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Archive for October, 2009

Can You Learn Forex Trading Free

Posted by superpips On October - 29 - 2009

Learn Forex Trading Free

An often asked question is “Can you learn Forex trading Free?” so let’s see if we can provide a definitive answer.

At some point you are going to have to inject capital into a trading account, so reality dictates that in one sense Learning Forex Trading Free is not possible, because without a Broker account, you will not be able to get a Demo account to practice on. But, apart from this small catch, you can learn Forex trading free. There is absolutely no need to invest money, in high priced, over hyped courses. Keep your money in your trading account, don’t waste it on overpriced education programs. 95% of them are NOT worth what they ask you to pay!!

Let’s look at what you do need to learn Forex trading free, so you don’t deplete your trading account on overpriced BS! An absolute necessity is the trading platform.

All Forex Brokers use a Trading Platform, the software that allows you to transact a trade and to monitor the market. This is usually provided free and will come with a wide selection of indicators you can apply to the charts plus a variety of other useful tools. A commonly used platform is MetaTrader4, and yes it’s Free!

There are a variety of other platforms available and most are provided free of charge.

Next on your education shopping list are the Forex basics. All of this can also be found free, Baby Pips is a brilliant starting point, but there is plenty more on the net. Yes it’s spread around a bit and might take you a bit of time to consolidate the information that is available into some sort of comprehendible state, but it’s out there and won’t cost you anything.

If you are really diligent, you may even find some quality technical trading courses that are free or virtually so. I know of a very good one put out by a Scottish trader with years of experience that sells for $1! Once you have your head around the basics, you can build on this via an inexpensive monthly subscription as your skills progress, your choice. The $1 course is damn good and can make you a lot of money when you start trading, but as with any course, you have to be comfortable with the strategies taught. This is the very reason why you should not invest in the unknown! Free or a $1, doesn’t hurt at all, $2000 does!!

Certainly there is a wealth of information out there that will only cost you time, nothing else.

Next; set up a Free Demo account with your Broker, and start test your trading knowledge and skills before you go live. Demo accounts often have time restrictions though, so once you get to this stage, it is worth thinking about investing a small amount in software like Forex Tester, which will allow you to test your skills time and time again over many years of data. Forex Tester does offer a free trial, but for the price it is worth buying, because you will end up using it time and time again as you develop and test your trading strategies. This will be the difference between a profitable career in trading and a short trip to oblivion. One foolish losing trade will pay for Forex Tester!

The next item you might consider is Free Forex Trading Robots. There is an extensive list of them that are available free, but be careful, many simply don’t work and will wipe out your account. Unfortunately this also applied to many you pay big bucks for as well, in fact there are very few that work and even those that do have their off days! If you do decide to try some Free Forex trading robots, run and test them on Forex Tester FIRST…. DON’T test them on your Broker account!!!

Beyond this you enter the realm of the silver tongued salesman. You will encounter high priced courses that you subscribe to, they lock you in and you become dependent. With many of these you are not in total control, and you will never really know what or who is trading them or generating the signals. You may even log in one morning and nobody is there, neither is you account!

So a word of warning: NEVER hand over your account and its trading to someone else unless they are highly reputable, NEVER EVER!

Learning to Trade Forex, is like going to University, it takes time and practice before you are confident in your ability to trade live. It can be studied Free, but a better end result is achieved with a Small investment in high quality courses and testing software. They will pay for themselves very quickly, some courses will even allow you to learn some trading techniques free of charge, then if you like what you try, you can invest in the course with confidence.

So if you would like to try a Free Forex Trading Strategy, click this link: Free Strategy. It is a very effective Forex trading strategy that you can try on either a Demo account or Forex Tester first and once comfortable try it on your live account and you will make money. It is presented over 5 videos so is easy to understand, but practice it first. If you like it you can follow on with the full course, which is not expensive, but is of exceptionally high quality and I am happy to recommend it. It has been the basis of a lot of our personal education and yes, we do receive a commission but we only recommend products that we have confidence in.

Forex Tester also offers a Free Trial, it doesn’t have full functionality, but will still give you a good feel of the full system. Click here to get Forex Tester Free Trial.

Every element of Forex trading takes practice, a experienced trader NEVER trades a new or unproven strategy without extensively testing it, so why should you?

Popularity: 36% [?]

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Foreign Currency Risk Management, what’s your Risk Tolerance

Posted by superpips On October - 26 - 2009

Foreign Currency Risk Management

Everyone has a highly individualistic aversion to risk, no two people are the same, so in many situations there can be no hard and fast rule. One only has to look at sport; skydiving’s a good example. Many are happy to jump from a plane, but base jumping.. no way. It all rests with personal risk assessment. 

Foreign currency risk management is different, there are intangibles and the lure of big money, and this can easily manipulate your personal judgment. Depending on what market you are entering you need to establish your risk tolerance before you commence trading. Any good stock broker or financial planner knows this, and in their marketplace they should make a significant effort to help you determine where your risk tolerance sits. So that you do not push or exceed your tolerance to risk. 

