Online Biz Keys: August 2010

Saturday, August 28, 2010

How Forex Brokers Work

Like any other business in the history of business, your broker’s raison d’etre, is to make as big a profit as possible. There are about as many ways to go about this as there are brokers. For those who are in it for the long haul, however, it is generally best to adopt a set of practices which are deemed fair by their clients: certain boundaries are set, and operating beyond them can cost a brokerage its reputation, and along with it its clients. Straying outside these boundaries, therefore, is not considered as being in line with the long term goals of the business. How strictly these boundaries are enforced, especially when there is little chance of clients ever even becoming aware of any transgression, again varies from business to business. For the sake of simplicity, in this article we assume that everyone in the business is squeaky clean, as if every client could peek into the broker’s back office at any time and dissect every trade. This is obviously not the case, and many brokers do take advantage of this opaqueness, but the details of that are best left for another discussion.

So without further ado, let’s get into the details of how forex brokers function. Somewhat removed from the top-tier interbank market, retail forex brokers are there to provide a service that would otherwise not be available, that is, giving an investor with a $10,000 bankroll the chance to speculate in the up-until-recently very exclusive forex market. There are generally considered to be 2 types of brokers providing access at the retail level: Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs) and Market Makers. ECNs are generally somewhat more exclusive, requiring larger deposits to get started, but are seen as providing more direct access to the interbank market. As we will see, there are certainly advantages to this, but some disadvantages as well. Market makers, on the other hand are more often than not, the counter party to their clients’ trades, creating somewhat of a conflict of interest, whereas ECNs profit from commission fees charged directly to the clients, regardless of the result of any trade, they are seen as being completely impartial – an ECN has no incentive for a client to lose money. In fact, one could argue that an ECN stands to profit more if a client is successful, meaning that s/he will stay around longer and they will be able to collect more commission fees from them. A market maker, on the other hand, being the counterparty to a client’s trade, makes money if the client loses money, providing an incentive for some shady practices, particularly in an unregulated market. The extent to which this happens varies among individual brokers. There are also some benefits to trading with a market maker (see our ECNs vs. Market Makers article) Some brokers also provide a service that doesn’t quite fit into either category – they route different orders differently, depending on complex algorithms, or on a dealing desk, that analyze each order and attempt to fill it in the way that will be most beneficial to the broker’s bottom line. They can offset some client orders against one another, effectively creating an in-house market, they can choose to be the counterparty to a client’s trade (trade “against” the client), or they can offset their position with a hedge through a higher-tier counterparty. Note that the market maker is mainly concerned with managing its net exposure, and NOT with any single individual’s trades. They are NOT gunning for your stop losses specifically, but may be gunning for clusters of stops.

If you have already read the first article in the series, Structure of the Forex Market, you will recall that market mechanics are responsible for the variation in bid/ask spreads, and also for slippage. So it seems the two biggest novice traders’ pet peeves are not so much a function of who their broker is, but rather their lack of understanding of the way the forex market operates. A broker that offers a fixed spread tends not to fill orders during periods of low liquidity because this would expose them to undue risk, and as much as their job is to cater to their clients, remember they are in business primarily to make money for themselves. Some brokers also offer guaranteed order fills, such as “guaranteed stop losses”. Again, if there is no counter party to take the trade, they have to expose themselves to risk in order to fulfill this guarantee, so don’t be surprised if you see such a broker quoting different/delayed prices around important trend lines or support/resistance levels. Be especially aware of brokers who offer both guaranteed fills AND fixed spreads. When a broker offers something that seems too good to be true, you would be wise to question how exactly their business model is able to support such a risky practice. As a general rule, a broker will help you only when your interests are aligned with theirs. On the other hand, brokers provide a very valuable service, without which you wouldn’t have the opportunity to profit from the forex market, so please think about how it all comes together before blaming yo

