Thursday, January 8, 2009

What's Out There?

When it comes to forex trading courses, there are two main categories:
1. Online courses
2. Individual training

Online courses can be compared to distance learning in a college-level class. An instructor provides PowerPoint presentations, ebooks, trading simulations and so on. A trader will move through the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels that most online courses offer. For a trader with limited foreign exchange knowledge, a course like this can be invaluable. These courses can range from $50 to well into the hundreds of dollars.

Individual training is much more specific, and it is advised that a trader have basic forex training before entering. An assigned mentor, typically a successful trader, will go through strategy and risk management but spend the bulk of the time teaching through placing actual trades. Individual training runs between $1,000 and $10,000

currency rates

to get a grip on currency rates, you need more than simple mathematics. First thing, you have to learn all definitions: Besides the correct meaning of terms “currency” and “rate”, you need to know what “quotation” means, along with “currency pair” (which consists of base and counter currencies). You need to know what are “point”, “spread”, “trend”, “position” etc. Every action on Forex market is preceded by an analysis. Depending on its functions, the analysis can be fundamental (when the economic dynamics of a country are being studied thoroughly, along with prognoses on its changes), or technical (when we apply a mathematic approach to the graphs of currency rate fluctuations).

The trade on Forex market goes on twenty-four hours a day. Saturday and Sunday are traditionally considered days of rest. The same as for all the other markets, work on Forex market uses a certain set of strategies, methods and techniques. There are rules you have to try and follow, and there are things you shouldn’t do. Every market session (Asian, European and American) has its own law and established traditions, which you also have to learn about.

And finally, for the trade on Forex market you need to use certain tools (software, papers etc.) without handling which the theoretical knowledge will be useless.

Why ForexGen

1. Lowest spreads in the market with 0-1 pips in 10 pairs, no commissions, no swaps and instant account Activation.
2. Scandinavian quality with Swiss precision, funds secured and local agents in 18+ countries.
3. ForexGen offers Forex trading in the major currency pairs and crosses.
4. Low capital start, with $250 as a minimum account size.
5. Liquidity and 24/5 availability are the characteristic factors of the Forex market compared with other financial markets.
6. ForexGen offers a free trial Forex demo account that allows you to test your skills and practice without risking real money.

Tips on Getting Started in Trading Forex

You can actually make a regular source of income by entering the fascinating world of forex trading. But there is a checklist you need to follow to have a profitable trading experience. That would make your forex trading worthwhile and that much more orderly.

It is the forex broker that you select who helps you to open your online forex trading account. Apart from having a flawless reputation, the broker you select should preferably be affiliated to a large banking institution. For example Saxo Bank is reportedly a good forex broker. But there are several others too. The choice is entirely yours. Before you make the final selection, read online reviews of the brokers and select the broker who is the least controversial and who has the maximum positive reviews in broker review sites. Remember to read the trading rules of the broker, particularly with reference to the leverages they offer, the carry forward charges to roll over your position to the next day and so on. In other words pay attention to the fine print of the terms and conditions of the broker’s agreement. Get someone who is well versed in forex trading to help you out on this.

MONEY TRADING

Most investment companies will set you up with a free paper trading account so you can practice your trading plan for 60 to 90 days before you begin actual trading. It is much better to lose money on paper that it is suffer a real loss to your own pocketbook. Once you have proven your trading plan you can open up a margin account and begin actual trading.

FOREX is often traded without commissions (the profits are in the spread), making it an attractive investment opportunity for those who want to trade on a more frequent basis.

As you can see, the risks or disadvantages perceived in other markets actually become the profits and advantages of the FOREX market. As always, with any investment, one should proceed with caution, having an established trading plan and risking only money that they can afford to lose.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

What are Hedge Funds ??

In the securities world, the term "Hedge Fund" does not necessarily imply any use of "hedging" as commonly understood; for example where commodity traders use options to "hedge" a commodity position. Presently, in the securities world the term "hedge fund" refers to any type of Private Investment Company operating under certain exemptions from registration under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Investment Company Act of 1940. "Hedge Funds" are often referred to as "alternate investment vehicles" and are tailored to the needs of sophisticated, high net worth private investors.

A Hedge Fund is generally structured as a limited partnership having a general partner responsible for the investment activities and day-to-day operation of the fund, and limited partners who are the investors supplying capital but not participating in trading or operations of the fund. The limited partners have limited liability. That is, their exposure to loss is limited to their investment. The General Partner has unlimited liability and is liable for the activities of the partnership. The General Partners principals limit their liability through the use of a corporation or limited liability company as the General Partner.

(Of course, the principals cannot limit their liability from the application of the anti fraud provisions of the Federal Securities Laws.) All of the investors' capital is pooled and is utilized by the General Partner or Investment Manager to implement its trading or investment strategy.

