Showing posts with label trade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trade. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Are You Calmed and Relaxed When You Trade?

There have been times when I made mistakes under pressure, but I don’t recall ever cracking under pressure. By that I mean I didn't panic, but I have come close. Being short soybeans when Chernobyl blew up was probably the closest. I've made huge errors in conduct - once I sat and lost $45,000 in a matter of minutes because I tried trading while teaching a student at the same time. Lesson learned: Never trade and teach at the same time. Stay focused on one or the other. I once woke up to a margin call of $21,000+, but it turned out in my favor. I had erroneously left a 5-lot in the market overnight - thinking I was flat - the result of sloppy housekeeping.
Nevertheless, I have learned how to make trades in a relaxed, but focused way. I don't put unnecessary pressure on myself. I don’t let myself get stressed out - it’s simply too costly to do that.
I don't believe that I have to be successful on any one trade; I keep my focus on the big picture. I don't believe I need to be right. I don't try to impose my will on the market. And I definitely don't try to predict the future of price movement. The market is the market - it does what it wants to do.

What I do is to closely observe market conditions and movement, and make up a detailed plan of attack. I trade what I see, allowing the market to take me where it wants to go. I make a serious effort to stay calm and relaxed, and ready to act on whatever happens next.
Once I have a trading plan, I follow it. I do not doubt or second-guess my plan. I meditate on my plan and picture myself carrying it out successfully, before I ever enter a trade. I really believe in mental imaging as being an important activity.

[ForexGen Money Manager]

An individual who is responsible for the entire financial portfolio of another individual or another entity. A money manager receives payment in exchange for choosing and monitoring appropriate investments for the client.

Benefits of being a Money Manager with [ForexGen]:

* Providing three different commission sources.
* Weekly commission plan.
* Easy & fast commission withdrawals.
* Fixed percentage of the profits.
* P = k * D “P=Profit, k=Variable Parameter, D=Deposits”

The money manager gets a fixed percentage of the profit previously agreed upon with the client for managing the client funds as a bonus feature.

The most competitive trading conditions:

* 2 pips spread on six currency pairs.
* Providing online trading services without maintenance margin, margin call and no automatic closing of positions below the initial margin on weekdays for accounts with initial equity of up to $1 million US. The margin level have to be recognized Fridays at 23:00 CET and before public holidays.
* Leverages up to 1:200 for accounts up to $1 million US.
* Liquidity and 24/5 availability are the characteristic factors of the Forex market compared with other financial markets.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Understanding Spreads | ForexGen


What Is A Spread?
FIRST, spread is the difference between the ask price (the price you buy at) and the bid price (the price you sell at) quoted in pips. If the quote between EUR/USD at a given moment is 1.2222/4, then the spread is 2 pips. If the quote is 1.22225/40, then the spread is 1.5 pips.
SECOND, it is how brokers make money. Wider spreads result in a higher ask price and a lower bid price. As a consequence, you pay more when you buy and get less when you sell, making it more difficult to realize a profit
Brokers don't typically earn the full spread, especially when they hedge client positions. The spread compensates the market maker for taking on risk from the time it executes a client trade to when the broker's net exposure is hedged (possibly at a different price).
Why Are Spreads So Important?
Spreads affect the return on your trading strategy in a big way. Probably more than you think. As a trader, your sole interest is buying low and selling high. Wider spreads means buying higher and having to sell lower. A half-pip lower spread doesn't sound like much, but it can easily make the difference between a profitable trading strategy and an unprofitable one.