Friday, August 27, 2010

Forex scam

A forex (or foreign exchange) scam is any trading scheme used to defraud traders by convincing them that they can expect to gain a high profit by trading in the foreign exchange market. Currency trading "has become the fraud du jour" as of early 2008, according to Michael Dunn of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.^[1] But "the market has long been plagued by swindlers preying on the gullible," according to the New York Times.^[2] "The average individual foreign-exchange-trading victim loses about $15,000, according to CFTC records" according to The Wall Street Journal.^[3] The North American Securities Administrators Association says that "off-exchange forex trading by retail investors is at best extremely risky, and at worst, outright fraud."^[4]

"In a typical case, investors may be promised tens of thousands of dollars in profits in just a few weeks or months, with an initial investment of only $5,000. Often, the investor’s money is never actually placed in the market through a legitimate dealer, but simply diverted – stolen – for the personal benefit of the con artists."^[5]

In August, 2008 the CFTC set up a special task force to deal with growing foreign exchange fraud.^[6] In January 2010, the CFTC proposed new rules limiting leverage to 10 to 1, based on " a number of improper practices" in the retail foreign exchange market, "among them solicitation fraud, a lack of transparency in the pricing and execution of transactions, unresponsiveness to customer complaints, and the targeting of unsophisticated, elderly, low net worth and other vulnerable individuals."^[7]

The forex market is a zero-sum game,^[8] meaning that whatever one trader gains, another loses, except that brokerage commissions and other transaction costs are subtracted from the results of all traders, technically making forex a "negative-sum" game.

These scams might include churning of customer accounts for the purpose of generating commissions, selling software that is supposed to guide the customer to large profits,^[9] improperly managed "managed accounts",^[10] false advertising,^[11] Ponzi schemes and outright fraud.^[4]^[12] It also refers to any retail forex broker who indicates that trading foreign exchange is a low risk, high profit investment.^[13]

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which loosely regulates the foreign exchange market in the United States, has noted an increase in the amount of unscrupulous activity in the non-bank foreign exchange industry.^[14]

An official of the National Futures Association was quoted as saying, "Retail forex trading has increased dramatically over the past few years. Unfortunately, the amount of forex fraud has also increased dramatically."^[15] Between 2001 and 2006 the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has prosecuted more than 80 cases involving the defrauding of more than 23,000 customers who lost $350 million. From 2001 to 2007, about 26,000 people lost $460 million in forex frauds.^[1] CNN quoted Godfried De Vidts, President of the Financial Markets Association, a European body, as saying, "Banks have a duty to protect their customers and they should make sure customers understand what they are doing. Now if people go online, on non-bank portals, how is this control being done?"

Thursday, August 26, 2010

5 Advantages of Forex Options Trading

By now, you've probably begun to hear about the new anti-hedging regulation the NFA is about to impose. This can be pretty inconvenient for some trading styles, but don't be ready to move all of your money offshore yet. The NFA also gave traders a HUGE benefit as part of the same new regulations.

First, let's get the bad stuff out of the way.

As of May 15th, 2009, hedging won't be allowed on NFA registered brokerages. What this means is that you won't be able to have any new long and short positions on the same currency pair at the same time. Not all brokerages permitted this, but hedging ability is standard for MT4 accounts and does work with other forex trading platforms.

Usually, to open a long and a short on the same pair is silly, but there are legitimate reasons to do this. Some EAs us a hedging strategy. Some traders (myself included) might have long term positions in one direction and want to take short term trades in the opposite direction while letting the long term trades run. Also, when a trader has been foolish enough to let a position run far against him with no stoploss, opening a hedged position locks in the loss to that level, giving the trader time to contemplate the unpleasant choices left available (at least until swap fees or widened spreads finally eat all remaining available margin). Just to be generous, they announced this on the 13th of April so that those of us who hedge would have month to adjust our strategies. Nice to know that they expect people to be able to take strategies developed over months or years and adjust them in only 1 month.

For those who want to hedge, there are several options. At least 1 brokerage is trying to determine if hedging can be done intra-day and that opposing positions will only automatically close at rollover time. Other brokerages that have licensed offices both inside and outside the USA are allowing US clients the option of moving to one of their offshore branches.

Another choice would be to open a second account at your brokerage and place your hedges in the other account. For those who like to leave long term trades open while making short term trades, this would work well. For someone trying to buy time to think of options during severe drawdown, it would fail. For forex robots that hedge, it would fail.

