Sunday, June 14, 2009

Forex Software - The Best Software Based on Audited Real Time Performance

There are lots of automated Forex trading software packages, which claim huge gains but which is the best based on pure performance? Let's take a look.

What we want to do is find Forex robot or Forex Expert Advisor, which has a real time track record of gains, which has been independently verified. If you look at any of the cheap Forex Expert Advisors sold online you will all notice they all have one thing in common - none has a track record in real time verified by a third party! So what do you get?

You get track records which have been simulated on past data in hindsight and that's easy, as you know the highs and lows but its not real money. You do get software packages which present what they say are real track records but there not checked by a third party, so you have to take the vendors word for it.

So no track records that are audited, are ever presented and the reason is obvious - because these software packages never make the gains they claim on paper, if they did no one would work and everyone would be trading!

If they worked, I would spend $200 for a lifelong income with no effort and so would anyone. The track records are never proved and claiming you can do something and actually doing it, are two different things.

If you want to make money at Forex trading, forget the easy route with no effort because you wont win. Instead educate yourself learn skills and you will then be able to make a huge return on your effort. If you want to win at Forex you need to make an effort as you do in any money making venture and Forex trading is no different.


Friday, June 12, 2009

Forex Trading Tools For the Time Poor

Most people have the view that it is almost impossible for busy people in full time employment to find the time to make money in the forex market. Little do they know that there are some very good tools in the form of forex robots that can automate the hard, and time consuming work of finding profitable trades in this huge liquid market.

What robots do much better that humans, is perform millions of minute by minute calculations to identify short term opportunities to make a gain in this volatile market. These tools sit on your PC around the clock, looking out for value creating opportunities created by these price swings.

The other area in which they out perform humans is by avoiding the errors that humans are prone to make, by trading with their heart rather than their minds. Robots to not get distracted by greed or fear. They take no part in emotions based trading mistakes. This is a big deal when you consider the statistics. 90 percent of failed trades happen because traders do not follow their own trading rules. A forex automated robot is no more than a piece of code that seeks buy and sell signals for a currency pair based on predetermined rules.

Forex robots become your trading butler. Best of all they don't expect to be paid overtime, they don't need to sleep and they don't need food or water. Once set up, a trading robot allows you to extract profits from this huge market continuously around the clock. Because of their awesome calculating capability. they excel in very short frames. This would be impossible for the time constrained home trader. Robots also have the time to monitor trades across a variety of currencies in all time zones.

The only problem is that there are now so many Forex robots being actively marketed on the internet. It is almost impossible to determine the good from the bad. Unfortunately most of them are indeed rubbish and not worth looking at. The Forex robot industry is a very competitive one and sellers use a variety of sales pitches and techniques to present their Robots in the best light possible. You should not be tempted by Forex Robots sellers who claim their robots will never make a loss. Look for a robot that is updated and improved regularly.

What really counts at the end of the day is how well a robot performs over the long term, through a variety of market fluctuations. Seek a robot that demonstrates steady, slow growth over a long time period. There are some gems out there which are proving themselves as money makers in all market conditions.

Ideally you should develop a shortlist of the Forex Robots that you like and then test them on a demo account, side by side, and starting with the same deposit. This is however a costly route as you would need to buy these Forex robots in advance. Fortunately there are sites that do this for you. Take your time, select wisely, and you will have a money making assistant which gets on with its job while you continue with your normal routine.


Saturday, June 6, 2009

Advanced Technical Analysis

Technical analysis depends on the use of indicators in finding the optimal points for entry and exit for each trade. A number of advanced technical indicators have been developed over the years that are used by the traders to confirm a particular market pattern. Two or more indicators are used in conjunction to confirm whether the markets are trending, ranging etc.

You should understand how to use these technical indicators to confirm trending or non trending conditions. Each technical indicator plays a unique role in the overall technical analysis process. Time periods and the technical indicators are useful tools for the traders. Spotting interday or intraday turning points caused by large moves, retracements, continuances or reversals is very important for traders and technical indictors are used to identify and confirm these turning points.

Each technical indicator performs differently in both trending and non trending markets. You should understand how each technical indicator shows direction, entry, exit or weaknesses or strength of price action in trending or non trending market conditions. You should memorize these differences to make the best use of these tools in your trading.

Let's discuss some of the important technical indicators. Directional Movement Indicator (DMI) consists of the Average Directional Index (ADX) and the Directional Index (DI). The Average Directional Index measures the strength of a prevailing trend. It rises when the trend is strong and falls when the prior confirmed trend or direction is weakening. ADX measures the trending quality of the market. It isolates those periods where the market is not trending.

Directional Index (DI) comprises positive DI+ and negative DI-. When DI+ rises above DI-, an upward direction is confirmed. When DI- rises above DI+, a downward direction is confirmed. Both DI+ and DI- show direction. A strong move in the currency markets is confirmed when ADX is rising and both DI+ and DI- are apart.

