10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Started Trading Forex

Are you thinking about trying your hand at forex? Think you might have what it takes to be successful? Don't fall in the same traps that so many before you have fallen into. Taken from successful and yet-to-be successful traders from all over the world, and some from my own book of forex blunders, here are 10 things most wish they'd known before they started to trade foreign exchange. And if I may be so bold, print this out and hang it right beside your computer monitor!

    Make Money with a Practice Account First. Don't trade a single penny of your own money until you've had ample experience with a practice account. I first started trading forex in college and thought I was smarter than the hundreds of people who had failed before me. I did open a practice account, but apparently thought I was ready to trade for real after a short three days. I've come along way since then, but that mistake cost me a small fortune to a college student. It translated into many missed nights out with my friends as I slowly tried to recoup what I had lost. Had I known what I do now I would have used a practice account for a month or more, gotten confident with my strategy, and wouldn't have lost track of orders that should have been cancelled because they were no longer valid. You won't make money during that time, but you won't lose money either, and that is half the battle. You'll find that out soon enough the hard way if you don't heed this important advice.
    Trading With Real Money is Different. As much as opening a practice account is good, trading with real money on the line is different. Try as you might to trade the same way with real money as you did with pretend money, the reality is that it just isn't the same when you've actually got something at stake. Seeing your account increase or decrease with each pip can be taken in stride when playing for fun, but can be excruciating when it's your money on the table. One way that helped me get over this was to think of each trade as the cost of doing business. For example, a business might spend money on an ad which is either going to make them money or it's not. Either way, the money spent on the ad is gone, so you should have done your research before spending the money to determine whether or not it was a good idea. It's much the same with forex. When you place a trade with a stoploss, consider the money at risk the cost of doing business. If you are not prepared to lose it, then you need to think twice about taking the trade in the first place.
    Forex is a Mental Game. There is a psychology to trading. There are mental and emotional states that can help your trading, and ones that can be extremely detrimental. You don't trade if you have been put-off by a loss and are looking for vindication, nor do you trade when you've come off a win and you think you are invisible. You don't trade when you are bored and you've got an itchy trigger finger, nor when you are tired, having a bad day, and especially not when you are thinking about how much you need the money. Trading with dollar signs in you eyes will result in taking trades that you shouldn't. Mindsets like these are a recipe for disaster. I thought I was a pretty even keel, more pragmatic than most, and level-headed. I didn't think I was going to be vulnerable to the emotional side of the game. Here's what I wish someone had told me: Expect to be emotional, but know that not keeping your emotions in check will be your demise.
    Don't Lament the One that Got Away. Don't sit on the sidelines watching some grand move in the market wishing you were in the trade. Chances are you'll convince yourself to get in and you will get burned. It's like trying to catch a falling knife; let it fall. Watching a pair make a big move that you missed is hard. Expect it to be. It sucks. But watching the pair go and thinking about getting in is like trying to cross a one-way street by looking the wrong way. Watching cars go by and seeing big gaps in traffic where you could have crossed provides no insight as to when you can cross. Just because you are looking at a painful gap in traffic that was definitely would have given you ample time, doesn't mean there's not a transport isn't yards away. Train yourself to look the other way. Look at what's coming, the set ups that are developing, not the ones that already developed. Begin to recognize when you are looking the wrong way down the Forex street, and force yourself to think differently.
    Plan the Trade, Trade the Plan. Have a trading plan before you press that buy or sell button. Know at what price you'd like to get in at, how much you are willing to risk, and where you'd like to see the price go. Know why you are taking a trade, and understand why your stoploss and target price are where they are. If you don't know why you are taking a trade, or don't know ho wot plan a trade, then you've got more learning to do. Take a free course at a site like http://www.babypips.com/. Just be sure to have a really clear understanding of your trading strategy before you begin.
    Have Respect for the Profession. Professional traders spend years in school, have mentors and work with other professionals in the field, and have the most advance tools and software at their finger tips to help them perfect the skill of trading foreign exchange. Don't expect after a month or two of trading that you know even a fraction of what these guys know. If you think you've got it all figured out how you can make a million dollars in the next three months on forex, think again. Trading forex takes some humility. You are a tiny fish in a big pond. Did you know that professional traders have a track record that usually just above 50 percent? That means they make winning trades approximately (on average) between 5 or 6 times for every 10 trades they make. That is because of what is called trade management. Stoplosses and targets are intelligently placed so that while they may lose 50 pips on a losing trade, they make 150 on a winning one. If you can do that 50% of the time you are making money. Don't waltz into the forex world thinking you can change the game, or be that one in a million that can make a few uninformed choices and you get lucky. Don't think you've got it all figured out or have an edge on the guys who make a career out of doing this. It's that slow and steady that wins the race.
    It's All About the Trades You Don't Make. Be a trading snob. Once you understand the basics of any given trading strategy (there are many), be a picky trader. Trade only when all your criterion for taking a trade are met. A big part of trading forex successfully is knowing when not to trade. I can't emphasize this point enough. To be successful at forex you have to first not lose your money, and that means staying out of losing trades. Make staying out of losing trades a priority, this goes back again to being a picky trader.
    Don't Be a Maverick, Be a Follower. To make money in forex you need to be doing what everybody else is doing, when they are doing it. It's not the time to re-invent the wheel, or get ahead of the curve. That will only result in lost pips. It doesn't matter what you know about currency, or the state of a country's economy. What matters is what the market is actually doing, not what it should be doing. Trying to find the bottom or top of a huge move or a trend is more like gambling than trading. If you are tempted to trade like this, do yourself a favour and go to Vegas where at least you can enjoy free drinks and catch a few shows while you lose your money. It's not a good sign if you are trying to time the markets. If you are, you are in need of an intervention. Don't bother placing the trade; take out the middle man and just send a big fat cheque directly to your online broker. The goal is not to get in when the market has bottomed. The goal is to get in when there is solid evidence that the market is going to go in a particular direction. That is rarely 10, or even 100 pips from the low. The key is to get in when there are indicators that it will go, not when you think its' the bottom.
    You're Going to Be Glued to Your Computer. At least chances are you will be. And I am not saying that's a good thing. Just know that this is a real possibility as you try to make money. It's easy to become obsessed with watching the markets, looking for opportunities, and making trades, smart ones and stupid ones. While it is important to put in face time, watch the markets and do analysis, if you are making smart trades you should essentially be able to make a trade and walk away and be OK with whatever happens. Be aware that it's easy to become a slave to forex. Take measures against becoming one by educating yourself on a trading style and strategy that you are comfortable with so that you don't fall that trap.
    Don't Just Learn, Get Help. It's just not enough to read about trading forex or to take a course, free or otherwise. If you want to implement a strategy effectively, it's simple: Get help. Learning and knowing what to do is not enough. You need the help and experience of a forex expert. There are some decent seminars and coaching programs that are available for free, but a good coach is money well spent. It's as close to getting your hand held as it gets. Quality membership sites and coaching programs can cost as little as $50 a month, to well over $200.

There are a number of excellent services out there. If you need some help deciding what type of service might be the best match for your goals and financial situation, visit http://fxexperiment.blogspot.com/p/trading-help-and-support.html.
There are some forex robots that can work reasonably well, but be wary, some are completely ineffective in the long-run and shouldn't be used unless you have good understanding and can look for further evidence that the trades are good ones. As a general rule, be wary of any system that leaves you to your own devices to implement.
Remember that there have been hundreds of forex traders before you that have had their accounts wiped out making rookie mistakes. Don't be one of them. If you take all the things that traders wish they knew before they started trading, then it not only save you a lot of money, it can make you a lot of money while you learn too. Keep this in a handy place, and read it often.

Futures Trading - Is It For You?

What is the Futures Market and why would anyone want to trade it?

Wikipedia's response is: A Futures Market is a financial exchange where people can trade Futures Contracts.Well, what is a Futures Contract? A Futures Contract is a legally binding agreement to buy specified quantities of commodities or financial instruments at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future.

It is important to emphasize the word Contract. The first important difference between the Futures Market and, say, the Stock Market is that the Futures Market trades contracts, not shares of stock. You are not buying and selling a share (or piece) of a company. A Futures Contract is an agreement between investors to trade a specific quantity of a commodity or financial instrument, for example, gallons of gas or tons of wheat.

It is fairly simple to see how commodities work. An airline, for example, agrees to purchase 100,000 gallons of fuel for their planes at the current market price, but does not take delivery until sometime in the future.

That was why Southwest Airlines made money when the price of fuel was $140/barrel and other airlines had none. They had negotiated Futures Contracts with several oil companies years earlier when the price of oil was less expensive, and waited for delivery until 2007-2008. When the price of oil is cheap again, they'll be buying Futures Contracts for delivery in 2011/2012.

That's all well and good, you say, but that's not really using a trading system with trading strategies, that negotiating.

For every Futures Contract, there is a degree of risk. Futures Contracts leverage risk against the value of the underlying asset.

Southwest acquired risk. If the price of crude fell below the price they paid, they paid more than they had to. Simultaneously, they reduced risk because they thought that the price of oil would go higher than their contract price. In their case, the leverage was profitable.