Online foreign currency trading is different, there is no middle-man, just you and the market. You are in total control of your risk tolerance by how you develop your foreign currency risk management strategy, your broker has no real involvement what so ever. 

Simply put, establishing your risk tolerance is a matter of knowing how much money you have to invest, what your

Forex Risk Management

Forex Risk Management

investment and financial goals are and how much you are prepared to lose if things go wrong. A guiding rule for Foreign currency risk management is: “Never trade what you are not prepared to lose.” 

Think about this for a moment: If you plan to retire in ten years, and you don’t have enough money saved, you may have a high risk tolerance, but minimal money to lose. Yet, you need to do some aggressive, or risky investing to reach your financial goals. This has the potential to create a very dangerous situation because personal needs and your trading strategies conflict. 

If you are in young and just starting to invest for your retirement, your risk tolerance is low, plus you have time to recover any losses. 

Then there is your innate feeling towards risk, you maybe naturally cautious, so will only consider conservative investment strategies. 

Before you ever consider investing one single penny, it is worth taking a course in financial risk management. These are by necessity, an integral part of any good trading course and are mandatory elements in establishing trading strategies. 

Risk management is something you will see discussed extensively and with good reason. Refer back to the chart and you should understand why good risk management has to be indelibly printed into your psyche, if not you will lose and big time. It is probably the biggest single failing of new traders and why they don’t stay in the game for long. 

I have personally experienced losing serious money through bad risk management, so if I can in any way help you avoid going through the same heartache, I will and I will make no apologies for doing so.

Popularity: 20% [?]

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Why Automated Forex System Trading

Automated Forex System Trading

Automated Forex System Trading

With the instability of many investments over the last 18 months, many people are turning to the Foreign Currency Market as an alternative, but why foreign currency investment instead of other securities?

The Online Forency Currency Trading or ‘Forex Trading’ possesses some unique characteristics:

  1. Its trading volume is vast compared to other markets.
  2. It possesses huge liquidity so buying and selling currency is never a problem.
  3. The market operates 24 hrs a day for almost 6 days per week.
  4. The Trading Floor is electronic, there is no ‘bricks and mortar’ exchange.
  5. There are 4 major markets, Asia, Europe, London & New York, offering the potential of 4 opening movements every 24 hrs.
  6. The market liquidity increases every year, irrespective of economic conditions.
  7. Since the early 90s it has been open to Retail Investors

Many small investors, like to trade part time and still maintain a full time job. This can pose problems since they are restricted to when they can monitor the charts. Yes you can trade on a ‘Blackberry’, but you gotta be good to work off a screen that small! Anyway, this has caused an explosion in automated Forex systems for trading, often referred to as Forex Robots. Many of these Forex Robots had their origins in trading houses, where there was a requirement to trade small investor accounts. They were also developed to produce entry and exit signals for professional traders.

Tragically, many of the Robots that have been sold to ’Mom & Dad’ traders, have done little to improve their bottom line, in fact, many of the ones we have tested would have sent your account crashing to oblivion. They were bloody disasters! The sales claims were wonderful, but all based on historical charts (backtesting) never on real time trading accounts. Downloadable Historical charts are never 100% accurate, which also means claims are hard to verify, so true testing has to be done on a Demo account over the longest period possible to get any indication of real performance.

But there are a few which have produced very encouraging results, worthy of testing on a trading account.

We currently trade using 2 different EAs: Forex MegaDroid and FapTurbo.

Megadroid has consistently produced profitable trades and has been returning around 12% per month. This is on a restricted risk setting of 20%, which is tighter than the 30% recommended by the creators. We just don’t feel comfortable with a risk level as high as 30%. This still means we will grow our account significantly over a 12 month trading period and that’s got to be a good for anyone.

When we started trading with FapTurbo the results were dissappointment, though this was due more to our Broker than the software. At the time our broker was not an ECN broker, so spreads varied considerably and were often outside the FapTurbo trading parameters. When the spread is 2 – 3 FapTurbo trades profitably, but being a scalper, the trade profits are small and it needs to trade frequently to have a significant effect on any account.

After about 6 months of frustration our broker bacame an ECN facility and trading with FapTurbo improved, but was still not as good as it should have been. We then found the cause, and this is very relevant to anyone outside the US. Being Australian and using an Australian broker, we set up our account in Aus$, only natural, no problems with conversions etc if we wanted to withdraw some funds. BAD MOVE!!! This meant that FapTurbo had to re-calculate the currency and it ground to a halt. When we changed our account to US$ the trading frequency changed significantly, as did profits… they were up, big time!

Of the other Forex Robots we have investigated, most will cut your account to shreads. Some of the hyped ones are simply re-packaged free EAs, presented as the latest and greatest, but the only money they make is for their vendor. When you find they have problems, there is no support and the vendor has vanished with your money, so where Forex Robots are concerned, be very cautious. Don’t jump in on the latest and greatest, check it out very thouroughly first before hitting the buy button.

If you do buy a Forex Robot, have a look at Forex Tester, and consider running some tests over a much longer period, it could well save your trading account!

Popularity: 19% [?]

