forex fire

Day Trading 101: when you begin trading, you’ll need a strategy. And part of that strategy will include the timeframe that you use for your trades. Obviously, for day trading, your timeframe will be less than one day.

Popular intraday timeframes are 60-minute, 30-minute, 15-minute, 10-minute, 5-minute, 3-minute, and 1-minute.

When you select a smaller timeframe (less than 60 minutes), usually your average profit per trade is relatively low. On the other hand, you get more trading opportunities. When trading on a larger timeframe, your average profit per trade will be bigger, but you’ll have fewer trading opportunities.

Smaller timeframes mean smaller profits, but usually smaller risk, too. When you’re starting with a small trading account, you might want to select a small timeframe to make sure that you’re not over-leveraging your account.

However, when selecting a very small timeframe like 1-minute, 3-minute, or 5-minute, you may experience a lot of “noise” that is cause by hedge funds, by scalpers, and by automated trading.

You might think that you see an emerging trend just to realize that it was only a short manipulated move and that the trend is over as soon as you enter the market.

That’s why I recommend using 15-minute charts. This timeframe is small enough for you to capture the nice intraday moves, but it’s big enough to eliminate the noise in the market and correctly displays the “true trends.”

When developing a trading strategy, you should always experiment with different timeframes. A trading strategy that doesn’t work on a small timeframe might work on a larger timeframe and vice versa.

Start developing your trading strategy using 15-minute charts, and if you’re unhappy with the results, change the timeframe first before changing the entry or exit rules.

Markus Heitkoetter is a professional day trading coach and the author of “The Complete Guide to Day Trading.” Visit http://www.thecompleteguidetodaytrading.com to learn a 7-step approach for developing your own profitable trading strategy.

Money.

Indy, or Indiana Jones was one of my favorite heroes. Remember the movie about the Holy Grail and the scene where he has to choose between the holly grail and his life? And although it seemed that he lost from his touch the Holy Grail he gained his life! What is more important than survival first? Investments are no different than the eternal search for the holly grail! If someone finds the system that is 100% foolproof then here we found within seconds the next billionaire at the cover of all major economic magazines!

Stop for a moment! Look around you! Is there a chance for someone to discover the one system that beats everything else all the time and make someone extremely rich? And if someone becomes so much rich why would he or she want to share the secret with others? Why? After all if more people learn about this idea it will eventually be useless as some will try very early to get a spot and the effectiveness will go from 100% towards zero as fast as a super car accelerates from 0-100 Miles per hour what is the point? Come on give us a synopsis!

Some systems and trading ideas are better than others indeed. But no one is the best! Investing is a very fascinating thing! For start there are a lot of options from the traditional stocks to more risky ones such as options and also other alternative forms such as real estate or hedge funds. Have you ever thought that since the idea of the holly grail is that it is unique that could it be possible that such a system if it existed it would be impossible to fit for all occasions? Investing in stocks is much more different than investing in real estate or precious metals. But the marketing which is something very powerful these days wants us to believe that there are gurus everywhere fallen from the sky as angels!

Ok so Dear God, if not the holly grail please pass me the best guru to make me rich! Silence again. Why? Investing builds on some major steps.Education,training,experience,solid risk management, control of emotions, balanced life and motivation. Yes motivation and action. Being an Economist I discovered very soon the idea and passion must say of learning how to invest properly and hopefully make it a career.

But what someone needs is also passion. It is no fun watching the ticks of stocks movements or forex quotes. But if someone tries to make money out of it there is a cost. And the best way to pay this cost is to be a pioneer. Experiment with what you know or do not know about how the markets work. Put the odds in your favour making your analysis. You do not need to buy each book claiming that it has the one system that will make you rich or subscribe to a service or newsletter paying thousands of dollars per year. Be open-minded. Why pay a lot of money when the real cost could be much less? Is it impressive to cost you a few hundreds or thousands of dollars for their access to the Holy Grail that does not exist? Why to share it with you and split the profits?

