InvestMacro FX

By James Woolley

The forex markets are open 24 hours a day between Monday and Friday which means that anyone in the world can conveniently trade at some point during the day. However, some times are more volatile and profitable than others.

The most volatile period of the day is between 1.30 and 4.30pm UK time which is around the time that US traders start trading the markets. More significant is the fact that a lot of economic data releases are announced during this period, which can cause dramatic swings and increased volatility in the currency markets, particularly the dollar-related pairs.

However although volatility is good to an extent, it’s not necessarily the best time to trade because these announcements can cause wild and unpredictable swings which generally does not equate to profits. The resulting move in the more significant of the data releases will often counteract conventional technical analysis as well making it extremely difficult to make any profits.

The only people to benefit from trading during this period are the tiny minority of news traders who are capable of benefiting from such swings.

For most of us the ideal time to trade is when you get large market moves and trends that are more predictable, conform well to technical analysis, and is during a time when there are no major economic news announcements scheduled.

Luckily such a period does exist and it is basically the start of the European trading session between 8.00 and 12.00 (or you could even say 6.00-12.00 because you often get strong moves from 6.00 onwards).

This is an excellent time to trade because it’s the most heavily traded session, so you get decent sized moves, and it’s generally free of any market-moving announcements so you can concentrate fully on technical analysis.

Unfortunately not everyone around the world can trade during this time due to time differences and the inconvenience of trading at an awkward time of the day, so for those people the next best time to trade is during the Asian session. The Yen related pairs in particular are the best pairs to trade during the Asian session, as you would imagine, as the other major pairs are extremely quiet during this time of the day.

So in conclusion, the best time of the day to trade the forex markets in my experience is the start of the European trading session where you get large swings and few market-moving announcements to contend with. If you’re trading the major currency pairs, you will find that the other times of the day are either too quiet or too volatile, unless you’re trading Yen pairs which move strongly during the Asian trading session.

About the Author

James Woolley runs a blog offering tips and strategies related to forex currency trading and a review of Forex Trading Machine

By James Woolley

You will often see investing magazines on the shelves in your local newsagent, and they do seem to be quite popular with stock market traders and investors. I used to buy them myself in the past, but nowadays I don’t bother with them at all. So are they really that useful?

Well let me discuss some of the positives first of all. One of the major selling points is that they will often have some really good informative and educational articles. Every month they will often choose a topic and write a feature article on this subject, which may be two to five pages long, for instance.

So they may write feature articles about options trading, or they may discuss the 10 most undervalued stocks in the FTSE 100, for example. One thing you can guarantee is that these feature articles will nearly always be a very good read.

Another thing I like about share trading magazines is that they will often discuss individual stocks that you may not otherwise have come across. They will often pick out a few small-cap stocks that are worth keeping an eye on, and these can turn out to be great investments. Of course you shouldn’t buy stocks on the back of a recommendation. You should always do your own research as well.

These magazines also tend to have good coverage of the latest company results. This can be useful because you can scan through them and find out which companies are performing very well, and are therefore worth adding to your shortlist of possible investments.

Those are the positives, but there are also several things I don’t like about investing magazines. Firstly you always have to bear in mind that the people writing the articles about various different stocks are journalists first and foremost, so you have to be very wary about listening to any recommendations. If they were highly skilled investors, then they would probably be working in the city for a major investment bank, or trading their own money.

Another thing to bear in mind is that they will often brag about the share predictions that they got right. This encourages inexperienced investors to start blindly following future tips, which will often lead to disappointment, because they will rarely mention the numerous recommendations that turned out badly.

So as you can see, investment magazines have their good points and their bad points. Ultimately it is up to you whether or not you buy them every month. They are very often quite a good read, but you should always be careful about following any of their recommendations.

About the Author

Click here to read a review of Zecco, the online stock broker that offers free trades, and to read a full TradeKing review.

By Cedric Welsch

Are you one of the many traders around today who have yet to see some really significant amount of profit as a result of their investments? Well, you could be lacking on some good knowledge in terms of really well and effective strategies to implement. Techniques and strategies can be acquired by simply observing professional traders and even brokers when they perform trading transactions.

