Trend Trading Forex

Trend Trading Forex

I was an idiot when I first started trading Forex. Like most new traders who eventually lose all their money, I started off as a day trader. I was sitting in front of the computer for 4 hours a day trying to make pips. I was even waking up at 3 AM to trade the London open. I loved the action and the speed of trading on a short time frame but it was very stressful. Not only was it stressful but it wasn’t really profitable. I lost more money than I made and at one point I was just happy to break even.

I remember reading the Market Wizards series of books and reading about Richard Dennis, the guy who created the turtle traders. The turtle traders were a group that Richard Dennis put together after a bet with his trading partner. Richard Dennis believed that anyone could learn trading if they had the right rules. He put an ad in the paper and he taught people from all walks of life how to become traders. Many of the people he taught became millionaires and some are even running their own firms.

One of the core principles that Richard Dennis taught his turtle traders is hot to trade the trend. His philosophy was that price action is the only thing that matters in trading, it is the only thing that is true. Technical indicators aren’t true and predicting where the market will go doesn’t work. Trend traders simply ride the market like a wave. If the marketing is up, they are taking long positions; if the market is down, they take short positions. This sound rather simple but it is psychologically hard to apply when trading. It is difficult to see a trade go against you and knowing that you have to stay in it.

The turtle trading system can easily be applied to Forex because the currency market has some of the longest trends of any market. There are trends that last several years. If you can jump onto just one trade, you can make a ton of money. With this trading system, you will get a lot of false starts and you will often get kicked out of trades because they will turn on you, but it only takes one major trend per year to make you the bulk of your money.

This is the same system that John Dunn uses. He is famous for taking a small investment and turning it into a 300 million dollar fund. His system is always in the market and is always trading. When it gets onto a trend, it stays with it until it ends. There are years when his systems doesn’t make any money and years where it makes a killing. As said, it is psychologically hard to trade like this but for those who can, they will see themselves earning more money, while having to spend less time slaving in front of a computer all day.

Tips to Successful Forex Trading

Tips to Successful Forex Trading

When you start trading on the forex market you may wonder how you can be successful.  There are certain things that successful traders do to ensure that they make a profit with as many trades as possible.  Knowing what these things are will help you in your trading venture.

The first thing you have to do is know your approach to the market.  You need to know what timeframe you are comfortable trading in and the trading strategy you are going to use.  There are a number of different strategies for each timeframe.  You need to use one that you completely understand and that you feel comfortable using.

When you look at your approach you also have to consider the analysis techniques you are going to use.  For short-term trading technical analysis is best while long-term trading requires more fundamental analysis.  Of course, you can mix the two analysis techniques together to get the best view of the market.

The second thing that a successful trader does is monitor and adapts their attitude.  When you are trading it is important that you are patient.  You cannot open a trading position if the market is not right and you cannot force the market to be right.  If you are trend trading then you have to wait for a trend before you open any positions.

You also have to be disciplined when you trade.  All traders are told that they must not let their emotions get the best of them.  When this happens you will trade badly and this can lead to significant losses.  Being disciplined involves following your trading strategy and risk management plan so you avoid these emotional trades.

You should also have realistic expectations about your trading and your trading goals.  Everyone wants to be able to make one big trade that secures their financial freedom and early retirement.  However, this is something that most traders will never be able to do because it is an unrealistic goal.  Set goals that you can actually reach.

The third thing you need to do is discriminate when you pick a currency pair to trade.  The forex market houses all of the currencies in the world, but you should not trade every currency.  You should choose two or three currency pairs to trade.  Doing this helps you keep track of your trades and helps with analysis of the market.

The last thing that all successful traders do is manage all parts of their trading.  This management includes risk control and money management.  With risk control you have to identify and implements methods of reducing risk and keeping your overall risk ratio low.  Money management ensure that you still have enough money in your trading account to trade.

When you are looking at trading on the forex market you have to think like successful traders do.  There are four things that these successful traders do that ensure they make money from their trades.  These things include knowing the market, using limited currency pairs, managing their trading and being disciplined.

What Is Forex?

