Learn To Use Moving Averages & Bollinger Bands?
Moving averages are a very popular tool among the traders because they are a lagging indicator of the price action. Short and long term trends are easier to identify using moving averages.
MAs are calculated on the traders specifications. They can be formatted to different style of trading and time frames. For example, in case you want to use a 90 time frame moving average, the prices of the last 90 times frames is added together and divided by 90.
A moving average can be calculated based on the opening, high, low or closing price within a time frame. Since the closing price is the most important price, most traders prefer to use the closing price. There are three types of moving averages. First one is the Simple Moving Average. Second is Weighted Moving Average and the third is the exponential moving average.
The simple MA is simply calculated by dividing the price in each time frame by the number of time frames as the name suggests. A weighted MA places more weight to the current prices as compared to the prices in the last few time frames. In an exponentially smoothed MA, the chart is exponentially smoothed out with less emphasis on the prices in the latter time frames.
Another important technical indicator is the Bollinger Bands. What are Bollinger Bands? These are bands plotted at a standard deviation above and below a moving average. The base of a band is moving average. The bands width is determined by volatility. The standard deviation is a measure of volatility so the bands are self adjusting. They widen during volatile markets and contract during less volatile periods. Bollinger bands bracket almost 90% of the market action.
Bollinger bands have many useful characteristics. Knowing when the prices are high and low, a trader can make rational investment decisions by comparing price action with the action of other indicators. They are curves drawn in and around the price structure. This provides relative definitions of high and low.
Bollinger bands can be applied to mutual funds, forex trading, futures, indices etc. As volatility lessens, sharp price action tends to occur as the bands tighten. A continuation of current trend is strongly expected when the price moves outside the bands.
A move that originates at one band tends to go all the way to the other band. When bottoms and tops made outside the bands are followed by bottoms and tops made inside the bands, reversal of the trend is highly likely.
When the bands are flat and narrow, this indicates that price volatility is lower than in previous time periods. The 10% price action outside the bands is most likely going to approximate areas where prices will return to within the bands.
When the bands begin to flare and widen, this indicates increased volatility and start of a new strong trend. Wide bands are usually taken as an indication of a very strong move.
Learn To Trade Exotic Currency Options
Currency Options are used by companies as risk management tools. What are Options? Simply stated, it is a contract that gives the buyer the right but not the obligation to buy an underlying asset under specific conditions on payment of a premium.
The buyer may or may not exercise the right. However, if the buyer of an options contract exercises his/her right, the seller is obligated to perform.
In all foreign currency transactions, one currency is purchased and another is sold. Consequently, every currency option is both a call and a put option. A call conveys the right to buy the underlying currency at a specified price. A put gives the buyer the right to sell at a predetermined price.
Why options are important as a risk management tool. Suppose a Japanese company is going to make the payment for its import of raw materials in 3 months time in USD.
The Japanese company can stay unhedged and purchase US Dollar in prevailing spot rate in three months time. On the other hand, it can hedge by buying USD forwards or it can use an options strategy.
One of the strategies available to the Japanese company is to buy JPY put/USD call option. The effect of buying the JPY put option is to put a ceiling on the cost of imports in case JPY depreciates. The exporter limits the cost to a maximum while not limiting the minimum. Now lets discuss five exotic options that you can trade to make profits under different market conditions.
Digital options are inexpensive, simple and easy to trade. If you believe the EUR/USD rate is going to be above 1.0900 after two months but you are not sure about the timing of this move, buy a digital option. If after two months, the EUR.USD rate is indeed above 1.0900, you get your predetermined payoff. If not, your digital option will expire and you with lose only a small premium.
One Touch Options are perfect for those traders who believe that there will be a retracement and the price of a given currency pair will test a support/resistance level. The one touch options pay a fixed amount if the market touches the predetermined barrier level.
A No Touch Option is a great way to profit from a trending market. The no touch option pays a fixed amount if the market never touches the barrier level that you choose. All you need to do is to determine the desired payoff, the currency pair, the barrier price and the expiration date.
A Double No Touch Option is perfect for you if you have the successful record of identifying and profiting from breakouts. But you have always lost money when the market is ranging. On the other side, you can use a Double One Touch Option if you know how to pick the tops and bottoms in a ranging market. However, you have always lost in a breakout market.
Learning to Avoid Emotions in Forex Trading
One of the most crucial yet overlooked elements of successful trading is maintaining a healthy psychological outlook. At the end of the day, traders who are unable to cope with the stress of the market fluctuations will not withstand the test of time. No matter how skilled they may be at the scientific elements of trading.
