'brush' these costs aside as negligible costs of having fun, much like the coins they put in poker machines. However, if you want to look at trading as a business, you have to minimize them and make sure you are getting the most for every dollar you spend to ensure your long-term survival.
by Marquez Comelab
http://marquezcomelab.com
FOREX — Dealing With Your Losses
One of the most important rules of Forex trading is to keep your losses as small as you possibly can. With small Forex trading losses, you can stick it out longer than those times when the market moves against you, and be well positioned for when the trend turns around. The one proven method to keeping your losses small is to set your maximum loss before you even open a Forex trading position.
The maximum loss is the greatest amount of capital that you are comfortable losing on any one trade. With your maximum loss set as a small percentage of your Forex trading effort, a string of losses won't stop you from trading for any particular amount of time. Unlike the 95% of Forex traders out there who lose money because they haven't begun to use wise money management rules to their Forex trading system, you will be ok with this money management rule.
To use as an example, If I had a Forex trading float of $1000, and I began trading with $100 a trade, it would be reasonable for me to experience three losses in a row. This would reduce my Forex trading capital to $400. It would then be decided that they're going to bet $200 on the next trade because they think they have a higher chance of winning after having lost three times already.
If that trader did bet $100 dollars on the next trade because they thought they were going to win, their capital could be reduced to $250 dollars. The chances of making money now are practically nil because I would need to make 150% on the next trade just to break even. If the maximum loss had been determined, and stuck to, they would not be in this position.
In this case, the reason for failure was because the trader risked too much money, and didn't apply good money management to the play. Remember, the goal here is to keep our losses as small as possible while also making sure that we open a large enough position to capitalize on profits and minimize losses. With your money management rules in place, in your Forex trading system, you will always be able to do this.
by Don Spanish
http://www.rapid-forex-method.com
The maximum loss is the greatest amount of capital that you are comfortable losing on any one trade. With your maximum loss set as a small percentage of your Forex trading effort, a string of losses won't stop you from trading for any particular amount of time. Unlike the 95% of Forex traders out there who lose money because they haven't begun to use wise money management rules to their Forex trading system, you will be ok with this money management rule.
To use as an example, If I had a Forex trading float of $1000, and I began trading with $100 a trade, it would be reasonable for me to experience three losses in a row. This would reduce my Forex trading capital to $400. It would then be decided that they're going to bet $200 on the next trade because they think they have a higher chance of winning after having lost three times already.
If that trader did bet $100 dollars on the next trade because they thought they were going to win, their capital could be reduced to $250 dollars. The chances of making money now are practically nil because I would need to make 150% on the next trade just to break even. If the maximum loss had been determined, and stuck to, they would not be in this position.
In this case, the reason for failure was because the trader risked too much money, and didn't apply good money management to the play. Remember, the goal here is to keep our losses as small as possible while also making sure that we open a large enough position to capitalize on profits and minimize losses. With your money management rules in place, in your Forex trading system, you will always be able to do this.
by Don Spanish
http://www.rapid-forex-method.com
Money Management Tips For Trading On The Forex
What is Money Management: describes strategies or methods a player uses to avoid losing their bankroll.
Money management in the foreign exchange currency market requires educating yourself in a variety of financial areas. First, a definition of the foreign exchange currency or forex market is called for. The forex market is simply the exchange of the currency of one country for the currency of another. The relative values of various currencies in the world change on a regular basis. Factors such as the stability of the economy of a country, the gross national product, the gross domestic product, inflation, interest rates, and such obvious factors as domestic security and foreign relations come into play. For instance, if a country has an unstable government, is expecting a military takeover, or is about to become involved in a war, then the country's currency may go down in relative value compared to the currency of other countries.
The Forex, or foreign currency exchange, is all about money. Money from all over the world is bought, sold and traded. On the Forex, anyone can buy and sell currency and with possibly come out ahead in the end. When dealing with the foreign currency exchange, it is possible to buy the currency of one country, sell it and make a profit. For example, a broker might buy a Japanese yen when the yen to dollar ratio increases, then sell the yens and buy back American dollars for a profit.
There are five major forex exchange markets in the world, New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo and Zurich. Forex trading occurs around the clock in various markets, Asian, European, and American. With different time zones, when Asian trading stops, European trading opens, and conversely when European trading stops, American trading opens, and when American trading stops, then it is time for Asian trading to begin again.