Other options are “synthetic hedges”. This would involve opening trades on related, but not identical pairs. The EUR/USD and GBP/USD tend to move in the same general direction much of the time, so if you wanted to trade opposite of a EUR/USD long, you could open a GBP/USD short. The EUR/USD and USD/CHF are inversely correlated, so if you wanted to hedge a EUR/USD long, you could open a USD/CHF long. Forex trading robots that hedge normally would need to be reprogrammed for this to work.

I contacted several brokerages and asked them a simple question. If I have a long position on the EUR/USD and try to open an equal sized short position, what happens? The possibilities are: 1. It won't let me open a short position. 2. The positions will cancel out, thus closing my long trade. 3. Positions will open, but will cause close outs at rollover time. None of the brokerages were sure, but said that they would have answers soon – I hope before May 15th. Judging from the lack of solid answers from the brokerages, this was definitely not their idea and they are scrambling to find ways to deal with it.

Assuming trades are forced to be closed (instantly or at rollover), the rule seems to be FIFO – first in, first out. Thus, if you open a 0.8 lot long on the EUR/USD, then a 0.5 lot long on the EUR/USD, opening a 0.5 lot short on the EUR/USD will close 0.5 lot of the first 0.8 lot EUR/USD long that you opened.

Why did the NFA do this? My personal theory is that they accidentally took the wrong medications one morning, but they do claim to have had some real reasons. For inexperienced traders, a broker might encourage hedging just to collect more spread. An unscrupulous account manager could open hedged positions and later close the half that was in profit to show profits (at least for clients who are not bright enough to ask about currently open positions) and collect performance fees. Some people might be stupid enough to leave hedged positions open for long periods while the swap fees eat their remaining account balance.

Overall, I find these reasons to be very inadequate. Truly stupid traders will find a way to get margin called very quickly without the NFA messing with those who have legitimate reasons to open opposing positions. Some people need training wheels to learn to ride a bicycle, but this is the same as forcing all of us to have training wheels on forever for the sake of a few perpetually unbalanced people. The sad part it that in this time of economic upheaval, I'm sure this will cause a number of traders to move their accounts to offshore brokerages. Very likely, some of these brokers will scam the traders out of their money. Also, some US brokerages will end up hiring fewer workers or laying off workers because of reduced business volume. Way to go NFA! Save a tiny amount of money for a few people and end up costing jobs and making others move their money out of the country to banks and brokerages that are at least potentially riskier.

What's Forex Trading

Forex is the foreign exchange market. This is also known as the FX, FX spot or designated foreign exchange market. All of these names are just a few ways to describe the very same market.
This market has sway since the 1970s, as currency, as President Nixon, the U.S. adopted the gold standard has been started. Previously, thForex is the foreign exchange market. This is also known as the FX, FX spot or designated foreign exchange market. All of these names are just a few ways to describe the very same market.
This market has sway since the 1970s, as currency, as President Nixon, the U.S. adopted the gold standard has been started. Previously, the U.S. currency backed by gold and now it is only by honoring the "belief" in the ability of the government and secured the currency again.
But even though this market is there for such a long time, it was not open to the retail public until the 1990s, and many market makers not even good until the year 2000 or thereafter established.
The spot Forex market is the largest financial market in the world, with a volume of $ 4000000000000 average daily trading volume. Now let's put that in perspective. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) trades over 25 billion U.S. dollars per day. So not only share these dwarf the largest stocks traded in the America's, but if the volume of all equity markets around the world together, you have not reached the daily volume in the forex market.

Forex trading is simply the trading (exchange) of money. It is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling is another. The "exchange rate" is what you see are cited. This determines how much currency to buy another currency.

You will find that there are many factors that go these exchange rates above and below his cause. Ultimately, the exchange rate for the trust that the world has in common, identified in a particular currency. This will be made of many facets: how does the economy, political stability, consumer sentiment, the trend in the direction of exchange rates on the charts, etc.

