The Importance Of Having A Forex Mentor

By Peter Kimber

Forex trading is alarming to some new investors. You have to know the terms and the language of investing. And you have to be sure of what youre doing in order to make your first trade successful. Knowledge and understanding of your product is very helpful. There are many websites on the web waiting to help you, but it can stress you out trying to find the right one that will make you money. Having an education on the matter will help.

Foreign Exchange trading, or Forex, is when the currency of one nation is exchanged for another. Because there is no main exchange setting in Forex like on Wall Street trading is done online or by telephone through a network of bankers, currency traders and brokers. Timing is everything in this type of trading and seizing on the right opportunity can make all the difference in the world.

You have to do your homework in order to learn this type of forex trading. But once you learn it, it can be a very lucrative business.

The things you have to learn for this type of business are risk control and management in trading. You have to know the craft before you take the risk, otherwise you will become discouraged at your failure and you wont even want to continue to trade. As you begin, keep a record of what you do. Be aware that you will lose money at first; this is part of the learning process. Set a financial limit and try not to go beyond that limit. This will help minimize the amounts you lose during the learning process.

You must pay attention to opening and managing an account as part of your training process. Learn by opening a dummy account to trade with virtual money. This will help you feel confident when you begin trading with real money.

You can search online for various websites that offer demonstration accounts for free. This would be the best place to go to get your education in trading forex.

Always ask questions. Thats the only way you will be able to learn this trade. Look online for any free seminars being given in your city. Attend them if possible and learn as much as you can before actually using your money to invest in forex.

A solid forex trading education is critical for making sound trades and the information above will help you go about discovering the right program for you and your goals. - 23309

About the Author:

If you want find out more about getting a forex trading training, then you should check out this website: learning day trading.

Learning Currency Trading (Part II)

By Ahmad Hassam

The most active traded crosses focus on the three non USD currencies (EUR, JPY and GBP). These crosses are known as the euro crosses, yen crosses and the sterling crosses. The most actively traded cross currency pairs are: EUR/CHF, EUR/GBP, EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY, AUD/JPY and NZD/JPY. Crosses enable currency traders to directly target trades to specific individual currencies to take advantage of news or events.

You may notice that the currencies are combined in a seemingly strange way when you look up at the currency pairs. For instance, if sterling-yen (GBP/JPY) is a yen cross, why it is not being also referred to as yen-sterling (JPY/GBP)? The answer is that those quoting conventions were evolved over the years. These conventions have been designed to reflect traditionally strong currencies versus traditionally weak currencies with the strong currency coming first.

The first currency in the pair is known as the base currency. It is the base currency that you are buying or selling when you buy or sell a currency pair. The second currency in the pair is known as the counter currency. So if you buy 100,000 EUR/JPY. You have just bought 100,000 Euros and sold the equivalent amount in Japanese Yen.

So you can say currency trading involves simultaneously buying and selling. This is the most important difference between currency trading and stock trading. In currency trading, going long means having bought a currency pair! When you are long, you are looking for the prices to go higher. It will make you a good profit if you sell at a higher price from that where you bought. You will make a loss if you are long and the price goes down.

Going short in currency trading means selling a currency pair! It means that you have sold the currency pair, meaning you have sold the base currency and bought the counter currency. When you anticipate the price of a currency pair going down, you go short in anticipation of the price going further down. This will make you a capital gain later when you exit your position. In currency trading going short is as common as going long. Unlike stock trading where you had to observe the up tick rule before you could go short. In currency trading there is no such rule.

If you have an open position and you want to close it, its called squaring up. If you are short, you need to buy to square up. If you are long, you need to sell to go flat. Selling high and buying low is the standard currency trading strategy. Having no position in the market is known as being square or flat.

When you open an online currency trading account, you will need to pony up cash as collateral to support the margin requirements established by your broker. A clear understanding of how P&L works is especially critical to online margin trading. Profit and Loss is how traders measure success and failure.

Profit and Loss calculations are pretty straight forward and are based on position size and the number of pips you make or lose. A pip is the smallest increment of price fluctuation in currency pairs. Pips are also referred to as points. Most of the currency pairs are quoted up to four decimal places. Suppose EUR/USD quote is 1.2853. If the price moves from 1.2853 to 1.2873, it has gone up by 20 pips. Pip is the increase or decrease in the fourth decimal digit. - 23309

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. He is interested in day trading stocks and currencies. Learn Currency Trading. First Trade Your Forex Demo Account!