Risk management is a topic that many forex traders do not take seriously enough. In fact, risk management is probably the single biggest factor that is over looked amongst forex traders and this is the biggest reason why 95% of them fail to make money over the long term. The reason that so many currency traders ignore managing their risk or developing a risk management plan is simply because they don’t feel like they need to. Many forex traders think that their trading system or their trading method is so accurate that they don’t need to manage their risk because they believe they will win on a very large percentage of their trades. The fact is that this is a false belief and it is simply emotional trading and illogical thinking as a result of fear and or greedThe truth is that this is a false belief and it is simply emotional trading and illogical thinking as a result of fear and or greed. Professional forex curency traders understand that at best they will win on 60-70% of their trades, they understand they will lose on any where between 30-50% of their trades. If you knew you were going to lose something 50% of the time why would you not control your risk? The simple answer is because beginning forex traders do not understand the concept of position sizing and they are trading based off emotion.

Position sizing is simply adjusting the number of lots or contracts you trade to stay within a pre-defined risk threshold while putting your stop loss at a safe level. Let’s dig into that sentence point by point. Many traders make the huge mistake of having a certain dollar amount in their mind that they are willing to risk before they enter a trade. They then buy or sell a number of lots that is equal to or greater than that dollar amount of risk. After that they will arbitrarily put their stop loss in mainly because they have heard you should use a stop loss. This is not an effective risk management technique, in fact it is basically gambling but it is exactly how, or similar to how most forex traders enter a trade.

To effectively utilize the power of position sizing you must first understand that it is absolutely necessary for you to have a set risk percentage that you are emotionally ok with losing on any one trade. Most traders cannot operate emotion free after losing more than about 3% of their account value on anyone trade. As such, risking 2% or less is the advised amount for any trader and you will be hard pressed to find any professional short-term or swing forex trader risking more than that on anyone trade, this is because they understand the importance of risk management and have already lost enough money to know they cannot control the market. So now your risk margin is at 2% of say a $5,000 dollar trading account. This means you can risk $100 on any one forex trade that meets your criteria for a valid trade setup.

So here is where position sizing, risk threshold and stop loss placement come in. Once you find a trade setup that meets your trading plan entry criteria you then need to find the safest place for your stop loss, after you find this level you calculate the distance between it and your entry level. Let’s say this distance is 150 pips, this means you can still only risk $100 but you must now adjust your position size down to meet your risk percentage. An advantage to forex trading is that you can trade mini and micro-lots at many brokers which basically means you have extreme flexibility in position sizing. So to meet your 2% risk margin and maintain your 150 pip stop loss distance you can only trade 0.66 micro lots, which means youre trading .66 cents per pip. .66 x 150 = $99. It’s vital to stay just under your risk threshold if it comes down to being slightly under or slightly over; if you traded.67 cents per pip you would then be risking .67×150=$100.50, which is over 2% risk, you want to avoid this because it will induce an emotional reaction that will very likely snow ball into a huge emotional roller coaster of trading errors.

Technorati Tags: forex market, Forex Risk, forex risk management, forex trader, forex trading, price action, price action analysis, risk managment, risk threshold, Trade, trader, trading

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These stock indexes generally only contain major blue chip stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW 30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 mainly contains techical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to easily buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a lower spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered very liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to avoid stocks that are bellow as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between and . Avoid buying a stock below at anytime.

Another consideration is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option inorder to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings release, stocks often drop significantly if you come out with a poor report. Earnings releases are 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

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Technorati Tags: Call, finance, invest, investment, money, options, put, stock market, Stocks, trader, trading

You only have to think back to recent stock market scams like Enron to know that it is almost impossible for the average, and even very sophisticated fund manager or hedge fund trader to really know what the real financial state of a company is.

Just by reading the balance sheet and other quaterly reports they release gives you a very poor insight into the real health of the company. Whereas the technical analysis charts of the company tend to give the real picture of what the market thinks of the value of the company. In the case of Enron even simple technical analysis told you to SELL when the stock was in the $80-90 range, this is why technical analysis of stocks is so popular.

