Develop Trading Discipline
You need to develop trading discipline. If you come to a point in your market analysis in a trading session when you have no confidence on the accurate direction of the market forecast, choose not to trade. Always remember, a lost opportunity is better than lost capital.
You should wait for the market conditions to become clearer before you enter a trade. You should increase the probability of success by trading when the trade setups are strong and risk to reward ratio is not more than 1:2. This is far more important in forex than in stock markets. The forex markets move a lot as compared to the stock markets.
You need to learn that high leverage will give you the opportunity to make a lot more money much quicker. But in case you go wrong, currency markets are ruthless. You can get your account wiped out. You dont see an opportunity clearly. Try to sit on the sidelines. You dont have to trade every time. Wait for the market conditions to become clearer. You should learn to be a patient trader. Wait for the market to come to you.
You need to learn that leverage is a wonderful money making weapon. It is the essential key to making money in the currency markets as no other markets allow high leverage that this market allows. A leverage of 100:1 means that with a $1000 deposit, you can trade $100,000. This huge amount of leverage will give you the opportunity to make the kind of returns on your investment that you want.
But using high leverage also has the potential of making you lose some or all of your capital if you trade foolishly. Take the example of credit cards. The bank lets you borrow huge sums of money using your credit card on the promise that you will pay it back.
But if you abuse your credit card, it can lead you into heavy debt or even bankruptcy. Just like managing your credit card, you need to manage leverage in forex trading. Just because you have $10,000, does not mean that you should trade 10 lots. Using all your capital would be foolish.
A very conservative yet very effective method would be to never leverage more than 20% of your account. Thus, you should only trade two lots with a $10,000 capital. Using good money management and discipline, you grow your account successfully in a short period of time.
Dont forget the power of compounding. The compounding factor applied to your capital can make it grow fast. Many people want to get rich quick. They take unnecessary risks while trading thinking that a few big wins will make them rich. They dont focus on proper trading principles. You need to develop the discipline in yourself to follow simple money management rules.
Suppose you open a mini account. Start by trading one position of a tenth of a lot. You will not make much money in the beginning. The position size is only one tenth of a normal lot. Be patient! The percentage of returns will compound over time. You will trade a much larger sum of money with the passage of time.
You should make realistic goals that can be achieved over time. Always trade with the money that you can afford to lose! Trading with money that you cannot afford to lose is foolish. Dont borrow money to trade. Dont use money that you would use to pay monthly utility bills. Dont use your life savings. You are not a gambler.
Understand How to Use Risk to Reward Ratio
Many new traders think that for each trade a good entry into the markets is the essential key to success. Most of them are wrong, unfortunately. What is more important is trading with a good risk to reward ratio. A risk to reward ratio compares the potential for reward with the potential for loss. A good ratio has a high probability of making a profit.
Risk is measured by counting the number of pips between the forecasted entry price and the forecasted price at which you want to exit the market in case of a losing trade. A trader must view each trade as a business transaction. Risk is just a measure of how much you can lose in a trade.
Reward is calculated by the pips between the forecasted entry price and the forecasted price at which you would want to exit the market in case of a winning trade. Reward is the expected number of pips that you want to make in a trade that will be a winner.
In order to manage risk, you need to look for high probability trades. Trade only if the risk to reward ratio is 1:2 or higher. Your risk and your reward depend on the time frame that you want to trade. Suppose you are a day trader. You are expecting to make only 30 pips in a trade. For the risk to reward ratio of 1:2, a stop loss of 15 pips is sufficient.
However, suppose you are a swing trader or a position trader with a longer time frame. Your profit potential will be more on a longer time frame. Suppose you choose 200 pips as your expected profit. You will need to set your stop loss at 100 pips.
The reason that you need to set a higher stop loss is that on a larger time frame, small trends occur within the larger trend. Retracements on shorter time frame is much smaller as compared on the larger time frame. Your trade is going to be recycled. In order to be not stopped out, you need to calculate your risk to reward ratio appropriately.
The second most important thing for traders is minimizing losses, next to maximizing profits. A forex trading system that wins on average only 50% of the time can still be profitable. Most of the traders want to make money. But they dont know how to protect what they currently have.
You have a 50/50 chance of the currency market going your way. It is just like flipping a coin. In case, the trade does not develop in your favor and the market is going against you, you should cut your losses by using stop losses. In simple terms, you cut your losses and let your winners run. This simple 50/50 trading strategy earns a profit even when a novice trader might experience a loss.