Now look at the oil companies. They reduced risk, believing crude oil prices would fall below the contract price they negotiated with Southwest. They acquired risk because the price of oil rose higher than the contract (thereby losing additional revenue they could have earned). In this case, their leverage was not as good as it might have been.

Here's where you stop and say, I'm not Southwest Airlines. I'm an individual day trader. I don't want to buy 100,000 gallons of crude. How can I trade Futures?

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), where the majority of Futures contracts are traded, realized that individual investors want to trade Futures just like major institutions; individual traders want to leverage their risk as well. They also understand that small investors will not risk millions of dollars on gallons of gas contracts or tons of wheat. Therefore, the CME decided to create an investment environment that would entice individual investors to trade Futures.

Remember, as small investor, you have lots of exchanges available to you for your trading day. You can invest in large cap stocks on the NYSE, tech stocks with the NASDAQ, ETFs - AMEX, and options at the CBOT. To entice investors to trade Futures, the CME created an exchange that made other exchanges pale in comparison.

First off, the CME created emini Futures designed specifically for individual investors. The e in emini means that they are traded electronically. You'll have a trading platform right on your desktop where your trades go to the CME. The mini means that the contract is a smaller version of the exact same contract that the larger institutions trade.

The most popular CME emini is the S&P500. This contract is based upon the S&P500 index that represents the top 500 stocks in the NYSE. The S&P500 index is price-weighted, so some of the stocks have more weight or "importance" than others. (larger companies can move the value of the index higher or lower).

And you believed that trading Futures was just for commodities like corn, wheat, rice, crude oil.

Imagine for a moment that you could trade all the top 500 stocks at the same time. That would leverage risk. If one or two stocks did no perform well that afternoon, you would still have 498 other stocks to trade. No need to pick any specific stock. No reason to spend hours and hours doing research on stocks either. Why? Because you are trading all of them. Of course, it would cost a fortune to be able to trade 500 stocks at one time. Well, buying and selling S&P500 emini Futures Contracts is just like trading all 500 stocks at once, for a fraction of the cost.

How did the CME entice a day trader to trade emini Futures? Look at the advantages of trading emini Futures Contracts. You'll see why many professional day traders gave up other exchanges...

1) The S&P500 emini contract is very liquid, meaning that it has lots of volume, and lots of action. Lots of volume means you can enter and exit quickly, in as little as 1 second. When trading first began in 1997, this contract's trading volume averaged 7,000 contracts / day. Today, it is not uncommon to see 3-4 million contracts daily.

2) This a a completely electronic environment. The CME does not have Market Makers who could refuse to fill your trade like the NYSE. The CME book is FIFO, first in first out. That makes trading on the CME a level playing field for all investors, no matter if you are trading 1 contract or 100.

3) Commission for emini Futures is based upon a Round Trip instead of in-and-out.

4) The distinction between the Bid price (the highest price that a buyer will pay for a contract) and the Ask price (the lowest price that a seller will sell a contract for) is just one Tick on the CME. (The minimum price movement is known as a Tick. The S&P500 trades in 25 cent increments. 1 Tick = 25 cents. 4 ticks = 1 point. Pay out is a bit different... if you gain 1 tick in your trade, the reward is $12.50, with 4 ticks = $50. Compare a 1 tick - Bid / Ask difference without Market Makers with trading NYSE securities where the difference between the Bid and Ask can be significant, especially if quoted by a Market Maker who makes his living on the spread difference.)

5) Trading emini's means that you are only watching 1 chart, the same chart, every day, day in and day out. Wouldn't you become a really hot trader if you only had to watch 1 chart? Stock traders usually watch a basket of stocks at once, flipping charts back and forth for fear of missing some price action.

6) Basically, there is no research to do every evening. Remember, you are trading all "500 stocks" at the same time. You don't need to research this stock and that stock, worrying about pre-announcements, whisper numbers, quarterly reporting, and accounting minefields.

7) Option traders must be able to correctly trade 4 conditions in order to have consistent trading success: underlying price, strike price, volatility, and time decay. Option traders may be right and yet lose on their trade because time was not their friend and the option expired worthless before they could make a profit. Futures traders are only concerned about 2 conditions: an advancing market or a declining market. Time decay is not a problem for Futures traders.

8) Margin rates are favorable to Futures traders. You can trade 1 S&P500 e-mini contract for just $400 / contract on margin. To trade stocks, at a minimum you would need to buy a lot of 100 shares. An average stock is $25/share, or $2500 to get in the door. Here's a major difference. The SEC defines a day trade as a transaction that opened and closed within the same trading day. A "pattern day trader" is any trader who executes 4 or more trades within a 5 day period. To by an NYSE day trader, you must open and have in your brokerage account at least $25,000 (or your account will be frozen for 90 days should you be caught day trading). Day trading Futures has no such restrictions. A brokerage account requires far less capital. Most Futures brokers allow you to open an account with just $2,500. This opens the trading Market to even small investors.

9) You can be a day trader with futures and trade them "long" (expecting the contracts to go up). But you can trade futures short (expecting the contracts to go down). There are bans put on short selling stocks that are less than $5. There are no restrictions on short selling Futures Contracts. Why? These are contracts, not shares of stock. As a day trader, you want to take full advantage of the Market's volatility. If you cannot short, then half of trading is lost to you. If you have to wait until the Market swings back up in order to enter a trade, then on the trading days when the Market is down 200 points, that might be a long wait.

10) If you are trading with an IRA or 401k account, when you exit a trade, you don't have to wait for the trade to "settle" before you use that same money for the next trade. One second after you exit your current Futures trade, that same money is available to you for another trade. With stock trading, when you exit a trade, you may wait as long as 3 days for your money to settle before you can trade with that money again.

11) Because this is Futures trading, rules originally intended for commodities also apply to e-mini Futures. There is a 60/40 split on taxes: 60% of your trade is long term (15% tax bracket) and 40% of your trade is short term (28% tax bracket). Compare this to stocks...hold a stock less than 1 year, it is a short term trade. You must hold the stock for over a year to qualify for long term capital gains. With Futures, your trading is broken down by the 60/40 rule, even if your average trade is 2 minutes or less. At the end of the year, your Futures broker sends you a 1099-b, a 1 liner, a net number of all your trading, not each individual trade. Say you made $50,000. The 1099-b will show $50,000, that is all. Now you claim $30,000 as long term capital gains and $20,000 as short term (60/40 split). Doing your taxes is so much easier as well. Your broker gives you the net entry, not each trade. You make just 1 entry on your tax return. If you trade stocks, you must enter every trade. If you are a day trader and trade multiple stocks, it may take hours to enter all the transactions. With Futures trading, you are done in a snap.

12) Futures trade just about every day, round the clock, 24/6. The only day you cannot trade Futures is Saturday. Many stocks cannot trade off hours, and if they do, it is very light trading. The S&P500 e-mini is traded all over the world. Depending upon the time of day, there is heavy trading on the e-mini. For example, at 2:00am EST, the Japanese trade the e-mini. At 4:00am EST, the Europeans trade the e-mini. If you have insomnia, e-mini trading is definitely for you.

13) Unlike stocks that trade across multiple exchanges and have different Bid/Ask prices, there is just 1 exchange/1 price for e-mini Futures and that is on the CME. That means for e-mini Futures contracts, there is only one price the posted price.

14) Your fills are guaranteed. If you are in a trade and the e-mini price goes through your offer, you get filled. This can be a problem for smaller Forex traders. You may be in a trade waiting to exit with an offer to sell. The Forex contract goes right by your price and you don't get filled. Then you read in fine print on your Forex Brokers contract they do not guarantee fills. The CME Clearing House acts as the guarantor to each of its clearing members, thus ensuring the integrity of trades.

15) When contracts expire on the 3rd Friday of the contract month, futures contracts do not expire worthless. You roll your money over to the new contract, unlike Options that expire worthless.

Barbara Cohen CIO, http://www.Shadowtraders.com, and professional day trader, specializes in teaching students how they can be trading futures with their own trading system and trading strategies. Ms. Cohen has helped hundreds of traders achieve their goals trading. Find out if trading futures is for you by attending one of Ms. Cohen's Free Webinars. Check out my Futures Trading Articles. For more information, call 866-617-2037 today.

Commodity Trading Tips, Golden Trading Tips and Guidelines of Do's and Don'ts in Commodity Markets

Historically, commodity trading has delivered the biggest fortunes worldwide. It originated centuries ago, even before the stock markets came into existence, albeit traded then in a different manner, than as seen today on electronic exchanges. I have often quoted that " If trading in the speculative markets, then Stocks & Equities is for boys but Commodities & Forex is for men" (No gender bias intended). Wealth creation is not a matter of chance. It is a process that needs sharp analysis & a lot of work time. Plan your play and then play your plan. Happy investing!

The similarity in Stocks & Commodities begins & ends at the point that they are both speculative trade markets, but there are a lot many differences in both these markets. Unlike the stock markets where even a highly valued stock could eventually see all it's commercial-value being eroded due to several reasons, the values of commodities may see corrections on a large supply but eventually will only increase again with time, as the inherent imbalance in the demand and supply ratio would always favor demand more than supply due to many influencing factors like growing populations, rising economies and better lifestyles to name a few. All adverse scenarios like geo-political tensions, wars, climatic imbalances, catastrophes and other man-made disasters, etc. which pull the stock markets down generally push the commodities up (especially Agro-Commodities & safe haven instruments like Gold), basically due to the differentiating factor that these commodities generally are also regular necessities to normal life and not simply investment instruments. Most Commodities are traded globally & the price rigging in these is next to impossible unlike, as seen in a lot of equity instruments where manipulation is a lot easier & occurrences of traders getting duped are rampant.