They are traded in pairs. Why? Because a currency can be strong vs a currency against another, but weak. Remember that the whole collective values currency sentiment of investors in the world.

So, if investors well over the British economy and worse feel about the U.S. economy, then the British pound (GBP) in place to win the U.S. dollar (USD). But at the same time, investors may feel even better about the U.S. economy than that of Japan. If so, the USD would go against the JPY (Japanese Yen). So, as you can, it's all relative to what it means to compare's. First and foremost is the U.S. dollar seen as weak (compared to the pound). In the second example, regarded the "buck" was as strong against the yen.

Thus, in these currencies on the interbank market traded through these Forex Market Maker. The market makers set off the quotation marks based on the purchase and sale of pressure that they see, because of the demand for one currency against another.

e U.S. currency backed by gold and now it is only by honoring the "belief" in the ability of the government and secured the currency again.
But even though this market is there for such a long time, it was not open to the retail public until the 1990s, and many market makers not even good until the year 2000 or thereafter established.
The spot Forex market is the largest financial market in the world, with a volume of $ 4000000000000 average daily trading volume. Now let's put that in perspective. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) trades over 25 billion U.S. dollars per day. So not only share these dwarf the largest stocks traded in the America's, but if the volume of all equity markets around the world together, you have not reached the daily volume in the forex market.

Forex trading is simply the trading (exchange) of money. It is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling is another. The "exchange rate" is what you see are cited. This determines how much currency to buy another currency.

You will find that there are many factors that go these exchange rates above and below his cause. Ultimately, the exchange rate for the trust that the world has in common, identified in a particular currency. This will be made of many facets: how does the economy, political stability, consumer sentiment, the trend in the direction of exchange rates on the charts, etc.

They are traded in pairs. Why? Because a currency can be strong vs a currency against another, but weak. Remember that the whole collective values currency sentiment of investors in the world.

So, if investors well over the British economy and worse feel about the U.S. economy, then the British pound (GBP) in place to win the U.S. dollar (USD). But at the same time, investors may feel even better about the U.S. economy than that of Japan. If so, the USD would go against the JPY (Japanese Yen). So, as you can, it's all relative to what it means to compare's. First and foremost is the U.S. dollar seen as weak (compared to the pound). In the second example, regarded the "buck" was as strong against the yen.

Thus, in these currencies on the interbank market traded through these Forex Market Maker. The market makers set off the quotation marks based on the purchase and sale of pressure that they see, because of the demand for one currency against another.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Forex Hedging

There are a number of forex dealers, dare I say even the majority, who allow clients to practice what is commonly referred to as “hedging” in the forex. What this means is that they allow clients to open both long and short positions in the same currency pair, at the same time. Other dealers, on the other hand, automatically close your positions when you enter orders that are exactly opposite to your open positions. There is an ongoing debate among retail traders about whether the practice of “hedging” is useful or not. There are traders out there who swear by “hedging” and others who think it is absolute bollocks.

First off, let’s differentiate this type of hedging from hedging in other markets.

“In finance, a hedge is a position established in one market in an attempt to offset exposure to the price risk of an equal but opposite obligation or position in another market.” (Wikipedia)

An example of this would be someone who believes in the inherent weakness of the Canadian dollar (CAD), but is afraid that escalating violence in the Middle East may push oil prices up. Since CAD has been known to have a fairly strong positive correlation to oil, the investor decides to sell CAD (long USD/CAD) based on his belief that the CAD fundamentals are weakening, but he hedges this position by buying some oil. This way, if oil does spike, driving up the value of CAD, he will lose out on his short CAD position, but this loss will be somewhat offset by his long oil position. Note that hedging is not meant to eliminate the risk, but only to mitigate it. It is a form of insurance against overwhelming loss. What it does, if done properly, is to smooth out the equity curve of a portfolio, which has benefits which are beyond the scope of this article.

The careful reader will notice immediately that the last words of the definition above read “in another market”, which automatically invalidates the buying and selling of the same currency pair as a hedge. There is no other word to describe this practice however, so you will see it in quotes whenever I refer to it, to differentiate it from the real hedging described in the example.