Most of the trading in the world occurs in the forex markets; smaller markets for trade in individual countries. Simply put forex trading is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another. Over $1.4 trillion dollars, US of forex trading occurs daily and sometimes fortunes are made or lost in this market. The billionaire George Soros has made most of his money in forex trading. Successfully managing your money in forex trading requires an understanding of the bid/ask spread.
Simply put the bid ask spread is the difference between the price at which something is offered for sale and the price that it is actually purchased for. For instance, if the ask price is 100 dollars, and the bid is 102 dollars then the difference is two dollars, the spread. Many forex traders trade on margin. Trading on margin is buying and selling assets that are worth more than the money in your account. Since currency exchange rates on any given day are usually less than two percent, forex trading is done with a small margin. To use an example, with a one percent margin a trader can trade up to $250,000 even if he only has $5,000 in his account. This means the trade has leverage of 50 to one. This amount of leverage allows a trader to make good profits very quickly. Of course, with the chance of high profits also comes high risk.
Like many other speculative investments, a key part of money management for the forex trader is only using money that can be put at risk. It is wise to set aside a portion of your net worth and make that the only money you use in forex trading. While the chances of good profits are there, if you should have a problem and get wiped out, you'll only have a limited amount of money placed at risk. Also remember that the market is n constant motion. There are always trading opportunities. If a currency is becoming stronger or weaker in relation to other currencies there is always a chance for profit. For instance, if you believe that the Euro is gong to become weak compared to the US dollar then selling Euros is a good bet. If you believe that the dollar is going to become weaker than the yen, or the pound sterling, then selling dollars is wise. Staying current on the news and current events in the countries whose currency you hold is a smart move. Many people reach points where they can predict currency changes based on political or economic news in a given country. Remember though that forex trading is speculation, so be careful when managing your funds and only invest what you can afford to risk.
Please always make sure you check with the pros when dealing in this market unless you are doing this as a hobby and don't have a lot at stake in it. There are a lot of big boys playing here and they won't lose much sleep if you and thousands others lose their shirts...
by David Mclauchlan
http://www.forex-article-directory.com/
Money management in the foreign exchange currency market requires educating yourself in a variety of financial areas. First, a definition of the foreign exchange currency or forex market is called for. The forex market is simply the exchange of the currency of one country for the currency of another. The relative values of various currencies in the world change on a regular basis. Factors such as the stability of the economy of a country, the gross national product, the gross domestic product, inflation, interest rates, and such obvious factors as domestic security and foreign relations come into play. For instance, if a country has an unstable government, is expecting a military takeover, or is about to become involved in a war, then the country's currency may go down in relative value compared to the currency of other countries.
The Forex, or foreign currency exchange, is all about money. Money from all over the world is bought, sold and traded. On the Forex, anyone can buy and sell currency and with possibly come out ahead in the end. When dealing with the foreign currency exchange, it is possible to buy the currency of one country, sell it and make a profit. For example, a broker might buy a Japanese yen when the yen to dollar ratio increases, then sell the yens and buy back American dollars for a profit.
There are five major forex exchange markets in the world, New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo and Zurich. Forex trading occurs around the clock in various markets, Asian, European, and American. With different time zones, when Asian trading stops, European trading opens, and conversely when European trading stops, American trading opens, and when American trading stops, then it is time for Asian trading to begin again.
Most of the trading in the world occurs in the forex markets; smaller markets for trade in individual countries. Simply put forex trading is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another. Over $1.4 trillion dollars, US of forex trading occurs daily and sometimes fortunes are made or lost in this market. The billionaire George Soros has made most of his money in forex trading. Successfully managing your money in forex trading requires an understanding of the bid/ask spread.
Simply put the bid ask spread is the difference between the price at which something is offered for sale and the price that it is actually purchased for. For instance, if the ask price is 100 dollars, and the bid is 102 dollars then the difference is two dollars, the spread. Many forex traders trade on margin. Trading on margin is buying and selling assets that are worth more than the money in your account. Since currency exchange rates on any given day are usually less than two percent, forex trading is done with a small margin. To use an example, with a one percent margin a trader can trade up to $250,000 even if he only has $5,000 in his account. This means the trade has leverage of 50 to one. This amount of leverage allows a trader to make good profits very quickly. Of course, with the chance of high profits also comes high risk.
