Custom Search

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Online Forex Trading - Beginners Guide

By Oliver Turner

When it comes to forex trading, understanding the terminology and the forex trading strategies before you begin is vital. There are many web based companies that provide online forex trading tutorials that revolve around real time forex trading. Using a forex tutorial will give you the beginner knowledge you need to take part in trading forex.

After you have completed your forex tutorial there are some basic forex trading tips that all beginners will find useful. The most important thing to remember when trading forex and the most important forex trading strategy is to remember to always place stop loss orders. Using this strategy in your online forex trading will help to prevent and limit your losses.

The next important step for online forex trading is to take profit orders at the same time as placing your stop loss orders. This is done by using the OCO order function that is available with most online forex trading systems. Take profit orders work on the same basis as the stop loss orders and help to eliminate the risk of locking into a profit too early.

Another beginner’s tip is to use a positive risk/reward ratio. This means that you should choose the amount you are willing to make on your forex trade beforehand and it should be more than or equal to the amount that you are willing to loose. This tip is essential if you want to be successful in your forex trading.

It is important for any forex trading beginner to note that successful online forex trading takes patience and is a long term investment. It takes controlled forex trading along with discipline and patience to make your forex trading profitable. Continued research and forex tutorials and guides will help you to learn more and remember as with all successful ventures; knowledge equals power.

Forex Trading from Home

By Bob Saville

Forex is one area of work at home opportunities that seems to be growing a great deal. People essentially buy and sell money in order to make a profit. Of course, it does get a little more detailed than that, but, when push comes to shove, it is the exchange rates that dictate a person's success in this work from home opportunity.

When you want to go on vacation to a foreign country, one of the things on the checklist of 'things-to-do' is getting your money exchanged into the local foreign currency. If you travel a lot, you probably realize that the amount of money that you get back from the currency exchange varies a lot. This is because exchange rates between countries vary - sometimes daily.

You will notice in economic reports and other financial information the exchange rate between major countries is always one of the things that is noted in the report. Work from home entrepreneurs take advantage of these fluctuations in the money markets to make large amounts of income.

As you have probably guessed - 'Forex' is the shortened form of foreign exchange. It can be a lucrative work from home opportunity for a person who enjoys the intricacies of the foreign exchange and financial markets. Large sums of money are bought and sold in foreign currencies in order to make a profit.

A basic forex transaction would look something like this:

" $100,000 of Canadian Dollars is purchased, which would cost someone from the United States roughly $88,000 (based on current rates).

" The buyer holds the currency until a point down the road where they can make money on it. Let's say the Canadian dollars rises against the American dollar by $.03 to $.91 cents. If the buyer of the currency sells at this point, they immediately make $3,000 (minus fees).

" On to the next transaction!

Of course, it is more complex than this, but the underlying principal of buying and selling currency is one that many people have taken to in order to make a nice work from home income. Add in the variety of currencies and the slightest economic fluctuations in a country and it can send a currency skyrocketing or plunging. This is what the forex traders look for.

You can make a nice income in the foreign exchange, or forex trading - with a little bit of know how. With money being traded everyday and fluctuations in currency working very similar to the stock market, you can spend your time working from home by getting into the forex markets.

Basic Forex Trading - What Are Pips?

By Amar Mahallati

If you are a forex trader, everything is usually about pips. For example, you might say, "I am up 35 pips for the day," or, "I made 127 pips on my last trade."

Although this sounds like a lot of fun, it would probably be helpful to explain what a pip actually is.

"Pip" stands for "percentage in point." Sometimes, people also refer to pips as "points." Basically, a pip is the smallest price unit for a currency. It is the last decimal point in every exchange rate or currency pair.

For most currencies, this means a pip is 0.0001. Therefore, if you bought USD/CHF 1.2475 and sold at 1.2489, you made 14 pips.

However, there are exceptions. One is USD/JPY. This currency pair only has two decimal places so that a pip is equal to 0.01.

