Trading Price Action in Forex Markets
To become a successful trader if you are new, you should immerse yourself completely in the subject in order to find your edge. If you already a winning at trading than you should know exactly what your edge is.
Even the most advanced traders find it difficult to understand, interpret and trade the sharp moves often seen in the forex markets. By learning to read and interpret price action, you can develop a huge advantage for you as a trader.
In a steep decline, one should be careful to measure the reaction of the longs. You must know if the move has the chance to turn into a rout.
You should look at the reaction of the longs as soon as the rate begins to go south, this way you will be able to determine if the market is sitting on a large number of long positions and whether traders want to dump their positions. In case of a spike followed by a sharp V recovery, you should avoid shorting the pair.
Masses of buyers entering the market at lower levels tell you that the market is not particularly long. Lower prices mean bargain prices for those wishing to accumulate long positions.
Moving averages (MAs) are among the oldest, true and tested indicators. Widely used moving averages are the 50, 100 and 200 day MAs.
As said before, moving averages are lagging indicators. They relate with the past price action in the market. MAs can be used effectively in intra-day trading for entering and exiting positions in one way markets that are trending.
During times of sharp price moves, it becomes difficult for the traders to enter a position as retracements are far and few. This makes most of the traders confused and forces them to start taking arbitrary decisions.
MAs can be used as dynamic resistance levels in such situations. This can give better results than the static support/resistance levels used by majority of the traders.
The advantages of using Moving Averages like this gives you dynamic levels to trade off and gauge price action taking place in the market. This will help you avoid using arbitrary levels in entering or exiting a position.
Can You Learn To Trade Like a Hedge Fund Manager? (Part II)
You must have read Part I of how hedge fund managers trade forex. You need to understand that hedge fund managers are always on their nerves edge. They constantly look for strategies that work.
Hedge fund managers aim is to make good money consistently while always on their guard because a trade can go bad any time. If a trade goes bad, they know beforehand how to get out of a bad position before it results in a huge loss. You as individual investors also would put your own money at stake in the hope of making good money.
You should decide whether you want to range trade or trend trade? Many hedge fund managers are trend following traders. If you want to become a trend trader than you need to become a master of predicting and anticipating trends in your favorite currency pairs. If you want to be a contrarian trader and range trade, than you should understand how to scalp.
You also need to decide the time frame that you will trade most. You should decide whether you will use the 5 min charts, 30 min charts, 4 hour charts , daily charts etc and why.
Do you want to hold your position overnight or you are happy as a day trader? If you are in a job, do you have time to trade in the evening or the night and how much time you can spare? What time is best for you?
Learn the art of entry and exit. You will need to learn technical analysis for this. Technical analysis is essential for your success. Should it be multiple entry, multiple exits? Should it be single entry, single exit? Should it be multiple entries, single exit? Should it be single entry, multiple exits?
You should understand the money management rules. Never ever put more than 1% of your equity at stake in a single trade. Learn to calculate the risk/reward ratio.
Now, test drive the forex system by back testing and forward testing. Back testing can be done on Metatrader and other platforms. Forward test your strategies on a demo account.
Open a mini account and try to test it live with a small amount of money. This way you will not lose much money but will be playing against your emotions.
Ultimately trading is all about developing discipline and controlling emotions. You dont get this feel in demo trading when you know nothing is at stake.
Get intimate with your strategies. There are two primary types of trading strategies”one that has a high percentage of profitable trades and one that has a high profit factor.
The key factor here is to know and find out what type of market environment your trading strategy performs well in and what type of market environment your trading strategy fails in. Because only then will you know what works under what conditions and what does not work.
Understand how much drawdown you can afford on your trading account with this trading strategy. You can establish a bench mark figure using a back test. Decide before hand how much drawdown is acceptable before you pull the plug out of the trade.
The last step of thinking or trading like a hedge fund manager is self reflection on your past trading performance. Self reflection is very important. Most of the time we become so absorbed with trading that we do not notice the obvious and keep on repeating it again and again.
This is why it is good to spend some time on a weekly or monthly basis to self reflect on your past trading performance. You need to fix a certain level of pips per day for yourself and keep on tweaking your trading strategies until you reach that figure.
Fundamental Trading Strategy Based on Interest Rate Differentials
As a forex trader, you should be aware of the role played by the interest rate changes in the general economic and investment climate. You should know that interest rates are an essential part of investment decisions and can drive currency markets as well as the stock and commodities markets in either direction. After the unemployment figures, Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) rate decisions are the second largest currency market moving release.