With the crazy markets of today it is very important for investors to diversify and keep their eyes open to new markets. One of the biggest markets right now is forex. What is forex? it stands for FOR-eign EX-change. It is basically the trading of one currency to another.

Many large corporations and even countries simply need to exchange their local currency for another in order to do business. For example most countries must pay for their oil with us dollars, which means they need to exchange their currency for dollars before they can but oil. Another example is with multinational corporations that need to pay expenses in different nations where they do business.

A large part of the foreign exchange market, however, consists of currency traders. Currency traders basically speculate on which direction currencies will go then they buy and sell currencies in order to make a profit.

On your own you may need a significant change between two currencies in order to make a good profit, however, many currency traders are able to take advantages of even small fluctuations in the market.

One major difference between the stock market and the foreign exchange market is that there is almost no inside information. Most significant news is released to the public through news agencies and therefore everyone can have access to the news simultaneously. This is because the fluctuations result mostly from macroeconomics and monetary flows.

A basic thing to know is that each pair of currencies is considered to be an individual product. Each individual currency is given a three letter code. For example, the code for the euro is EUR and the code for the dollar is USD. So EUR/USD is the price of the euro in dollars.

Another major difference is that the market is always open. Forex operates 24 hours a day five days a week. It operates between banks with banks, banks with brokers, and brokers with individuals like you and I. The market is open 24 hours a day because when one market closes in the next time zone another market is open leaving the possibility to continually exchange, even into Saturday and starting Sunday evening.

This is good if you are an individual trader, because you can work during the day and trade in the evenings. Or if you suffer from insomnia you can even trade at midnight!

If you start out slow you can easily get a feeling for the foreign exchange market, it isn’t as difficult as it seems. However, it is important to start out slow until you can get a feel for the market. Many would be investors try to start out big and end up loosing big! Don’t let greed get the better of you.

If you are interested in entering the forex world, don’t hesitate it can be well worth it. It is surprisingly a very user friendly market and with all of the fluctuations in the world scene there is a lot of money to be made!

Forex Trading Tips To Help You Get Started

Have you ever thought about becoming a Forex trader? You could become a successful trader as long as you are ready to work hard and educate yourself about Forex. Go over the following article to learn more about Forex trading and the efficient strategies you can use to get started.

The best way to become a successful Forex trader is to educate yourself about efficient trading strategies. You can easily learn everything you know about Forex thanks to the Internet. Purchasing educational material is a good option but you need to choose material developed by professional traders.

Practicing with a demo account is an excellent way to get some experience without losing money. You should learn more about different brokers and purchase a demo account from a reliable one. Using a demo account will give you the possibility to make very small investments or to practice on a virtual trading platform.

Start a trading journal. You should record your progress at the end of each trading session. This is the best way to get an idea of how much you are earning thanks to Forex. If you notice that you are actually losing money on the long term, try identifying the mistakes that are costing you money.

Do your best to follow the trend. You will get better results if you limit your risks, for instance by not going against the trend. You should not go against the trend until you have more experience and know enough about Forex to recognize a situation where going against the trend is justified.

Use stop loss orders to secure your profits and limit your losses. You can set these limits when you invest on the Forex market to automatically get rid of an investment once it reaches a certain value. You should have a stop loss order that corresponds to the profit you were expecting and a second that will allow you to get your money back.

Try not to tied up all your funds. Investing all your available funds at once is not a good investment strategy. It is best to invest only a third of your available funds so you are not taking the risk of losing everything you have. If you use leverage rates, make sure you have enough money in your account to cover what you could lose.

Approaching Forex as a quick and easy way to make money is definitely not a good strategy. A very small percentage of traders manage to earn a profit thanks to Forex since a wide majority of users think that Forex will allow them to earn a high income with very little effort. You can significantly improve your chances of becoming a successful trader by taking Forex seriously and taking all the time you need to learn about efficient trading strategies.

These Forex trading tips will help you become a successful trader if you are ready to work hard. Apply the tips you just read and do more research on Forex trading.

Forex Why I Use An Empty Chart

Forex Why I Use An Empty Chart

I am one of the few traders who doesn’t use any type of technical indicators. I trade using a raw candle stick chart with nothing on it. I don’t even use moving averages. How did I come to trade like this? I came to trade like this after losing my money over an over again. The methods that called for using these indicators didn’t work for me and it didn’t fit the way I think and trade. I find that those lagging indicators just get in the way of what truly matters in the market, price.

