forex fire

Easy Language

TradeStation gives you the power to right code in Easy Language in order to back test your trading strategies. Now, while the name of the code is Easy Language, it is far from easy. If you have previous coding experience, then Easy Language will remind you a lot of C++, but if you have no previous coding experience, do not waste your time on trying to learn the syntax. Simply look to their third-party programmers for assistance. These developers are backed by TradeStation and they do not charge and obscene amount of money. Better yet, if you have a friend or relative that knows how to write code, they will quickly be able to write basic strategies for you.

TradeStation provides some basic literature on Easy Language, but if you want to really get your feet wet, you will have to purchase their home study course, which will run you a cool $149. Again, if you are here to trade, trade, and leave the developing to the programmers.

Historical Market Data

TradeStation has over 25 years of historical data. When you look a little closer, the amount of data is dependent upon which investment vehicle you are using:

• 4 years of intra-day Forex data
• 8 years of Eurex Futures and Index Data
• 16 years of intra-day Equities
• 25 years on intra-day Futures data

So, the real question is do you need all this data from TradeStation. Well, of course, if you are serious about testing your trading strategies. This amount of market data will allow you to back test your strategies in bull, bear and flat markets. You will quickly see how you would have faired in the bull market of the late 90’s, or the slippery slope down in ‘01 and ‘02. Most importantly, you can see how you would have done since the market recently bottomed in the spring of ‘03.

Automated Trading

I do not endorse mechanical trading, as I feel every trader should be responsible for his or her own trading decisions, but I have to admit, having the option of setting up automatic trading is impressive. In order to activate this feature, you should be certain that your strategy is working properly and has clear stop rules. The last thing you want is to take lunch and come back to realize you just bought a 10 thousand dollar hotdog. TradeStation also has a new feature that allows you to execute orders based on fundamental analysis. TradeStation is the first platform capable of scanning and executing orders based on fundamental factors.

Back testing Strategies

There is one part of back testing that TradeStation does not tell you about and that is slippage. When you write your Easy Language code, you can tell the code to exit a trade on the close of the current bar, or ext at market on the open of the next bar. The problem is you may want to write the code to get out at a specific price. Now, all of you Easy Language experts out there, please relax, I know that you can write code to get out at any particular price, but the average trader will not know how to write such detailed code. So, in summary remember that if you write your own code, the canned functions in Easy Language will not allow you to easily code your exits. Just make sure you verify in your performance report that your results have not been inflated or deflated due to slippage.

TradeStation will display a report of your hypothetical trading results. The TradeStation performance report lists everything from average time in trade, average gain, total commission, annual rate of return to name a few. Only problem, you cannot export the data to excel. So, one is forced to manually type in stats into your friendly worksheet processor. Depending on how much information you want to analyze, this exercise could prove to be time consuming.

Trade Execution

TradeStation has the quick order button execution of every other active brokerage firm. But the cool thing with TradeStation is the Order Cancels Order (OCO) and Order Stages Order (OSO) order types. For Order Cancels Order, you can instruct TradeStation to enter a position if the price breaks up or down. This works well when you have identified two levels on a stock as potential long or short entries depending on how the price breaks. The Order Stage Order allows you to stage multiple orders for an existing position. So, if you are long MSFT and want to exit in 3 increments, you can create an OSO order which will stage the orders and when a certain price is hit, it will exit a part of your position at a specific limit. I often hear traders say that they do not want to put a stop in, because if there limit is hit, they will have to cancel their open stop order, to then put in a limit order to exit the trade. Well, with OSO in you can place both a stop and up to 3 limit orders in TradeStation, so there is no longer any excuse as to why you can not protect your capital, the second you get in the trade.

Shorting

TradeStation does not have the books to short some of the more obscure stocks. So, if you want to short stocks that are not well known, you may encounter some trouble with TradeStation. This does not happen often, but it happens enough that it is noticeable.

Charting

The charts in TradeStation are in real-time and there are over a hundred indicators, show me, paint bars, etc. which can be displayed on the chart. The only negative is that you cannot execute trades by clicking directly on the chart. There are multiple screens in TradeStation that will allow you to close a position; unfortunately, the chart is not one of them.

