Learn Forex Trading Tips

By Bart Icles

Many people these days make extra money through forex trading. If you are one of the millions who have been lured by the rewarding yet unpredictable world of forex trading, it is important that you learn forex trading tips before you start dealing with real money. Although the forex market can allow you to make money easily, it can also take away all your investments in under a minute. As a beginner, it is important that you keep your distance from the forex market and learn the most that you can about it before you finally decide to start engaging in currency trading.

One of the most valuable tips you will have to remember about forex trading is to learn forex trading techniques at length before you step into the market. One false move and you easily destroy your trading career forever. Learning about forex trading techniques will help you a lot in making your income levels soar as you engage in this volatile yet profitable market.

It is important that you are able to follow the different trends that occur and are practiced in the forex market. By following these trends, you will be able to determine when the market is going to experience a decline and when it will start to rise again. This can also help you judge when to join and when to exit trading. The market trends will also form the basis for your strategies that will differ according to the different scenarios that the market can pose.

There are also certain house rules that forex investors observe. You can learn more about these rules through enlisting yourself to forex courses. There are different forex courses online, some of which are free of charge and some will cost you a small amount of money. Whatever form of investment your forex education will require from you, be assured that it will help much in making you familiar with the basics of forex trading, as well as how you can develop different strategies for different circumstances.

If you learn forex trading tips, you are actually taking the first few steps in ensuring that your trading career will be worth your while. It is important that throughout your learning process until the time that you are already actively engaging in forex trading, you are able to keep your senses keen and alert. This will help you absorb information as you come across them, and you will also be able to make immediate responses to the different changes that can happen in the forex market. - 23309

About the Author:

A forex trading tutorial starts with a desire to learn and a drive to become a great trader. Learning with forex tutorials takes dedication and a good teacher. But once you learn how to trade and do so successfully your life will change and you have options and financial resources you never had before.

Intro To Trading Systems

By Maclin Vestor

A good trading system is about much more than just selecting stocks. Certainly that is important as well. However, a good trading system will provide the ability for you to protect against losses, manage your money, add proper leverage when necessary, and also select a stock selection maximizing your reward and minimizing your risk.

The guess work is taken out of the way for you. The stock is purchased when criteria is met, the amount of stock purchased is also based on certain criteria. The stock is sold when criteria met, and there are protective measures against a stock's demise, and where possible and appropriate leverage is created to maximize the returns without taking on more risk than you can handle.

This trading system will be talked about in 5 additional parts in addition to this intro. This post is designed to explain the trading system, its functions and how it operates.

1) Exit strategy. Every good system trader will first know the exit strategy. It doesn't matter what vehicle selection you use, if you have no exit strategy, you're stuck. The trick is to understand that unless you want to get trapped in an investment you have to know when you're getting out.

A good exit strategy has both loss protection, and profit taking, and sometimes even a 3rd stop. The first 2 might be a maximum loss, and a maximum gain before taking profits, while the 3rd one will be a trailing stop that rides the gains up, and will sell the remaining shares. There are other exit strategies such as hold forever and write covered calls against it to collect income, or protective puts in place of a stop-loss.

2) Protection. Although #1 covers most of the protection, there are several other ways to protect yourself. Protection is vital to allow you to stay in the game. Many people know that if you lose 20% you need a 25% gain to make up for it. Losses not only can result in a series of losses that wipe you out, but they also hinder your ability to gain in the future. a 95% loss for example requires a 2000% nearly impossible goal to make up for this loss. So even if you flip a coin and have a 50% chance of gaining 200% or 50% chance of losing 95% of it, you should probably not take it if all your money is at risk, because it doesn't have the downside protection A series of wins followed by 1 loss would prevent your ability to stay in the game. Even though those odds SEEM fair, they are not without proper protection. Protection ensures that you won't have that 95% loss, and it absolutely restricts that loss to a fixed amount, rather than take 100% risk.

Such forms of protections are writing calls, in this situation you are given a premium so if the stock tanks to zero in a worst case scenario you'd still end up with the premium, this is minimal protection, and only protects a marginal amount of decline before the losses continue. The other form of protection would be buying a protective put. This actually in fact does protect against catastrophic losses. The lower your stock goes if/when it crashes, the more you make from your put or puts. You are the one paying a small amount in order to protect against any sort of decline below the designated price. The lower this price, the cheaper the option. If a stock is at $50 and you buy a protective put at a strike price of 40, you will NOT be protected against losses from 50 to 40, but beyond that you will be protected to the downside.

These are somewhat more sophisticated forms of protection. Basic forms of protection are diversifying, and perhaps being short. If you buy a stock at $100, and you short one in the same sector at $100, if the whole sector goes up, you are betting not that the market will go up, not that the sector will go up, but that stock A that you are long will outperform stock B in a bull market, and stock B will under perform stock A in a down market. This offers protection although it may limit the gains as well, Plus, you actually have to be right in your thesis.