Price is the only thing that matters when you trade Forex. The only thing you should care about is where was the market, where did price go and where do you think it will go. Trading is not a science and it is far from a solved game. Everyone is using guess work to make their trades. The only difference is that some have advanced computers and mathematicians who create predictive algorithms that help them guess without human subjectivity and others are making uneducated guesses. We will never be able to make predictions like the super computer using banks but we can give ourselves a leg up by using price action.

When the chart is empty, all you have to look at is the flow of prices staying steady or moving up and down. I really enjoy this because it gives you a true picture of the market. People cloud their screens with technical indicators because they falsely believe that they can help them predict the market but this is not true. Just watching the price action is all you need to predict the direction of the market. It isn’t 100% accurate but nothing is in trading.

What are some methods I use to trade without indicators. I like to trade trends and I have created many methods to try and spot when price will go up or down. One method that I like to use that is based on price action is to watch how banks accumulate shares. The accumulation stage of trading is when the price action is a bit choppy. It’s not going to much up or down and it always reverts back to a central trading range. Many traders do what is called range trading during these times of consolidation.

What I like to do instead is follow all the false starts. A false start is when the price action start to make an acute move up or down. Normally when this happens, a banks is either buying or selling. They are also often times trying to fake out their competitors (you and I) to jumping onto a false move. When enough people jump onto  a false move these fake outs gain temporary momentum. The institutional traders know that this  movement in price can’t last so they start to take the opposite side of the trade and when the price corrects itself and everyone is selling our buying off in fear or greed, the institutional trader who started this fight collects a ton of pips.

An indicator could not provide you that type of insight.

Forex Is For Disciplined People

I am not going to focus on the technical aspect of trading in this article. I think that too many people focus on the mechanics of trading and not on the mental side. It is my experience and belief that the mental side of trading is where most people need work. Sure new traders don’t use a proper trading strategy but they also don’t know how to think about the business of trading. They have faulty beliefs that will keep them in a state where they are losing money. Lets fix their head then their trading.

So what do I mean by lets focus on the mental side of trading? What I mean is that trading for many involves too many emotions. These emotions are would causes trader to make bad decisions in Forex. The more bad decision you make, the more money you will lose as a trader. It is my goal to teach traders to think about the game and how to think about each trade. By changing their internal representation of what good trading is first, then we can easily teach them winning trading system that will make them profitable and that will keep them in the black.

So what is good trading and what is bad trading? Most people who find themselves wanting to be a trader do so because they want money NOW. They don’t want to wait the same amount of time that it takes investors to earn money. They want daily, weekly and monthly income from trading. There is nothing wrong with that and I share the same goals. Where I differ from the average trader is that I know that you cannot remove patience from the business of trading. It doesn’t matter if you are day trading or investing.

Not only do these traders want income now, they also want to always be trading. They love the action of trading. My job is to replace their love of trading with the love of making money. Enjoy being profitable more than you love putting on trades. If they could learn this one thing they would lose less money. I also have to teach them that every trade has to be planned ahead of time. I don’t want them making any gut decisions. The big banks use automated trading systems ran by super computers because they know how human emotions are not subjective.

If there is anything to take away from this article it is, focus more on how you think about trading. Do not allow Forex trading to become a game or a source of entertainment. Think of each trade you make as a major business decision that should be well planned and researched ahead of time. What if you are day trading? Of course in day trading your decision have to be made fast but your system will already have things such as lot size, entry point and exiting solves before you sit in front of the computer.

Forex Mistakes That You Should Avoid

Forex Mistakes That You Should Avoid

All forex traders make mistakes, but the successful traders learn for the mistake they and others make.  It is important that you know about some of the common mistakes made by traders so you can learn to avoid them.  One you know what these common mistakes are you will be able to trade around them and lose less when you are trading.

The first mistake that many traders make is averaging down.  Averaging down is a technique that many traders come across where a position is held even when it starts making a loss.  The trader will increase the amounts in the trade and wait for a turn in the trend.  This technique is dangerous and often leads to more losses than gains.