So what are the secrets to technical analysis?, I’m about to tell you, here are my golden rules:

* Only use 3-5 simple technical analysis indicators

* Make sure that you understand how the indicators that you have selected work, what the parameter settings are and in what market conditions they are effective

* After selecting your indicators and parameter settings don’t mess with them.

The real secret to technical analysis is to become VERY familiar with your choosen indicators, and really this can only be done by watching and studying the market, so that you get to the point that you TRUST them.

The fact is that in any market, for each bar, there are only 5 pieces of information, the open, close, high, low and volume, yet there are now hundreds of indicators. Most of these indicators are displaying the same information and so are redundant.

For the record my set of indicators are:

* 4 Simple Moving Averages

* Bollinger Bands

* MACD

* Stochastics

But the way I use them is quite special, to learn more about how to become an expert at technical analysis visit:

Top Dog Trading Review

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Technorati Tags: bonds, day trading, investment, money, options, stock market, Stocks, technical analysis, trader

Like all investments it is important to learn about what you are investing in, and certainly don’t just take the advice given to you by a bond seller without checking it out first yourself. The three most important things that must be considered when purchasing a bond include the par value, the maturity date, and the coupon rate.

The par value of a bond refers to the amount of cash you will receive when the bond reaches its maturity date. In other words, you will receive your initial investment cash back when the bond reaches maturity.

The maturity date is of course the date that the bond will reach its full value. On this date, you will receive your initial investment, and the interest that your money has earned.

Corporate and State and Local Government bonds can be “called” before they reach their maturity, at which time the corporation or issuing Government will return your initial investment, along with the cash that it has earned thus far. Federal bonds cannot be “called”.

The coupon rate is the interest rate that you will receive when the bond reaches maturity. This number is written as a %, and you must use other information to find out what the interest will be. A bond that has a par value of say $2000, with a coupon rate of 5% would earn $100 per year until it reaches maturity.

Because bonds are not issued by banks, many people don’t fully understand how to go about buying one. There are 2 ways this can be done.

You can use a broker or brokerage firm to make the purchase for you or you can go directly to the Government. If you use a brokerage, you will more than likely be charged a commission fee. If you want to use a broker, you should shop around for the lowest commissions!

Purchasing directly through the Government isn’t nearly as hard as it once was. There is a program called Treasury Direct which will allow you to purchase bonds and all of your bonds will be held in one account, that you will have easy access to. This will allow you to avoid paying a broker or brokerage firm.

More advanced traders may try to buy and sell bonds to take advantage of the price movements, you can even swing trade them. But this is a very risky business if you don’t know what you are doing, you will need to take a swing trading course if this was something that wanted to, but again most people just buy and hold.

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Technorati Tags: banks, bonds, broker, invest, investment, money, Stocks, swing trade, trader, trading

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of money trading options, but of course you can also lose money just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go on margin you can get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not quite as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that a big loss can also happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk.

What I’ve just described is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non-directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much lower dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you learn to trade options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become an expert stock trader 1st. This is because you must be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non-directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very good skill to have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.

Technorati Tags: day trading, finance, forex, investment, money, options, Stocks, trader, trading

The 50 simple moving average, or 50 SMA, is simply the sum of the last 50 readings for each period, divided by 50, this is a moving window, as time moves on so does the average. Notice that I used the word period because this indicator works on any time period in exactly the same way.

It can be used on monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 30 minutes, 15 minute and on whatever time period you want to monitor and trade. Although the SMA is the most widley used there is also the exponential moving average or EMA. This is a weighted version of the formula using the mathematical exponent function to give more weight to the more recent values, this has the effect of making it a slightly faster average that many traders prefer.

The reality is that it probably does not matter if you used the SMA or the EMA, what does matter however is that you use one or the other and then be very consistent with it. Do not switch between them, it is more important that you learn to trust your chosen indicator then a slight difference in its value.