Like many other speculative investments, a key part of money management for the forex trader is only using money that can be put at risk. It is wise to set aside a portion of your net worth and make that the only money you use in forex trading. While the chances of good profits are there, if you should have a problem and get wiped out, you'll only have a limited amount of money placed at risk. Also remember that the market is n constant motion. There are always trading opportunities. If a currency is becoming stronger or weaker in relation to other currencies there is always a chance for profit. For instance, if you believe that the Euro is gong to become weak compared to the US dollar then selling Euros is a good bet. If you believe that the dollar is going to become weaker than the yen, or the pound sterling, then selling dollars is wise. Staying current on the news and current events in the countries whose currency you hold is a smart move. Many people reach points where they can predict currency changes based on political or economic news in a given country. Remember though that forex trading is speculation, so be careful when managing your funds and only invest what you can afford to risk.
Please always make sure you check with the pros when dealing in this market unless you are doing this as a hobby and don't have a lot at stake in it. There are a lot of big boys playing here and they won't lose much sleep if you and thousands others lose their shirts...
by David Mclauchlan
http://www.forex-article-directory.com/
New Housing Index Benefits Forex Market Investors
As most Forex market traders utilize fundamental analysis to plan their market strategies, the news of a newly developed housing index is making waves in the industry. Up until now, the most common housing index used by Forex traders to predict future currency movement was the S&P/Case-Stiller home price index. This index tracks price change movements in the housing market in 20 different metropolitan regions throughout the country. It measures average price changes on re-sold properties in those designated indexed areas. The indices are published on a monthly basis with a two-month lag. The new housing index (the IAS360), developed by a Denver based company, takes a broader (and different) view of price changes in the U.S. market.
The IAS360 in detail
The IAS360 housing index addresses some of the inherent weaknesses of the commonly used S&P/Case-Stiller home price index. This new index analyzes housing trend changes on a deeper, wider level (360 counties, with 30 reported indices). This broader picture of reality is especially helpful in a time of a downturn since it can give indications of counter movements in emerging markets. For instance, by utilizing the IAS360 housing index, certain markets that would not have been analyzed by other indices such as the S&P/Case-Stiller index, could show actual growth. That in turn could be the fore bringer for renewed growth in the overall market, which might have been missed by a more limited housing index indicator.
The median sales price
The IAS360 index analyzes data based upon the median sales price, whereas other indices analyze data based on average sales prices. The median sales price method (takes the middle price between the highest and lowest prices) paints a more realistic picture than the average sales price method since it's not skewed towards the highest or lowest priced homes.
Timely reporting
Timely reporting is crucial in determining trends and knowing when to invest in the markets. As opposed to the two-month lag in reporting with the S&P/Case-Stiller index (i.e. May figures come out in the last week of July), IAS360 numbers are published with only about a month's lag time (i.e. May figures are released in early July). With timelier reporting, the investor can make a better-informed trade decision.
by Harman Gilly
Online Forex trading system platforms provide convenient online trading, day or night, with access to online Forex market news.
The IAS360 in detail
The IAS360 housing index addresses some of the inherent weaknesses of the commonly used S&P/Case-Stiller home price index. This new index analyzes housing trend changes on a deeper, wider level (360 counties, with 30 reported indices). This broader picture of reality is especially helpful in a time of a downturn since it can give indications of counter movements in emerging markets. For instance, by utilizing the IAS360 housing index, certain markets that would not have been analyzed by other indices such as the S&P/Case-Stiller index, could show actual growth. That in turn could be the fore bringer for renewed growth in the overall market, which might have been missed by a more limited housing index indicator.
The median sales price
The IAS360 index analyzes data based upon the median sales price, whereas other indices analyze data based on average sales prices. The median sales price method (takes the middle price between the highest and lowest prices) paints a more realistic picture than the average sales price method since it's not skewed towards the highest or lowest priced homes.
Timely reporting
Timely reporting is crucial in determining trends and knowing when to invest in the markets. As opposed to the two-month lag in reporting with the S&P/Case-Stiller index (i.e. May figures come out in the last week of July), IAS360 numbers are published with only about a month's lag time (i.e. May figures are released in early July). With timelier reporting, the investor can make a better-informed trade decision.
by Harman Gilly
Online Forex trading system platforms provide convenient online trading, day or night, with access to online Forex market news.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