On the other hand paying for research and guidance at a reasonable price is definitely not a bad idea if you trust the author and offers extreme good customer service. But once you learn how to invest even with the most basic way why would you need a mentor anymore? Have you ever wondered that if you win and make profit the key to success is consistency? Think of it. If you only could make lets say 5% each month and compound this amount each month then if you can do this for 10 years each month an initial amount of 10,000 will reach the amount of 348 times higher that is 3,5 million dollars. And if that investment is in stocks and add some quality meaning dividends earned then it could be much more. Ok 5% each month each month for 10 years may seem irrational to you but my point is to use it as an example. Change the numbers and inputs. Do your own homework and research.Diversify!Apply very good risk-management criteria. Have a passion for it. And a dream and a goal. My goal is to learn as much as possible about the financial markets and be a good trader. I may not become a top one but at least this is my holy grail : Consistency and Compounding. Keep it simple. All the best to your efforts and trading results.

http://www.themoneycosmos.com

Economist,MSc In Economics
Level II candidate in the CFA Program
http://www.themoneycosmos.com

If you read about investing, you’ve seen the word Forex trading. Historical roots of the Forex currency trade from the days of the gold exchange, through the Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretton Woods Agreement, established in 1944, fixed national currencies against the dollar, and set the dollar at a rate of USD 35 per ounce of gold. The Forex market as we know it today was actually established in 1971.

Today, the Forex market handles about $1.9 trillion in transactions every day, and it runs 24 hours a day, five days a week. The most traded currencies are the U.S. dollar, the Euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Swiss franc and Australian dollar. As recently as ten years ago, currency trading had high barriers to entry, so only large banking and institutional firms had access to the tools and systems required to play in the Forex trading game. The advent of internet technology is what made Forex trading grow considerably popular as well as accessible with various types of investors.

Forex market basics

Forex markets are the most liquid and accessible markets in the world. The Forex market is overwhelmingly dominated by international banks, government banks, investment banks, corporations, and hedge funds. Individual traders account for only about 2 percent of the market. Forex trading must always be considered high risk, but with good Forex risk management it is possible to generate some excellent returns on your investment.

Forex is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another as forex is traded in what is known as “cross pairs” for example GBP/USD or EUR/USD. Forex, also known as foreign exchange, has many advantages over stocks and futures for both day trading and swing trading. Forex is all about investing money in foreign currencies, just gain profit by selling at a higher price, the one you hold, just to buy another one at a lower price. You buy one currency and sell another one. The idea is to make a trade when you believe the currency you’re buying is going to go up in value compared to the one you’re selling. Then, if it turns out that your prediction was correct, you do another trade in the reverse direction. Sell the currency you originally bought and buying the one you sold and collect the profits.

Summary

The Forex market is vast and daunting and mostly inhabited by giant organizations. Forex trading is a serious business and it is vitally important that you are properly educated and informed before committing your hard-earned money to the markets.

But it can be navigated by individuals who have studied the finer points and who want to take a risk on something potential profitable. And since the whole world uses money, the trading of currency is always going to be a major force in the financial world.

Jo Jude
http://how-to-learn-forex-market.blogspot.com/
Jo Jude is a notable author of many articles related to finance, credit and insurance
Read Jo Jude’s blog to find much more in depth information about Forex and currency trading. Go to http://how-to-learn-forex-market.blogspot.com/

Trading for a living, what could be a more alluring profession? The Forbes list of the 500 wealthiest people in the world is littered with names of people who have amassed huge fortunes in the world of Wall Street. Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Tudor Jones, James Simons, Louis Bacon, and Eddie Lampert, just to name a few. In 2007, to make the list of 100 top earners on Wall Street, you needed an income of at least $75 million! The top earners made over $1 billion!