So we have determined so far that “hedging” is not the same as hedging. In order to go further, we should also define several other terms:

Equity – specific to a retail forex account, this word describes the “value” of the account at the present time. It is calculated by taking the total value of all open positions in the market and adding that value to the account balance. For example, if you have a $10,000 account and one open position that is currently losing $1,000, your equity is $10,000 - $1,000 = $9,000. If you have open positions, this value fluctuates every time your positions do. If you were to liquidate all your positions at current prices, your account balance would become equal to your equity.

Balance – the amount of money you have in the account as margin. This amount varies only when positions are closed, but is not a good measure of the total value of your account, as it does not account for open positions. To judge the value of an account, equity should always be used instead of balance.

Understanding the above terms is crucial in judging whether “hedging” is beneficial or not, since they will be affected differently when a “hedge” is applied.

So what does happen when a “hedge” is applied? When an exact “hedge” is applied, meaning that you buy and sell the same amount of the same currency, your net position in the market is zero (you are market neutral). You are buying and selling the exact same thing at the exact same time, so it doesn't matter which way the market moves, the gain in one trade will be exactly offset by the loss in the other trade. The only thing that has happened is that you have paid your broker the commission or spread payment twice. This is also true of "hedged" trades which are not exactly equal. If you buy x units of EUR/USD and you simultaneously sell y units of EUR/USD, then your net position is x-y units of EUR/USD, where a negative value indicates a net short position and a positive value indicates a net long position. You can see from here that if x=y, then we have a net position of 0. Let's study 2 cases where one trader uses the "hedge" option and another trader simply closes his trade in order to become market netural, that is, to close his positions.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Introduction to Foreign Exchange Markets

Being the main force driving the global economic market, currency is no doubt an essential element for a country. However, in order for all the countries with different currencies to trade with one another, a system of exchange rate between their currencies is needed; this system, is formally known as foreign exchange or currency exchange.

In the early days, the system of currency exchange is supported solely by the gold amount held in the vault of a country. However, this system is no longer appropriate now due to inflation and hence, the value of one’s currency nowadays is determined through the market forces alone. In order to determine the value of a currency’s exchange rate, two main types of system is used which is floating currency and pegged currency.

For floating exchange rate, its value is determined by the supply and demand of the global market where the supply and demand is bound by all these factors such as foreign investment, inflation and ratios of import and export. Normally, this system is adopted by most of the advance countries like for example UK, US and Canada. All of these countries have a similarity where their market is well developed and stable in economic terms. These countries choose to practice this system due to the reason where floating exchange rate is proven to be much more efficient compared to the pegged exchange rate. The reason behind this is because for floating exchange rate, the market itself will re-adjust the exchange rate real-time in order to portray the actual inflation and other economic forces. However, every system has its own flaw and so does the floating exchange rate system. For instance, if a country suffers from economic instability due to various reasons such as political issues, a floating exchange rate system will certainly discourage investment due to the high risk of suffering from inflationary disaster or sudden slump in exchange rate.

Another form of exchange rate is known as pegged exchange rate. This is a system where the value of the exchange rate is fixed by the government of a country and not the supply and demand of the market. This system is called pegged exchange rate because the value of a country’s currency is fixed to another country’s currency. As a result, the value of the pegged currency will not fluctuate unlike the floating currency. The working principle behind this system is slightly complicated where the government of a country will fixed the exchange rate of their currency and when there is a demand for a certain currency resulting a rise in the exchange rate, the government will have to release enough of that currency into the market in order to meet that demand. However, there is a fatal flaw in this system where if the pegged exchange rate is not controlled properly, panics may arise within the country and as a result of that, people will be rushing to exchange their money into a more stable currency. When that happens, the sudden overflow of that country’s currency into the market will decrease the value of their exchange rate and in the end, their currency will be worthless. Due to this reason, only those under-developed or developing countries will practice this method as a form to control the inflation rate.

However, the truth is, most of the countries do not fully practice the floating exchange rate or the pegged exchange rate method in reality. Instead, they use a hybrid system known as floating peg. Floating peg is the combination of the two main systems where one country will normally fixed their exchange rate to the US Dollars and after that, they will constantly review their peg rate in order to stay in line with the actual market value.

