Forex Technical Analysis

As you probably know, the Forex currency exchange is the world’s largest financial market tipping the financial scale at more than 150 times the size of the New York Stock Exchange.

With the growth and expansion of the Internet, this mega-market has become accessible for individual retail traders all over the world.

But it was not always that way. In fact, for most of its existence since 1971; the Forex currency market was only available to international banks, hedge funds, other giant financial institutions and a few of the world’s richest individuals.

For those with the knowledge and the money to access that market, profit potential was exceptional and, presumably, that was one of the reasons, most trades required a minimum investment account in the million dollar range for any transactions in the currency futures or spot Forex markets – both of which exposed you to unlimited risk.

As an investor, you had to have a high risk threshold and you had to continuously monitor the market. If a trade happened to go against you, you could admittance was restricted for so long. Of course, there was the fact that you had to have a huge bankroll in order to play in the Forex currency exchange game. A few years ago, potentially you could lose your entire investment; plus you might get a margin call that could cost you even more. Back then, your downside risk was a very frightening thing.

But these days everyone, including you, can participate in this huge and potentially profitable market, taking advantage of new investment vehicles that give investors immediate, limited-risk access to the world’s huge currency markets. And that only begins to describe the tremendous advantages of investing in the currency markets. A complete list would be a long one, but here are a half dozen of the best reasons the Forex currency exchange is attracting so many investors.

It works great on a part time basis. Since the Forex market is open 24 hours, there are plenty of trading opportunities every day. No large investor can corner the market and control the forex trading. The forex market is too large and too liquid for that. When one currency depreciates there is always another that goes up. So, unlike any other market, Forex cannot crash. Both rising and falling currencies offer you a profit opportunity. Whether going long or short, if your predictions are correct you will make money. You do not have to have a lot of investment capital. If you use the available high leverage properly, you can make significant profits without having a large trading account. No commission charges are the rule rather than the exception for most Forex brokers. They get paid on the spread which keep your costs down.

The Forex currency exchange market is capitalism in its purest form. It is completely driven by supply and demand. That means that it is the competition among major banks of the world, which sets the prices…and that’s a very good thing!

In this article, we have presented some guidelines to assist you in working your way through the many adverts you see for Forex, FX or foreign currency exchange trading. If you will keep these points in mind, it is likely that you will be able to find a trading system or Forex strategy that meets your individual goals.

By: Jamie Doyle

There are some traders who are simply trading the news and these people are known as fundamental traders. However there are also traders who only trade with indicators and patterns on their charts and these people are known as technical traders. Personally, I am a technical trader and I am going to show you how you can better trade the currency using technical analysis.

Below is some stuff you need to know in order to be able to do proper technical analysis:

1) Candlestick Patterns: This is usually one of the most overlook parts of technical analysis. Most traders do not spend time learning how to interpret candlestick formation and this is why they are unable to trade with success. You do not need to be able to know everything about candlestick but you definitely need to know the various type of reversal patterns or continuation patterns so that you can enter your trade more accurately.

2) Forex Indicators: Once you have familiarized with the candlesticks, you need to spend time to learn the features of different forex indicators so that you know which to choose for your trading plan.

3) Decide on Your Type of Trading Style: There are basically 3 main types of trading styles you can adopt.

You can be a forex scalper who enter and exit a trade within minutes and only trade on the low time frame charts like the 1 minute and 5 minutes.

You can be a forex day trader who enter and exit a trade within the same day and you will be trading off the 15 minutes, hourly and daily charts.

You can also be a position trader who enter and exit a trade within days or even weeks and you will be trading with the daily, weekly and monthly charts.

What you decide to become depends on your time availability. If you do not have a lot of time to look at the chart everyday, you should choose to be a position trader as you only have to take a look at your chart every few days because you are trading off those higher time frame charts.

If you have 1 to 2 hours everyday to do technical analysis, you can choose to be a day trader. You can spend one to two hours to do proper analysis and then place your trade on the day.

If you have the luxury to trade anything of the day and you are a impatient person who wants to see result fast, you can choose to be a forex scalper.

Once you decide on the type of trader you want to become, you can then decide on the time frames to use. At this point of time, you can then create a trading plan with your chosen indicators and a set of conditions that you need in order to enter a trade and exit a trade.

For those of you who are new, this can be a difficult task but it is something that is necessary in order to be successful in this field.