Consider different risk to reward ratios and how much you need to win to break even. For 2:1 risk to reward ratio, you need 67% winners just to break even. For a 1:1 risk to reward ratio, it means just 50% winners to break even. 1:2 ratio means only 33.5% winners. Never ever trade when the risk to reward ratio is more than 1:2.
Understanding Forex Accounts
Good money management is the essential key that many currency traders miss. Many traders ignore adapting good money management rules at their own peril. As a consequence, they get their account blown in a few weeks of trading. You need to become a disciplined trader. Trading discipline means developing a trading system based on money management rules that limit your risk and avoid making trading decisions based on emotions. In the end, every trader has to develop his/her own insights and systems.
One of the worst blunders that trades can make is to try to trade without sufficient capital. This does not mean that you should have a lot of money before you start trading; it only means that you need to have enough capital in your account to take advantage of the movements in the markets. Low capital increases your chances of getting blown out.
A trader with limited capital is always a worried traders always looking to minimize losses beyond the point of realistic trading. The minimum amount required to open a standard account with most forex brokers is $2000. You can start with $2000 but it is recommended by most of the professional traders that you should start with $5000-$10,000 to get good results.
A standard account or a regular account (often also called 100k account), lets you trade a $100,000 standard lot with a $1000 deposit. This $1000 is kept as the margin by the broker. This is a 1% margin. Your account should have more than $1000 if you want to trade a $100k lot.
When you open an account with the broker, you must determine what the default margin is. You can change the account margin to whatever you feel comfortable with. If you start with a 2% margin, then it will cost you $2000 to trade one standard lot.
You can get a leverage of up to 200% in most of the standard accounts. Using 200% leverage means trading $200,000 with a $1000 deposit. Too much leverage is dangerous. Dont use more than 4% leverage while trading in the beginning.
Its not that leverage is bad. It is a double edged sword that cuts both ways. It increases your profit but at the same time wipes you out in case of a slight miscalculation on your part. Its just that you need to understand and learn how to use it. You can only do so with practice. With practice and more experience, you can increase the level of leverage in your trading.
The mini account was developed to accommodate investors who were looking for diversification of their stocks portfolios. You can open a mini account with a deposit of $300. This small dollar requirement allows many investors to participate in the forex markets who were previously unable to do so.
One lot on a mini account means $10,000. On a mini account, you have a different lot size as compared to the standard account. You only need $50 to control a mini lot of $10,000. This is a leverage of 200%. Pip size on a mini account is also small as compared to the standard account. A pip size on the mini account is equal to $1 instead of $10 as on a standard lot.
If you lose 100 pips on a mini account, it means losing only $100 as compared to losing $1000 on a standard lot. You can say a mini account reduces your risk by 10%. But it also reduces the amount of profit that you can make. Start with at least $500 on a mini account. A mini account is a great way for beginners to practice forex trading. Once you develop the feel of how the currency markets work, you will have to open a standard account. It is on the standard account that you can make good money.
Seasonal Trends in Forex Markets
You as a forex trader can either use fundamental analysis or technical analysis in studying the forex markets and making predictions about the future. The savvier among you will try to combine both in making predictions about the future direction a particular currency is going to follow.
Fundamental analysis depends on the study of underlying economic factors that affect currency markets. Technical analysis is based on the premise that past price action can be used to make predictions about the future price action in forex markets.
There is something known as, The January Effect. Many stock traders must be familiar with this term. This effect is based on a simple observation that during the last day of December and the fifth trading day in January stock prices tend to rally.
There is nothing extraordinary about the January Effect. The effect takes place due to the fact that many investors try to recognize capital gains or losses at the end of the year due to tax reasons. Many corporations also try to window dress their balance sheets at the end of the year.
The interesting fact is that seasonality is not peculiar to the stock markets. Forex markets also tend to show seasonal effects. Seasonality is defined as a pattern that occurs at a particular time of the year.
The January Effect also affects forex markets due to the fact that many investors who are adjusting their stock positions try to convert their local currencies into dollars at that time.
However, the January Effect is more pronounced in certain currency pairs as compared to others. For example, dollar shows pronounced January Effect against some currencies but not other. The Summer Effect also takes place when dollar shows a summer seasonality when it tends to rise in USD/JPY and USD/CAD in the beginning of July and give back its gains by August.
There are many other seasonal patterns in currency pairs. However, it does not mean that you should believe in these effects blindly. Just keep them in your mind when trading.
Seasonality only shows that there are strong chances that during a particular time of the year, the chances of a particular currency pair going up or down are more.
In some years, the effect may be pronounced. In others, not so pronounces. As a forex trader, you should keep these seasonal effects at the back of your minds while trading during that time of the years. You need to just understand these seasonal patterns.