Massive wealth creation is possible through Commodity Trading & Investments if done the right way & with a lot of strict discipline. But if done the wrong way, which is generally the most followed path, there will be enormous losses also. You can start off equity trading or investment with smaller sums of money, but would require deeper pockets to be able to do some modest trading in the Commodity Exchanges & also to sustain the "Mark to Market" volatility in the Commodity Markets. The gains & losses in both also become proportionately big or small eventually. I would now like to highlight some basic Do's & Don'ts for the most frequently seen habits & maybe unknowingly committed mistakes, which I have noticed in most traders & had to address to a number of times as a Market Analyst & a Commodity Market Trade Advisor.

1] Do not trade with hesitance, half heartedly or in over confidence. You may incur small but repeated losses if you are scared of the markets or heavier ones if you are overtly brave and foolhardy.

2] Be patient when your trade positions are moving in the right expected direction to extract maximum gains and ensure the gains by improvising the stop-loss level, time and again. Do not be pessimistic here or else you may book gains pre-maturely & may later repent on exiting early. This may lead to keeping on re-entering the same trade at further levels & repeatedly exit at small reversals in panic, which in turn would erode earlier small gains & also build losses. It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong & that makes all the difference between Winners & Losers.

3] Do not be over optimistic when trades have hit the suggested stop-loss levels and make sure you exit there. You may miss better and multiple opportunities on being stuck in deals gone wrong leading to higher and higher losses each day.

4] Do not discuss your open positions with one and all. This will lead you nowhere and confuse you more, as all would air their own views on the same (whether knowledgeable or not) and many a times, would make your trade decisions seem as foolishly and hastily taken. If only you would have consulted them earlier...

5] Do not develop a tendency of being a Bull or a Bear in these markets. There is only one side to the markets and that is neither the Bull side nor the Bear side - But ONLY the Right Side at the Right Time. Trend is King, so follow it at all times.

6] Realize that you are in a bad situation and exit fast when you need to pray for relief at each rise or fall in a trade which is leading you further in a deep pit towards heavier losses.

7] Follow ONLY one Analyst's or Technical Advisor's guideline at a time, as more guidelines will again create a lot of confusion. You can opt for or look out for an alternate guidance when the earlier guideline proves to be less productive or loss making, but not simultaneously.

8] Be honest to yourself as hoping or praying for something different, than the actual reality or situation is nothing less than fooling your own self.

9] There is NOTHING such as HUGE, mind-blowing and sky-high profit makings overnight, as assured by many to win a prospective client. YES, there are sizeable gains and high returns for a disciplined trader and may return exactly the opposite, if not worse, for the non-disciplined. Do not enter this trade market under any illusions of getting to be a Billionaire overnight. It will never happen. In fact all that you now possess may also be lost.

10] DO NOT BORROW or trade with funds that are not yours or pump in more funds by borrowing to hold on to loss making trades. Trade only with own funds that are spare-able and be prepared mentally in losing even that in totality, in the worst case.

11] Never trade or enter / exit positions in panic. Volatility is a non-separable component of this trade market and will be present most of the times.

12] Do not be a party to rumors or be guided or misled by these. Verify & double-check on the source for genuineness.

13] Stay away from the people who have a habit of saying "I had told you - See now?". These are the very same people who would never put anything on paper or ever trade on their own views- with their own funds, as in reality they do not have any concrete views or knowledge. They are mere sponges on an ego trip, who keep soaking or gathering tidbits of information from anywhere available irrespective of their reliability, put all together and spread the newly formed news. If what they say goes wrong, they would disappear and would be seen nowhere or if found, might now have some stronger views and reasons for why the wrong happened as generally these kind of people are very good convincers & are blessed with the gift of gab. Listening to these characters and their views is very dangerous. As the wise always said: - "Half knowledge is always the most dangerous", "Ignorance is Bliss" and "Blessed are the fully knowledgeable".

14] DO NOT TRY to be the TREND SETTER or the first one to know where a particular trade will turn from. No one can possibly be, except by a sheer matter of chance, the best seller or the best buyer - so why try it? You might end up losing a lot of money and also becoming the laughing-stock for all. Follow the trend and make respectable gains, "Quietly".

15] Do not enter the Commodity Markets with Stock Market trading ideas. Though both are speculative trade markets, there is a substantial difference in both and generally have opposite trading patterns and thumb rules, as elaborated earlier.

16] Providing past performance records is not a mandatory rule for Analysts or Advisors, and the same info (wherever posted) can be misleading, as the same can be manufactured by the end of day to dupe prospective clients. Do not try to look for something that can misguide you & lead you on the wrong path, ending up in losses - money-wise & also confidence-wise. Upon subscription by the trader, the same people showing fantastic results on their websites, but performing poorly in real-time, may later not be available even for a discussion or may later say that "Past performances are not an assurance of any future success". So take a Trial for a fortnight or a month (not for a day or two), do some live paper trading & only trust the live performances. Judge the genuineness of the research quality and real-time trading support only on the basis of live experience and not by past performance records. Most of these records could be fakes. Better to pay for the Trial & come to the right conclusion, rather than loose a lot of capital by trading on faith generated by looking at & getting impressed by the past performances.

17] "Trading without a Stop-Loss & yet making gains is sheer Talent - Not trying such stunts is Intelligence". The stop-loss practice is for your own benefit as this provision has utmost importance and is not provided on each trading ticket by the exchanges, just for the heck of it. If the trades turn & move in the opposite directions beyond entry levels, they might further move very fast in a volatile manner & the losses accrued, in the absence of a stop-loss, can be un-imaginable. There are several things happening across the globe constantly, which affect the price movement, direction & volumes in commodity trading, as basically they move in accordance with demand and supply situations & are also greatly affected by the Geo-political scenarios all over. It is not humanly possible to track each & every occurrence, watch out for economic data's released all around the globe and understand the level of their impacts on the trade movement & direction of all commodities, though you may be constantly updated on most of the developments, most of the time. Many times the reaction or the impact of these developments is so quick & enormous, that large & rapid movements in rates are instantly triggered with high volatility, even before the news on these developments reach all over the world. In such a scenario, you may never know as to what level these trades could go to & the losses (though sustainable by a few) may be very large. These losses are not the only losses that you incur if caught in such a situation - you also miss out on the opportunity, the same commodity is offering, in the opposite direction and also by other trades as most of your attention and funds will now be concentrated and caught up on this particular trade gone wrong. Remember - Growing wealth is important, but safe guarding seed capital is even more important. It's easier to resist & also absorb losses at the beginning than later.

18] Averaging in loss making positions is a practice which is most commonly seen & generally leads to more dangerous losses. This is also recommended by a number of advisors, but I certainly do not recommend it. In fact I strongly oppose it. Remember - YOU are incurring the loss & not your advisor.

19] Putting all your eggs in one or a couple of baskets could prove to be more dangerous for the day trader. Having a wider investment or a trading spectrum would be more effective. All entered trades may never go wrong simultaneously but a stray one or two could and what, if you have traded in only those? It may also happen that the 1 or 2 trades that you have entered into, have moved in the right direction, but have not achieved the expected high results or gains in comparison to the ones you have left out. So it is only advised and not stressed upon - that the trader should take positions in a wider range of trading / investment opportunities to achieve better results.

20] Do not be biased to a particular commodity. Look at all commodities (having healthy trading volumes) only as profit generating opportunities & not at the English name or Social status of the commodity.

21] Always remember -"You cannot use yesterday's ideas for today's business and expect to be in business tomorrow". Be ready to accept and implement change immediately and constantly as "Change" is the only factor that's constant in the world - everything else keeps changing and its meaning is all the more true in these highly volatile and ever-changing market scenarios.

Adherence to the above is sincerely recommended to trade and achieve gains in these ever volatile Speculative Trade Markets.

http://www.moneyline.co.in/
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Rajesh J. Shah's is the Chairman of Moneyline Futures Consultants P. Ltd., which is an Investment & Trade Advisory Organization which offers trading ideas & tips for Trade in all Commodity & Equity Markets. We offer MCX Trading Tips, Gold & Silver Tips, Commodity Trading tips & Advisory Services for Indian, U.S. and other Global Commodity Markets. Get Latest news on commodities, Market data & Live Commodity Rates. Our Forecasts & News updates cover gold, silver, copper, crude oil, agro commodities, Commodity Trading & a plethora of other factors affecting the price, movements & direction trend of precious metals & other commodities in the commodity trading markets. Moneyline offers valuable insights to both investors and traders globally, in Gold, Silver, Copper, Crude Oil & other Commodities traded on the exchanges, with early info as to where they are headed directionally.
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Trade Money Management

Here come the non-glamorous hard working nuts and bolts of trading, trade money management but none the less important.

How to manage your risk.