With that in mind, it is no wonder that new traders set out to make their fortunes in the financial markets. After all, they are bombarded with advertisements and infomercials describing the next great thing in the world of trading. Starting with accounts as small as just a few thousand dollars, these traders hope to hit it big, and they seek to find that holy grail of trading systems that will lead them to the promised land of Wall Street riches.

I was one of those traders almost 15 years ago. At that time, after subscribing to a couple stock newsletters, I was bombarded with other newsletter writers, telling me they new the way to financial fortune. One service got me interested in commodity trading by sending me some spread trading strategies. These proved to be outdated and ineffective, since markets change over time. I then learned a popular trend following system, had some initial success, and then was hooked on trading. Little did I know that trading is a lot more difficult than I realized.

What I didn’t realize is that the competition in the financial markets is fierce. Wall Street is littered with MBA’s and PHD’s from the Ivy League schools. These people are groomed for Wall Street careers through summer internships at the big investment houses such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, or even some big hedge funds. Some of these hedge funds not only hire traders, but top scientific minds from disciplines such as physics, chemistry and engineering.

In 1998 I had the opportunity to work for a hedge fund and commodity trading firm as an execution trader dealing with Asian and European markets. This firm was run by a trader who hired computer programmers that could test and research all of his ideas and then program them into automated trading models. The only orders I needed to execute were the more sizable orders so we could avoid the slippage caused by large stop orders. There were other traders and research staff that all had a hand in developing new models for the system. In spite of this, that firm eventually nearly failed and is now just a shell of itself.

Around that same time, I learned that a friend of mine from college worked for one of the biggest offshore commodity funds, and one of the most successful. He indicated that firm also had a significant number of research personnel conducting research on new trading models. Their system was also heavily automated, they had their own research platform for developing these new models.

Also in the late 1990’s I was introduced to Jaffray Woodriff of Quantitative Investment Management in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had a mutual friend that was a fraternity brother of mine at William and Mary. The first time I spoke with Jaffray, I realized that he was far more intelligent than I. He was also a computer programmer and learned how to test and develop his own trading models on his own software. He clearly had a passion for the markets and I could just tell this guy was going to make it big. At that time, he had a small trading business, but ran into some initial problems. So, he took off for Wall Street to work at an investment bank. He had some good success on the trading desk there and a few years ago, decided to start up his current business with a partner. That hedge fund now manages over $3 billion!

Now that you know how stiff the competition is, you may think twice about trying your hand at trading for a living. Can it be done? Of course it can. However, the statistics suggest that traders who start out with less than $10,000 trading futures or in the Forex currency markets will fail 90% of the time. The main reason for this is the lack of capital, but it can also be attributed to not having a coherent plan for trading.

With this in mind, new traders should follow the following process before attempting to stake their claim in the financial markets:

1. Determine the absolute highest amount of money you are willing to lose in the markets, money that if lost, will not affect your standard of living.

2. Determine what you seek to achieve in this business. What are your short term goals and long term goals?

3. Determine your monthly bills and make sure those are covered by ANOTHER source of income besides trading.

4. Figure out what type of trading suits your personality best. Are you able to withstand significant losses while waiting for significant trends to develop? Do you need to be right more often than you are wrong? Do you want to take quick small profits or wait for big trades that occur over longer periods of time? Can you pay attention to the markets with no distraction throughout the day, or do you have a real day job that requires most of your attention? Are you more interested in technical analysis or fundamental analysis? Do you like mechanical trading systems or do you like to go with your gut? When you answer these questions you can figure out whether you should focus on longer term stock trading, daytrading, short term swing trading, options trading, etc.

5. Once you figure out the trading style that suits you best, then you must conduct a good bit of research on the markets to develop your trading strategies. I recommend backtesting strategies on historical data with a program such as TradeStation. If you are able to program your own software for developing trading models, that is even better. Do not fall into the trap of just looking at the bottom line results of the models that you test. You must see how they perform on a day-to-day and month-to-month basis so that you will have an idea of the losses you can expect when trading for real.