The Stochastic Indicator is often referred to as the overbought or oversold indicator. The Stochastic Indicator identifies swings, tops and bottoms. It measures the relationship between the closing price of a currency pair and its high or low during a specific number of days or weeks.

It does a wonderful job in finding the reversal tendencies in prices. When the price of the currency pair rises, the closing price tends to be closer and closer to the extreme high prices of the currency pair in that time period. Likewise when the prices fall, the closing price tends to fall on average closer and closer to the extreme low prices.

The Stochastic Indicator is very popular among the traders. It is considered to be a highly accurate method of picking the tops and bottoms. It is a very useful tool that can used as a timing aid in knowing when to take action in a currency pair particularly when it is used in conjunction with other technical indicators. This indicator tries to find a correlation between the moving closing price of the currency pair and its reversal tendencies.


Risk to Reward Ratio

Many new traders think that a good entry into the markets is the key to success. Unfortunately, most are wrong. A trader must view each trade as a business transaction. A risk to reward ratio compares the potential for reward with the potential for loss. Risk is calculated by counting the pips between the forecasted entry price and the forecasted price at which you want to exit the market in case of a losing trade.

Reward is calculated by the pips between the forecasted entry price and the forecasted price at which you would want to exit the market in case of a winning trade. Reward is the expected number of pips that you want to make in a trade that will be a winner.

To manage risk properly, you need to look for high probability trades that have a risk to reward ratio of 1:2 or greater. This depends on the time frame that you want to trade. For example, if you are a day trader and you are looking for making only 30 pips in a trade, a stop loss of 15 pips is sufficient for the risk to reward ratio of 1:2.

However, if you are a swing trader or a position trader with a longer time frame, your profit potential will be more. If you choose 200 pips as your expected profit then you will need to set your stop loss at 100 pips.

The reason that you need to set a higher stop loss is that on a larger time frame, small trends occur within the larger trend. Retracements on shorter time frame is much smaller as compared on the larger time frame. Your trade is going to be recycled. In order to be not stopped out, you need to calculate your risk to reward ratio appropriately.

The second most important thing for traders is minimizing losses, next to maximizing profits. A forex trading system that wins on average only 50% of the time can still be profitable. Most of the traders want to make money. But they don't know how to protect what they currently have.

You have a 50/50 chance of the currency market going your way. It is just like flipping a coin. In case, the trade does not develop in your favor and the market is going against you, you should cut your losses by using stop losses. In simple terms, you cut your losses and let your winners run. This simple 50/50 trading strategy earns a profit even when a novice trader might experience a loss.

Consider different risk to reward ratios. How much you need to win to break even for each ratio? For a 2:1 risk to reward ratio, you need 67% winners to become profitable. For a 1:1 risk to reward ratio, it means just 50% winners to become profitable. 1:2 ratio means only 33.5% winners for profitability. Never ever trade when the risk to reward ratio is more than 1:2.


4 Pros of and Reasons to Start Fully Automated Forex Trading

Fully automated forex trading entails using a automatic trading program to cover every single aspect of trading in the forex market for you so that you don't have to do a thing. Why would you want to do this?

Automated/No Emotion Trading - How fully automated forex trading programs work is largely by reacting to changes in the market quickly and effectively. Because these programs remain tied into real time market data around the clock, they are always in the first position to effectively react to changes in the market, positive or negative, to keep you on the winning sides of your trades. For example, if you are invested in a profitable trade but suddenly the market fluctuates out of your favor, with an auto trading program in place that now bad investment gets traded away at the earliest indication, considerably shielding you from loss which is a major part of how successful forex traders make their money.

24 Hour Service - The greater forex market occurs over a number of international markets. As such it remains open a full 24 hours a day for each day during the week and even extends late into the weekend. It's just common sense that to be successful in the market this means that you've got to be aware of the position of every currency against another that you're invested in for the better part of the entire day and night, which ultimately works out to being a job and a half. Virtually no one's schedule allows for this, so having a fully automated forex trading program in place means that you have a competent trading system as well as a safety net in place to make every necessary move for you 24 hours a day, whenever it is required.

Affordable Alternative - Many traders spend a great deal to employ a full service broker to get the same services rendered by the much more affordable alternative of fully automated forex trading. Most brokers charge fees and on top of that even take out sizable commissions from whatever gains your investments make, whereas you can get a trading program for around a one time fee of $100 or so to get the same services for life. 30% of all traders are using this technology for a reason.

No Learning Curve - Perhaps best of all is that completely newbies who have never even heard of the term "pip" can run a fully automated forex trading program to make real money in the forex market.


Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Currency Trading Courses - Get on the Road to Trading Success With the Best FX Courses

Currency trading is a skill anyone can learn but most traders still lose and it's a massive amount - 95%. They don't lose because they can't win its because they learn the wrong information and this is where a good currency trading course, can cut your learning curve and out you on the road to success.

A good course can teach you skills and give you the confidence to trade successfully. In all areas of work you need to learn skills and Forex is no different but anyone can learn and learn quickly with the right instruction. So what should you look for in a currency trading course?