You see it does not matter how perfect you think your strategy is at some point in time it is going to go wrong. "Not mine" you might be saying to yourself. You might think that you have the perfect system that no one has ever thought of before. You might have back tested it till the cows come home and traded a demo account for months. It works, It works, It works! Oh and by the way you might think it's new but you can bet your bottom dollar somebody somewhere has thought of it before.

So you start live with your own hard earned cash. At first all looks great but then some sad day it doesn't. It all goes wrong and that last trade was enough to wipe out all your previous gains and then some.

If you do not have your trade money management in place you might win 9 out of 10 trades but the 10th trade will lose you more than the previous 9 winning trades. I see it happen all to many times. There are three things you need to be thinking about and we will be covering them all here soon.

What happens when my strategy goes wrong?

Having a stop order is an important yet simple way to make sure you do not over expose yourself to the market. We will never go into a trade thinking it will go against you but there will always be a time when it does. So our advice will always be "remember to place your stop loss orders" They will get you out of so much trouble, protect your capital and give you peace of mind. So it's worth saying again "place those stop orders at the time of placing your trades".

There are three types of stop order that you might think about.

1. The normal stop
2. The guaranteed stop
3. The trailing stop

All three have them plus point and depending how you look at things will depend on which one will be right for you. Let's take a look at what the differences are.

The normal stop:

When you place your trade the stop will be a point on the chart where you have planned to close out of the trade, therefore risking no more past that point. If the market starts to move against you and this point is hit your trade, with you losses, will be stopped and the trade will be closed. This means you have more control of your loss instead of just blindly leaving the trade and your account open to a greater hit. Sounds sensible right? You will be amassed at the amount of traders who think they can do without stops. They don't tend to spend that long trading as their account gets burnt very quickly.

The guaranteed stop:

The difference from the normal is small and will cost you a little too. Normally in the form of a little extra on the spread, a few more points on either side of the bid/offer price but some might say it's worth it. The normal way a trade is stopped out is seen in the example above. The market starts to move against you, your stop loss order is hit at the exact level you have stated and your trade is closed. The market though does not have to work like this. There is nothing to say that it has to move up or down in an orderly faction. If for example there is some unexpected news the market might "gap" in either direction especially after the weekend when the market has been closed. It tends not to happen as much to the forex as it does with the stock market but there is still a chance that you can be caught out by this. The way to protect yourself from this would be to use a guaranteed stop which would close your trade at the point you have chosen even if the market gaps pass this.

The trailing stop:

This does exactly what it says. You set where you would like the stop order to be and if the market moves against you it will stop you out at that point. If on the other hand the market moves in you favour and your trade goes into a profit then the trailing stop moves with it locking in some of your profit, good way to protect some of your profits by locking them in as early as possible.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the market might somehow know where your order is placed and move to stop you out of trade, so therefore don't set you stop orders. It just does not work like that. Instead remember not to place your orders to tight as you must give the market room to maneuver so that you don't get caught out in the general noise of the day. It might take you a while to judge how far to set your order on any given currency pair or time frame but it will come with experience and why we promote the use of a trading journal to help with things like this.

2. Risk-Reward ratio, is the trade worth making?

Understanding the risk reward ratio of all your trades is a must have parameter of any sensible money management strategy.

It is all too easy to lose money trading the forex. If you trade far too high a percentage of your account at once, before you know it, after only a few hard hitting trades your pot is empty. Or you might well have a high percentage of small winning trades, then along comes a large losing trade that again wipes you out leaving the pot empty and you wondering what happened.

As risk is a part of every trade it is a must for every trader to work out what he/she stands to gain versus their loss before you hit the buy button.

This means a trader should know, before taking a trade, how much of your capital you are willing to lose versus the potential reward or amount you stand to win if the trade comes good.

It's easy to work out so let's look at a few examples.

If the ratio is say 1:2 then for every unit you would potential loss you will be looking for a return of two units. So if you have set your stop loss order 20 points/pips away from your opening order then you would be looking for a gain of at least 40 points/pips.

If the ratio is 1:3 then for every 3 unit you would potential loss you would be looking for a return of three units. Again if you have set your stop loss order 20 points/pips away from your opening order then you would be looking for a gain of at least 60 points/pips.

Setting your parameters at 1:2 ratios is the leased you should be looking for. To put that into some context it would mean that if you were successful on 40% of your trades, which is not so out there, then in the long run you will be a profitable trader. "Wow that's less than half my trades and I can still be profitable" Yeah well that kinder reduces the pressure a bit doesn't it. This is where we go back to our psychology again, patience and self-control. Also how great is it to hear someone actually tell you that you don't have to be right all the time?

"Let your profits run and cut your losses quickly"

"Which risk-reward ratio should I be using?"

Whether you look for a return of two, three, four or even five times your potential loss is really down to you but as we have looked at 1:2 is a good starting point for beginners. Then as you become more experienced build on that and you will find that some trades offer more easily to three to four times your potential loss but always make the goal two. If you don't you will be just gambling your hard earned money away. Remember if the trade is not worth doing then be patient there will soon be one that is worthy of risking your money.

3. How much of my overall account should I trade?

Position sizing is all about how much, in terms of percentage amount of your overall account should you be willing to risk on a single trade.

Far too many traders make a huge mistake at the start by choosing to risk far too large a percentage of their accounts on any one trade. They have an over confidence that their new found knowledge is much greater than the average newbie and so believe they will achieve complete global domination of the financial markets inside one month. Only to find that after a limited amount of trades their trading careers come to an abrupt end and global domination is over before it ever really began.

That is why position sizing is so important to us all if we are going to get this right.

"So how much should I trade?"

Well we believe that most sensible positions on this would recommend that 2/3% of your overall pot should only ever be risked on any given trade. Now I know what you're thinking "it's going to take me years to buy that boat I have my eyes on" right? Well yours might not be a boat but you get the point, and the thing is as much as I hate to have to say it but at some point we all have a losing streak. So when this happens will determine your chances of staying in the market, will you be risking too much and be out? Or will you be using a sensible position sizing strategy and after you come through the other side of your losing streak still be in the market to reap the profits that will come your way. This is how we will achieve our long term goals.

For example if you have set your max risk at 2%, you would have to loose in theory 25 times in a row to wipe out only 50% of your account and how unrealistic is that? We would hope by the way, that you stop way before you hit 25 and evaluate your trading strategy to see what's going wrong but it does take away a lot of the stress when you adopt this approach to position sizing.

It's just simple math to work out how much to risk on a single trade.

For an account size of 500 and a risk of 2% the amount per trade would be 50
For an account size of 5000 and a risk of 2% the amount per trade would be100
For an account size of 10000 and a risk of 2% the amount per trade would be 200
For an account size of 500 and a risk of 3% the amount per trade would be 75
For an account size of 5000 and a risk of 3% the amount per trade would be 150
For an account size of 10000 and a risk of 3% the amount per trade would be 300

To help you with the calculations you could put everything into a spread sheet so that can automatically workout for you your position sizing. We will be publishing one here soon and we will be making it available to download for free if you're not sure how to go about that.

The most important aspect of trading must be to protect your capital, keep the risk of wiping your account out to a minimum so as to make it as hard as possible to lose over the long run. The aim is to take the stress away and to help you sleep at night no matter what happens. Trading should be fun as well remember.

How to Trade Forex for a Living and Escape the 9-5

What does Trading Forex Actually Mean?

Forex trading is short for foreign exchange trading. It is the buying and selling of one currency pair against the other. Another name for Forex trading is currency trading. Trading Forex is something you can do from your own laptop from almost anywhere in the world. All you need is an internet connection.

Forex trading is the buying and selling of different currencies for a profit. We trade online using a Forex broker. If a market is moving up, we trade the market by buying it, if the market is moving down; we trade the market by selling it.

As Forex traders we can make money buying or selling. We can make money when the markets are moving up, and when the markets are moving down. As currency traders, all we need is movement, as movement equals potential profit. As a currency trader, we like movement in any direction.

When we say that we are trading the market, or buying or selling, it means that we are placing a trade with our Forex broker. We do this online using their trading platform.

Why should you Learn How to Trade Forex?

Anyone that tries something new, without first learning how to do it, is in for a tough time. This is true for almost everything, and trading is no exception. Learning how to trade the Forex market is a very important step that new traders must go through at the beginning of their Forex journey.

The Forex market has lots of profit potential, but only if you know how to extract that profit from the markets. Beginner traders should learn how to trade the markets for a profit alongside experienced professionals who can help them to fast track their learning process and make sure that they know how to make consistent profits.

Remember that the Forex markets have a huge amount of profit potential, and absolutely anyone can learn how to trade Forex online from the comfort of their own home. Not everyone makes it. It takes patience and discipline to become a successful Forex trader, but it is definitely worth the effort.

Learning how to trade Forex needn't take up lots of your time. You can learn how to trade the markets in as little as 20-30 minutes a day. You can also create an immediate income, but you need to know 2 very important things. You need to know what to do, and when to do it.

How to Trade Forex... your first steps

Your first steps when learning how to trade the market is to get some high quality trading education. Remember even Benjamin Franklin said that an "investment in knowledge always pays the highest return". Get the basics covered so that you know price action patterns, cyclicity and which are the best charts to trade. But don't forget the most important part, which is to make sure that you have a proven Forex trading strategy.