Using Moving Averages | ForexGen


You can make money with individual stocks no matter what the market is doing.But it is important to look at some key measurements. One of these measures is the moving average. Short-term moving averages help gauge the short-term direction of the market, while longer moving averages take a big picture view.For example: if a stock breaks the 200-day moving average on its way down, that's generally thought to be bearish, and the longer-term trend could be reversing. The 200-day moving average can also act as support. If a stock comes down, but stops at the major moving average and then starts moving higher from there, it can act as a firm underpinning of support for the stock.Looking at the 50-day moving average can be quite useful as well. It's more of an intermediate snapshot of the price trend and is more sensitive than the longer-term 200 day. A rising moving average with the price trading above it is bullish, while a descending moving average with the price trading below it is bearish. More short-term signals can be seen with the 10- and 20-day moving averages. Moving average crossovers can also be valuable. When the quicker moving average (50 day for example) is above the slower moving average (200 day), this is thought to be bullish. Likewise, when the shorter term is trading below the longer-term moving average, this is thought to be bearish.Using a screener can be helpful in finding stocks that meet this criteria. Of course, moving averages alone don't tell the whole story. But a company with solid fundamentals while also trading above these momentum indicators can help you find stocks bucking a downtrend or confirming an uptrend.The screen that I'm running today looks for stocks trading above their short term (10 and 20 day), intermediate term (50 day) and long-term (200 day) moving averages. I'm also demanding that their current quarter earnings estimates have been raised within the last 4 weeks (or at the very least, not lowered); their average broker rating has been upgraded (or at the very least, not downgraded): and they have a Zacks #2 Rank or Zacks #1 Rank (Buy or Strong Buy).

Monday, September 1, 2008

What Is Forex?


The foreign exchange market is the "place" where currencies are traded. Currencies are important to most people around the world, whether they realize it or not, because currencies need to be exchanged in order to conduct foreign trade and business. If you are living in the U.S. and want to buy cheese from France, either you or the company that you buy the cheese from has to pay the French for the cheese in euros (EUR). This means that the U.S. importer would have to exchange the equivalent value of U.S. dollars (USD) into euros. The same goes for traveling. A French tourist in Egypt can't pay in euros to see the pyramids because it's not the locally accepted currency. As such, the tourist has to exchange the euros for the local currency, in this case the Egyptian pound, at the current exchange rate.
The need to exchange currencies is the primary reason why the forex market is the largest, most liquid financial market in the world. It dwarfs other markets in size, even the stock market, with an average traded value of around U.S. $2,000 billion per day. One unique aspect of this international market is that there is no central marketplace for foreign exchange. Rather, currency trading is conducted electronically over-the-counter (OTC), which means that all transactions occur via computer networks between traders around the world, rather than on one centralized exchange. The market is open 24 hours a day, five and a half days a week, and currencies are traded worldwide in the major financial centers of London, New York, Tokyo, Zurich, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and Sydney - across almost every time zone. This means that when the trading day in the U.S. ends, the forex market begins anew in Tokyo and Hong Kong. As such, the forex market can be extremely active any time of the day, with price quotes changing constantly.

What Is Forex?

The foreign exchange market is the "place" where currencies are traded. Currencies are important to most people around the world, whether they realize it or not, because currencies need to be exchanged in order to conduct foreign trade and business. If you are living in the U.S. and want to buy cheese from France, either you or the company that you buy the cheese from has to pay the French for the cheese in euros (EUR). This means that the U.S. importer would have to exchange the equivalent value of U.S. dollars (USD) into euros. The same goes for traveling. A French tourist in Egypt can't pay in euros to see the pyramids because it's not the locally accepted currency. As such, the tourist has to exchange the euros for the local currency, in this case the Egyptian pound, at the current exchange rate.
The need to exchange currencies is the primary reason why the forex market is the largest, most liquid financial market in the world. It dwarfs other markets in size, even the stock market, with an average traded value of around U.S. $2,000 billion per day. One unique aspect of this international market is that there is no central marketplace for foreign exchange. Rather, currency trading is conducted electronically over-the-counter (OTC), which means that all transactions occur via computer networks between traders around the world, rather than on one centralized exchange. The market is open 24 hours a day, five and a half days a week, and currencies are traded worldwide in the major financial centers of London, New York, Tokyo, Zurich, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and Sydney - across almost every time zone. This means that when the trading day in the U.S. ends, the forex market begins anew in Tokyo and Hong Kong. As such, the forex market can be extremely active any time of the day, with price quotes changing constantly.