By: Kelvin Dee

Forex exchange-rate index is designed to measure how, over time, movements in the dollar will affect U.S. imports and exports. And to do this well, Forex index must also take account of any differences between the rate of inflation in the United States and the rates of inflation in other countries. Suppose that the rate of inflation were 10 percent a year in the United States but only 3 percent a year in Germany. The buying power of the dollar in the United States is falling 7 percent a year faster than the buying power of the German mark.

Now suppose that Forex exchange rate of the dollar declined by 7 percent from one year to the next against the mark. Then German buyers would be getting 7 percent more dollars for their marks; but the decline in the exchange rate would be exactly undone by the greater increase in prices in the United States than in Germany. The number of Mercedes that it took to trade for one Boeing 757 would be the same in the two years. (At least, this would be true on average for many goods.) This means that, when a change in Forex exchange rate simply compensates for differences in inflation rates, the relative prices of U.S. imports (from Germany) and U.S. exports (to Germany) do not change.

Readers let us notify: international Forex trade economists do it differently. One of the most confusing concepts in economics is the way in which Forex rate of exchange between two currencies should be expressed. As we indicate in the article, we choose to express the rate as the number of units of foreign currency that can be purchased with one dollar (e.g., let’s say the yen is trading at 130 yen to the dollar). This approach is commonly used in the media and it squares with the intuitive idea of appreciation or devaluation of the dollar. When Forex exchange as we have defined it goes up (e.g., from 100 yen to 120 yen), the dollar buys more foreign currency – the dollar has appreciated. When Forex exchange rate goes down (e.g., from 100 yen to 90 yen), the dollar buys less foreign currency – the dollar has depreciated.

Unfortunately, this approach is the inverse of the concept that international trade economists focus on when they describe Forex foreign-exchange markets. They define Forex exchange rate in terms of the price of foreign exchange, so the yen to dollar exchange rate is the cost of purchasing one yen with dollars. If Forex exchange rate in our terms is equal to 100 yen to the dollar, the inverse would be $0,01 (one cent) per yen. If the dollar appreciates, from 100 yen to 120 yen to the dollar (dollar purchases more yen), then Forex exchange rate, expressed as the cost of yen, declines in dollar terms, in this example dropping from $0,01 to $0,0083.

The appreciating dollar means that yen purchased in foreign exchange Forex markets are now cheaper to buy with dollars, exactly the concept that trade economists wish to show. But it also means that their definition of the Forex dollar-exchange rate falls when the dollar appreciates! This is very confusing and so we define Forex exchange rate as yen per dollar, rather than dollars per yen.

For those who go on to further studies in international economics, however you, you will find that the trade economists’ definition usually appears in international Forex articles and journals.

By: Nick Larson

The Forex (short for foreign exchange) market or foreign exchange currency market is a world-wide market. It is decentralized and accessible to all: when a tourist in Tokyo buys dollars with yen, they are performing a transaction on the Forex market – just as when a multinational institution converts millions of euros to pounds sterling. This makes it the largest market in the world, rendered volatile by the large volume of transactions. It is also always open, except on weekends.

Many Forex traders only seek to trade a foreign currency against their own, such as companies needing to pay wages somewhere other than where they sell. But a large part of the market consists of currency traders who speculate on movements in exchange rates – in the same manner as those who are speculating on stock prices.

Exchange rates fluctuate due to macroeconomic developments and events and expectations that traders have, in addition to actual cash flows. This market attracts investors because its volatility provides many opportunities for profits (and losses, of course), while allowing the use of hedging instruments as well. A further advantage is that the Forex broker authorizes the use of leverage by allowing that their investors trade on margin.

On the Forex market, currencies are traded against each other by “pairs”, which represent the relative value of a unit of currency, the “base” against another currency. They are usually written by juxtaposing the three-letter codes of international currencies, starting with the base, for example, EUR/USD is the ratio of the Euro against the U.S. dollar.

Like all markets, there is a difference between purchase price and selling price with Forex, called the gap between demand and supply. It is measured in “pips,” the smallest difference in price that a given exchange can offer – and generally equal to one hundredth of a percent. For major currencies, the difference between the price at which one can buy and that at which one can sell is often between one and three pips.

The market is divided into three access levels: at the top is the interbank market, including the largest banks and securities dealers, who generally perceive sharp differences. Smaller banks and large multinational corporations come later, followed by pension funds and asset managers. Traders, who bring up the rear, participate indirectly through brokers or banks, and constitute a growing part of the market through the facilities offered by the Internet.

By: Christopher Shepherd