As a good trader, you need to be emotionally detached in making trading decisions. One of the attributes of good traders is that they accept losing. Your trading decisions must not depend on fear and greed. Make decisions based on an intellectual level. Traders who get emotionally involved in trading make hasty decisions resulting in substantial errors. They try to whimsically change their strategies after a few losses. In case of a few winning trades they become carefree.
Good traders are emotionally balanced. In the midst of a losing streak, they try to take a break before fear or greed starts to dominate their strategy. You cannot win every trade; you must be psychologically strong enough to cope with losses. Even very successful traders go through stretches of losing trades but they are emotionally strong enough to cope with it.
If you are going through a bad stretch, it may be time you think of taking a break. Take a few days off from watching the markets and trading to clear your mind. Continuation to trade relentlessly during tough market conditions can breed greater losses and ruin your psychological confidence.
Make no mistake about it, no matter how much you study, practice and trade; there will be stretches of losing trades. You cannot always win. The key is to make losing trades small enough in order to live to trade another day. By using good money management rules, you can overcome a lot of bad luck in your trading. Never ever put more than 2% of your equity at risk in a single trade.
You need to control your emotions in order to become a master trader. One constant is the human emotional behavior despite many new methods that have been introduced to traders. After all, markets are just people selling and buying. Markets are only a reflection of investors emotions.
People afraid of losing their money start to sell in a panic. Fear of losing money makes the market prices to head lower. Greedy people buy trying to catch a free ride. Fear of losing a good opportunity makes the market prices to go up.
You need to learn technical analysis as a forex trader. Technical analysis will make you understand how to capture profits from movements in the price. You should understand how price action takes place. Develop a trading system that is ruled based. Dont make decisions based on emotions.
The best method to overcome emotions in trading is to develop your own trading system that is ruled based. It should be mechanical in nature. Trading is an art. Learn trading as an art. There will always be 10% of discretion in each trade. Develop a trading system that has clear cut rules for entering and exiting a position and rules out most of the discretion. Discretion means using emotions. Make rules to avoid discretion. Use those rules consistently. There maybe a few losses. With a good forex trading system, you can be sure the number of winner will be greater than the losers.
Trade Forex Intraday With The 5EMAs Forex Trading System
Are you looking for a forex day trading system that works? Are you tired of blundering around in the dark and finally want a complete set of trading rules? Do you have a forex trading strategy that works?
A popular and often touted way of forex trading is day trading. However, when you are trading on the smaller time frames intraday, it can be very taxing on your mind and on your heart.
If you do not have a complete set of rules that cover the trade from entry, stop losses and profit targets, it can be very traumatizing when you do not even understand why you are losing money. That is not even deciding on how you calculate your position size!
Trading 5 – 10 currencies, each on multiple timeframes, can cause anyone to go dizzy. Plus when you are trading intra-day, it can be taxing mentally and emotionally. Especially when you go down into the 5 minutes and 10 minute charts. One very useful way to improve your performance as a day trader is to have mechanical forex trading help.
The question is: How do you have a profitable day trading career when you have to overcome so many challenges?
You need to have a solid, robust and tested forex day trading system. A system that does not leave you guessing when to enter or when to exit a trade. And if it comes together with automation in identifying trading signals across multiple charts and currencies, that is even better!
The 5 EMAs forex trading system helps you trade in two ways: Trending trades and breakout trades. Together with these two types of trades, you get the rules for managing your trade all the way till you close it out for a profit, or you get stopped out for a small loss.
Together with the instructions for identifying trades, you get expert advisers that automatically pop up when a potential trade has been identified. This means you do not have to be looking at the chart waiting for the candles to close! When you get the alert, you just need to visually confirm that the trade set-up is in order before you place the trade according to the rules.
It is a simple, yet powerful day trading system. To find out more about how to day trade successfully, read my review on the 5 EMAs Forex Trading System.
How Does Stock Market Ticker Work?
A stock market ticker is a banner that contains a constant scrolling of current stock prices. It provides real time information about the stock market.
When it comes to market information, especially when something urgent is happening in the market, usually the stock market ticker will provide that info.
There is so much trading that goes on in today’s markets that the stock price listed for any given company is likely to change at least a little each time it comes around again on the ticker.
Most of the stocks have a certain amount of delay while some are truly running in real time. You will have to pay a fee if you want to get the actual up to date numbers.
It is not necessary for many investors to have the exact real time prices, unless they are day trading where they need to sell or buy quickly during the day.
Through many source online or an online brokerage account, you can actually set up your own stock market ticker to simply show which information you’re interested in. You may want to just keep an eye on the stocks that you have invested in.
While you’re considering a purchase, you may want to keep an eye on a single stock with all the breaking news and any other information as soon as you can buy it.