While you're learning how to trade the market make sure that you're practicing what you're learning with a Forex demo account. It's important to put into practice what you think you've learnt, so that you can see exactly what you've remembered.

What to do next?

You're next steps are simple, get your consistency by trading price action patterns that work, and using a proven Forex strategy. Once you have this consistency make sure that you are trading live and able to get similar results to when you were demo trading.

Now simply rinse and repeat, only trade when you see your edge in the markets and continue to trade price action patterns for profits. Make sure that you are trade sizing so that as your account grows, you are risking more money per trade, because if you are losing a little, you're risking less per trade. Use our trade size calculator to do this.

Your next step now is to make sure that you get yourself in the proper environment and interact with other traders, otherwise trading Forex can become a lonely occupation.

It also helps to have a trader coach or a Forex mentor who is more experienced in the markets and can help you to refine your trading approach and improve your trading strategies. They should also be able to help you psychologically deal with trading as the sums of money get larger.

Let's get one thing straight. A lot of people start trading Forex only to give up in 3 months' time. They may start trading again at some point, and you might find yourself in this position, but there's one big problem.

Trading has to fit into your lifestyle. If it doesn't fit into your lifestyle, you won't carry on doing it. So many people start trading small timeframes for hours at a time, put their lives on hold, and try to get rich quick. The sad fact is that this is very unlikely to work for them, as their having to force 4+ hours a day, to the detriment of the other things in their lives such as family, work and friends.

I've got a better idea, how about fitting trading into your lifestyle and getting rich easily, without having to force it and without having to find hours a day to trade? Doesn't that seem a lot more appealing?

Fit Trading into 30 Minutes a Day
If you're going to fit trading into your lifestyle, you have to be trading the daily chart timeframe. You can't trade an hourly chart and expect to be able to do it in 30 minutes a day. Trading the daily chart means that there is only one bar/candle per day, so all you need to do is logon to your trading platform when the daily bars close - New York close, and make your trading decisions at that time.

Let's say that you trade 10 or 12 currency pairs, you've got 2 or 3 minutes per currency pair to check if your strategy is setting up. That may sound like a small amount of time, but that leads me on to the next section.

Plan your Trades at the Weekend
A bit of time at the weekend looking through your charts and analysing trend and strategy setups is time well spent. Bear in mind that there will only be 5 new bars per week, you can set yourself in a very good position by doing a little bit of preparation at the weekend. Remember, fail to prepare, and prepare to fail...

Set and Forget
So if the goal is to trade daily charts in less than 30 minutes a day, we need to learn to set up our trades and let them run, coming back to the charts once a day. I'm not going to lie to you; this can take some time if you're obsessed with always watching your money tick up and down on the screen. It is however, the most relaxing way to trade. Get used to the world isn't going to end tomorrow. You have a stop-loss in place to protect you, and you can sleep soundly knowing that if the trade does go the wrong way, your broker will get you out of the position.

You see, you really do have to set and forget about your trades when you're on the daily charts, as the end goal is to make sure that we're highly focussed when we're trading, but we're able to step away from the screen and get on with our normal lives. That's the way that trading is meant to be.

Don't' see trading as a "get rich quick scheme", as you'll lose all your money trying, but see it more as something you can fit into your lifestyle and get a little bit richer day at a time. Remember trading is all about compounding, so in 3 to 5 years' time, you should be in a very comfortable financial position.

Learn how you can escape the 9 to 5 and create financial freedom through Forex by visiting Learn to Trade Online.

Kick start your future in Forex with our free Forex membership including our 16 part Forex training course [http://learnhowtotradeonline.com/online-forex-training-course-for-beginners/], video tutorial, trading articles and charting software.

Increase Your Earning Potential Using A Trade Copier Software

Foreign currency trading is a very lucrative investment option, but the inexperience and lack of knowledge in foreign currency trading makes beginners a little apprehensive about the whole affair. They fumble when it comes to opening and closing trades in the market. Also, they are unable to tell the high-earning positions from the unprofitable ones.

Using a trade copier might be the best option for most beginners until they get a deeper insight into the working of the Forex market and are able to trade independently. In fact, trade copier softwares have become so popular that they are being considered a necessity for successful trading rather than an optional tool to be taken only by those who need help.

To understand how a trade copier works, it will help to first understand how copy trading works.

What is Copy Trading?

Forex stands for Foreign Exchange. Forex enables investors to earn by speculating on the value of currency. Copy trading is an investment strategy used in Forex trading. It involves copying trades or trade decisions made by other investors. This other investor is generally a seasoned investor or one who has a reputation of generating consistent profits in the marketplace. The system is based on a kind of social trading network and the person whose trades you copy is a mentor.

The process of Forex trading starts with setting up an account with a broker. If you choose to copy a trade, a fixed amount of your funds get automatically linked to the account of the investor whose trades you intend to copy. Each time the investor trades including opening or closing an option or issuing a stop loss order, your account will copy the movements in proportion to the amount of money linked to the account. Every time the trader profits, you will profit and every time he loses you will lose. The system allows you to profit significantly by not restricting you to a single account; you can link it to different traders' accounts.

Copy trading differs from mirror trading in the fact that the latter allows you to copy on specific trade strategies and not all. In copy trading, you can copy an entire strategy or mirror individual trades only; the choice is yours. The option of copying several accounts is a better option as it helps mitigate risks. The trade copier software allows you to stop copying other's trades and starting trading independently whenever you want. You can close the copy relationship altogether.

Copy trading can be done manually or mechanically. There are specially designed trade copier software programs to enable it to be done mechanically. Its ability to copy an indefinite number of accounts gives you all the information you need to take sound trade decisions. Also, it has integrated several other tools to maximize profit and minimize risk.

Local vs. Remote Trade Copier Software

Trade copier software is of two basic types. The first one is remote while the second is local. The two differ on various grounds. A local version is used primarily to trade between many different accounts, between account managers and also by retail managers trading with multiple brokers. This exposes one to a greater number of trades thereby increasing the earning potential. This software generally operates on a local network.

The remote trade copier permits trades between multiple accounts. It is a fully-automated solution and the trading is conducted from a remote server or machine. In today's times, the remote version has become more popular because it is more sophisticated and highly reliable. It also allows for high speed trading. Being fully automated, it reduces the workload for managers and traders who can then rely on automated signals.

How does Forex Trade Copier Software help?

When the concept of copy trading was introduced, it was believed that it offered the most benefits to account managers and not much to retail Forex traders. This is not what it actually is. The software program can be used by account managers and retail Forex traders.

There are several benefits of using the trade copier software. The software converts vital trade data into an easier format and copies it to different accounts simultaneously. Since the process is handled by computers, it eliminates the need for human effort. Imagine the amount of work that would have gone into it if the same process was done manually. It also saves a good amount of time. Even if you are a full-time trader and are quick at replicating trades, you might not be able to do it as efficiently as the program because after all manual processes are prone to mistakes.

When you copy trades, as an investor you can capitalize on another investor's ability to predict market movements. It enables an investor to manage his or her money more effectively by distributing it profitably. Trade reversal is another advantage of using the trade copier. If you think you are going to lose on a particular trade you can reverse it that is you sell when the trade is buy and vice versa. It is called the stop loss order in trading jargon.

Making the Right Choice

There are plenty of trade copier software packages available for use in the market. The choice of software is what makes the difference between success and failure. Hence, you should pay careful attention to the features the program has to offer.

The first most obvious feature and of course a standard feature on most packages is automation. Trading software opens and executes trades on the basis of pre-programmed algorithms. The Forex market is a highly volatile one. The real earnings come from responding quickly to the sudden movements in the market. And, if you've done a bit of reading on Forex trading, you must know that when these movements might occur is totally unpredictable. The copier software you choose should ask for minimum human intervention. A high level of automation allows one to copy trades to and from master accounts instantly.

The trade copier program must run the MetaTrader 4 trading platform. MetaTrader or MT4 as it is also referred to, is an electronic trading platform used in retail foreign exchange. It comprises a client and server component. The server component is managed by the broker while the client component is provided to his customers. If the program you have does not have MetaTrader 4, it is a better option not to invest in it. It is preferable to go for the older versions of the MT4 platform. Also, it should allow for regular updates as and when the newer versions are released. It should also be compatible with future versions.

When choosing trade copier software, the ease of use is another feature you might want to consider. Ease of use allows even the least tech-savvy traders to benefit from the program. The program should be easy to install. Detailed instructions provided by the manufacturer can be of great help in this regard. It makes it less stressful as it eases the learning curve.

Versatility is another feature that defines an efficient program. When we say versatility, we mean that the software has the capability to mirror trades to multiple accounts thus putting you in a better position to open and close trades. If you can get trade copier software that allows for reverse trading, there is nothing like it.

Additionally, one must be able to customize the copier program to one's individual needs. This includes the ability to adjust profit and stop loss levels, multiplier levels, the choice of currency pairs and the likes. The software should be complete in itself and should not require any additional programs to support it.

Your budget also goes a long way in influencing your choice. Don't hesitate to pay a little extra for tried, tested and proven software programs.

As we end, there is a small tip I would like to give. The trade copier system is an automated system and will take vital trading decisions on your behalf based on the market trends. However, if you want to be in better control of your investments, you should evaluate the collected data and decide to what degree you want to follow or copy the trade decisions of another investor. Also, don't get into Forex trading a blank slate. You should go out and learn the best you can about Forex trading to give you a head start on the rest. There are very good resources out there to help you learn the market. This way you will compliment the software program and make it work better.