The impact of the interest rate changes not only have short term consequences but also have long term impact on the currency markets. One Central Banks decision can affect more than a single currency pair in the interconnected forex markets.
In forex trading, an interest rate differential is the difference between the base currency interest rate and the quoted currency interest rate. In the currency pair, EUR/USD, EUR is the base currency and USD is the quoted or counter currency. The interest rate differential for the EUR/USD pair will be the difference between the Euro interest rate and the USD interest rate.
Understanding the relationship between the interest rate differentials and the currency pairs can be very profitable for you as a forex trader. In addition to the Central Banks overnight interest rate decisions, expected future overnight rates as well the expected timing for the interest rate changes can be crucial to the currency pair movements.
The reason why this is profitable is that international investors like big banks, hedge funds and institutional investors are yield seekers. They actively keep on shifting funds from the low yield assets to high yield assets.
Interest rate differentials are considered to be the leading indicators for currencies. London Inter Bank Offer Rate (LIBOR) and the 10 year government bond yields are usually used as leading indicators of currency appreciation or depreciation.
Lets take an example, suppose the Australian 10-year government bond yield is 5.25%. The US 10-year government bond yield is 1.75%. The yield spread in this case would be 350 basis points in favor of the Australian Dollar.
Suppose the Australian government raised its interest rate by 25 basis points. The 10 year Australian government bond yield would also appreciate to 5.50%. Now, the new yield spread is 375 basis points in favor of AUD. The AUD will also be expected to appreciate against USD.
The general rule of thumb used by professional traders is that when a yield spread increases in favor of a certain currency that currency is expected to appreciate against the other currency in the pair. This is important information for you as a trader. Interest rate data is available on Bloomberg. Keep track of the currencies in the currency pairs that you trade with that data.
Understanding How the Forex Brokers Make Profits
When you start currency trading, you are told by every forex broker that there are no commissions involved in forex trading. New traders take their brokers words as true and most think that the cost of trading is minimal.
Forex brokers are also known as FCMs (Futures Commission Merchants). They make profits through the bid/ask spread they charge their clients for each currency pairs. This bid/ask spread is your trading cost and profit for your broker.
Lets do a simple calculation. Spreads are usually overlooked by the individual traders as the price they pay for trading. So lets calculate your cost of trading.
Suppose you are day trading. 5 times every day, taking away the weekends, when you cant trade, there are 250 trading days for you.
As a day trader, you will open and close your position before the end of each trading day. That means each position is traded 2 times by you.
Suppose; your start with a deposit of $50,000. You use a leverage of 4 only, you are being cautious. So this $50,000 deposit will control (50,000) (4) = $200,000.
Your Annual Turnover will be; (5) (250)(2)(200,000)= $500 M. Huge! Now lets calculate how much your broker will make and what your spread cost is. Spread Cost= (Annual Turnover) (spread)/2.
Suppose further, the bid/offer spread charged by the broker is 3 pips. 3 Pips Spread Cost= (500M) (0.0003)/2= $75,000.
Suppose, the spread offered by the broker is only 2 pips. 2 Pip Spread Cost= (500M) (0.0002)/2= $50,000.
You can see yourself, the cost of trading with a 3 pips spread versus a 2 pips is $25,000. This is 50% of your account equity. You see, a 1 pip difference can result in $25,000 more as trading cost for you.
You will have to make a profit of $75,000 simply to break even. Trading costs are one of the reasons most active traders fail in the long run.
Understand what a Forex Trend is
It is important for you as a forex trader to identify and understand a trend in currency markets because they tend to be vicious and one way. Trends in forex routinely wipe out retail traders like you and me who commit the sin of trend fading.
FX trends start slowly and are the unintended consequences of another action in the global capital markets. For example, a booming stock market may lead to a massive forex trend in its wake.
Similarly, global recessionary fears may force investors to take refuge in save haven currencies like dollar in their flight towards safety. Likewise, anticipating decrease in interest rates will take carry traders to risk aversion.
So you will have to keep one eye on the global macro situation developing to look in which direction smart money is going to flow. Most of the trends in forex markets are fundamentally driven by the direction of smart money flow.
The longer the trend is going to last, the longer the correction and the consolidation is going to be. In other words, fundamentally driven trends do not take U-turns all of a sudden.