A third popular option is to set up a ticker with stocks from a specific area that you are interested in, like tech stocks for example, or oil companies. Or car companies, if you like watching numbers sinking fast!
In conclusion, the stock market ticker is a very useful investing tool that can inform you quickly when something has changed. By that you will be alerted and search more information from other sources and find out what has caused a stock go down or go up.
3 Stock Trading Truths
There are thousands of fallacies about the stock trading discipline that arouse fear in a new trader’s mind and prevent others from even trying their hand at it in the first place. As a proficient trader for over 15 years, I like to be more positive than that and concentrate on the predominant truths that you will find about stock trading. Here are just a few.
1. You will be successful at stock trading if you can keep your trades consistently low risk over time. Sure, you might miss out on some of those too good to be true, windfall trades that all the movies are centered around. However, you will find that, over time, searching for those dream come true trades more often than not results in a fantastic loss that ends up deteriorating the portfolio you worked so hard to accumulate. Better to keep your trades lower risk and steadily profitable over time if you are serious about making money at stock trading.
2. You don’t have to spend all day trading to be extremely successful. This does not have to be a full time job. But please don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting another get rich with no work scheme. It takes time and effort to learn the sustems needed to achieve success at stock trading. But, by using GAP trading effectively, I profitably trade for 2-4 hours a day, plus another hour of pre-market preparation. In fact, I make a great income. With the right system, you can too.
3. The experiences of other successful traders who have “gone before” you can speed up your success tremendously. Don’t start from scratch because it will take you 10 or more years and a lot of money to make all the mistakes others have already made. It is just smart business to use the knowledge of others. How many times do we hear “don’t reinvent the wheel”, then turn around and do just that? Instead, read books by successful traders, take classes, find mentors, and use the wisdom of others to make your road more pleasurable and secure.
Some like to make the “regular guys” think that stock trading is mysterious and complicated and that only a guru in the field can understand it. Take it from a “regular guy”, that is just not correct. With the right systems in place and a good understanding of the basic truths, a prosperous stock trading career is available to anyone who wants it.
Money Management in Currency Trading (Part I)
Before you open an account with a forex broker and start trading live, you should know that the most important thing for you is good money management. Money management means how much of your portfolio, you are willing to risk on a single trade. How many contracts your risk tolerance warrants?
The important thing in trading is to learn how you can improve your investment results by making small changes to your trading strategies. Good money management rules can make the difference between becoming a successful investor in the long run or an unsuccessful one.
Have you ever played poker? If not, watched it being played online or on TV! If you have then you will never see a good poker player play all his/her cards on a single bet. Good poker players know that by risking only a small percentage of their money on a single bet, they can win and lose. But he/she will still play the next hand. If he/she puts everything on the table on a single bet; it will have to be a 100% sure bet. An impossible thing, you can never be 100% sure. Life is full of probabilities. Nothing is for sure.
Forex trading is far more complicated than playing poker. You are dealing with hundreds of unknown variables that affect the markets instead of only 52 cards. To succeed in forex trading, you must understand and implement the money management principles.
Many pitfalls will cross your way while trading. As a trader you should be constantly aware of two emotions; greed and fear. In case you win a trade, you will become greedy and would want to risk more to make one big win. You would want to strike it rich in one or two trades. This will drive you to take more and more risk.
When you lose a trade, you become afraid to risk enough of your money on the next trade. Fear takes over and impairs your decision making, making you lose confidence in your judgment and decision making. Lets see how fear and greed can play havoc with your trading.
Lets suppose you have a run of successful trades. You are feeling overconfident and you are not satisfied by risking only 2% of your account on a single trade. You want to risk more on the trade. The more you have in a trade, the more you will make if you are right. You increase your risk to 5%, you win. You increase it further to 10%, you once again win. You finally decide to put 25% of your equity at risk on a next trade, but misfortune strikes. Your successful run comes to an end. You lose.
Suppose you had a $100,000 trading account and you had foolishly risked 25% or $25,000 on one trade that you desperately wanted to win. Losing $25,000 means you have only $75,000 in your account now after your loss. How much you need to make to get back the original balance of $100,000; you need to make $25,000 again to go back to the original balance. It means you will have to make 25,000/75,000= 33%, so you risked 25% but now you will need to make 33% to get back your original amount.
Many investors once they lose a trade become desperate and try to risk more to recover their original loss. They end up losing more and more and very soon those investors destroy their accounts. Most of them are out of trading forever soon. There are other traders who try to reduce risk even more on making a losing trade; eventually they lose any opportunity for meaningful growth in their accounts.