Forex trade copiers have changed the way investors can invest their money. Work with one starting today and turn currency trading into a potentially profitable investment option.

Online Forex Day Trading The Tao Of Rapid Wealth Creation And Perpetuation

Foreign currency trading is the most profitable and powerful way to make money today in the world.

It is a 2.5 trillion dollars daily global market and business.

For this reason the knowledge and the secrets of how to do it successfully have been kept away from the public for thousands of years.

This is because it is the jealously guarded "SECRET" of how the "Money and Power" Elites, the multi-national and multi-billion dollars corporations, largest banks and governments of the world, the "Movers & Shakers" of International Banking & Finance, Business moguls & Tycoons, CEOs of major Corporations, secret societies and the privileged blue bloodlines of the Wealthiest Families of Europe and the Americas make their money and get rich.

They create vast fortunes easily trading foreign currencies.

Thereafter, using this great wealth, they create factories to manufacture consumer goods and products and hire you, Joe Bloke to work in those factories, banks and jobs at minimum wages.

So, it is no wonder why they don't want you to know about the REAL TRUTH and "SECRET" on how to generate great wealth through foreign currency trading.

If you know how to trade foreign currency and generate $100,000 monthly for life, will you be idiotic, naïve and crazy to go to work at these DEAD END jobs to earn minimum wages and be paid nickels and dimes?

So, there has been a persistent organized campaign by the powers that be, the Money Elite to KEEP AWAY AND HIDE these "SECRETS" of creating vast wealth from foreign currency trading.

That is why they are always floating false propaganda and negative campaign in the mass media that currency trading is risky and you should not do it because you'll lose all your money.

If you go to your bank manager or money management advisor or investment management company and tell them that you wish to make money at home from online currency trading, they will scream at you and try to discourage you and frighten you with the false information and half truth that it is risky and that you'll lose your money.

This is because it is THE SECRET with which they make money and get rich!

Citibank alone makes $20 billion dollars trading currencies yearly.

Most banks, including your bank trade currencies and it is among the major ways to create income.

It is just that they don't advertise this secret.

George Soros, the King of forex trading makes billions of dollars yearly trading currencies!

It is reported that a few years ago, he nearly caused the government of Thailand to go bankrupt because he made so much money trading their currency!

Yes, foreign currency exchange trading or forex trading can be risky.

It is true, you can lose your shirt and go bankrupt.

But this is half of the truth.

The other half of the truth is that if you buy and study a good forex currency trading e-book guide or program and understand how it works, avoid the pitfalls and get to know the secrets of risk management and trade with discipline, you can get fabulously rich so fast it will make your head spin round and put the devil to shame.

This is why there is an organized campaign to discredit online currency trading.

If you get rich so fast, then you'll not need to depend on the "Money and Power" Elites and their jobs and welfare system where they allow you nickels and dimes to keep you subjugated.

If you get rich too fast, they will no longer be able to manipulate you into voting and keeping them in power to continue milking your life by making you labor and work yourself to death making them rich.

There are so many reasons why most beginners in foreign currency trading fail to earn money and instead lose all their savings.

When they first hear about how easy and fast it is making money from day trading currency, they search the internet and find a forex trading broker.

Then they open a currency trading account and put in a few thousands of dollars in the online currency trading account and immediately begin to try to earn money from online currency trading.

And they get entangled in all the foreign currency trading sophisticated strategies and systems of technical and fundamental analysis such as reading "Forex charts", "Moving Averages", "Elliot wave", "Stochastics", "Bollinger bands", "Directional movement index", "Trend and Oscillator indicators", "Fibonacci retracements and others.

They spend all day and night listening to business news on radio, reading forex newsletters, forex articles in magazines and watching business news on TV

These beginners don't take their time to buy a valid online currency trading e-book guide to study and understand the forex market and the currency trading "SECRETS" before they begin trading.

They don't open the free demo trial forex trading account to practice for free to develop viable profitable currency trading skills first before they open a paid forex trading account to begin trading and making real money.

They make the fatal and dumb mistake of trying to fly in the world of foreign currency trading market before they learn how to crawl.

So, they get confused, make grievous foreign currencies trading errors and lose their money.

When they lose their money, they will not accept responsibility because that is the difficult part.

The easy thing to do is to blame their mistakes on online currency trading and to declare and gripe that it is risky and a scam designed to con the unsuspecting public.

This gives them the justification to begin filing false complaints and instigating legal action with the lame excuse that they were naïve and didn't know the risk involved and so have been ripped off.

The truth is that there are at least one million people around the world who have foreign currency trading skills and do it well to make millions of dollars monthly!

Yes, sometimes they will lose.

But most of the time they are fabulously profitable.

I once read about a taxi cab driver from New York who started trading foreign currencies about 10 yrs ago.

While driving his taxi cab, occasionally during his lunch break, he will log into his forex trading account and enter a few currency trades.

By the end of his driving day shift, he would check his online currency trading account and was always surprised to find that for a few minutes of trading currencies, he had made more money that day in minutes than he made driving the cab for a whole month.

This encouraged him to stop driving the taxi cab and to begin trading currencies full time.

In 10 years, he made $4 billion dollars ($4,000,000,000) trading foreign currencies online and was listed in Forbes Magazine's 400 richest Americans!

He is just one out of the many average people all over the world who took the time to study online currency trading, understood it and trade it correctly and are making millions of dollars without any hard work.

You too can do the same.

It is simple.

If you can click your mouse once to buy the currency and in a few minutes click your mouse a second time to sell them, you can make money.

It is a no brainer. Even a caveman can do it!

So, foreign currency trading is not difficult to understand or to do like stock or bond or commodity trading.

If you know where to get a good and valid forex trading guide or e-book and be patient to spend 1 hr daily to study it to understand the foreign currency trading market, how to click your mouse to buy and sell the currency; and if you will be patient to do the free demo trial for a few months before you open a paid forex trading account to begin trading, you can get obscenely and insanely rich so fast, it will make your eyes want to pop out, seeing all the piles of cash you generate just by clicking your mouse twice for a few minutes daily!

One powerful secret that will help you as a beginner is to avoid hiring money managers at the beginning to trade currencies for you.

The reason is that 90% of these money managers who advertise with highly impressive websites and brochures and also in TV infomercials and radios and seminars are fraudulent.

When you hire them to trade for you, they will over trade your account (churning) so as to generate a lot of trading fees for themselves because whether they make money for you or not, you must pay them their fees.

The more they trade your account, the more fees they generate for themselves!

By over trading your forex currency account, they expose it to massive risk which will eventually lead you to lose a lot of money.

This is because there are certain days and times which are profitable to trade and there are some days and times which are not.

Therefore by over trading (churning) your currency trading account, they get rich at your expense.

Plus, some of them will even use some profits they generated from trading your account to trade for themselves and make themselves rich without you knowing what is going on.

As if that is not bad enough, some will entice you to trade on margin. This means that they will loan you money to trade.

But the trick is that they are loaning you digital money which is created from the air and has no value.

All they do is go to your account and enter any amount of money they wish to loan you. (They don't actually put real money into your currency trading account!)

This is not real money because it is just digital artificial numbers.

But if you use this fake funny digital money to trade and lose, then you'll owe them real money!

You'll be required to pay them with real money!

And if you fail to pay them, they can freeze your bank accounts, assets and homes to collect the debt.

This is how most of these brokers get rich at the expense of naïve beginners in online foreign currency trading.

So, if you're a beginner, avoid hiring money managers to trade for you at the beginning. Stay away from managed trading.

Instead learn to trade and after you have made at least $500,000, contact us to give you the list of the best and honest money managers in the world (as well as the best forecasting services) who can trade for you and make you richer.

There is another fraud which some money managers perpetrate.

After you open a paid online currency trading account and put in thousands of dollars in there for them to trade for you, they use your money to trade for themselves.

Then they use a computer software to generate a fake forex trading account statement for your forex trading account which will show that you've lost money.

There is no way most people will find out, because you can't access their trading activities.

And sometimes even when you find a honest and reputable money manager to trade for you, when your account becomes profitable and you request to withdraw some of the money, they will begin to give you a run around, excuses and try to discourage you from withdrawing the money.

If you persist, you'll find out that suddenly your account will begin to lose money because they have softwares to manipulate it and generate dubious account statements to make it seem as if you've been losing money!

Above all, most beginners in forex currency trading fail to earn money because they spend too much time in doing complicated forex mathematics, reading charts, listening to business news on radio, TV and reading too many forex newsletters and magazine articles, which are conflicting, confusing, time consuming and counter productive.

They spend so much time over stuffing themselves with forex trading news and information that they become constipated with information and overwhelmed and so have little or no time to actually click their mouse to buy and sell the currencies and make money.

Most beginners also are unable to find and use a good currency trading system and software.

Some of them are even conned into buying outrageously expensive trading softwares and system for $4000 from some companies who advertise on TV infomercials late at nights.

They don't know that they can get the same forex trading system and softwares for free online at the websites of some forex trading companies!

These $4000 softwares are not for beginners and when we checked them out, we found they are complicated and not easy to use.