Ability to Link Accounts

TradeStation has the ability to link all of your accounts. Therefore, you can trade futures, one minute and then put on a trade in your equities account the next. This is extremely convenient, since you do not have to open another application or go through the tedious process of logging into another account.

Commission Structure

If you are an active trader and you trade under 1k shares per lot, TradeStation makes sense. TradeStation has a per share cost up to 500 shares. The first 500 shares are $.01. So you can buy 100 shares for a $1 and up to 500 shares for $5. Over 500 shares, it is $.006 per share. So, if you trade 3k shares, TradeStation can become costly. The first 500 shares will cost 5 bucks and then the last 2.5k shares will run you another 15 bucks. The total cost would be 20 dollars one-way for the trade. In this example, it of course would be much cheaper to trade with a brokerage firm that has a flat charge for all trades. In summary, if you are going to trade in big lots, 1k or more, go with a flat fee brokerage firm, but if you’re going to trade under 1k lots, TradeStation is the place for you.

Support Center

TradeStation has a support and discussions forums, where traders share ideas, stories and Easy Language code. Unlike many forums, where there are only a few users, the TradeStation forum has hundreds of quality posts. I have been able to pickup tons of ideas as well as free Easy Language code for some of my strategies. Each post is grouped in categories and the users are quick to respond to your questions. TradeStation has also recently started a Wiki for both their platform as well as Easy Language. The Wiki is expanded daily. TradeStation also has a dependable phone support staff. I have yet to call and not be able to get someone on the line with in 15 - 30 seconds. The staff is always attentive and willing to help on any issue. There is a sales desk, equities desk, futures desk, and forex desk. Each department specializes in their respective areas, which prevents you, the client, from ever talking to someone who is unknowledgeable on how to address your issue.

Radar Screen

TradeStation is the only trading platform, which has a radar screen that can scan the market based on your own market criteria. Now this is not your standard, scan that can display stocks with an RSI under 30. The scan in Radar Screen can be as simple or as complicated as your Easy Language abilities will permit. So, if you want to look at stocks at 2-day highs, with 25k shares per minute, that are up a minimum of 2%, you can scan the market for this information in real-time. The only negative regarding Radar Screen is TradeStation only allows you to scan the market for 1k stocks. But, who needs to monitor more than 1k stocks?

See You At The Top,

Al Hill

Al Hill is the co-founder of mysmp.com (My Stock Market Power) which provides free trading articles to investors. Please visit http://mysmp.com/trading-articles.html for more free articles.

I invite you to take the next few minutes to learn the truth about the real estate market, how it compares to other methods of building assets and why it is such a lucrative form of investing. Many potential investors will say, ‘I need to get into the Florida Investment Property market’, especially taking into account current stock market fluctuations and the HOT market for investment properties, but simply don’t know the facts about Orlando property investing and how to use sale and leaseback method of property management.

When is the last time your financial advisor or stockbroker tried to convince you that moving a portion of your assets into the Florida Investment Property market might be a good idea? Never Right? The ‘why’ is simple. They don’t earn commissions when you buy Florida Investment Property. It is also likely that you have probably never had an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of stocks versus Florida Investment Property quite like the one you will see here.

Reason 1:

Leverage: Banks will not typically loan money to buy stocks. Banks will however, compete fiercely to loan money to buy Florida Investment Property. Your first question should be, ‘why is that’? It has to do with risk management, which we will discuss later. The fact that banks want to loan you money to buy Florida Investment Property creates a situation which we will call LEVERAGE.

Let’s assume that you have $10,000 to put into some type of investment. If you choose to buy $10,000 worth of stocks, you will own exactly $10,000 worth of stocks. Pretty straight-forward. However, suppose you choose to invest that $10,000 into Florida Investment Property using a 90% mortgage (which in many cases can go up to 95-100% mortgages in today’s market), you will own $100,000 worth of Florida Investment Property. If both of your investments were to appreciate by 10%, your actual gain with your stocks would be $1000 where your actual gain with Florida Investment Property would be $10,000. That equates to an actual 10% return on investment vs. a 100% return on investment. That’s what we call leverage.