In addition, if you are short, and the stock market booms, you may get a margin call and be forced to sell. Also, if you do not use money management, you are at risk of a short term swing requiring you to sell all of your shares of the stock that went up, in order to pay for those that you were short that went up, and if you can't cover your short, your entire account is in jeopardy of being wiped out.

So rather than being short, I recommend replacing it with buying put options, although this has lots of risks involving time decay as well that you must understand before investing. Using a business entity such as a C Corp or a LLC is another form of protection that can protect you potentially against higher taxes, and personal financial trouble such as a bankruptcy on your record if you intend on using forms of leverage such as loans.

3) Money Management and Control. A good trading system will have a form of control. it will allow you to not give up that control when things go bad. In other words, it allows you to manage your money. Money management is very important. Perhaps one of the most important things is position sizing. If you buy $10,00 of stock for one stock when you only have $10,000 in your account this is very poor money management. Continue to do this, and eventually you will suffer a large loss which will be great, and it will be very difficult to gain enough to make up for it. In addition, if the price goes lower depending on your system, you may want to give yourself flexibility. Extra cash on the sides is another form of money management. It doesn't have to be cash per say, but some form of safety. Various forms of currency, sometimes some gold, bonds, and money market accounts that are all fairly liquid would be a few examples.

4) Leverage Leverage is about using your abilities to gain, the strength of your trading system and various tools to minimize risk, and increase gain. When you take on leverage, you should be able to reduce your position size in comparison to your capital, and still have a similar reward or gain.

Forms of leverage include options, the further out of money option you purchase, the more leverage you have if that stock does make a strong move. You can also sell options to raise capital to invest in some cases.

Another from of leverage is a loan. Whether it's a credit card, a home equity loan, going on margin, or a business loan for an asset holding company, or even taking a company public and using the capital to invest, the idea is to gain money at x% and to invest it and make a greater return than x%. if you can do this, and manage money well, and protect yourself, Your gain is only limited to the amount of capital you can borrow at the maximum of slightly less than what you expect to gain. Generally however, if you use a loan, you should have a form of cash flow or income that will cover the costs of the loan just in case your investment goes wrong. That's another form of money management while using leverage. Money management should be treated much differently under different forms of leverage.

5) Finally, the stock selection vehicle. You need some method to select your vehicle, based on this and your other factors you will determine time horizon and a methodology of trading. The system will help you choose your trading stocks, and exactly what to do with them. You can play around with different trading systems, but generally you should first attempt a good exit strategy and make sure your controls on parts 1-4 of your trading system are sound, and try tweaking them

Stock Trading Systems that are well defined will leave very little room for error. If you learn to use a trading system, you can choose to enhance the essential skills it takes to making your trading system better.

Unfortunately, many day traders are slaves to the computer screen and can miss a moment. Focus on building the better trading system, and not placing the better trade, and you will give yourself some valuable time. If you are really using a system, you don't need to be the one to place the trades, and can instead higher someone to do the work for you. You can use that extra time to improve your system, or find new ways to invest, or learn how to become a better trader.

You can learn other tips like this at the System Trading|Stocks Trading Systems blog, which is full of tips for day trading, options, swing trading, momentum trading, and advice on building a trading system. - 23309

About the Author:

Maclin Vestor teaches about trading systems. You can learn more about system trading and find a Trading System that works for you at his blog.

Know These Trading Secrets

By Ahmad Hassam

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

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

Right now forex and gold markets are really hot while the stock market is down. Stock market was a great investment opportunity a few years back. Over time, opportunity keeps on shifting from one market to another. Gold prices are going up. Those investors who entered this trend in the gold market by investing at the right time if they are going to ride the trend till it lasts in the gold market will make a lot of money. At the moment almost everyone is investing in gold as a hedge against likely USD depreciation. Everyone includes countries like China, Russia, India, hedge funds, institutional investors like big corporation and big banks, and retail investors.

This situation may continue for some months or some years but suddenly you will find that crude oil futures have become a great investment opportunity. Many hedge funds had made a lot of money by investing in crude oil futures in the year 2008.

As the global economy recovers and demand for oil increases, oil prices will again go up in a few years time. Timing for entering the market and the timing for exiting the market is very important for a successful trade. In trading it is the timing that is of essence.

A lot of people make the mistake of focusing only on one market. Many people end up spending time on only one market. In reality all the markets are interlinked. Successful trading requires mastering a strategy that enables you to trade multiple markets and multiple time frames. If something happens in one market, you will find the repercussions in the other markets.

They do testing, development, put on a million indicators, go and trade live. They do everything they can while spending all kinds of time trying to figure out one market and one timeframe. But then what almost happens is that market starts to go sideways or the opportunity shifts to another market.