Pips are very important because they are the basis by which a profit or loss is calculated.

What is a Pip Value?

Even when you utilize different currency pairs and deal with fluctuating prices, the pip usually remains the same. If the USD is the base currency, you divide the pip (which is usually 0.0001) by the exchange rate. If the USD is the quote currency, the pip value is always just one pip, such as 0.0001.

Therefore, if the exchange rate for USD.CHF is 1.2489, it goes like so:

0.0001 / 1.2489 = 0.0000800704

That probably seems like a small number, but remember that with forex trading, you can leverage small sums of money to move large amounts of currency. Therefore, it is entirely possible to make a profit off of such a small number.

For example, if your broker lets you trade with leverage of 100:1, you only need to put up $1000 to buy a standard lot of $100,000. You can see that trading in larger lots boosts the pip value so that your profit or loss is also affected, like so:

If you trade on $1000 in currency, your pip value is calculated thusly:

0.0000800704 X 1000 = $0.08 per pip.

This means that you have a profit of $112.14; not bad.

By the way... With forex trading, you don't invest in a single company or group of companies as you do with stocks or mutual funds, for example. Instead, you're investing in a particular national economy. You are pinning hopes on one nation's economic health versus that of another.

Therefore, fundamental analysis is very important. When trading currencies you need to know about the countries economic situation.

Basic Forex Strategies Explained

By F. Robey

When it comes to successful Forex trading, there are two basic strategies used by the majority of traders: fundamental analysis and technical analysis.

Fundamental Analysis

In fundamental analysis, Forex traders look for causes that might trigger market fluctuations. These may include political activities, financial policies, growth rates and other factors.

As you can imagine, fundamental analysis of the Forex market can be fairly difficult. For that reason, most traders use fundamental analysis only to predict long-term trends.

But a few use fundamental analysis for short-term trades. They review different currency value indicators that are released several times throughout the day, such as:

Consumer Price Index

Purchasing Managers Index

Non-farm Payrolls

Retail Sales

Durable Goods
In addition, there are meetings held that provide quotes and commentary which may affect markets. These meetings, such as those of the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Open Market Committee, and Humphrey Hawkins Hearings, often discuss interest rates, inflation and other issues that have the ability to affect currency values.

Examining the meeting reports and commentary can help Forex fundamental analysts to better understand long-term market trends, and also allow short-term traders to profit from important activities and events.

If you decide to follow a fundamental analysis strategy, be sure to keep an economic calendar that shows when these reports are released. Your broker may also be able to provide you with real-time access to this kind of information via the internet.

Technical Analysis

The more popular strategy for Forex traders is the technical analysis.

Technical analysis of Forex trading includes the use of graphs, charts and other methods of measuring past data to see the indication of the rise and fall of currencies.

In other words, to spot trends.

This is similar to technical analysis for equity trading, except for the timeframe--Forex markets are open 24 hours a day.

Because of this, some forms of technical analysis that factor in time must be modified so they will work with the 24-hour Forex market.

Some of the most common forms of Forex technical analyses are:


The Elliott Waves that interpret market actions in terms of recurrent price structures.


Fibonacci studies which make use of of arcs, fans, retracements, and time zones to anticipate changes in trends.


Parabolic SAR (Stop and Reverse) that allows the investor to follow the dots in either an upward or downward trend until SAR is reached and the trend reverses.


Pivot points of prices used to calculate the point of rotation of the previous period's high, low and closing prices for a security.

Many technical analysts use a combination of these studies to make more accurate predictions. Others create trading systems to identify trends in buying and selling conditions.


Most traders determine a strategy they're comfortable with and perfect it over time. Some focus on one particular study, while others use broad spectrum analysis to help with their trades.

Perhaps the best strategy is to try a combination of both fundamental and technical analysis. This will allo you to make long-term projections and also determine entry and exit points.

In the end, the best basic Forex strategy to use is one with which you are most comfortable (often determined through trial and error).

Your broker can also help you in making the right choice.