Look for a 100% money back guarantee with no handling charges deducted. You can't see the course so you need to see if it lives up to the advertising copy and you can only do this with a guarantee - never buy a course without one.

Look for the strategy that's outlined and ask does it make sense to you in terms of what the vendor says they can do?

A lot of courses are no more than basic technical analysis and that's all free online, you need a specific trading strategy! You need to have an advantage over the 95% of losing traders and that is what you're looking for from the course a trading edge.

Look for unlimited support by email, many courses are just books and if you're learning you don't want a book you want a course with full support. The best currency courses, will give you live training in the market via daily newsletters, so you can see how the system is applied and how it performs. The best education is always in real time, as you learn far quicker, than looking at past charts and its more fun.

Currency trading courses, can give you the knowledge and skills that can last a lifetime and put you on the road to currency trading success. In terms of cost most are around $50 - 150 and one great trade will pay for the course many times over.

Get the right course and you will have fun, cut your learning curve and soon be trading confidently and profitably, in the world's most exciting market.

NEW! ESSENTIAL FOREX TRADING PDF's! and FOREX COURSE!


What is a Forex Robot?

A Forex robot, or Expert Adviser as it is referred to on the popular Metatrader platform, is piece of software that is designed to automate Forex trading activities. They can either trade on full autopilot or automate certain aspects of trading.

Almost all successful human traders will follow some type of trading system which will have rules to govern all aspects of trading. They will have rules to help determine when is a good time to place a trade based on variety of technical indicators. They will also have money management rules covering such things as the number of lots to place, how much of their total trading capital they will commit to open positions, and what level to set profit limits or stop losses at.

Traders very often make mistakes when they fail to follow their rules by succumbing to their emotions. They may enter the wrong trades, get it too late and exit too early. Trading robots are nothing more than an automation of what a good human trader does. They are disciplined and stick to the rules that the trader coded into the software.

The MT4 trading platform is free to download and comes equipped with vary many technical indicators from simple moving averages to more complex fractal signal generators. An expert advisor can call on any of these indicators within is algorithm to help identify a trading signal. So trader can automate any technical signal he or she wishes using the power of an expert advisor.

The earlier Forex robots tended to focus on a major theme or strategy to make their trading decisions. Most of them would fall into one of the following camps:-

• Trending robot
• Ranging robot
• News robot
• Breakout robot
• Scalping robot
• Grid trading robot
• Correlation trading robot

The newer Forex robots hitting the market now have a combination of these strategies, the most common being a combination of trending and ranging. The allows the robot to continue to make profits in a variety of market conditions.

There are only three things required to get started trading with a Forex robot:

• a PC and broadband accesses to download the MT4 platform
• a broker that support the MT4 platform (there are hundreds of them)
• download a Forex robot and attach it to a chart according to the required settings.

Despite what you may read on Forex robot sales sites no Forex robots can guarantee profits. The Forex market is too volatile to get all trades right. What a Forex robot can do is improve the odds or probability of making more winning than losing trades. With tight money management (which should also be automated) and committing only a small portion of the account to open positions, you stand a good chance of making money in the long run.


The Essential Forex Trading Strategy

There is no one essential Forex trading strategy to get you making millions of dollars from the paper trade. Also, it is time that you lower your expectations of the potential of the market to make you that kind of money and understand the reality of the situation. Yes, the market is one that can generate a steady income for you, one that is exponentially greater than if you were to work for someone in a company.

For one thing, to get rich, you need to work for yourself, because one thing that the world does not understand is that your time is bankable. Every hour of every day that you work and how much work you put in should give you the returns that you need to be able to make your venture worthwhile. The Forex market is one such platform for you to make money and if you decide to venture into this market, then you need to understand the market.

The Forex strategy that is good is one that contains many facets. For one thing, the strategy is one that knows the market inside and out and to succeed in the Forex game, you need to be able to understand the market and know all you can about how it behaves. Here, the adage that knowledge is power is one that is truly applicable and once you understand this, then you can move on to your second part of the Forex strategy. You need to be able to know about market psychology, or in simple man's terms, how the market thinks and reacts according to different situations.

Then your strategy must also be one that takes into account the many players or market makers of the Forex trade. This would include two main groups, the large central banks and of course Governments. Of course, these are the people that have the largest access to currency and with a single action, they can turn the tide of the market if they see the need. You need to be prepared against this as well and you also need to know that the market has some set patterns that it follows when it comes across certain situations. Your strategy should take into account aspects like flight to safety and economic indexes and predictable price surges when the market encounters either a good or a bad patch.

Another important thing you need to know about is how you best use the elements of fundamental and technical analysis, and how they can be best used to your advantage. Media monitoring and technical analysis of market trends; how you manipulate the data and how you can predict or forecast the market should also be main pages within the chapters of your success. With these functions, then and only then can you have an essential Forex strategy that is able to generate a steady income for you. Once you are able to master all these things, then you can consider more advanced aspects of Forex trading to evolve your finance acquisition and get you on the road to financial independence.