Leverage: Florida Real Estate vs. Stocks

The traditional argument against Florida Investment Property Investing (mainly from Stock Brokers) has always been ‘I can get an average of 10% from stocks with little effort so why would I invest in Orlando Investment Property that only appreciates 6-7% per year’? This point-of-view is not taking leverage into account.

If you take the above statement to be true and compare the REAL numbers, the stock investment gained 10% of the initial $10,000 value (or $1000) and the Orlando Investment Property investment gained 6% of the initial $100,000 value (or $6000). That is still an actual return of 10% versus 60%. It is not hard to see which investment provides a greater immediate return on investment. Additionally. these numbers do not take into account any income from your property during the course of the year, or the substantial tax advantages to owning property, which we will discuss later.

Reason 2:

Value: As we mentioned previously, if you invest $10,000 into purchasing stocks, you own $10,000 worth of stocks (a fairly obvious point). If you invest $10,000 into purchasing Orlando Investment Property using the leverage of a 90% mortgage, you own $100,000 worth of Orlando Investment Property right? Well, only if you paid retail for your property. Any savvy investor will tell you that there are excellent deals to be had in Orlando Investment Property, you just have to find them.

What if you purchased a $100,000 property that happened to be worth $110,000 the day you bought it? Does it happen? The answer is yes, all the time. If you have your eyes open and are willing to ‘go through the numbers’ to find good deals, they are all around you. You may be asking yourself, why would anybody sell a $110,000 property for $100,000?

Value: Making money when you buy.

The reasons are endless as to why a quick sale is desired, but just to name a few: job relocation, divorce, an estate is being settled or maybe a current appraisal on the property simply wasn’t done prior to selling. By ‘finding this deal’ you have accomplished two things.

You have added $10,000 to your asset column in the form of equity.

You have created additional LEVERAGE for yourself as the value of your property increases (a 6-10% gain on $110,000 is better than a 6-10% gain on $100,000!) Remember, you make money in Orlando Investment Property when you buy, not when you sell.

Reason 3:

Control: Let’s take our assumption one step further. When you buy your $10,000 worth of stocks, what can you do to increase its value? If we follow the previous assumption, you have invested $10,000 using a 90% mortgage to purchase a $100,000 property that has an actual value of $110,000 because you ‘found a good deal’. So what can you do to further increase the value of your new $110,000 property?

It is amazing what a cleanup, a little landscaping and a paint job can do to increase the value of a property. Only a few hundred dollars well spent can result in huge value gains in Orlando Investment Property. Your $110,000 property with a little effort could easily be worth $115,000, $120,000 or more virtually overnight! Do you have to do any of this work yourself? Absolutely not! If you like to do that sort of thing then have at it, but if not, simply hire it done and accept a little lower net gain.

Reason 4:

Superior Tax Position: The tax code in the United States is geared to reward Investors who make housing and other property available to the population. When you invest in stocks, you are taxed at some of the highest rates in the tax code. When you invest in Orlando Investment Property, you put yourself in one of the best tax positions in the business world. Remember the wealthy that hold substantial portions of their assets in Orlando Investment Property? Tax advantages are one of the main reasons this is true.

Continuing with the above example, let’s say that you have completed your ‘deal’ with the $10,000 invested with a 90% mortgage to purchase the $100,000 property that appraised for $110,000 (because you ‘found a good deal’), which you improved to say, $115,000 by spending another $1000 on cleanup etc. Assume that one year passes and the Orlando Investment Property market grew by 6%, your property would now be worth $122,000. So far, so good right? If you are like most people, you may want to spend some of your hard earned money.