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Find a Broker for Forex Trading

Posted by superpips On October - 8 - 2009

There is a vast number of Forex Trading Brokers eagre to offer you an account and help you with your Forex trading. Most are very professional and have support systems to assist you in your commencement. But as with so many high profile investment structures, there are a number of operations that at the outset, look very professional but then vanish into thin air, with your money.

Within the Forex industry, there are many reports of strange and underhand Broking behaviours, funds and accounts that go missing, reversed and un-authorised trades and other Scams that leave you high and dry with a zero balance, or it could be a simple as barriers and problems withdrawing funds.

So how do you start assessing a Broker for Forex Trading?

Here is a list of items you should investigate that will give you an overview of how a Forex Trading Broker might rate. It is not the ‘be all and end all’ only a starting point, as you undertake your due diligence, it is highly likely you will add others:

  1. Where are the Broker’s Registered Offices? As soon as I see places like Panama, the Seychelles or other off shore havens, the warning bells start ringing. I am not saying they might not be very professional, I just check much deeper.
  2. Is the Forex Trading Broker regulated by an official Government Body?
  3. Contact information. Are they available by phone, or only via email or web enquiry service? Forex is a 24hr market, they need to be available on the phone 24hrs per day.
  4. Do they have a recognised trading platform or an ‘In House’ system? Some big Institutions like Dukascopy have their own platform, but many Brokers use main stream platforms like MetaTrader, Currenex or Integral. Many EAs or Forex Robots require MetaTrader4.
  5. What spreads do they offer?
  6. What is their Broking structure? Are they DD (Dealing Desk) Broker, a NDD (No Dealing Desk) Broker, a STP (Straight Through Processing) Broker or an ECN (Electronic Communication Network) Broker? For a detailed explanation of the differences and how it affects your trading: Read this Article.
  7. Speed of Execution of Orders? This is directly related to their broking structure, so investigate (5) above.
  8. Leverage offered? Most Forex Trading Brokers will offer 100:1 but some will go much higher for established clients. When you are new, start with 100:1 it is better for your risk management.
  9. Do they have minimum account balances? Some Forex trading Brokers require a minimum of US$50k or more whereas others will offer accounts as low as US$1000
  10. Do they have access to all major Financial Markets?
  11. Do they offer Demo accounts, how many and how long can you demo trade on them?
  12. Do they provide PDA feeds and software for mobile trading?

 This should get you started on compiling a Forex Trading Broker ‘short list’. Spend time on your due diligence, it’s your hard earned money and you need to be 110% happy with where you place it.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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mbnavigatorWhen you commence online foreign currency trading, you are going to have to set up a currency trading account with a broker. They will provide you with a currency trading platform that will facilitate all your trading activities. One of the more common currency trading platforms is MetaTrader 4, which is provided free by the broker or can be downloaded from here. This it the interface that will allow you to either sell or buy foreign currency. MetaTrader 5 is currently in development and is due for release soon.

There is a vast variety of currency trading brokers and the new trader is often confused by the type of broker. There are two primary types: Dealing Desk (DD) and No Dealing Desk (NDD). You will then encounter NDD brokers which are either Straight Through Processing (STP) and or ECN.. Electronic Communications Network.

Let’s now put some clarity into this confusion:

The Dealing Desk Broker: A Forex DD Broker makes money on spreads and by taking the opposite position to their client. They are the ‘Market Makers’ because when you, the client, buys they sell and visa versa. They are literally making the market because they can manipulate the market, because you, the trader never see’s the true market quotes.

The No Dealing Desk Broker: The NDD Broker accesses direct to the interbank marketplace, all trades are virtually instantaneous with no re-quotes or delays in communication. This is particularly important if you trade during news periods. NDD Brokers usually charge commissions, though some can also derive income from spreads. A NDD broker will either be STP or ECN + STP

Straight Through Processing: This is where the NDD broker communicates directly with the liquidity providers, the banks that trade the Interbank marketplace. There are no intermediaries so everything is executed immediately. STP Brokers do have the ability to alter spreads, which gives them options as to how they make their money. They do not charge commissions.

Electronic Communications Network: These brokers allow traders to trade against one another within the ECN, these traders could be small retail traders up to Banks and Institutions. An ECN broker allows everyone to place and execute competing trades against each other within the ECN. For this reason, an ECN broker cannot make money on spreads but make their money on commission. An ECN broker wants you to make money, otherwise they don’t earn commissions.

So what type of Currency Trading Broker do you select? An ECN broker is the most transparent, dealing in the true market, everything is done automatically without anyone watching who is in the market since there is No Dealing Desk to monitor.

The Dealing Desk broker, has the ability to manipulate the market and one of the results is ‘slippage’ where the spread can change during the execution of an order. This can have a disastrous impact on your trading strategy, as it chucks your pre-determined setups out the window!

Popularity: 39% [?]

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Dukascopy: Interbank forex broker provides best spreads, biggest liquidity and marketplace for on-line forex trading

About Me

I have 3 passions in life apart from my family, Trading, my dog and making documentaries. This blog is about one of my passions, Foreign Currency Trading and I hope the information I offer will help you on the path to profitable Trading so you do not become one of the trading tragedies...

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