The SMA is oftern used to determine what the trend of the stock is, depending on the value used it could be a short term, medium term or long term trend. An important point to note is that moving averages are really only useful when the stock is trending, if the moving average is flat, i.e. horizontal on your chart it can become very choppy, this is a good time to stay out of the market.

The general rule is that if the current price is above the SMA the trend is up, if below the trend is down. This is very important to understand because it forms the basics of trend trading and trading with the trend.

For the short term trend many traders like using a 5-8 SMA or EMA, here is a trading secret, never trade again the direction of the short term tend, this is really just common sense when you think about it.

Moving averages often act as support or resistance, many traders use the 15, 21 or 30 SMA for this purpose.

There are a number of other very important moving averages that you need to know about, these are the 50, 100 and 200 SMA, and this mainly applies to the daily and weekly charts. A lot of big players in the markets, the mutual funds, investment banks etc use the 50 and 200 SMA as support and resistance, if they decide to buy or sell based on these you need to follow suite, the 100 to a lesser extent. These are very useful averages to watch if you trade EFT’s like an Oil ETF.

A useful tip is that when a stock breaks through one moving average it will often move all the way to the next, for example, if a stock breaks the 30 SMA it may move to the 50 before finding some support or resistance.

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Technorati Tags: day trading, forex, moving average secrets, options, Stocks, trader, trading

The 50 simple moving average, or 50 SMA, is simply the sum of the last 50 values for each period, divided by 50, this is a moving window, as time moves on so does the average. Notice that I used the term period because this indicator works on any time period in exactly the same way.

It can be used on monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 30 minutes, 15 minute and on whatever time period you want to monitor and trade. Although the SMA is the most widley used there is also the exponential moving average or EMA. This is a weighted version of the formula using the mathematical exponent function to give more weight to the more recent values, this has the effect of making it a much faster average that many traders like.

The truth is that it probably does not matter if you used the SMA or the EMA, what does matter however is that you use one or the other and then be very consistent with it. Do not switch between them, it is more important that you learn to trust your chosen indicator then a slight difference in its value.

The simple moving average is primarily used to determine what the current trend of the stock is, depending on the value used it could be a short term, medium term or long term trend. An important point to note is that moving averages are most useful when the stock is trending, if the moving average is flat, i.e. horizontal on your chart it can become very choppy, this is a good time to stay out of the market.

The general rule is that if the current price is above the SMA the trend is up, if below the trend is down. This is very important to know because it forms the basics of trend trading and trading with the trend.

For the short term trend many traders like using a 5-8 SMA or EMA, here is a trading secret, never trade again the direction of the short term tend, this is really just common sense when you think about it.

Moving averages can often act as support or resistance, many traders use the 15, 21 or 30 SMA for this purpose.

There are a number of other very important moving averages that you need to know about, these are the 50, 100 and 200 SMA, and this mostly applies to the daily and weekly charts. A lot of big players in the markets, like the the mutual funds, investment banks etc use the 50 and 200 SMA as support and resistance, if they decide to buy or sell based on these you need to follow suite, the 100 to a lesser extent. These are very useful averages to watch if you trade EFT’s like an Oil ETF.

A useful tip is that when a stock breaks through one moving average it will often move all the way to the next, for example, if a stock breaks the 30 SMA it may move to the 50 before finding some support or resistance.

A844534297

Technorati Tags: day trading, forex, moving average secrets, options, Stocks, trader, trading

Until the recent economic downturn, I pretty much followed my broker’s suggestions when it came to my investments. I was getting rich, but I was doing okay until the financial crisis hit. I lost a lot of money and I realized that I was going to have to pay more attention to my money and making it grow. I didn’t know that much about the market, so I started doing my homework.

