Archive for April, 2008

Trading and Discipline – Part 1

April 14, 2008 1:29 pm

Do you trade with a specific daily plan or do you emotionally trade? Traders that experience the most success have specific fundamental disciplines that they follow each and every day. If you want to achieve results that are comparable to the best traders out there, follow these specific steps:

Trade with a Plan not on Emotion

A classic trading mistake is to make trading decisions based on emotion, causing you to buy or sell at the wrong times. Trading is considered an aggressive investment strategy but to mitigate some of this risk, outline your ideal trading choices and then implement those choices consistently to achieve the best overall results.

Use Trading Tools

To become a superior trader, you will need to leverage trading tools. With technology constantly expanding, there are a variety of tools that will help you achieve revenues within your daily trading. Some ideas to help you trade are:

• Gaining access to your investment company’s trading.
• Review financial daily news with both online and print subscriptions.
• Use trading software for technical analysis of securities. Trading software can also help you to manage trends in the market and trends within your portfolio.

Use Stop Losses

In trading, stop losses can be a powerful trading discipline to leverage. The concept uses trading tools to limit your loses either on a specific day or with a specific security. If you are trading on margin, stop losses are even more important to leverage to help manage your trading risks. Overall, this is another tool in your arsenal of tools designed to help you experience more trading success.

Top traders leverage a variety of tools to achieve their successes, treating trading as if it is a full time job. No matter which combination of trading tools you personally leverage, the most important thing is to establish a discipline that you consistently implement in order to achieve your overall desired results.

Forex 101

1:27 pm

A lot of people imagine that forex trading is complicated, requiring a high entrance investment, though the reality does not support these two widely held assumptions. With forex transactions being carried out online 24 hours per day, the door is open to anyone with the risk tolerance and the flair to trade daily online. Only a few hundred dollars are required to begin trading on the forex market.

Once you have decided to trade on the forex market, you will need to open an account with an online brokerage firm that offers direct access to the forex markets. The amount that you may trade in will depend on your deposit, but it is usually about 200 times the initial deposit when you are offered the ability to trade on margin. Margin trading leverages your investment assets to borrow additional trading capital. While margin trading on the forex market is considered to be an aggressive strategy, it can offer the potential to build wealth quicker than when trading on personal assets alone. Like any trading strategy, leverage may work for or against you depending on your skill in choosing trades. If you trade daily and treat your research and focus as a full time job, it is possible to make a living from forex trading. As the largest growing market in the world, many traders have learned how to leverage forex trades to build a strong personal financial foundation.

Forex exchange has a different dynamic than traditional trading as the markets never close. All you need to get started is an online account and access to the internet. Generating profits on the forex market can be generated in a short amount of time in a day, although the research time required to trade effectively will encompass the rest of your allotted daily time.

A recommended way of trading is to study the price action on a chart so that you can leverage the chart patterns in your trading decisions. While past trends are not indications of future performance, they certainly are helpful when compared against news of the time when trading in foreign currencies.

Generating profits on a daily basis is not guaranteed in the forex market, but when leverage time, capital and research, it’s possible to generate substantial, consistent forex profits. If you are new to forex trading, start small and learn the market. As you begin to experience successes, continue to add time to focus and investment capital to build a business out of forex trading.

Forex Rollover Finally Explained…

1:26 pm

As the forex market is different than traditional trading, it is crucial to understand how the returns are generated and how interest is calculated. Trades by clients in the forex market are settled within two days and if there are open positions held at the time of a time rollover, they are automatically rolled into the next settlement date by the clearing house. In other words, the open position is swapped for a new one that will expire in the following settlement date. These two positions are usually priced differently, based on the difference in the overnight bank interest rates of the two currencies being traded.

The forex trader who is long the currency bearing the higher interest rate, may receive a small credit in their account overnight. On the other hand, if the forex trader is short the currency bearing the higher interest rate, then they will have their account deducted over night. Whether the account is debited or credited is reflected on the price of the latest position assigned during the time rollover.

The term “Wednesday rollover” is used by some traders to make up for Saturday’s and Sunday’s interest that was not accounted for during those two days that the market is closed. If there is any open spot position held on Wednesday, then the trader will have three days worth of debit and credit in their respective trading accounts.

Here is the formula for calculating rollover interest:

Contract notional value x (base currency interest rate – quote currency interest rate) / 365 days per year x current base currency rate = daily rollover interest debit/credit.

The rollover fee in this instance is calculated while considering the trader’s full position, not their actual traded amount. This makes the effect of a rollover fee magnified. Note that there will be increased rollover fee for trades on Wednesday, as they are settled after 4 days on Monday instead of the standard 2 day settlement. Though a rollover fee is not always a decisive factor, when it does occur, it can significantly affect profits or losses for a forex trader.