The Foreign exchange market, or commonly known as FOREX, is the largest and most prolific financial market because each day, more than 1 trillion worth of currency exchange takes place between investors, speculators and countries. From this, we can deduce that the actual mechanism behind the world of foreign exchange is far more complicated than what we may already know, and that, the information mentioned earlier is just the tip of an iceberg.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Avoiding Forex

A lot of people have been 'burnt' from scam operations on the Internet. Their sites may look so perfectly legitimate that you doubt whether they would have gone through all that trouble building a trading platform just to steal your money. Beware.

The first thing I look for is the geographical location of the broker. If I find that they are based in a country where the financial industry is, in my opinion, relatively unregulated and under-developed, I quickly forgo signing up. This is terrible news for honest brokers in those countries, but your job as a trader is to protect your capital. If you lose that, then you cannot trade. The onus is on them to convince you that they will do the right thing by you as an investor.

I started out with an Australian broker. Currently I am using an American one. I have not tried UK-based brokers but the British financial industry is one of the best. Companies that are based in countries such as Japan , Germany and France are probably just as good too, if their website speaks your language.

Notice any license numbers that they may have registered with regulatory bodies that act like government watchdogs who oversee the finance and investments industries. These are organisations that impose strict rules to safeguard your investment. Some of these rules may include the requirement that brokers segregate all customer funds from the operational funds of the business. Your money is required to be put in highly-reputable banks and the funds are only withdrawn from these accounts upon specific withdrawal requests.

Take note that there are some fake regulatory bodies being thrown around in cyber-space as well. Take a look at how long they have been operating for. Try and search out any reviews or comments made about them. See if you can find forums where traders have discussions about their brokers.

Below is a list of things to keep in mind to help you avoid being a victim of a scam:

Stay Away From Opportunities That Sound Too Good To Be True

There are people who may have just acquired a large amount of money just and recently are the same and are shopping around for safe investment vehicles. These may include retirees who have access to their retirement funds. It is understandable why retirees would be drawn to 'high-return, low-risk investments'. This is also what makes them very vulnerable. If you identify yourself to be one of these people, be careful. A lot of deceitful characters are after your money. Furthermore, only allocate a tiny amount of your money to trading until you can start growing it. Not all people can trade successfully, so it is a venture you should take on haphazardly. It is your life savings at risk.

Avoid Individuals Or Organizations Who Claim To Predict Or Guarantee Large Profits

Any form of trading is hard. Trading currencies is no different. Be wary of statements that make it sound easy. Statements like:

"Whether the market moves up or down, in the currency market you will make a profit";

"Make $1000 per week, every week";

"We are out-performing 90% of domestic investments";

"You'll make returns of 70% a year";

"Here is a no-risk strategy".

If they could make such returns, why would they even bother letting you know about it.

Be Wary Of Companies Who Downplay Investment Risks

Hold your wallet tight and zip up your purse when companies say that written risk disclosure agreements are routine formalities imposed by the government. Watch out for statements like:

"With a $10,000 deposit, the maximum you can lose is $200 to $250 per day";

" We promise to recover any losses you have ".

Be Wary Of Companies That Claim To Trade In The 'Interbank Market'

Do not believe it when some people say that they have access to the 'Interbank market' or that they can give you access to trade in that market because that's where bargain prices can be obtained. This is not true. The 'interbank market' is not a place, it is not a physical building. It is simply a loose network of currency transactions that are negotiated between big financial institutions and other large companies.

Ethnic Minorities Are Often Targeted

Ethnic newspapers and television 'infomercials' are sometimes used to attract Russian, Chinese and Indian minorities. Sometimes these ads offer so-called 'job opportunities for account executives to trade foreign currencies', whereby the recruited 'account executive' is expected to use his own money to trade currencies and would often times be encouraged to recruit members like their friends and family to do the same.