The entire forex market consists of a huge network of traders, brokers, and several other professionals involved in the trading transactions. The forex trading industry is a worldwide based business operation of buying and selling currencies owned by different countries. Although forex trading is a globally operated kind of business, anyone can easily get access to the forex market online and trade currencies themselves at their convenience from any part of the world. This is all made possible because of the internet technology.

If a trader choose to buy the currency of a particular country, and that country’s economic standing improves later on, then that will mean to be a handsome profit for the trader already. The buying and selling part of the transaction is really simple, but the decision making part is what maybe hard to do right. You as the trader must know very well which currency is best to buy now, and you should also know when would be the best time to sell it.

One very bad misconception about forex trading is that it is somehow associated to luck. On the contrary, foreign exchange trading has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of being lucky or anything like that. It is purely a business that is based on facts, statistics, and prudent decision making. As a trader, if you have no solid collection of factual data that a currency will perform well, then it is a bad thing to think that it might indeed rise later on based on pure gut-feel. This kind of thinking is what makes a lot of traders lose large amounts of investments, simply because they choose to act based on feelings and emotions rather than through some careful study and analysis.

A good strategy that is implemented by a lot of professional traders is the strategy of buying a certain currency during its lowest possible value and then waiting patiently for its value to rise before selling it. This strategy obviously involves patience and the proper timing to act on things. Without these two very important and much needed trading qualities, it will be very difficult for a trader to make profits.

About the Author

The feeding of trade forex news is so crucial to many investors. And so are forex trading review write-ups very crucial in avoiding scams.

The Euro put in an impressive week versus both the dollar and the Swiss franc with both pairs approaching short term targets.

The EUR/USD has made a close above 1.3500 and now may target the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level from the November to January move. This level coincides with the resistance level from October at 1.3740.

The EUR/CHF completed a bottom head and shoulders reversal pattern and has reached its estimated target at 1.3030, which coincides with the 50% retracement from the mid-November to January move. The 100-day moving average now comes into play which is currently close to the falling trend line off of the November highs at 1.3140.

Today’s Market Events:

EUR – German Flash Manufacturing PMI – 08:30 GMT
Expectations: 61.1. Previous: 60.7

EUR – Industrial New Orders – 10:30 GMT
Expectations: 2.3%. Previous: 1.4%.

Germany, the engine of EU growth, appears be to coming out of the recession with the Bundesbank increasing its economic forecast, raising 2011 expectations to 2.3% from 1.8%. Euro strength will likely be seen if these two industrial reports come in above market expectations.

By James Woolley

When you’re first starting out it can be fairly difficult to decide which currencies are the best ones to trade. Do you watch all of them or only concentrate on one or two?

Well in truth there’s no right and wrong answer. If you have a rigid trading system which produces consistent profits whatever the currency pair, then you may want to open a window for each pair, ideally on a multiple monitor set-up, so you can watch for your entry criteria to be met for any of these pairs.

So for example, let’s say your trading criteria is a MACD crossover, a Supertrend change of colour, and RSI in overbought/oversold territory.

In this instance, you would simply create graphs containing this data for every major currency pair, and wait for a suitable entry for any of them.

That’s one approach. Another approach, and one favoured by myself, is to only concentrate on the major pairs. This is because they are the most traded, and therefore charting patterns and technical indicators are generally more reliable and tradeable.

Another reason why I take this approach is because these pairs have the tightest spreads. This is extremely important because you really don’t want to be trading pairs that have wide spreads simply because it limits your profits more and puts added pressure on you to make correct calls.

Over time these wider spreads can really eat into your profits, so I generally stick to three of the four major currency pairs – GBP/USD, EUR/USD and USD/JPY (USD/CHF is the other but that has a spread of 4 points with the broker I use).

I can easily watch these three pairs at once and watch for any entry points, but if you’re just starting out, another approach could be to just concentrate on one pair. You will find that although most pairs follow technical indicators very well, each pair has it’s own personality and so by concentrating on just one pair, and learning how it behaves, you may find this is the most profitable approach to take.

Another factor is your location and the time at which you are available to trade. For example, the GBP/USD is most active between around 8.00 GMT and 20.00 GMT, so if you’re based in Australia, for example, you would miss most of the action if you wanted to trade in the daytime where you are.