6. Do not start trading until you are absolutely confident in the strategies you have developed. One big mistake a lot of traders make is not sticking to their plan. As soon they experience a drawdown, they give up on their strategy and try and trade a new one. As soon as they start the new one, the old one starts working. This is one reason I recommend against the purchase of black box trading systems without any knowledge of how these systems select their trades.

7. After you start trading, maintain records on how your trading. Be sure to write down the reason for initiating your trade, and the reason you exit. If you deviate from your strategy, state why, and how that deviant trade performed. In this way you will be able to keep track of what works for you and what does not.

Ultimately, you must approach trading like you would any other business or profession. It requires research, education and knowledge to succeed in this business. Many people fail, so do not assume that because you have some smarts that you can be successful. Successful trading requires careful planning, common sense, intestinal fortitude, and a little luck!

Scott Cole
http://www.kungfutrader.com

To the average investor, “correlation” once seemed to be one of those “little known, less cared about” ideas. But in today’s increasingly connected global financial system, correlation takes on a whole new importance. Witness how our entire credit and financial system teetered on the brink of collapse when one market, the sub-prime credit market, started tumbling out of control.

Bear with me for just one short academic moment.

In the world of finance, correlation is a statistical measure of how two securities move in relation to each other. Correlation is computed into what is known as the correlation coefficient, which ranges between -1 and +1. Perfect positive correlation (a correlation co-efficient of +1) implies that as one security moves, either up or down, the other security will move in lockstep, in the same direction. Alternatively, perfect negative correlation means that if one security moves in either direction the security that is perfectly negatively correlated will move by an equal amount in the opposite direction. If the correlation is 0, the movements of the securities are said to have no correlation; they are uncorrelated.

In real life, perfectly correlated or uncorrelated assets are rare; rather you will find securities with some degree of correlation. For investors trying to build diversified portfolios that improve returns while reducing risk, correlation is not a good thing. In fact, it is a very bad thing. High correlation amongst investments means that as one goes up (or more recently) down, all the others move right along with it.

Unfortunately, the interconnectedness of global markets has led to a very high level of correlation between assets, not only among equities, but across most asset classes that, on the surface, don’t seem like they should be all that correlated. According to The Economist, March 9, 2007, “Perhaps it should not be too surprising that, according to Merrill Lynch, over the past five years the Russell 2000 index of small American companies has a 94% correlation with the S&P 500, the main Wall Street index. More alarmingly, international stock markets have not offered any diversification either: they have shown a 95% correlation. Yet more startling are the figures showing that hedge funds have recorded a 94% link with shares. Even property has been following Wall Street 81% of the time.”

Why should investors be concerned about this? For a very large segment of the population, our jobs/incomes (and any defined benefit pensions) are tied to the state of our employers/companies, which are tied to the state of the economy, which is tied to the state of the financial markets. Defined contribution pensions, 401k’s, and IRA’s are most commonly invested in equities (through mutual funds or self-directed accounts) and are therefore tied to the same set of risk variables in the economy (interest rates, energy prices, geopolitical instability, natural disasters, currency fluctuations, commodity prices, illiquidity of credit markets, etc.) When the entire house of financial cards starts tumbling, only uncorrelated assets have the ability to be a lifeline to investors’ net worth.

Enter life settlements as investments. Life settlements are discounted cash settlements paid by investors to life insurance policyholders. In exchange, investors later receive the full amount of the life insurance policy upon the passing of the insured; a win-win transaction. Policyholders, who choose to sell their policy, receive cash now to enhance the quality of their remaining days. Investors receive an excellent return on investment, historically a double-digit return.