Start Forex Trading

You Can Do it from Home
If you're interested in getting involved in forex trading, all you need is a computer and a bit of time.
Granted, conducting some research is wise if you want to make the best choices. But once you have an idea of your strategy, you can conduct transactions online for minimal fees and without having to pay a professional to do it for you (although this is an option).

The Investment is Minimal
To get involved in currency trading, you do not need to invest a lot of cash upfront. Many trading options are available for a small investment, some as low as a few hundred dollars. This allows new traders in particular to get involved, learn the process, and risk very little.

You Can Make Money
While trading on the forex market takes some research, skill, and a bit of luck, it is possible to make money. The potential for huge payoffs is at times exaggerated, but there are traders making large amounts of money in this market.

It's Flexible
Trading on the Foreign Exchange market is a 24-hour process, which means that you don't need to wait for the opening and closing of the exchange to know where you stand. You can make trades at any time of the day, which gives you much more control than if you are operating in the traditional stock market. This also allows traders to respond to breaking news immediately.

Trading volume

Trading volume is high through the day simply because of the sheer size of the market but this volume will peak whenever the trading hours of two or more of the three main trading areas overlap. This in fact happens at two time periods between 2 am EST and 4 am EST when the Australasian and European markets are operating at the same time and between 8 am EST and 12 pm EST when the European markets and North American markets are both open at the same time.

So, unless your trading strategy involves specific currency pairs being traded in particular markets, the times above are those times when you will see the greatest number of possible trades and thus the times which many traders find to be the most profitable.

Technical Outlook On Swiss Franc


ForexGen.com is an online trading service provider supplying a unique and individualized service to Forex traders worldwide. We are dedicated to absolutely provide the best online trading services in the Forex market.

ForexGen provides a unique online trading experience based on our intelligent online Forex trading package, the ForexGen Trading Station, including the best online trading system.

ForexGen serves both private and institutional clients. We have a strong commitment to maintain a long term relationship with our clients.

Creating a Wealth from Forex Trading


Forex, or Foreign Exchange, trading can be a very rewarding. In fact, it can be one of todays best wealth generating opportunities. Regular people like you and me are consistently making $500, $600 and more per day from the comfort of their home trading forex. Many do not know this, but the forex market is by far the largest market in the world. It is estimated that around $1.5 TRILLION is traded every single day. By far more then all the stock, bond and futures markets of all the world combined!

But what does a forex trader do? Simple, buy a currency at a low value and sell it at a higher value, and in the process profit from it! For example, buy Great British Pounds with US Dollars, wait for the Pound rate to go up and make money! This can be done several times a day if the forex trader is a day trader or several time a week or month if the trader is a forex swing trader.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Why ForexGen

1. Lowest spreads in the market with 0-1 pips in 10 pairs, no commissions, no swaps and instant account Activation.
2. Scandinavian quality with Swiss precision, funds secured and local agents in 18+ countries.
3. ForexGen offers Forex trading in the major currency pairs and crosses.
4. Low capital start, with $250 as a minimum account size.
5. Liquidity and 24/5 availability are the characteristic factors of the Forex market compared with other financial markets.
6. ForexGen offers a free trial Forex [demo account] that allows you to test your skills and practice without risking real money.

We consider every client as a special case, a VIP and a partner. A client's profit is our success and a client's loss is a significant call of action for us. Customer care is the heart of our business, we know every client on personal bases as we provide 24/7 customer support.
We keep contact with our clients to ensure that we are on the right track. Leading our client relationship to success is our focus.
Let ForexGen prove to you that you have taken the right step by choosing our partnership.

Take Advantage Of trading U.S. Dollar


Why Geography Matters

Understanding the accounting treatment for foreign subsidiaries is the first step to determining how to take advantage of currency movements. The next step is capturing the arbitrage between where goods are sold and where goods are made. As the U.S. has moved toward becoming a service economy and away from a manufacturing economy, low-cost provider countries have captured those manufacturing dollars. U.S. companies took this to heart and started outsourcing much of their manufacturing and even some service jobs to low-cost provider countries to exploit those cheaper costs and improve margins. During times of U.S. dollar strength, low-cost provider countries produce goods cheaply; companies sell these goods at higher prices to consumers abroad to make a sufficient margin.

Investing in the Forex Market


To understand the efficient markets hypothesis in the context of foreign exchange trading, consider the options
open to an American bank (or firm) that temporarily has excess funds to be invested overnight

The bank could lend that money in the overnight bank money market, known as the federal funds market. The

simple net return on each dollar invested this way would be the overnight interest rate on dollar deposits. The bank has other

Is Technical Trading Appropriate?

The discussion of risk and returns suggests that technical analysis may be very useful for banks and large financial firms that can borrow and lend freely at the overnight interbank interest rate and buy and sell in the wholesale market for foreign exchange, where transactions sizes are in the millions of dollars.