Understanding Market Gaps

1:26 pm

A majority of stock markets operate between pre-defined trading hours. For instance, a certain market may open at 9:00 am and close at 5:00 pm. If on the opening of the market the price of a particular counter is different from the one than was there at the close of the previous trading session, then that’s when it is said that the market has experienced a gap.

It is rendered a “gap” because on the trading chart, there will be a blank space (gap) between opening and closing prices. The lack of the opening and closing prices is due to events that took place while the market was closed, such as press releases, profit warnings, takeover bids and other news stories. Market gaps might also be caused by traders placing bids after the market closes that will take effect as soon as the market re-opens. Gapping up happens when the market opens at a price that is higher than the previous day’s high. If the previous day high was 100 and the market opens at 120, there would be a 20 point full gap up.

Gaping down occurs when the market opens at a price that is lower than the previous day’s low. Gapping up and down in the market can be a great trading strategy, depending on where you are positioned. The causes for these gap movements are simply supply and demand. If the market is inundated with numerous buy orders before the start of trading, the prices will move up to ensure that there will be enough sellers to balance the market. Likewise, if there are many orders to sell, the price will be lowered so as to find enough securities buyers.

Trading on these gaps is potentially lucrative for traders, but this strategy is one that requires time as the trading landscape can change in a vey short amount of time. Perhaps the best way to go about trading during gaps would be to paper trade first, and see whether targets are being met, before leveraging the trading strategy online.

Scalping The Stock Market

1:25 pm

Scalp trading involves the buying of stock with the goal to sell it on the same day to take. Traders using this technique are looking to take advantage of short term price differentials. Traders consult daily charts for information to use when selecting their securities positions. In scalp trading, the expected profits and losses per trade are not designed to be substantial, but the trader is searching for small gains per transaction over a large volume of daily transactions. The trick to scalp trading is to position one’s self to take advantage of bid-ask spreads among individual securities.

The following are the two key concerns for a trader engaged in scalp trading:

The first one would be to realize that the specialists are the ones that largely drive the price differentials for individual securities, as they trade in such high daily volumes for institutions, thereby assisting in forming the market for scalpers. Specialists are geared to assist in maintaining an orderly market for a particular stock. The specialists trade in a much higher volume than an average trader, but they are under strict exchange rules designed to maintain the market presence of an individual security.

The second concern relates to the increasing usage of decimalizations in market pricing which work against scalp traders. Before decimalizations became the standard, fractions were the standard and were more beneficial for traders leveraging scalping techniques. Traders used to aim for at least a sixteenth of a point in profit (known as a teenie), or otherwise equal to 6.25 cents per share; thus a purchase of 1000 shares bought at $10 and sold at $10 1/16 would make a scalp trader up to $62.50 before commissions. However, decimalizations have narrowed the difference between the bid and ask prices for scalp prices, thereby placing additional pressured on price differentials and generated profits; similarly, a 1000 share trade buying at $10 and selling at 10.01 would only generate a $10 profit using decimals.

The narrowing of profit margins shouldn’t discourage a prospective scalp trader from venturing into the trading market. There is money to be made from scalp trading; the key is trading in high daily volumes.

How to Swing Trade Effectively

1:24 pm

Swing trading seeks to exploit the natural flow of the stock market and if carried out in a sound manner, presents potential for increased profitability over and above the traditional avenues for trading.

As a swing trader, your job is to look for short term opportunities in the market, seeking relative lows and highs in price differentials to leverage. The time horizon for swing trading is a bit longer than day trading, though holding open positions for a week or so is often avoided. While the swing trader’s positions are held longer than a day trader’s, they are still considered short term holds relative to the standard buy and hold strategy, often with a several day to several weeks hold on an underlying security.

An effective swing trader appreciates that stock prices do not move in straight line. A stock will gain in price, then later may lose or become remain unchanged, offering potential for a swing trader to capitalize. Price differentials present swing traders with an opportunity to either go long or short in a way that may bring quick returns.

Many sound swing trading systems encompass both bullish and bearish perspectives, allowing a swing trader to diversify their trades in line with the changing market conditions. This may prove instrumental in avoiding losses that may be incurred due to daily market trends.

A reasonably prudent swing trader should employ stop loss orders to forestall sizable account losses with individual trades. Furthermore, in more developed trading systems, pre-defined profit-loss measures may also be leveraged to curb speculative trading and potentially larger trading losses. The profit stop measure may also be done away with once the stock reaches the pre-determined level.

Many swing traders employ the use of charts when selecting their underlying securities. Admittedly charts may not be used to foretell how the market will be in the future, but they describe past trends that a trader can be used to set their trading criteria.

Automated Forex?

April 10, 2008 7:56 am

Automated trading seems to becoming
pretty popular… I guess who wouldn’t
want to have a “robot” trade your forex
account for you while you sleep.

A new automated forex solution just
went live noon today at:

http://www.click-here-for-details.com/a/go.php?c=autofx

Check it out…

And if you have any experience with
using these types of software, please
let me know how they’re working for
you.

Just leave a comment below.