Let’s do the numbers. You have a mortgage at current rates that started at $90,000 and after a year worth of payments (the majority of which are tax deductible) you still owe approximately $89,000. However, your property is now worth approximately $122,000. If you were to refinance at 90% once again, you would take out a new mortgage of approximately $110,000. This will leave you with approximately $21,000 in cash in your pocket. Now, the BIG question; do you have to pay tax on that money? Absolutely Not! You have not sold the property or realized a ‘capital gain’. You have simply borrowed money from yourself. You are able to do what you wish with that money, free from any tax whatsoever. Obviously, a good strategy might be to purchase two more properties just like your first deal!

Also, we have not taken into account the fact that ALL of your interest payments on this property are tax deductible. In addition, you are also able to depreciate the property itself and all of its contents for additional tax advantages if you choose to do so.

Let’s be fair and compare the Orlando Investment Property tax position with the stock scenario. Assume that the $10,000 initial stock investment grew by 10% in the first year, creating a gain of $1000 and you wish to access it. If you draw it out, you will pay from 20-28% (or higher) in capital gains tax in order to have access to this money. This reduces your net gain to $800 (actual 8%) or less, depending on your tax situation. Compare that to Orlando Investment Property and you are beginning to get the picture.

Reason 5:

Limit Your Exposure To Risk

Risk Management: Do you remember at the top when we said that banks would compete fiercely to loan you money on Orlando Investment Property? The answer to the ‘why’ is very simple. Low Risk. Banks incur little if any risk when loaning money on Orlando Investment Property due to the steady, solid growth rate of the property market, as well as the fact that if you default on your payments they will simply sell the property to somebody else. This is in direct contrast to the volatile stock market, which can vary daily with sharp increases and decreases in value. Furthermore, banks realize that a property isn’t going anywhere, whereas many investors know all too well about .com and other types of companies that were there yesterday and gone today.

This is all not to say that Orlando Investment Property markets don’t go down from time to time, however the dips are much less dramatic than that which can take place in the stock market, proven out by the banks’ willingness to loan money on property.

Reason 6:

Protecting your peace of mind.

Finally, Now that we understand the value of leverage and risk management we realize that a 6% Orlando Investment Property gain ‘beats the pants off’ a 10% stock gain in actual return on investment by a wide margin (approximately 50%, not taking into account several factors that can increase this number such as tax advantages, income on property etc.) Owning good, solid Orlando Investment Property allows you to sleep at night, or go on an extended vacation without worrying about your asset column. This is directly opposed to holding a substantial percentage of your assets in stocks.

Lisa Carson
http://www.biminibayresortinvestment.com
lcarson@biminibayresortinvestment.com

Anyone with a little bit of computer knowledge can make money online selling anything their heart desires. You can sell old clothes, furniture, eBooks, information packets, cars, almost anything. The internet is such a huge and versatile area for an online marketplace. You can create a painting or any work of art and sell it online. You can start a home business and sell the products that are offered through that company. Starting a home business can possibly to lead to more profits over a longer period of time then traditional selling, but it all works. Join an affiliate program and sell a product created by someone else.

The most basic and most popular place to make money online selling is eBay. EBay has millions and millions of products being sold all over the world. It is as simple as finding something you are willing to get rid of, then throwing it up on eBay. There step by step instruction will help you get started on the right track. It is very simple so do not let the minor details get you confused.

Create an ecommerce website and start to make money online selling products on your own website. If you are not capable of creating your own site, have someone do it for you. If you want a quicker alternative you can back to eBay and purchase an existing website. Go to eBay and click business and industrial, there you will find a link for business and websites for sale. Sort through sites that you think might interest you and contact the seller with all questions you may have.

Become a power in affiliate marketing. You can make money online selling affiliate products from your website. Go to sites like clickbank or commission junction and sort through products that catch your eye. View the pay scale to see how much you will make off of each sale. Fill out the information and create a link, next place it on your website and bingo, you now can make money online selling products you did not have to create.

To make money online selling affiliate products you must have a marketing strategy in place, unless you are getting quality traffic to your site. One example is you can write a quick 500 word article about your product and submit it to article directories such as Ezine Articles with a link back to your site. So now when anyone reads your article, they now can visit your site through the link you have inserted. There are many other free ways of marketing but article marketing is a basic strategy to get you started.