Infact after you manage to master how to use it, they will not help you to make more money!

So, it is not wise squandering your hard earned $4000 to buy them.

If these over priced worthless forex trading softwares work as they are advertised in seminars and infomercial, the companies will not be selling them.

Instead they will keep them secret and use them to make billions of dollars.

If you wake up tomorrow and discover you have a goldmine underneath your house, will you go out and advertise in TV infomercials and radios and seminars to sell your house for $4000???

The truth is that most of these infomercial advertising forex companies don't really trade currencies. They are just sales people. Shysters. Tricksters.

They make their money by peddling worthless forex trading softwares to the naïve beginners for $4000.

When you check one of these companies out (one of them has the audacity to call their worthless software "Forex Made Easy"), you'll discover that the CEO of this company actually admitted that not only that he does NOT use his $4000 software to trade but he knows nothing about trading currencies!

He only lends his name to his company to use to market their worthless foreign currency trading software.

The company's pitchman who conducts the seminar is a sales man and he also doesn't trade currencies because he had committed fraud in the past and was barred from trading commodities.

While the CEO of the company runs infomercial and seminars peddling worthless forex trading software for $4000, he doesn't use it and doesn't trade currencies.

Instead he hired a money manager who trades the currencies for him!

So, if you're a beginner who desires to get rich fast from currency trading, you must know these insiders' "SECRETS" of currency trading market and the pitfalls and how to avoid all the fraudulent companies peddling worthless forex trading e-books, books, softwares, systems and complicated trading strategies.

There are millions of them.

Beware because they are smooth operators who are very skilled in salesmanship and who can easily dazzle you with their big refined nonsensical English and so con you.

There are billions of dollars to be made in foreign currency trading and you can get abundantly rich trading these currencies online from home or office starting small.

But you must locate and buy a valid foreign currency trading e-book guide.

You must study it and understand it.

You must try the free demo account trading and do well in it before you can open a paid forex trading account to actually begin making real money.

You must begin by trading only one or two currencies at the beginning.

With time as you acquire more skills, you may trade more currencies.

You must learn how to trade with discipline and learn the BEST DAYS AND HRS to trade to be profitable and the other times when YOU MUST NOT TRADE to avoid losing money.

You must know how to "go long" or "short" on a currency, how to enter "Market Order", "Limit Order", "Stop Order", "OCO order" and "Entry Order".

If you learn how to do Online currency trading hedging, it will help you to maximize your profits.

You must be disciplined and avoid emotional currency trading.

When you make a reasonable amount of money for the day, stop trading because you can't be profitable at all times of the day and if you don't stop and take your profit, you may end up losing all the money you made.

Above all don't open a paid currency day trading account and trade until you have done the free trial demo account trading for a few months and mastered it.

At the beginning, keep your trading strategies simple.

Avoid complications and advanced trading strategies of technical and fundamental analysis because these are the reasons why 90% of beginners lose money.

Use a simple trading strategy to get rich at the beginning.

Afterwards you may then take advanced forex trading courses and do technical, fundamental analysis and use forecasting services to make even more profits and get richer, making millions of dollars effortlessly.

If you're serious in learning all the insiders' "SECRETS" about how to make millions of dollars trading foreign currencies online, without selling your soul to the devil and without losing your shirt, you must get our powerful currency trading e-book which reveals a very simple and yet profitable and powerful trading strategy which is guaranteed to make you $100,000 monthly for life from home or office.

You can learn to get rich from the jealously guarded foreign currency trading "SECRETS" of the "Money and Power" Elites, the multi-national and multi-billion dollars corporations, largest banks and governments of the world, the "Movers & Shakers" of International Banking & Finance, Business moguls & Tycoons, CEOs of major Corporations, secret societies and the privileged blue bloodlines of the Wealthiest Families of Europe and the Americas.

With the millions of dollars which you make from foreign currency trading, you'll be free like a bird to buy a mansion, with the most lavish and expensive furnishings, jewelry, antiques, electronics, a 50ft yacht, dream luxury cars, pick your choice: Lexus X470, $44,000 Jaguar 2007 S type, Silver Porsche Carrera, $180,000 Ferrari Testarossa, Mercedes 2007 Model S Class, 2007 Rolls Royce Silver Seraph, Bentley Mulsanne S, $220,000 Bentley Arnage Silver Tempest or a flaming red Lamborghini Jalpa!

You can make all your dreams in life to come true, without any hard work!

May these insights into foreign currency online investing, foreign currency trading program, investing online, forex trading, day trading, online trading e-book, day trading online, day trading system, day trading course, day trading future, forex day trading, day trading book, day trading firm, day trading training, currency day trading, online future trading, online currency trading, online forex trading, online commodity trading, online currency trading system, currency forex online trading, online trading course, online trading education, trading, online trading investing, forex, forex trading, forex broker, forex market, forex trading system, forex news, forex trader, forex signal, forex trading, online forex, trade forex, forex quote, forex education help you make millions of dollars and to achieve your life's ambitions and dreams.

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Automated Stock Trading Software - How to Choose the Best

Get the Information You Need to Evaluate Stock Trading Software

In today's market, investors are wondering if they should even buy stocks and if they can make money. The answer to both is "yes." Stock market trading is a wonderful opportunity now, with prices lower and volatility higher than in many years. Stock trading online has never been more popular.

Automated trading platforms, robotic trading programs, online day trading systems-there are many terms used to describe the stock trading systems that can help you to make a stock investment and to grow your money. Review the criteria below and understand your own personal preferences by talking with other stock traders. Identify the facts you need to compare programs. You'll need a good understanding of the automated trading tools' features and costs before you make a decision.

Many types of companies offer stock trading advice and stock trading strategies. They run the gamut from educational programs that aim to teach you how to trade, to a list of recommended stocks to buy and sell at certain triggers, to brokerage firm proprietary software, all the way to fully automated robotic software. Prices can vary from thousands of dollars to less than $50 a month for some auto trading software. With such a variety, how do you choose? This article will guide you through the features and benefits of the programs that are available for online stock trading. We will not discuss trading software for options or Forex trading. Many of the programs are geared towards "day traders," who technically open long positions (buy) or short positions (sell short) and close these positions the same day. Not everyone who uses these programs closes out their positions by the end of the trading day--sometimes they hold their positions for days, weeks or months. We'll call this "active trading." Sometimes this is also referred to as "swing trading."

The essential features of a stock trading program include a data feed for stock quotes and indicators, stock charts or charting capability of major indicators, current balance and positions and an order entry system. The order entry system should allow stop (loss) orders, stop limit orders and trailing stops. A trailing stop limit is similar to the stop (loss), except its loss will be measured from the stocks highest point achieved. The preferred method would be to keep the trigger prices in stealth mode, not viewable by the market makers, rather than as actual orders. Most automated trading software should include a watch list of the stocks to potentially trade based on the parameters the stock trader has entered.

Exchange Traded Funds (ETF's) can be part of an efficient trading strategy. These are mutual funds that are traded intraday on the stock exchanges, unlike traditional mutual funds that are a basket of securities priced at the close of the market. Online stock trading systems should also include trading capabilities for ETF's.

Other features to look for include safety measures that stock traders may take, such as establishing a profit goal--the minimum price increase a trader would expect a stock to gain before closing their position. Also highly desirable is a form of profit protection for your investments, which is the reduced profit goal. After the stock reaches its profit goal and continues to rise, the stock trading software should wait and let the profit increase. If the stock price decreases or pulls back, the online trading program should close the position and lock the profit. This pullback value should not have any effect before the profit goal is reached and is intended to improve stock performance. More sophisticated auto trading programs will also offer the percentage gain from stock trader's entry price, and the trader can also specify a minimum amount in case the percentage gained is too low.

Check the Features and Ask Questions

Number of Technical Indicators - There are literally hundreds of indicators that stock traders can use to determine which stocks to buy and sell and when. The most robust programs will offer hundreds of indicators for technical analysis, such as Bollinger Bands, and some will even include indicators for Candlestick Chart formations. Robotic programs use these indicators to set conditions under which online investing will occur.

Complexity - Automated stock trading programs vary greatly in ease of use. Some online stock trading systems do require actual programming expertise. Others are simply point and click. Check out the online demo to see that it fits your level of comfort before making a commitment. Talk to others who are currently using the auto trading websites and check out their online communities for more comments.

Number of Long and Short Strategies Per Account - Due to the size of the online trading platform, there may be a limit to the number of strategies that you can have loaded on each account. If you want to run, say two long trading strategies, then you may need two accounts. Also confirm if you have enough memory on your computer for two or more accounts. Experienced active traders may run two or more live long and short strategies, while having additional accounts for strategies that they are testing in a simulator mode.

Find Out How Advanced Your Software Can Be

Recommended Additional Features - The best automated stock trading software will include additional features that active traders will find invaluable once they have begun automated trading.

Additional strategy and order entry features include the ability to add to a position as a stock goes up, or as the stock declines, as well as a minimum purchase interval that the stock price should drop before it begins purchasing additional shares. A maximum bid/ask range will also be helpful, as the size of the spread can directly impact a swing trader's ability to make profitable trades.