Seek Out The Company's Background

Check any information you receive to be sure that the company is who they claim to be. If at all possible, try and get the background of the people operating the company. Do not rely solely on oral statements and promises made by the company's employees.

If You Are In Doubt, It Is Not Worth Risking Your Money

If after trying to solicit information and at the end of it all, you are still in doubt about the credentials of a particular company, my suggestion is to start looking elsewhere.

You may find further information by contacting government 'watchdogs' because they keep up to date with trends and reports regarding scams and other fraudulent activities. Please check the resource section of this site for the information of organizations that regulate the securities industry, sorted by country. There is also a list of brokers that you may want to look at.

This is an excerpt, modified from the book: The Part-Time Currency Trader.

by Marquez Comelab

Friday, August 20, 2010

FOREX: Exiting positions at a right time

The presented article covers one of the most important (in author's opinion) aspects of trading in general and Forex trading in particular - managing of orders and positions. This includes choosing entry points, making decisions about exit points, stop-loss and take-profit of the trader.

I hope this article will help new traders, who just began to work with Forex, and also to experienced traders who trade regularly and regularly make or loose their money to the market.

When I started to trade Forex and made my first big losses and profits I began to notice when very important thing about the whole trading process.

While the right time to enter a position was rarely a problem for myself (nearly 80% of all my open positions had gone into the "green" profit zone), the problem was hidden in the determining the right exit point for that position.

Not only was it important to cut my risk on the potential losses with stop-loss orders, but to limit my greediness and take profit when I can take it and make it as high as I can. There are many known guidelines and ways to enter a right position at a right time - like major economic news releases, global world events, technical indicators combinations, etc. But while the entering into a position is optional and trade can decide to miss as many good/bad entry point moments as they wish, this is untrue if we talk about exiting a position. Margin trading makes it impossible to wait too long with an open position. More than that, every open position in a certain way limits trader's ability to trade.

Choosing the good exit points for positions could be an easy task if only the Forex market wasn't so chaotic and volatile. In my opinion (backed by my trading experience) exit orders for every position should be toggled constantly with time and as the new market data (technical and fundamental) appear.

Let's say, you took a short position on EUR/USD at 1.2563, at the time you are taking this position the support/resistance level is 1.2500/1.2620. You set your stop-loss order to 1.2625 and your take-profit order to 1.2505. So now, this position can be considered as an intraday or 2-3 days term position.

This means that you must close it before it's "term" is over, or it will become a very unpredictable position (because market will differ greatly from what it was at the time you have entered this position). After the position is taken and initial exit orders are set, you need to follow the market events and technical indicators to adjust your exit orders. The most important rule is to tighten the loss/profit limit as time goes by. Usually if I take a middle term position (2-4 days) I try to lower the stop and target order by 10-25 pips every day.

I also monitor global events, trying to lower my stop-losses when very important news can hurt my position. If the profit is already quite high, I try to move my stop-loss the entry point, making a sure-win position.

The main idea here is to find an equilibrium point between greed and caution. But as your position gets older the profit should be more limited and losses cut.

Also, trader should always remember that if the market began to act unexpectedly, they need to be even more cautious with exit order, even if the position is still showing profits.

Every trader has their own trading strategy and habits. I hope this article will make its readers think about such an important aspect of trading as the exit orders and this will only improve their trading results.

by Andrey Moraru

http://www.earnforex.com
http://earnforex.blogspot.com

Filed under Basics, Strategy, Tips, Coaching, Forex Trading Strategy, Systems, bollinger bands by wizardoftrading.

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The FXDD AUTO platform introduces Forex traders to the mirror trading concept, a new method in trading that enables traders to ‘mirror’ strategies developed by other experienced Forex traders.

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WhisperfromWallStreet helps people just like you become more successful investors. Through our free newsletter we teach you how to trade OTC stocks like a professional. The more you understand the markets and what moves them the more profits you will put in the bank. Our newsletter offers you top stock alerts, powerful investing tips, and exclusive research you won’t find anywhere else. What are you waiting for? There is NO risk and our service is always FREE.

WhisperfromWallStreet filters through thousands of companies and sends you alerts on the stocks that are about to run.

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