While I was investigating ways to invest, I stumbled across TrendFollowingStrategies.com. I had seen some articles on trend following and I had an idea of how it worked, but I really didn’t want to spend money on software or that much time following the market and trading. What I saw on the site impressed me. Instead of having to buy expensive programs, all I had to do was join the site. They do all the research. Even better, they only followed ETFs (exchange traded funds) which are a safer investment than most stocks.

TrendFollowingStrategies.com gives members advice on which ETFs to buy whether the market is in an upswing or a downturn. They track the trends in ETF trading and follow the stocks that are rising. They also advise their members when to sell to realize the maximum reward from the trade. I decided to join.

I’ve been a member for just over a year and my investments are doing very well. I made just over a 20% gain in the last year. Riskier investments like hot stocks always worried me, but this method is low risk while it yields better returns than I used to get even in a good market. The information they give me lets me know which ETF trends to follow, when to buy and when to exit. I can evaluate the trade and make a decision on the amount to invest.

One nice thing about TrendFollowingStrategies.com is that I don’t have to spend all my time worrying about the market. I made around 10 trades last year and still made a 20% return. How great is that? With this technique you don’t have to watch the daily market fluctuations, thats all taken care of and all you need to do is check your email.

I really appreciate that I don’t have to make high risk investments to get a good return on my money. This website doesn’t recommend high risk investments, just EFTs. EFTs are similar to mutual funds and are less risky than many other investments in the market. I had some EFTs in my portfolio before I joined TrendFollowingStrategies.com, I just wasn’t maximizing my return on them.

I want to make money, but without the element of risk that so many investments entail. TrendFollowingStrategies.com has strategies that work for me. I’m a bit lazy about my investments too, so making a low number trades is perfect. I love the ease of investing with this method.

I would recommend membership in this site to anyone who wants to make money in the market without investing a lot of time and effort. They do most of the work for you and you just have to make the decision on when and how much to invest in the trade. You can maximize your return on your investment with a minimum of work. If you aren’t a member of TrendFollowingStrategies.com, you should be.

Technorati Tags: business, currency, currency trading, etf, finance, financial, forex, investing, market, news, options, Stocks, trader, trading, trend following

There are more and more traders pouring into the forex trading sector every day. There is always money to be made and this is certain to attract large numbers. At the same time, the market is not likely to become saturated. There are so many possible trades to make between all the different currencies and banks and private individuals will always need to make Forex exchanges.

So why is the forex market so profitable? The answer is that fluctuations in the exchange rates can be intense and very quick, especially in times when the world economy or the economy of a particular country is unsettled. When a country’s currency is constantly changing in value, a lot of money can be made in a very short time. That is, if you are lucky – or if you know what you are doing.

This means that people are always hungry for training materials that will help to give them an edge. They want to discover how to predict the rise and fall of the market. That is how cash is made and it is a skill that can be acquired.

So why would a high earning forex trader want to spill his secrets in a currency trading tutorial?

Skilled, experienced forex traders are used to responding to a market. So when they see a demand for teaching their skills, they respond to that market too. Traders want to make money in all possible ways and those ways includes teaching others. Often when a person sets out to teach something, they end up learning new things about the subject themselves. Or sometimes they are tired of just working with numbers all day and want to work with real people for a change!

Nevertheless, a good trader who is giving his time in providing training material will generally expect to get something back. This means that any free forex tutorial, if it is worth investing your time, will have some payback for the trader providing it somewhere down the line. Probably they will send you promotions for other products that they offer. This is not a problem of course, you will not be obligated and you can just ignore these.

This does mean that although the free tutorial may be very useful for you, it will not contain everything that the trader has to teach. He will often be holding back many secrets for his paying members or buyers.

Because of this, free forex tutorials are usually best for beginners. At that level you can learn a lot from somebody just showing you the basics. If you are new to forex it will be much better for you this way and you will be grateful that he does not confuse the issue by throwing in all his advanced strategies into the free currency trading tutorial!

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Technorati Tags: banks, currency trading, forex trading, forex tutorial, invest, investment, money, trader

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