Technical trading is much less useful for individuals, who would face much higher transactions costs and must consider the opportunity cost of the time necessary to become an expert on foreign exchange speculating and to keep up with the market on a daily basis. How large would transactions costs have to be to eliminate the excess return to the technical rules? If we assume a 6 percent annual excess return to the rule and 230 trades (10 trades a year), round-trip transactions costs would have to be greater than 0.6 percent to produce zero excess returns.

How to trade Forex ??!

Choose a longer time frame for direction analysis and a shorter time frame to time entry or exit.

Many traders get confused because of conflicting information that occurs when looking at charts in different time frames.
What shows up as a buying opportunity on a weekly chart could, in fact, show up as a sell signal on an intraday chart

Calculate your expectancy.

Expectancy is the formula you use to determine how reliable your system is.
You should go back in time and measure all your trades that were winners, versus all your trades that were losers.
Then determine how profitable your winning trades were versus how much your losing trades lost

Monday, January 5, 2009

Services for Individuals

ForexGen offers our IB's individualized service created according to the individual needs and specified business situation for each IB.
Our Introducing Broker program provides a highly organized program for individualized services and organizations in order to introduce their clients to the online foreign currency exchange market, moreover they will enjoy the benefits of being a part of the ForexGen family.

ForexGen offers 1 pip spread on 10 pairs with high trading techniques that make ForexGen
incomparable to any other rival.

Many Reasons to Choose Trading Forex


The smart trader pays close attention to spreads, because they are the cost of trading.
Other market makers may list low spreads, even a 0.9 EUR/USD spread, but there are often strings attached. Their “special rates” may apply only if deposit amount, lot size, trade volume, regional or other restrictions are met. Or these rates may be available only for particular times of the day or week.

By contrast forex brokers offer tight spreads to all traders with no discrimination. Our posted spreads are our standard spreads, except when market liquidity just isn't available to us (for example, during market events or weekends).

• Get the spread that’s posted (under normal market conditions).
• Get the same spread, regardless of your account size, account type, or trade size.
• Get the rate you expect, with immediate settlement, fast execution.
• 100% automated – no intermediaries, no trading desk, and no disappointments.

Take-profit orders

Don’t you just love that name? An old market saying goes, “You can’t go broke taking profit.” Use take-profit orders to lock in gains when you have an open position in the market. If you’re short USD/JPY at 117.20, your take-profit order will be to buy back the position and be placed somewhere below that price, say at 116.80 for instance. If you’re long GBP/USD at 1.8840, your take-profit order will be to sell the position somewhere higher, maybe 1.8875.

Limit orders

A limit order is any order that triggers a trade at more favorable levels than the current market price. Think “Buy low, sell high.” If the limit order is to buy, it must be entered at a price below the current market price. If the limit order is to sell, it must be placed at a price higher than the current market price.

Stop-loss orders

Boo! Sound’s bad doesn’t it? Actually, stop-loss orders are critical to trading survival. The traditional stop-loss order does just that: It stops losses by closing out an open position that is losing money.

Use stop-loss orders to limit your losses if the market moves against your position. If you don’t, you’re leaving it up to the market, and that’s dangerous. Stop-loss orders are on the other side of the current price from take-profit orders, but in the same direction (in terms of buying or selling). If you’re long, your stop-loss order will be to sell, but at a lower price than the current market price.

Dollar Moves in Thin Trading

Dollar mixed, moving within tight ranges in light Christmas week trading


In light holiday trading, the dollar dipped against the euro, but edged higher against the yen and pound Friday.
The 15-nation euro rose to $1.4067 in late New York trading Friday from $1.3999 late Wednesday, while the British pound slipped to $1.4677 from $1.4752.
The dollar also rose to 90.58 Japanese yen Friday from 90.39 yen late Wednesday ahead of the Christmas holiday.
With a lack of economic reports or government financing actions to direct trading, the greenback moved within tight ranges against the major currencies.

As expected, preliminary data showed a lackluster holiday shopping season compared with last year, but equities in the U.S. traded higher on the heels of the Federal Reserve's agreement to make General Motors Corp.'s financing arm, GMAC Financial Services, eligible for bank rescue aid. The Dow Jones industrials rose about 47 points.
In other New York trading, the buck fell to 1.0675 Swiss francs from 1.0740 francs late Wednesday, but gained to 1.2221

ForexGen Live Account

The live/real account is provided to those clients who may have some experience in the online trading.

[Opening an Account Online]

The quickest, easiest and secure way to open a ForexGen trading account is online.
Complete and submit your application online in just a few minutes.

ForexGen.com is an online trading service provider supplying a unique and individualized service to Forex traders worldwide. We are dedicated to absolutely provide the best online trading services in the Forex market.