The second mistake that many traders make is pre-positioning their trades before economic news is released.  There are certain economic new reports that affect the way the forex market works.  It is recommended that trades be closed before the news is released because of the fluctuations that can occur.

The mistake that a lot of traders make is thinking that they can predict what the market will do.  There is no way to accurately determine what the market will do in the future.  To avoid this mistake you should never open a position before the news has been released and you can see what the market is doing.

The third mistake that trader make and the second one related to the news is trading directly after the news has been released.  Once the news has been released a trend usually starts.  However, this is often a false trend which reverses before picking up again.  When this happens traders are often stopped out and they lose the edge they had with the position.

The fourth mistake that many new and experienced traders make is to risk more than 2% of their account balance.  It is recommended that you never trade more than 2% of your account as part of you risk and money management.  If you risk more than this when you hit a string of losses you could potentially lose your entire account balance.

When you calculate what 2% of your account is you should include any leverage you are going to use.  While leverage increases the return you may make it also increases what you stand to lose.  You must take the amount of leverage you are using in the trade into account when you calculate what 2% of your balance is.

The fifth mistake that traders make is having unrealistic expectations.  A common myth about the forex market is that you can make money quickly and this is not true.  You should expect a realistic return on your time and the amount of money you are putting into your trading.  It is very hard to make large amounts if you are invest very small amounts of capital.

There are five common mistakes that new and experienced forex traders make.  When you know what these mistakes are you can easily avoid them and be successful in your trading.

This Pocket Drum Machine Is Perfect For On-The-Go Producers

A calculator-sized drum machine.

Teenage Engineering has been creating tiny versions of music producing equipment for a while now as part of their Pocket Operator line, but their latest product offers more flexibility for producers than ever before. The PO-32 Tonic drum machine gets upgrades that allow users to import and export sounds via a standard 3.5mm headphone input or microphone.
Pocket Operator has a wide range of miniature, calculator-sized drum machines available that all come with slightly different sounds, but with the new accompanying Microtonic VST plug-in, producers can make new drum and synth samples they can load into their pocket-sized drum machine.
The drum machine features a small, quirky screen, and it has 16 buttons to assign sounds and patterns to, two knobs for adjusting pitch and modulation and 64 patern chaining. It runs on two AAA batteries.
Teenage Engineering offers a wide range of pocket drum machines, and the PO-32 is the most expensive at $90. The Microtonic VST is an additional $99 but if you pre-order them together the cost is only $140. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until the first week of April to get your hands on the PO-32.


Glitch Based Graphic Dances To Michael Jackson

It’s an increasingly bleak world, we need to find joy. We need to find music. Yes, we need to look… to this computer student’s video game graphic glitch being set to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. Beautiful. Brilliant. A new movement is at hand. A movement of dance.

Yes friends, gather round this mad creation, the digital world’s imperfection put on display as you gaze upon the unknowable, the unforeseeable — look into the eye— of a tiny digital mutant hitman wiggling along with movements!

Friends, what a delight, what a thrill, what a miserable metaphor for everything human in our lives! For are we not just shaking digital beings trying to make the most out of it!?

What a time to be alive. And also be a digital dancing man in someone’s student film. What a time.

What did you think of the video? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter at @WhatsTrending.

Airline Travel Needs More Kitties and Puppies

Since a lot of us are dealing with stressful airline travel on our way home for the holidays – an estimated 38 million of us – we’ve got a couple of stories about adorable animals in airplanes and airports to help us out.
The first one is about a cat that somehow got out of its carrier on a Delta plane and encountered a flight attendant who was NOT happy to see it.
The video shows the thoroughly grumpy woman shooing the cat out of the attendants’ area and calling over the intercom for the animal’s owner to come claim it. “I need them to come and get their pet,” she announced curtly, telling other passengers to wake them up if necessary.
United Airlines understands that some of us would enjoy meeting a pet during our travels, however – they’ve started a program to bring dogs to airports to help travelers relax.
More than 230 trained comfort dogs are currently hanging out at the airport in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Neward and Washington – so keep an eye out for them if you want cuddles.