You really should have the ability to be able to adapt to different market conditions and not waste your time mastering one market. This is critical if you want to make a fortune in trading. You can start with one market but over the years add a few other markets as well. This will diversify your risk as well. For example, there were so many stocks just a few years ago that were incredible to trade that either dont exist anymore or would not trade successfully today. Stocks are no more a good investment. But if you want to trade stocks, you will have to wait for a few more years for the stock market to boom again.

Many gurus will teach you that you really need to learn the ins and outs of one market. They will tell you to focus only on one market and then stick with it. But the problem with that philosophy is that opportunity keeps on shifting from one market to another. Mastering different markets is counterintuitive. Always remember a good trader always follows where the money goes. In other words, follow where the opportunity goes. - 23309

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. He is interested in day trading stocks and currencies. Know The Trend Forex System. Learn Forex Trading!

The Easy Way To Make Money In The Stock Market!

By Grant Dougan

Penny stocks are an exciting investment opportunity. Some investors stay away from these types of investments since they think they are full of risk. In reality, there is so much opportunity to make money with penny stocks if you know what you need to look for.

Any stock under $2 is what I consider to be a penny share. When I choose a stock to invest in, I search for a company that is new and growing. You will see many organizations that are now trading less than two bucks because the organization has had difficulties. I try to look for businesses that are new and growing instead of established ones whose stock is inexpensive based on problems the company has faced. This sets me up to earn some massive profits down the road.

So how do you spot the companies to buy? This, of course, is the key question!

Examining the industry that the business is in is a critical first step. Is the competition too stiff for a new business to be successful? You need to look at the industry as a whole to ensure that the company is supplying a service or product that there is enough demand for.

Next, of course you want to examine the actual company. What about the management team? You should also look at what the business offers its customers and see if their product is different from what other companies are offering. You should try to locate companies that either offer a unique product or compete by changing some other factor such as their prices. If the business provides a product that isn't identical to what everyone else offers then it is extremely more likely to generate additional sales.

You should also take a look at the financial statements of the company, but don't worry if you notice that the business has negative income. Most growing companies don't generate positive earnings in the years at the start. Just make sure that there is money available to the company. Whether they have entree to loans or credit or cash sitting around, the organization need to have cash so the business can invest money in their business and develop in the future.

As a final note, it's always a good idea to be able to locate updates on the organization. By having the ability to read periodic updates from the organization, either on a website or some type of newsletter, you have the ability to understand exactly what is happening with the organization.

These shares can provide you with tremendous returns if the business starts to become profitable. There is incredible money to be made when you understand what to look for. - 23309

About the Author:

Make use of these penny stock tips and you will be on your way to making great money trading penny stocks. Click Here to learn about a penny stock trading system that has been making great money for the past four years!

Finding the Right Forex Trading Broker

By Jane MacRae

If you have been in the forex game, you will understand that a right forex trading broker can really be your life saver. Despite that there are so many brokers out there you can choose from, to find the right one is not always easy. Here are some tips to help you go about.

* Select One That Offers a Free Demo Account

Many online forex brokers offer free demo or test accounts to new and potential members. Take advantage of them.

Not only are demo accounts a great introduction for those new to forex trading, it will also let you take a look at the trading platform used by that broker. You want an interface that is easy to learn and understand, and that you will be comfortable to use.

* Do Not Be Shy to Ask For References

Yes, you should ask for references! In fact, a good broker may often offer you his references. You need to be able to talk to other people who have used his services, and find out whether or not they are happy with their experiences.

If a broker is unwilling to give you references, he probably is not your choice.

* Check Out the Minimum Deposit Requirement to Open an Account

With different forex brokers, there is a minimum amount you must deposit into your account when you start doing business with them.

In case one broker asks for a larger deposit than you are willing to start with, search for one that requires a lower minimum. There are options out there for every investor, no matter how much or how little they have to invest.

* Learn About the Broker's Credentials

There is no centralised, governing body to regulate the whole forex market over the world. However, the business practices of each forex broker is regulated by institutions in the countries where they are located.

A broker located in the US, for example, should be registered as a Futures Commission Merchant (or FCM) with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (or CFTC). They should also be registered with the National Futures Association (or NFA).

* Examine the Service Charge

You should be aware that cheaper is not always better.

Brokers who seem to charge small fees than their competition might make up for the difference with hidden fees that you are not even aware you are being charged.

Before going into business with a broker, ask about possible hidden fees, read the fine print, and learn as much about them as you can.

To find a good forex trading broker is probably an inevitable experience for almost all players in the forex field. With what has been discussed in this article, you should at least know what to look at. But, don't get frustrated if you still make a mistake. Sometimes, we just grow out of try and error. - 23309

About the Author:

Click here for our review of a leading automatic forex trading system in the market, which will grant you a huge advantage over your competitors. You many also like to check out this related article about trading spot forex.