How does that solve the correlation dilemma facing investors today? The July 30, 2007 cover story of Business Week, Profiting From Mortality, states “Moreover, [life settlements are] ‘uncorrelated assets,’ meaning their performance isn’t tied to what’s happening in other markets. After all, death rates don’t rise or fall based on what’s happening to commodities, say. Uncorrelated assets like these are highly prized in an increasingly connected global financial system.” Life settlements bring a true measure of diversification to investment portfolios at a time when most other investment asset categories are increasingly operating in parallel.

“Investors are attracted to life settlements because insurance is seen as a noncorrelated alternative asset. Life settlements provide noncorrelated diversification because insurance policies are independent of the factors contributing to economic downturns, such as interest rate fluctuations and increasing fuel cost. As a result, life settlements are one way to reduce a portfolio’s exposure to sudden downturns in the stock and bond markets,” according to Conning Research & Consulting, Inc.’s 2007 study “Life Settlement Market: Increasing Capital and Investor Demand”.

Wall street firms have known this for years. Firms like Berkshire Hathaway and AIG have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into life settlement portfolios, to mitigate risk in all their other “correlated” assets. Institutional investors are using life settlements to shore up collateral for development projects. After all, unlike real estate, life insurance policies (logically) don’t decline in value over time. Each day, a life insurance policy is one day closer to reaching full value.

Options for individual investors to participate in life settlement assets had been few, but the investment picture is improving. Funds are on the horizon, although not yet here, and fractional ownership arrangements already exist, that provide the diversification necessary to achieve a predictable rate of return for an individual life settlement investment portfolio.

Financial advisors have preached diversification for years. What they were really trying to say and most of them didn’t realize it, was that investors need to uncorrelate their investments. Unfortunately for many of us, diversifying with a bunch of highly correlated assets achieved nothing, didn’t diversify, only “deworsified”. Life settlements, on the other hand, are one truly uncorrelated investment asset.

Dave Yelken is a life settlement expert and the owner of Accelerating Wealth, LLC, a financial services agency specializing in life settlement strategies, based in Bedford, Texas. To contact Dave, or to add yourself to his mailing list, please visit http://acceleratingwealth.com/

The forex market is the biggest financial market in the world by trading volume. Every day currencies valued at approximately 3 trillion dollars are traded. This means that a trade of one million dollars is not even scratching the total daily volume of the forex market. A volume so big is created by many traders and institutions, each of them with a different intention.

Central banks are big players in the forex market. The purpose of central banks, like the Federal Bank of the United States, is to keep the economy and currency of their country stable. They do it with the interest rate decision and trading the currency market. Most central banks are active traders in the forex market, mainly to stabilize their currency and have a sufficient foreign currency reserve if the need for it ever arises.

Commercial banks are the main part of the forex market. These banks carry out the trades by other traders. This action requires them to exchange currencies with one another according to their clients’ needs. The commercial banks also trade currencies for their own profit and speculation. When banks believe that one currency will rise over the other, they perform the appropriate trade to make sure they profit from it. Since commercial banks control most of the money in the world, they are the one of the biggest parts of the forex market.

Importers and exporters are also a crucial part of the forex market. Since these companies work with countries other than their own, they also work in different currencies around the world. Their main activity in the forex market is to exchange money from their currency to their client’s currency and vice versa. They also use the currency market to “lock” an exchange rate and guarantee a certain profit. This is done to avoid the impact of fluctuations in exchange rates and guarantee a future profit.

Private speculators, including private citizens, hedge funds, and other non-regulated or little-regulated institutions also make up a big volume of the forex market. Usually they are not trading to do international business or stabilize an economy, but rather to make a profit for themselves or their clients. Their trades are being carried by commercial banks.

As you can see, there are many players in the forex market, and that number is just growing every day. You can also be a part of this market and profit from it. To do that, you need the best forex broker out there and a good forex trading system to help you, and you can start trading.

About the author:

Nadav Snir is a stock market trader and forex trader. You can find more information about forex trading and forex brokers at his site at http://Great-Info-Products.com/Forex/index.html.