If there are hundreds of indicators, as is the case with robotic traders, see if the definitions of the indicators are readily available. The definition or formula for indicators may vary from one electronic trading platform to another, so be sure you understand them first.

Recommend you have a program that displays current Profit and Loss (P&L) on your open positions and the status of the rules on your watch list. For example, if a stock on the watch list hasn't traded, is there a feature where the trader can pull up the rules and indicators to see which one(s) is preventing the trade?

Some automated stock trading programs visually display the percentage of symbols up and down in each sector from the specified time frame to the current time so you can see how the market is turning. Does the platform include the ability to block certain symbols from trading? If you're running a long trading strategy, you won't want to be buying ETF's that short the market.

Day traders will want automated trading software that tracks and displays the number of day trades remaining. Day trading is regulated by the SEC, so it's important to understand if you will be day trading first.

Orders in Stealth Mode - A standard feature of many trading software programs is the ability to enter limit, stop and stop limit orders. While it is important to have an exit strategy from your positions, telegraphing it to the institutional traders in the form of publicly viewed limits is not. It's a little like poker--whoever can see all the hands has the advantage. Instead, newer programs allow the user to enter these price points in the auto trader system, but trigger a market order when the conditions are met. This is one advantage of a truly robotic stock trading program.

Automatically Executes Your Trading Strategy Even While You're Away From Your Computer - Very few stock market trading systems can actually do this. For those that do, it's done based on the trader selecting technical indicators, comparison operators and numerical inputs that will activate opening, adding to, or closing stock positions. Essentially, it's a rules driven software system. The trader can select from hundreds of historical indicators representing the stocks' previous conditions. The indicators should be updated daily using the latest data. Programs that can trade automatically are the cream of the online investing software crop. They take the emotion out of investing. Long time traders report that the simplest strategies, when left to run on their own for long periods perform best. The program should also have a manual override so the stock trader can manually place a trade as well. Specifically ask if the system has this capability. Many market themselves as "automated trading" but are not truly automated.

Ability to Simulate Strategies In Real Time Before Running Live - Most traders would agree that they'd like to "test drive" a system before using it. Some programs allow this through "back-testing," in which the program uses past data to execute the trades and show you what they would have been. This is not always accurate, as there is much data needed to perform a thorough back-test and it's nearly impossible to replicate all the circumstances with just the historical data. In addition, how the system performed in a market last month or last year does not indicate how it will perform in the here and now.

There are a few systems that allow the stock trader to simulate strategies, but this is done mostly with paper tickets, rather than through the software package. The best stock trading software will let you practice stock trading using a live real-time data feed during market hours. This is the preferred method, as it gives traders a very realistic view of how their trading strategy is performing and the ability to feel the highs and lows of daily trading without investing real money. If you can simulate trades, you won't need to open an actual brokerage account until you go "live" with real money. Ask if there is a limit on how long you can run in the simulation mode.

Shows You How to Create A Stock Trading Strategy - There should be a step by step walk through to show novice traders how to create a trading strategy. Are there off-the-shelf strategies that are available for your use? Are there any fees involved or are they offered for free? Can you modify the off the shelf strategies? Note that firms should not be guaranteeing you a certain return. The best firms will have long and short stock trading strategies available at no charge and will allow the stock trader to create their own. Some firms will even allow you to copy strategies from a "friends" list. One size does not fit all. If the company doesn't tell you the details of the strategy or why they selected or recommend a certain stock, then it's not advisable to use it. You may overpaying for "proprietary" services and may be able to obtain free stock market tips and recommendations online that will perform comparably.

Tech Support and Customer Service - The best automated stock trading software firms have an extremely high "up-time" and are very rarely out of service. Check on the firm's record--how often have they had outages? The software should be easy to install and should work with a variety of operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc.). If you have questions, is there a knowledgeable and helpful staff to provide service? How quickly do they respond, if by email?

Commissions - Trading commissions can eat into your profits if you are not careful about choosing a plan that fits your needs. Commissions can vary greatly from broker to broker, depending on the number of shares traded, whether the shares are in round lots of 100, price of the shares traded and the number of trades you place each month. Stock traders may even want to have more than one account if they have a trading strategy that normally trades 100 shares lots and another that trades 1000 share lots. It pays to read the fine print.

Number of Broker Choices - If you have a proprietary brokerage software product, then you'll only be able to trade through that firm. The best online trading includes the lowest commissions for the typical trades for each strategy that you use. There are other programs whose software has been integrated into the order placing functionality at a variety of brokerage firms. Commissions will be one consideration in choosing a firm. Another is the margin rates. If you choose to have a margin account and borrow against the value of your securities to open more positions, you will be charged margin interest. Rates will vary by firm. Typically, firms with the lowest commissions won't pay you interest or offer a money market fund for your uninvested cash. This is how they keep their costs down. If you anticipate having extra cash that you won't use for trading, you may want to keep it in another account where it can earn more. You should also check if there is a minimum to open an account or a minimum number of trades required.

Check the Costs and Software Support

Initial Software Fee and Monthly Fees - Ask is there is an initial fee to buy the software package. Is it thousands of dollars? If so, find out what you are really getting. Much of what you can obtain from some of these programs can be found in inexpensive books or on the Internet for free. Is there also a monthly fee? If so, what does it cover? In reviewing online trading services, more expensive software is not necessarily better. Some active investing services are less expensive because they have more subscribers.

Data Feed Fee - Does the program include real time data feeds for stock quotes and indicators? Is there an extra fee for this or is it included in the basic monthly fee? This is the biggest component cost in developing automated stock trading programs. Or, is the data delayed by 20 minutes? Is it only the end of day data? If so, even in a simulation, old data is not good data. Many brokerage firms offer free Level II quotes to qualified active traders who trade a specified number of trades each month.

Stock Charts Fee - How will you review the major indicators that you're using to make trading decisions? Some programs include stock charts with their fee, others charge a separate fee for it. Depending on the platform you choose, you may or may not need a charting package. Find out how much is it and how much you can customize the stock charts to track your favorite indicators.

Ongoing Support Fee - Ask is there are any other fees. Hidden fees will definitely each into a stock trader's profits. If you're not in the market to make money, then you shouldn't be in the market.

Long Term Contract - Is the fee you're paying upfront for a year's contract? If so, is it automatically renewed every year?

Training Fee - Find out if there is a separate training fee. For programs that market themselves as financial educators, there will be a fee, sometimes hundreds or thousands of dollars, as this is how they make their money. The best automated stock trading software programs provide free training.

Training Formats - Is the training in the form of a live seminar? Webinar? Are there extra materials such as DVD's that you must buy to find out all the information advertised? Or, is live training available in the company's office?

Minimum to Invest - Brokerage firms have their own minimums but there are also account minimum balances required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for what it calls "pattern day traders." A day trade occurs when a trader opens and closes the same position in a margin account on the same day. A pattern day trader is any person who executes 4 or more day trades within 5 business days in a margin account, provided the number of day trades is more than 6% of the total trades in the account during that period. All pattern day traders must maintain a minimum of $25,000 in equity at all times.

System Requirements - The more robust the trading system, the greater the memory requirements. Check this before you sign up or purchase a new computer. If you sign up for more than one account, will your machine have enough RAM to run both or will you need to purchase an extra computer or more memory? If you have a Mac, ask if the software works on Mac, as not all do. You may want to have one computer dedicated only to your automated stock trading programs and not run other word processing or spreadsheet programs.

Reports - The best automated stock trading software will include a reports function, that allows the stock trader to pull up trades by time frame, security, long vs short, open vs. closed and P&L. For truly active traders, this information is an easy way to track trading for tax purposes.

Trading Strategy Statistics- In addition to Reports, another great feature is strategy statistics. They will tell the serious stock trader the number of trades executed and break them down by profitable vs. unprofitable over various intervals. Reviewing the strategy accuracy increases the odds that a stock trader will be profitable.

Online Trading Community - Trading platform developers who are truly proud of their work welcome comments and questions from users. Take some time to read their stock trading forum and see what other stock traders are saying. There are even a few automated stock trading programs that will take requests for additional indicators from their users.

Take the Right Steps as You Choose Stock Trading Software

Be wary of those who tell you that you must follow their stock trading system using only their tools. This is about you having control over your financial future. There are as many successful stock trading strategies as there are active traders. Experiment, talk to others and do research. You will find what works best for you.

Use caution when signing up for anything long-term, even if a 30-day free trial is offered. Some firms may request a large down payment or full payment in advance and pressure you on the spot, promising a discount if you sign up immediately. Some consumers have reported difficulty in obtaining refunds even when they have followed the procedures exactly.

Happy trading!

© Copyright - Regina Guinn. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

CoolTrade™ Fully Automated Stock Trading Software benefits include Power Research Tools. The CoolTrade™ Strategy Wizard allows you to rapidly filter through all 8000+ NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX stocks for only those that meet your investment criteria. 100% point-and-click, requiring no programming knowledge. Fully Automated Stock Trading Software. A real-time Market Simulator allows you to run a strategy that you select in simulator mode during live market hours. This is not a back-tester. It runs in real-time so you can see how your strategies perform during actual market conditions. The Reports option will provide you with your strategy statistics. Switching from live to simulator mode is done with a simple click of the button. The Robotic Trader may be set to start by itself in the morning and trade the market all day 100% unattended.