Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Forex Signals: Effectively Using Forex Signals to Maximize Your Forex Trading Profits

FOREX trading has some shortcomings; one is the fact that you have to spend a great deal of time scrutinizing the market. Indeed, you may have to spend many hours at your PC, keeping your eyes peeled for entrance and exit situations that will be helpful in your overall investment strategy.

It is possible to utilize automated orders. Limits and stops prevent eye strain by letting you have some time away from your monitor, secure that any potential for loss is minimal. However, you can also lose out on prospective gains, if such orders, in your absence, take effect sooner than you’d like.

To minimize the risk of automated orders, and yet still get away from your desk, a FOREX signal service may be helpful. Someone else does the market watching and analyzing for you, and the results are sent to you directly, by email, cell phone, pager, etc. Such services aren’t free; usually a monthly or annual subscription is required. However, some brokerages have integrated such services into Forex trading software which sends signals to you by screen “pop-up” messages, or by the other direct methods already mentioned.

FOREX signals are usually only to be had in a restricted quantity of currency pairings. Most frequently, one of the following will be offered: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, or USD/CHF. However, other such duos may be offered by certain specialty services.

A high level of technical market analysis is generally required for FOREX signal creation. Most services utilize a mix of indicators to recognize primary trends and entrance/exit signifiers. Subscribers are then given the option of exercising or foregoing a trade based on the results; some companies may even give you the ability to place trade orders that can be exercised by an analyst without consultation with you, to give you even more freedom from having to monitor the markets – or even the signals – yourself.

A variety of signals are possible as the results of the analysis of currency charts. A Simple Moving Average (SMA) signals to buy if the price for the specified currency moves higher than the line indicating the average price, or to sell if the price goes below the line.

A Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) study also has a signal line where “buy” is indicated if the price goes above, or “sell” if the price goes below, the line.

Market interest may be found using indicators of volume. Especially near the market low, high volume tends to signal that a new trend is beginning. Conversely, low volume may signal that investors are unsure of the wisdom of purchase at this time. The possibility of market change may be signaled by a variety of different indicators.

The utility of such signals can be reinforced with a mixture of additional indicators from a variety of sources. Such a combination provides insight into market behavior that can be fairly dependable. Of course, nothing is 100% certain – if such signals were absolutely reliable, we’d all be rich. No respectable service will ever guarantee absolute success. However, a particular service’s result history can be a good indicator of whether or not you can rely on their currency trading advice being useful to you in the future.

Subscription services that provide such data typically cost between $50 and $200 per month. You may find that the cost outweighs the benefits, or you might find that your profits make the information worth the price. Such data can never take the place of true knowledge, however; signals are simply a form of guidance. If you lack the basic tools to use the information provided, such a service will probably be useless to you until you can obtain some additional training.

By:
Ron Henson

The Forex Mini Account - The Best Way To Start Off Trading Forex On Low Capital

A lot of people assume that forex trading will require a huge capital base. As a result, they would instantly decline to entertain any proposal to start trading in forex, preferring to remain with trading stocks and shares which is more affordable. This is simply not true, because in forex trading, you can start off with minimal capital when you utilise a forex mini account.

There are four main advantages of a Forex Mini Account.

1. Low Minimum account size

$300 will allow you to start a forex mini account. This is affordable for most people to start off with in forex trading. When you consider forex trading as a business, there are very few businesses costing only $300 as a startup capital offering lucrative prospects of earnings within a very short time.

2. High leverage

You can get leverage of 200:1 In the mini forex account, there is a small margin deposit required fixed at $50 for per lot traded. This amounts to a stunning leverage of 200 to 1. One of the key factors to accelerate profits is to use trading vehicles of high leverage, and a forex mini account certainly meets or fulfils the definition of high leverage.

3. One pip is equivalent to $1

Trading in pips allows the new forex trader to scale down his risk. With such a low denomination, the trader is able to deal with forex trading with less pressure and more discipline. For example, a 20-pip floating loss is approximately $20, so that if you have a 20-pip sudden move against the direction of your trade on a 100K account, that is translated into a $200 floating loss. In every transaction, by using a Mini account, the trader does not end up with a total loss as he loses only a small amount on every losing transaction. This allows him to follow his trading strategy in a disciplined manner.

4. A smaller trade size

The mini forex account trades in smaller contract sizes of 10,000 units which is 1/10 th the size of the standard account. This smaller trade size allows traders an opportunity to trade live with less overall risk. As a result, a beginner can transit or move into forex mini trading quickly from paper trading. While the standard lot is 10,000 units, the beginner trader can increase trading to more lots or units as he gains experience and confidence, and as his profits increase as a result of disciplined trading.

One hidden benefit of trading the mini forex account is that traders can become familiar with the quality and also the reliability of the forex trading platform or trading station of his broker. This is because the forex mini account utilises the same state-of-the art trading software as that for normal sized forex trading.

Mini accounts are recommended for traders with account balances of less than $10,000, allowing them more trading opportunities without over leveraging their account and hence get more staying power in the market.

We will discuss how you can exploit these features of a forex mini account to your advantage in Part #2 of this article so that it is easier to earn a consistent income trading on low capital and lower risk.

By: Peter Lim ,CFP