Forex Guide, Tips and Strategy

By: Pankaj andy

FOREX or The Foreign Exchange market refers to an international exchange market where simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another is done. Currencies are traded in pairs, for example Euro/US Dollar (EUR/USD) or US Dollar/Japanese Yen (USD/JPY). It is one of the most unique markets of the world because it is almost free from all the external controls and secondly it has largest liquid financial market, with trade reaching between 1 and 1.5 trillion US dollars a day, that is 30 times larger than the combined volume of all U.S. equity markets.

Buying and selling of currencies is basically for two reasons. About 5% of daily turnover is from companies and governments that buy or sell products and services in a foreign country or must convert profits made in foreign currencies into their domestic currency. The other 95% is trading for profit, or speculation.

The FX market is considered an Over The Counter (OTC) or ‘interbank’ market, due to the fact that transactions are conducted between two counterparts over the telephone or via an electronic network. Trading is not centralized on an exchange, as with the stock and futures markets.

Marginal trading, which is speculating the currency prices by getting a credit line, used for trading with borrowed capital. It is important because of the fact that in FOREX investments can be made without a real money supply. This allows investors to invest much more money with fewer money transfer costs, and open bigger positions with a much smaller amount of actual capital. Thus, one can conduct relatively large transactions, very quickly and cheaply, with a small amount of initial capital.

The two fundamental strategies in investing in FOREX are Technical Analysis or Fundamental Analysis. Technical analysis is basically studying the past performance of a particular currency and investing in that currency hoping that history would repeat itself. Simply Stating, This technique stems from the assumption that all information about the market and a particular currency’s future fluctuations is found in the price chain. That is to say, that all factors that have an effect on the price have already been considered by the market and are thus reflected in the price. A Fundamental Analysis is one that analyzes the current situations in the country of the currency, including such things as its economy, its political situation, and other related rumors. Also, it is important to remember that investors must also keep in mind the expectations and anticipations of market participants and not on the above factors alone.

Some of the benefits of FOREX can be listed are that potential profits are enormous relative to initial capital investments. Another benefit of FOREX is that its size prevents almost all attempts by others to influence the market for their own gain. As compared to investing in Equities or currency futures, FOREX provides 24 hour trading, it has superior liquidity, it has 100:1 Leverage and it provides with lower transaction costs and higher profits.

Pankaj andy writes about forex basics topics.

By: Omar Vargas

There are TWO timeless rules of Investing in FOREX:

RULE #1) ~ Cut your losers; let your winners ride.

YOU WILL HAVE LOSING TRADES.

Every FOREX trader does. The key to being a
consistent, predictable, reliable trader is to, at the end
of the day, add up more wins than losses. And, when you KNOW
(based off your trading rules), without a doubt, that YES,
indeed you are, in a losing trade, don’t keep losing money
(lowering your stop loss) just to *prove you are right* or
your rules are wrong (however you want to look at it).

Let’s face it - you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk
purse. You can’t change the spots of a leopard and you can’t
turn chicken poop into chicken salad. The best trades are
usually “right” immediately (the techniques, rules, methods
and strategies you can learn at http://www.1-forex.com
, will be your best indicator for just what a “right” trade really is).

Remember, people have been trading the markets for a hundred
and sixty years. The smart traders know there’s going to be
another trade. Cut your loses short and compound those
winning positions.

RULE #2) ~ Thou Shall Not Trade the FOREX Without the
Placing of a Stop Loss Order.

When you place a STOP order, right along with your ENTRY
order, via your online trade station, you’ve just
automatically prevented a potential loss from “running” too
far.

Before initiating any trade, if you haven’t already figured
out at what point you would be wrong and would want to cut
your loses or, at the very least, reevaluate your position
from the sidelines, then you shouldn’t be putting on the
trade in the first place.

Show me a FOREX trader who doesn’t use stop loss orders and
I’ll show you someone who loses a lot of money.

To make a profit, in the FOREX, a trader (possibly YOU
soon?) can enter the market as a *buy position* (known as
going “long”) or a *sell position* (known as going “short”).

For discussion, let’s assume you’ve been studying the EURO.

Your trading methods, rules, strategies, etc., tell you that
prices will rise during a particular timeframe. So you buy
the EUR/USD pair (or, technically, you will simultaneously
buy euros, the base currency, and sell dollars).

You open up your handy trading station software (provided to
you for free by the online broker), which resides on your
desktop, and you see that the EUR/USD pair is trading at:

< < EUR/USD: 1.3242/45 >>

REMEMBER: the quote to the left of the / (1.3242) refers to
the bid or “sell” price (what you obtain in USD when you
sell EUR). The quote to the right of the / (1.3245) is used
to obtain the ask or “buy” price (what you have to pay in
USD if you buy EUR).

So, since you believe that the market price for the EUR/USD
pair will go higher, you will enter a *buy position* in the
market. For simplicities sake, let’s say you bought one lot
at 1.3245. As long as you sell back the pair at a higher
price, then you make money.

But, no worries. This seemingly elaborate process is
handled, and even calculated for you, via the broker’s
software mentioned above. The chart software and the quote
board are in agreement with all sides of the currencies.

To illustrate a typical FX SELL trade, consider this
scenario involving the USD/JPY currency pair:

REMEMBER ~ Selling (”going short”) the currency pair implies
selling the first, base currency, and buying the second,
quote currency. You sell the currency pair if you believe
the base currency (USD) will go down relative to the quote
currency (JPY), or equivalently, that the quote currency
(JPY) will go up relative to the base currency (USD).

NOTE: while the Profit Calculations, on the Short-sell trade
scenario below, may seem somewhat complicated if you’ve
never been in the FOREX market before, trust us when we say,
“this process is nearly seamless through your broker trade
station (software). We’re just showing you this thought-
process below so you can SEE how a PROFIT occurs even when
SELLING a currency pair.

The current bid/ask price for USD/JPY is 105.26/105.30,
meaning you can buy $1 US for 105.30 Japanese YEN or sell $1
US for 105.26 YEN.

Suppose you decide that the US Dollar (USD) is overvalued
against the YEN (JPY). To execute this strategy, you would
sell Dollars (simultaneously buying YEN), and then wait for
the exchange rate to rise.

So you make the trade: selling US $100,000 and purchasing
10,526,000 YEN. (Remember, at 1% margin, your initial margin deposit would be $1,000.)

As you expected, USD/JPY falls to 104.26/104.30, meaning you
can now buy $1 US for $104.30 Japanese YEN or sell $1 US for
104.26

Since you’re short dollars (and are long YEN), you must now
buy dollars and sell back the YEN to realize any profit.

You buy US $100,000 at the current USD/JPY rate of 104.30,
and receive 10,430,000 YEN. Since you originally bought
(paid for) 10,526,000 YEN, your profit is 96,000 YEN.

To calculate your P&L in terms of US dollars, simply divide
96,000 by the current USD/JPY rate of 104.30.

Total profit = US $920.42