With the right determination you can make money online selling anything you want. Selling online can lead to long term financial wealth. Many people are becoming ultra successful online. Some are doing it part and some do it full time as a business. Whichever way you want, you too can do it. A lot of people are tired of working the day to day JOB. So, they try and make money online selling anything to help supplement or even take over their current income. You can too.

Matt Belock Is The Creator/Owner Of Internet Ready Cash. Your Answer For An Internet Based Business Opportunity Is Only A Click Away.
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One of the best ways to test out technical indicators and test out how effective they really are is to do some backtesting and look through historical price charts. However, this data can often be misleading.

I’m a regular forex trader and have traded the forex markets for a few years now, but despite being profitable overall, I still like to experiment with different indicators every so often and test out different systems that I come across on the internet.

However one thing I have noticed is that there is a huge difference between viewing historical data and thinking that an indicator or set of indicators seem to be extremely accurate and profitable, and making decisions based on these indicators in real time.

The main reason for this is because some indicators can be misleading and although they may appear profitable when viewing historical charts, in real time they can often give false signals or show up differently on historical charts when the current bar or candle is completed.

Technical indicators that give different signals and that can change in real time are often known as repainting indicators.

An example is the Supertrend indicator. This indicates whether there is a currently a bullish trend in place (indicator is green) or a bearish trend (indicator is red). Now if you look at historical charts you can see that this signal shows pretty clear signals and changes in trend are clearly defined.

However when you view this indicator in real time you will often find that it changes colour in the middle of a bar or candle, and for example, if it suddenly changes from red to green, you could take a long position, but the price could drop back and the Supertrend would go back to being red if it occurred in the same period.

However, if you looked back at this period of time at a later date you would only see that it remained red the whole time during this period and no change in trend took place. So this is one example of how a repainting indicator and how historical data in general does not always tell the real story of what actually happened.

So whenever you are analysing historical charts and testing out different technical indicators and systems, always remember that when you come to trade these same indicators in real time, they are not always as reliable as they may seem to appear in historical charts. Also remember that it’s easy to spot trends and patterns after the event but when you’re trading live it’s a lot harder to do.

Click here to read James Woolley’s FXcast review and to learn all the latest tips and strategies related to forex currency trading.

Unlike many other forms of speculation, investing can actually be fun and it is a great way to plan for your family’s financial future. Investing money into areas like real estate, online, stocks and shares are just a few of the many places where this is carried out on a daily basis. For the careful investor any one of the many areas can make money, sometimes sooner rather than later. While the subject is very large, the information listed here is for guidance only and further information should be sought before you jump-in with both feet.

The stock market is a great place to make money, and if you intend on doing this with stocks and mutual funds, it is highly recommended that you first carry out some research on the companies you wish to invest in. The stock market can be a great way to make money, sometimes very quickly but these sorts of gains are generally made by people that know what they are doing and short term risks can be involved. If you are after long term security with huge financial gains then you will most likely look at real estate as a way to ear money. Many people buy homes that need upgrading and this is a way to buy them at a knock down price but it should be remembered that to sell on a house for a profit requires a little more than just a coat of paint.

There are however, many factors that should be considered before any attempt is made to invest in real estate; this is not the case with the next option. Probably the fastest growing way is through trading online and it’s amazing how easily you can work your finances online, and make money without even leaving the house. Anyone trading online can first check the companies they are interested in, their growth and performance for example before they decide to invest with them, all of which can be done quickly and easily. While many people make a decent profit doing this you must be disciplined in your approach as it is easy to let it start ruling your life and wallet.

Whichever market you plan to work in, remember investing is a skill; true it can be learned but that often requires patience which is something many short term investors do not have. If you are truly serious about making money from trading then simply must do the basics, study and research the field you are in. For further information on the subject with some interesting case histories, simply visit the forums, blogs and websites that are a powerhouse of good advice. I know many people that thoroughly enjoy investing this way and having control over an investment portfolio; I also know a few who approached it the wrong way and lost large sums of money in the process so be one of the wise ones.

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