Title:Forex trading

Trading Reference Number:
421

Trading Description:
So what is is Forex trading you may ask? Forex is the exchange you can buy and sell currencies. For example, you might buy British pounds (by exchanging them to the dollars you had), then, after pounds / dollar ratio goes up, you sell pounds and buy dollars again.

Trading Reference:
forex trading, forex, shares, stock market, buying shares

Trading Article:
So what is is Forex trading you may ask? Forex is the exchange you can buy and sell currencies. For example, you might buy British pounds (by exchanging them to the dollars you had), then, after pounds / dollar ratio goes up, you sell pounds and buy dollars again. At the end of this operation you are going to have more dollars, then you had at the beginning.

The Forex market has much higher liquidity, then the stock market, as much more money is being exchanged. Forex is spread between banks all over the planet and as a result it means 24 hour trading.

Unlike stocks, Forex trades are performed with high leverage, usually it is 100. It means that by investing $1000 you can control $100,000, and increase potential profits accordingly. Some brokers provide also so called mini-Forex, where the size of minimum deposit equals $100. It makes possible for individuals to enter this market easily.

The name convention. In Forex, the name of a symbol is composed of two parts – one for first currency, and another for the second currency. For example, the symbol usdjpy stands for US dollars (usd) to Japanese yen (jpy).

As with stocks, you can apply tools of the technical analysis to Forex charts. Traders indexes can be optimized for Forex symbols, allowing you to find winning strategy.

Example Forex transaction

Assume you have a trading account of $25,000 and you are trading with a 1% margin requirement. The current quote for EUR/USD is 1.3225/28 and you place a market order to buy 1 lot of 100,000 Euros at 1.3228, expecting the euro to rise against the dollar. At the same time you place a stop-loss order at 1.3178 representing a maximum loss of 2% of your account equity if the trade goes against you, 50 pips below your order price, and a limit order at 1.3378, 150 pips above your order price. For this trade, you are risking 50 pips to gain 150 pips, giving you a risk/reward ratio of 1 part risk to 3 parts reward. This means that you only need to be right one third of the time to remain profitable.

The notional value of this trade is $132,280 (100,000 * 1.3228). Your required margin deposit is 1% of the total, which is equal to $1322.80 ($132,280 * 0.01).

As you expected, the Euro strengthens against the dollar and your limit order is reached at 1.3378. The position is closed. Your total profit for this trade is $1500, each pip being worth $10.

Title:Nature Of The Foreign Exchange Market

Trading Reference Number:
316

Trading Description:
The Foreign Exchange Market is an over-the-counter (OTC) market, which means that there is no central exchange and clearing house where orders are matched. With different levels of access, currencies are traded in different market makers:

The Inter-bank Market – Large commercial banks trade with each other through the Electronic Brokerage System (EBS). Banks will make their quotes available in this market only to those banks with which they trade. This market is not direct…

Trading Reference:
forex, currency, trading, technical analysis

Trading Article:
The Foreign Exchange Market is an over-the-counter (OTC) market, which means that there is no central exchange and clearing house where orders are matched. With different levels of access, currencies are traded in different market makers:

The Inter-bank Market – Large commercial banks trade with each other through the Electronic Brokerage System (EBS). Banks will make their quotes available in this market only to those banks with which they trade. This market is not directly accessible to retail traders.

The Online Market Maker – Retail traders can access the FX market through online market makers that trade primarily out of the US and the UK. These market makers typically have a relationship with several banks on EBS; the larger the trading volume of the market maker, the more relationships it likely has.

Market Hours

Forex is a market that trades actively as long as there are banks open in one of the major financial centers of the world. This is effectively from the beginning of Monday morning in Tokyo until the afternoon of Friday in New York. In terms of GMT, the trading week occurs from Sunday night until Friday night, or roughly 5 days, 24 hours per day.

Price Reporting Trading Volume

Unlike many other markets, there is no consolidated tape in Forex, and trading prices and volume are not reported. It is, indeed, possible for trades to occur simultaneously at different prices between different parties in the market. Good pricing through a market maker depends on that market maker being closely tied to the larger market. Pricing is usually relatively close between market makers, however, and the main difference between Forex and other markets is that there is no data on the volume that has been traded in any given time frame or at any given price. Open interest and even volume on currency futures can be used as a proxy, but they are by no means perfect.