Forex Fortunate 5%

Written by admin on March 20th, 2011

familiarise yourself with the broker’s trading platform, with the explicit understanding that trial trading is not a facsimile of the real thing. It is merely an opportunity to understand the particular Order Management System’s processes and protocols.

The goal of trial account platform practice is becoming comfortable and confident when executing your orders, before risking your funds with live platform trades. Trades are often incorrectly entered because of careless keystrokes, and lack of attention to basic trade execution procedures. Always check your trade before you place it – instrument, amount, and order.

Charts
The chart is an essential trading aid. It displays the market’s past, present, and possibly hints at its future.

Technical Tools
Studies that once cost large sums are now freely available on the charts provided by most brokers. Each of these trading tools may be useful, however, in most instances covering a chart with a maze of overlays and studies serves no useful purpose. Again, it is a matter of research and personal preference.

Quotes
When you execute a Forex trade you are effectively buying the base currency, the first one in the cross, and selling the quoted currency, the second in the cross. The currency pair or cross is the instrument you are trading. When you buy the instrument you pay the ask price: when you sell you pay the bid price.

You do not have to delve too deeply to read stories of chart quotes and executed prices differing, especially in volatile markets. Stories are far from rare of the same trade being stopped out or not filled by one broker, yet not closed or filled by another. The issue of slippage is a matter between you and your broker.

A stock exchange quote emanates from a specific central source; the Forex is not a centralised market. A Forex dealer’s charts reflect a variety of price sources, and sometimes motivations. Accordingly, prices may vary, sometime quite significantly, because your broker’s third party charts display indicative price, not necessarily the broker’s executable price.

So-called live streaming Forex prices, provided by firms like Reuters, play a critical role in the Forex price discovery process. In a way these streaming prices are an aggregated indication of current Forex quotes. At source prices are often manually entered and thus subject to human error, and at several points of distribution they may be manipulated.

Indicative prices signify or imply current Forex quotes and past fluctuations. Virtually all reputable charts will reflect the same trends and be quite closely aligned, nonetheless, they indicate a past bid/ask price, not necessarily a broker’s execution price, though they can be identical, or nearly so.

The more sources used the greater the accuracy of the price – EUR:USD and USD:JPY crosses are widely traded and reported, and tend to be closely aligned across charts. Similarly, quotes tend to be more accurate during the relevant sessions, e.g. the EUR, GBP and CHF during the London session, the JPY, AUD and NZD during the Asia/Pacific session.

The Spread
An obvious conclusion is that the lower the spread the lower the cost to trade. There are brokers who offer raw spreads and charge a fee, so it is not necessarily that simple.

Some brokers offer fluctuating spreads, others fixed. Both appeal to traders for different reasons. The former because it may be a more transparent picture of current market liquidity and volatility, the latter because traders know what the spread will be, supposedly irrespective of liquidity and volatility.

Money Management

A sensible money management plan is essential for disciplined trading. Effective money management is the basis of Forex survival and profitability. Traders who do not take this requirement seriously probably have low Trader IQs and are merely gambling.

Objectively review the discretionary components of your Money Management plan.
• How much capital can you risk, and by risk we mean afford to lose?
• What margin percentage of your usable account balance do you risk on each trade?
• What leverage ratio do you apply to the margin?
• How much profit do you expect to make?
• Calculate your profit goal, as an annualised return on your account balance – is it realistic?

Only about 2% of Forex traders achieve an annual return exceeding 100%, an extraordinary result by any rational expectations.

Capital
The funds you use to trade Forex are at considerable risk. The extent of your risk depends on your choices; i.e., the broker you choose and the trades you make. Only risk money you can afford to lose when trading Forex.

That said, not having sufficient capital is a significant reason for such high self directed trader attrition rates. An under capitalised account dramatically reduces the probability of success, making it extremely difficult to implement prudent money management.

This is an approximate guide for the recommended capital to open various Forex accounts.
• Standard Account              ,000 to 0,000+
• Mini Account                       ,000 to ,000+
• Micro Account                     ,000 to ,000

Be patient. Rather than rushing to open an undercapitalised account wait and accumulate the maximum possible capital you can risk.

Equity
Adding the used margin to the available, or useable, margin determines account equity. When there are no open positions the Account Balance, Equity and Available Margin are the same.

Margin
Initial Margin is the amount put at risk to collateralise a trade and is expressed as a percentage of the trade’s total value. The initial, or used, margin is the security deducted from an account, and is often leveraged. Brokers usually aggregate initial margins to fund their own trading.

What remains is the available, or usable, margin. This fluctuates with a trade’s value. When the remaining margin falls below the broker’s acceptable margin requirements open positions are liquidated by a margin call.

Please carefully read broker’s margin policies, and ensure you fully understand the different margin terms, especially the margin call policies. Where a broker has a margin policy of 1% a leverage ratio of 100-1 is available, 2% equates to leverage of 50-1, 2.5% to 25-1, 5% to 20-1, and so on.

We recommend Self Directed Trader margin of 1% to 5%, subject to the leverage chosen, positions open, and market conditions.

Leverage
One compelling reason for the rapid expansion of online Forex trading is the high leverage offered by many brokers. The National Futures Association defines Leverage as: “The ability to control large dollar amounts of a commodity with a comparatively small amount of capital.”

Leverage is expressed as a ratio, e.g. 10-1, and is unquestionably an appealing notion. We open a ,000 account with a Forex broker offering 100-1 leverage, and willing to instantly lend us ,000. What a deal. Voila! We now have a 0,000 trading bank, and can make 100% return on our capital with only a ,000 profit. Sounds easy enough. Consider this, we will lose 100% of our capital with a ,000 loss, and that may only take a handful of pips if we are silly enough to trade with preposterous margins and leverage.

Trading in this manner dramatically increase the risk of loss, and is basically suicidal. Those using such strategies are known in some brokerage circles as wood ducks – easy prey.

Leverage is a useful tool for those who know how and when to use it. That means judiciously, after you begin to consistently take trading profits. Think of leverage as a scalpel, not a chain saw.

Most professional Forex traders use leverage between 2-1 and 5-1. Self Directed Traders may claim this is unrealistic for those with small accounts, and some may want to use leverage up to 20-1 in conjunction with a sensibly low margin. This is not totally unreasonable, however, we must also realise the smaller the capital the greater the need to protect it.

When you have become a profitable, confident trader you may chose to review your Money Management Plan.

Happy Trading
Forex Signs
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