ForexGen provides a unique online trading experience based on our intelligent online Forex trading package, the ForexGen Trading Station, including the best online trading system.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Successful Options Trading Strategies

When it comes to giving people the hope of becoming a millionaire overnight, the stock market excels. Every day we see evidence of stocks that have flown upwards as if they had wings, providing investors with a windfall of profits. It's inevitable that catching one of those stocks just before it takes off is an exciting possibility, inspiring the beginning trader to take the plunge. When you trade options, the stakes are raised, making those massive profits even more attainable, but the basics that underlie successful trading in the stock market are the same as those for trading options.

Once you start to look at trading stocks, you find yourself plunged
into a confusing nightmare where hundreds if not thousands of people are pushing "their" system that is supposedly infallible. For a beginner, it's easy to get drawn into the complex net, believing that there must be a simple solution that will hand you the keys to stock market success. These keys will see you finding winner after winner, and making your fortune.

The reality, however, is that there are no keys that will find a winner every time. After all, if that was possible, how could anyone ever lose any money in the market? And if nobody loses, then how can someone else gain? The whole stock market would collapse.

Having said that, there are a number of very successful trading systems that work well over the long term. It's important to realize that a winning system is one that consistently delivers profit over a longer time frame - and part of the equation is that a percentage of trades will be losers. Once you learn to look at the bigger picture, rather than focusing on the individual trades, you'll be a lot more successful in the market.

There are a couple of approaches to the market that are popular across many systems. One is to take small losses when they happen, and let your winners run. So you might take six little losses, which are more than compensated for by one huge gain. This type of approach takes a lot of confidence and self-discipline, as it's very easy to give up if those six little losses all happen in a row, without a winner in sight.

Another approach is to take your profits after a certain percentage of gain, and occasionally put up with a medium sized loss. This system is nice if you like to see profits, because you don't run the risk of a stock that's risen suddenly dropping again and wiping out your profit - you took your profit early. However you also run the risk that the stock will continue to fly upwards and you miss out on that profit. This system can be risky, because you need a number of small profitable trades to cover one of the losses

Forex Options Market Overview


The forex options market started as an over-the-counter (OTC) financial vehicle for large banks, financial institutions and large international corporations to hedge against foreign currency exposure. Like the forex spot market, the forex options market is considered an "interbank" market. However, with the plethora of real-time financial data and forex option trading software available to most investors through the internet, today's forex option market now includes an increasingly large number of individuals and corporations who are speculating and/or hedging foreign currency exposure via telephone or online forex trading platforms.

Forex option trading has emerged as an alternative investment vehicle for many traders and investors. As an investment tool, forex option trading provides both large and small investors with greater flexibility when determining the appropriate forex trading and hedging strategies to implement.

Most forex options trading is conducted via telephone as there are only a few forex brokers offering online forex option trading platforms.

Forex Option Defined - A forex option is a financial currency contract giving the forex option buyer the right, but not the obligation, to purchase or sell a specific forex spot contract (the underlying) at a specific price (the strike price) on or before a specific date (the expiration date). The amount the forex option buyer pays to the forex option seller for the forex option contract rights is called the forex option "premium."

The Forex Option Buyer - The buyer, or holder, of a foreign currency option has the choice to either sell the foreign currency option contract prior to expiration, or he or she can choose to hold the foreign currency options contract until expiration and exercise his or her right to take a position in the underlying spot foreign currency. The act of exercising the foreign currency option and taking the subsequent underlying position in the foreign currency spot market is known as "assignment" or being "assigned" a spot position.

The only initial financial obligation of the foreign currency option buyer is to pay the premium to the seller up front when the foreign currency option is initially purchased. Once the premium is paid, the foreign currency option holder has no other financial obligation (no margin is required) until the foreign currency option is either offset or expires.

On the expiration date, the call buyer can exercise his or her right to buy the underlying foreign currency spot position at the foreign currency option's strike price, and a put holder can exercise his or her right to sell the underlying foreign currency spot position at the foreign currency option's strike price. Most foreign currency options are not exercised by the buyer, but instead are offset in the market before expiration.

Risk-Reward Ratio in Forex Trading

From the very beginning of your forex career a term Risk/Reward Ratio will be an important part of your trading strategy. The realization that every single trade you make contains a certain degree of risk will defend you from uncontrollable fears and panic attacks during the trading hours. This is when the risk management comes in handy. The best known way to figure out the risk you take is to calculate the risk-reward ratio. What is this ratio and how is it determined?

Risk

First thing to do when calculating the risk-reward ratio is to figure out the risk itself. This can be done by analyzing the total sum of money needed to enter the trade. The actual amount of money at risk is calculated by the following formula:

the price of the selected currency multiplied times the amount of lots

Reward

The reward is of course closely related to the profits you hope t make from the price movements. The formula to figure out the reward is as follow:

the gain multiplied times the amount of lots traded