Understanding Forex Article Of The Month
Trading with Strategy
by Nicholas H. Bang
Trading successfully is by no means a simple matter. It requires time, market knowledge and market understanding and a large amount of self restraint. ACM does not manage accounts, nor does it give market advice, that is the job of money managers and introducing brokers. As market professionals, we can however point the novice in the right direction and indicate what are correct trading tactics and considerations and what is total nonsense.
Anyone who says you can consistently make money in foreign exchange markets is being untruthful. Foreign exchange by nature, is a volatile market. The practice of trading it by way of margin increases that volatility exponentially. We are therefore talking about a very �fast market� which is naturally inconsistent. Following that precept, it is logical to say that in order to make a successful trade, a trader has to take into account technical and fundamental data and make an informed decision based on his perception of market sentiment and market expectation. Timing a trade correctly is probably the most important variable in trading successfully but invariably there will be times where a traders� timing will be off. Don�t expect to generate returns on every trade.
Let�s enumerate what a trader needs to do in order to put the best chances for profitable trades on his side:
Trade with money you can afford to lose:
Trading fx markets is speculative and can result in loss, it is also exciting, exhilarating and can be addictive. The more you are �involved with your money� the harder it is to make a clear-headed decision. Money you have earned is precious, but money you need to survive should never be traded.
Identify the state of the market:
What is the market doing? Is it trending upwards, downwards, is it in a trading range. Is the trend strong or weak, did it begin long ago or does it look like a new trend that�s forming. Getting a clear picture of the market situation is laying the groundwork for a successful trade.
Determine what time frame you�re trading on:
Many traders get in the market without thinking when they would like to get out, after all the goal is to make money. This is true but when trading, one must extrapolate in his mind�s eye the movement that one expects to happen. Within this extrapolation, resides a price evolution during a certain period of time. Attached to this is the idea of exit price. The importance of this is to mentally put your trade in perspective and although it is clearly impossible to know exactly when you will exit the market, it is important to define from the outset if you�ll be �scalping� (trying to get a few points off the market) trading intra-day, or going longer term. This will also determine what chart period you�re looking at. If you trade many times a day, there�s no point basing your technical analysis on a daily graph, you�ll probably want to analyse 30 minute or hour graphs. Additionally it is important to know the different time periods when various financial centers enter and exit the market as this creates more or less volatility and liquidity and can influence market movements.
Time your trade:
You can be right about a potential market movement but be too early or too late when you enter the trade. Timing considerations are twofold, an expected market figure like CPI, retail sales or a federal reserve decision can consolidate a movement that�s already underway. Timing your move means knowing what�s expected and taking into account all considerations before trading. Technical analysis can help you identify when and at what price a move may occur. We will look at technical analysis in more detail later.
If in doubt, stay out:
If you�re unsure about a trade and find you�re hesitating, stay on the sidelines.
Trade logical transaction sizes:
Margin trading allows the fx trader a very large amount of leverage, trading at full margin capacity (in ACM�s case 1% or 0.5%) can make for some very large profits or losses on an account. Scaling your trades so that you may re-enter the market or make transactions on other currencies is generally wiser. In short, don�t trade amounts that can potentially wipe you out and don�t put all your eggs in one basket. ACM offers the same rates regardless of transaction sizes so a customer has nothing to lose by starting small.
Gauge market sentiment:
Market sentiment is what most of the market is perceived to be feeling about the market and therefore what it is doing or will do. This is basically about trend. You may have heard the term �the trend is your friend�, this basically means that if you�re in the right direction with a strong trend you will make successful trades. This of course is very simplistic, a trend is capable of reversal at any time. Technical and fundamental data can indicate however if the trend has begun long ago and if it is strong or weak.
Market expectation:
Market expectation relates to what most people are expecting as far as upcoming news is concerned. If people are expecting an interest rate to rise and it does, then there usually will not be much of a movement because the information will already have been �discounted� by the market, alternatively if the adverse happens, markets will usually react violently.
Use what other traders use:
In a perfect world, every trader would be looking at a 14 day RSI and making trading decisions based on that. If that was the case, when RSI would go under the 30 level, everyone would buy and by consequence the price would rise. Needless to say, the world is not perfect and not all market participants follow the same technical indicators, draw the same trendlines and identify the same support & resistance levels. The great diversity of opinions and techniques used translates directly into price diversity. Traders however have a tendency to use a limited variety of technical tools. The most common are 9 and 14 day RSI, obvious trendlines and support levels, fibonnacci retracement, MACD and 9, 20 & 40 day exponential moving averages. The closer you get to what most traders are looking at, the more precise your estimations will be. The reason for this is simple arithmetic, larger numbers of buyers than sellers at a certain price will move the market up from that price and vice-versa.
Nicholas H. Bang http://www.ac-markets.com/
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Forex Knowledge
Assuming one has acquired enough market knowledge and acquired one?s proven trading system. This is the second most important element of success in trading, in fact. An edge in any system is based on the quality of info one has, charts being only an info of secondary quality not the best one.
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DIFFERENT CENTERS
The first hour after opening in Tokyo tend to provide the best liquidity of the day and that is when most heavyweight players try to position their way without having much difficulty for the day. Sydney open is more often used as an ambush hour by certain players using the time window till Tokyo open. One rule of thumb is when Yen jumps at Tokyo open the chances are it will continue throughout the day and a few more days. On different point, learn to position trade Yen or any other currency if one is really going to make a big money one day. Fwiw.
One hour from Tokyo open, London open and NY open are the times where most liquidity of the market exist. And that is where market makers are busy setting the trend for the session or even the day. Your observation has a merit because most of the session or daily moves are started either in London open or Tokyo open or NY open. Especially London Open. Other markets are too thin for any good sized traders to make their market views felt. Good luck.
London is just a market place where all sorts of Forex folks flock to buy and sell. It does not have to be London folks. It could be anyone from anywhere in the world with deep pockets who start setting the market direction on a given day. Same goes for NY and Tokyo sessions markets. In any case, Tokyo and NY still relatively small markets when compared to London as far as Forex goes.
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The learning curve for Forex investing is not too steep, but you still must use dilligence when approaching the subject. There are a number of technical issues you must address, and these will take your undivided experience.
Understanding Forex NewsDaily Forex Market Commentary for December 1, 2006Sat, 02 Dec 2006 04:20:00 GMT
GFT Daily Forex Market Commentary for December 1, 2006
Forex Market Commentary by Cornelius Luca, Currencies Analyst, GFT
The dollar made a collapsing decline on Thursday, due to pure spec and rumored corporate orders.
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