Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Inside Bar: A Short-Term Trading Pattern

By Chris Blanchet

Many investors who are just learning technical analysis will make short-term investment decisions based on reliable, longer-term patterns such as the head and shoulders top discussed elsewhere in this series. The difficulty with such a strategy is that short-term trades based on long-term patterns will typically not yield the desired gains.

The inside bar pattern is one such pattern from which investors can take short-term cues. This pattern indicates a possible change in investor sentiment in the short-term. In other words, if the overall trend has been heading down, the inside bar often indicates a reversal in that trend.

Spotting an Inside Bar

Investors who are just learning technical analysis might have a tough time identifying the inside bar. Explained (our website has a diagram), the inside bar pattern consists of a taller bar (wide trading range) followed by a shorter bar (tighter trading range). The shorter bar will fall within the same range as the preceding bar.

Confirm The Pattern

When it comes to using the inside bar to commit to a trade, investors should seek additional confirmation through additional analysis. This step is often overlooked when investors start learning technical analysis. Other analysis includes fundamental data for the security, sector and market, as well as technical data such as support and resistance levels and momentum.

When it comes to analyzing the inside bar pattern, investors will achieve better trading results from this pattern when the inbound trend is steeper. Additionally, investors will want the first bar to be longer, which suggests the inbound momentum has climaxed. As for the second bar, the narrower the better as this indicates that the reversal will be more dramatic.

Lastly, investors should notice that volume on the smaller bar is lighter. This suggests a more balanced trading activity.

When it comes to learning technical analysis, investors should remember that there are many other indicators that need to confirm their trade decisions. As well, there are plenty of specialized software programs available to make simple buy and sell recommendations. - 23309

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Forex Trading Strategies That Work

By Fred Todle

The forex trading business has become one of the most sought-after home-based businesses. There are however, some misconceptions regarding what it is and how it worked. It is possible for some to view trading in forex the same way they view stock trading. There are a few similarities but by and large they are very different and diverse from each other. Forex trading is the trade in currencies and involves exchanging one currency with another.

The concept behind forex is pitting currencies against one another with the hope that their price will fluctuate enough to make a profit. In the forex trading business, one currency is purchased with the hope that it will go up in value in comparison the one we are selling. Forex trading has become one of the best ways to make money for both large and small corporate entities including individuals.

Forex trading used to be conducted mostly by banks and large financial corporations trading across the globe. Regular people were more or less excluded from this because of the high initial amounts required to get into the business. The forex trading industry moves over $4 trillion dollars every single day and is therefore one of the most lucrative financial ventures one can ever get into. But nowadays,it is not uncommon to see ordinary people trading in forex. This is because of expert tutorials, forex training and the utilization of various forex strategies to make it easy for anyone to trade.

Because of the sheer volume of currency traded daily, only large multinational banks and enterprises were involved in trading. These employed sophisticated tactics of reading forex signals to predict current events and how they would weigh in on the price of forex. Their skill was so sharp when it comes to predicting that major banks practically set the price for forex trading.

Ordinary people like you and me are now profiting in forex trading. This is largely because there is a lot of free information online and offline pertaining to forex strategies. Special software has also emerged that has drastically reduced the learning curve and has also facilitated expert trades. The risks has also been severely reduced to the extent that one can start trading with only $50 dollars.

With special software, it is now possible to participate in expert trades regardless of your level of expertise. This is because the software actually guides one. Perhaps one of the best advantages of forex trading software is the fact that it can also work in autopilot. This means trades can be placed with a click of a button even when the trader is not actually next to the computer. One downside is that sometimes because of lack of knowledge the person can end up spending a lot of time next to their computer. There is also the potential for losses especially if one has not become acquainted with the intricacies of predicting. Forex signals are the ability to translate signs and interprete them in regards to the price of forex. - 23309

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