So to conclude, there aren’t really any best currencies to trade, each pair is potentially very profitable. However, the major pairs generally have the tightest spreads and are the most actively traded, and generally conform very well to technical analysis, so these are the currencies I would recommend trading.

About the Author

James Woolley has been trading currencies for around five years. He also runs a blog where he reveals all his best forex tips and strategies

By James Woolley

If you have any experience in using any kind of charting packages to assist you with your forex trading, you will know that there are endless different technical indicators you can use. In this article I’m going to be asking what are all these indicators and which ones do you really need?

As you can guess from the title of this article, there are essentially four different types of technical indicator and they are as follows:

1.Trend indicators.

MACD, Parabolic SAR and the various moving averages are a few examples of trend indicators and they can all be used to identify a trend. It’s widely argued that you should only trade with the trend so all of these indicators will help you to take the decision out of your hands, and therefore dictate which way you should be trading. Your only decision now is at what level to enter the trade.

2.Momentum indicators.

These types of indicators are essentially oscillating indicators and are most useful for determining overbought and oversold positions and can be very useful in signalling the start of a new trend. Examples include RSI, Stochastics and CCI.

3.Volume indicators.

As the name suggests, these types of indicators show the volume of trades behind a particualr price movement which can be extremely beneficial because a price movement backed up by high volume is a much stronger signal than a price movement based on low volume. Examples here include Chaikin Money Flow, Force Index, Money Flow Index and Ease Of Movement.

4.Volatility indicators.

Volatility indicators generally use ranges to show the behaviour of the price and the volume behind any movements. This is useful because any dramatic change in behaviour can provide a good entry signal. Common examples include Bollinger Bands, Average True Range and Envelopes.

So there you have the four different types of technical indicators available to you. Which ones you use is entirely up to you, but it’s generally advised that you have at least one type of each in order to provide additional confirmation for entering a trade.

Trading forex using technical analysis is all about probabilities in that when you enter a long position, for example, you want all of your chosen signals to be signalling an upwards movement, therefore indicating a high probability of an upwards movement taking place.

If you use a strict stop loss policy and use these different types of indicators to confirm positions, then over time this high probability trading method should provide you with more winners than losers in the long run.

About the Author

James Woolley has been trading currencies for around five years and also runs a forex trading blog dedicated to offering free forex tips and strategies.

Being supported by 0.9803, AUDUSD rebounded from 0.9832, however, another fall to re-test 0.9803 support is still possible later today, a breakdown below this level could trigger deeper decline to 0.9600 area. Resistance is at 0.9920, above this level will suggest that a cycle bottom has been formed at 0.9832 level on 4-hour chart, then further rise towards 1.0076 could be seen.

Daily Forex Analysis

By Cedric Welsch

If you have been hearing about the forex trading business for quite some time now and you find yourself starting to develop that deep sense of interest for it, then consider this as a brief introduction to it.

The forex market is that kind of place where people perform their trading transactions. In the forex trading world, people trade currencies. Buyers are those in the buying end of the transaction, while sellers are in the selling end of the transaction. Both buyers and sellers are busy all throughout the trading hours doing business transactions, all for one single purpose in mind – and that is to make a good profit out of their investment.

Each single day, trading transactions in the forex market can reach by the trillion in dollars. This is how huge the forex trading industry is around the world. No wonder why too many people are attracted to this wealth making opportunity that much. There are individuals who make millions of dollars in profits out of buying and selling currencies in the forex market. The principle really of the trading process is rather simple and easy to understand. When you decide to buy a currency, you must base such decision in the hope that the value of that currency will be higher by the time you sell it. Through this simple principle in mind, you are bound to make profits.

In order to become really successful at trading currencies, you should not only be very familiar with the buying and selling part of the entire trading transaction, you should also become very knowledgeable with the whole forex market and its trending behavior. Familiarize yourself with all sorts of technical jargon within the entire industry. Learn what causes the ups and downs of the market and which causes certain currency rate values to decline. If you do a thorough research online, you will find several good sources of information that will help you understand every bit of detail you need to learn about forex trading.

Once you are well equipped with the right knowledge, what you will need to have as well is an ample experience on trading. You can either start off with a practice account or you can gain your experience through actual and real live trading transactions. Only, you should be prepared at losing some of your investments in the start. If you hit the lucky break early on in your trading game, then good for you. But don’t depend too much on luck as this is a very rare thing to happen in the forex trading business.