But mostly when the retail investors realize that a trend has developed, it is always too late for them. Professional traders, institutional investors and hedge fund have long been in the trade and are ready to dump their positions on the retail crowd.
As they say, a Newsweek cover is a kiss of death for a trend. Situations like these are important for an individual investor to understand.
Remember trend is your friend. Trend trading is one of the most popular trading strategies employed by professional traders including hedge funds.
The best strategy is to take a position in the direction of the trend. You can easily identify a trend in currency markets using multiple time frame analysis involving moving averages.
Once you have identified the trend, use Fibonacci retracement levels to enter and exit the position. Always put stop losses. If you successfully make a trade, you can make many pips in a few days.
How Ordinary People Beat the Wall Street?
You must have heard this fact many times that more than 90% of new traders fail and give up in a few months. Only a few survive in the long run.
Yet, still millions of ordinary people around the globe wake up everyday in the morning, turn on their computers and try to make a living trading the financial markets electronically. Have you ever thought why?
The interesting fact is this that the same statistic of failure exists in other businesses like restaurant business. New restaurants open on daily basis; most fail. Only a few succeed.
Still the possibility of making it big never stops people from starting new business ventures. The same also applies to forex trading.
Kathy Lien is a professional forex trader. She is a great writer too and has written many books on forex trading. In one of her books, Millionaire Traders, she tells the story of 12 ordinary people who beat the Wall Street at its own games.
The rag to riches story of Hoosain Harneker is remarkable. He had lost almost all his saving in a failed business venture.
He had no money. He was heavily in debt. One of his friends told him to trade forex. His friend emailed him the forex system that he used to trade forex daily. The forex system was based on simple moving averages. Hoosain did not have even a few hundred dollars to open an account with a forex broker.
He took six months to save $1000 to open an account and start trading live. During those six months, he practiced and practiced his forex strategies on the demo account.
His wife was not sure about his success. He promised his wife that he would never trade forex again if he blew up the $1000. All the 12 people in the Millionaire Traders had blown their accounts in the first few months of trading except Hoosain.
Hoosains advice to new forex traders: Begin by practicing on your demo account and double your amount three times in a row. Dont trade live before that. Paper trading gives you the confidence to face the daily turmoil of the forex markets.
Many new traders jump straight into live forex trading without practicing much on their demo accounts. After a few losses, they give up thinking that forex trading is difficult.
Forex trading needs a lot of discipline. You can learn from the success stories of these 12 ordinary but remarkable people who had the discipline and determination to make it big.
Learn How To Trade Forex
Learning forex trading should not be difficult. With decent understanding of money management rules and a good trading strategy, you should be ready for conquering the forex markets.
You should always try to understand the big picture. You should start each trading session by looking at the daily charts. After looking at the daily charts zoom into 4hr, 1hr, 30min, 15 min etc charts. Forex trading is about interpreting the past price action as well as about interpreting the future price action.
You need to ask: Is the market ranging or trending before each trade. You should ask: Is there any long term patterns that have developed. By taking a general look at the different charts you will develop a general understanding of how the forex markets are behaving in the short as well as the long term.
You should try to understand the general direction of your favorite currency pairs. You can use candlestick analysis and moving averages (simple as well as exponential) to identify long term patterns and reversals.
Bollinger bands applied to 4hr charts can be used to identify the daily trading range. Most of the price action is expected to be within the Bollinger bands. Any moves outside the bands can be viewed as short term abnormalities and ignored.
Do some scenario planning, once you have a general overview of the market. Make sure you know what news is scheduled to be released and what is the expected market reaction.
Understanding the big picture does not mean knowing the whole picture. You should only focus on your favorite pairs. It takes a longtime and effort to understand a currencys behavior, how it reacts to things like oil prices, interest rates etc. So concentrate only on a few pairs in forex trading.
Always try to take notes and keep a daily trading journal in which start by analyzing the general direction of the markets for that day. What is your thinking about how the markets are going to react to different news that is expected to be released that day? Your entry and exit for the trade. What is your expected profit?
After each trade, look at what went wrong and how to avoid it in future trading! In case of a good trade that made you pips, analyze how many pips you could have made more and how to tweak your trading strategy for better results in the future trades.
Keep these general tips in mind while you learn forex trading. Never ever trade without putting stop losses! Practice on the demo account for at least three months before starting live trading with your real money.