After you have all the much needed knowledge and experience, you are now ready to go full blast on your quest to a real forex trading success.

About the Author

Want to get more out of trading? Go read forex news updates. Who says you can’t find reputable brokers? Find out who they are here: forex reviews

By Ben McArthur

New traders come into the Forex market every day. Many have never traded in any type market before. Experienced traders know that to succeed in Forex trading you must have the knowledge and mindset to trade without emotional attachment and with the proper discipline.

You must have a detailed trading plan in place before entering any trade. Don’t abandon your plan because the market did not react the way you anticipated. The market is always right.

To be a successful Forex trader you must at all times adhere to your trading plan and be disciplined in every trade you make.
Undisciplined traders don’t have long careers as traders.

Always trade with stops in place. Never adjust them to stay in a losing trade. Only adjust stops to protect profits already made.

You must learn that you, and every other trader, will have losses. It is inevitable. You are no different than other traders.
There is no perfect trading system or perfect trader.

Both bulls and bears make money. Don’t be afraid to short a market if your trading system or indicators are pointing to a market about to go in decline.

Refine your trading system as you gain more experience. No system is perfect and your system should be tailored to your particular trading style.

Don’t be afraid to stand aside from time to time. New trading situations come along every day. Wait until you feel that the odds are more in your favor before placing an order.

Trading is not gambling. It is a business. Always treat is as one.

Patience is a virtue. Most of the big moves take time to develop. Wait for the market to tip it’s hand before jumping in too soon.

Greed is a surefire way to blow out your account. Trying to squeeze extra profits out of a trade can backfire if the market suddenly changes direction.

Don’t overtrade. Overextending your account will lead to a short career as a trader. Too much leverage on any trade has been the downfall of many traders.

Control your emotions. Emotionally attaching yourself to a trade can affect your judgement.

Study your trading system and be familiar with the indicators, chart patterns, or price movements that signal a trade. Wait for your trading methodology to give a trading signal before entering the market.

The trend is your frend. Sometimes a short term trade against a trend can be profitable, but be extra cautious if making a short term trade against a strong trend. Temporary reversals of a major trend are traders taking profits and the trend will usually resume in full force.

Forex trading involves skills beyond having a well designed trading system. Learning to control emotions and becoming well versed in the other attributes needed are what sets the best traders apart from the rest.

Learn more forex trading secrets at the author’s website.

About the Author

Want to learn more about Forex trading? Visit the author’s website for more Forex trading tips and learn some little known forex trading secrets

The Euro traded on much stronger sentiments in the last week and almost touched it’s highest in the last two months versus the US dollar. The increase in Germany’s business sentiment boosted the investor’s confidence over the single currency.

The pair EUR/USD reported the increase of 1.73 percent in the last week to 1.3243 on Friday. The pair is expected to find support at 1.3448 and likely to find resistance at 1.3786 which also happens to be its highest since November 22nd, 2010.

The list of events that could influence the trading of the pair EUR/USD for the week Jan 24th, 2011 to January 28th, 2011 are as follows:-

On Monday January 24th, 2011 report on activity in manufacturing and services sectors will be released by Germany and France and a comprehensive report will be also published for euro zone covering industrial new orders.

Data on German consumer climate by Gfk Research will be published in Germany while France will also report its official consumer spending data on January 25th, 2011.

United States will also report their official data on consumer confidence and industry data on house price on January 25th.

On Wednesday January 26th, 2011 the US Federal Reserve will report its Federal Funds Rate which will give a future outlook for interest rates in United States. Moreover US will also release the data on new home sales on Wednesday.

Preliminary report on consumer price inflation will be published by Germany on Thursday January 27th, 2011. Whereas key data on weekly jobless claims, durable goods orders, natural gas stockpiles and pending home sales will be published in United States.

On Friday January 28th, 2011 European Central Bank will report its data on private borrowing and M3 money supply while United States will publish the fourth quarter’s GDP. Moreover revised data on consumer sentiment & inflation expectations will be reported by University of Michigan.

About the Author

Daily forex trading news written by Rehan from DailyForexTrade.com