Expert Articles Resource

Learning to trade Forex?

By Article Expert on Nov. 14, 2009.

Free 5 Day Video Trading Course

One of the biggest problems facing beginners to the Forex market, is the feeling that it is straight forward. This perception can be your undoing, I know, because we fell into the same trap and it cost us a large share of our account.

It doesn’t matter how you begin Forex trading, you need to have a basic knowledge of what is going on. There are a variety of factors that effect the market, and having an idea of what they are and how they impact the charts, will make a significant difference to your trading success.

The Top Dog training system I overview in the video, has been the difference in us going out backwards until there was nothing left, to now, where most or our trades make good money.

Yes there is a heap of training material out there, much is excessively over priced for what they offer. All too often, they leave out certain critical elements and the training is focused on a specific market. If a trading system can be employed across the board, Forex, Options, Futures, Commodities etc, I firmly believe it has to offer a very thorough understanding of market dynamics.

I suppose what you have to consider, is should you risk your hard earned cash before you have even a basic understanding of what Forex is all about, or do you get some core knowledge and minimise your risk. A lack of knowledge can be very costly, with no comeback policy.

This is what Dr Barry Burns course teaches and it will lessen your financial risk considerably, you can use his strategies on any market. So try before you buy, test out his Free 5 day  Video Course, and see what it has to offer, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Automated Forex Trading | Forex Robot Scams

By Article Expert on Nov. 13, 2009.

The deregulation of the Forex market, now offers small investors and traders the chance to trade the Foreign Exchange and this has given rise to vast array of automated Forex trading systems. These provide the home based trader with a ‘set and forget’ trading methodology, where the trader installs a Forex robot onto their brokers charting system, selects their criteria and the robot takes over. ..well that’s what is supposed to happen.

This is likened to finding the Holy Grail, and though there are some intriguing Forex robots on the market, thorough testing by experienced traders has exposed many flaws in the claims made by the creators.

Most of the Forex robot sales claims are based on historical ‘back testing’ results, not live account testing and depending on what system you are using and the substantiation of the historical charts you download, these will and do vary wildly. We have never yet been able to mirror the results offered on a sales page. Some Forex robots we have evaluated were quite brilliant at destroying our demo account, so approach very carefully.

Demo accounts have always been good at producing much better results that live accounts. Demo accounts will always fill a trade, whereas live accounts are subject to spread variations, slippage, and liquidity, plus broker quirks and lot sizes, just to mention a few influences. So as you consider this carefully, if a Forex robot wipes you out on a demo account, how do you think it will go live???

Much as I would love to, I am not going to list the Forex Robot failures, why? quite simply, I don’t want to get sued!

How does an automated Forex trading system work?

Each is different and reads different signals, an automated Forex trading system analyses and interprets its preselected series of indicators, then determines entry and exit strategies based on its interpretation. It opens a trade automatically, based on risk management parameters and aims to make a profit. It will also close the trade, based on exit strategy.

Most of the modern Forex robots run on Metatrader4, which is a very common trading platform and they require narrow trading spreads, often 2-3 pips, occasionally up to 5 pips. They often need time to “bed down” before they commence trading. Some Scalp, which is taking small quick trades and others trade over longer periods and all will have loosing trades. You must make sure the robot has stop loss strategies built in, some don’t, so be careful!!

This is another way Forex robots make their results look good. Without a stop loss strategy, they allow vast draw-downs, keeping the trade open until it returns to into profit. If the draw-down is large it can also send you broke since you may not have the reserves in your account to protect the loss, so your broker will demand extra funding.

If you don’t have the time to day trade and would like to use automated Forex trading, there are two Forex robots we use, these two robots are constantly updated by their developers, so we regularly watch their performance and keep them up to date, it’s all part of our financial management strategy for automated Forex robot systems.

To find out more about these Forex Robots, we review them on our new Blog, you will also find other Forex Trading Tools.

Risk and Your Forex Trading Style

By Article Expert on Oct. 30, 2009.

The most critical part of any type of investing, is being aware of what level of risk you are comfortable with. Without a good comprehension of this, the chances of you loosing everything are very high. There are many different types of trades you can make on the Forex, each possesses its own risk parameters and these your choice will be defined by your risk tolerance. Then there is your personal approach to trading, conservative, moderate, and aggressive.

 When you first come to Forex trading you may decide to trade a day chart. The bar movement over a day can be many of pips, so when you determine your stop position you have to assess what your drawdown limits are. If your money management stipulates a 3% funds exposure, you will encounter problems on day charts unless your account is large.

 The 5M or 30M charts maybe more suitable since the pip movement tends to be less, so your stop positions can fall within your management criteria.

 Yes, we all want good returns from out trades, but jeopardising ones account to significant stop positions and excessive draw-downs is going to clean out your account and trading career very quickly.

 A practical risk level is 3% or $300 on a $10,000 account.  Convert this to pips, 1 standard lot ($100,000) has a pip value of $10 so if you trade end of day and your stop loss placement, whether count-back or support and resistance or any other, indicates a 100 pip stop position, then you are not risking 3% but 30%! Three adverse trades and your account has vanished!

 An aggressive trader is open to taking riskier trades that a conservative trader. They will expose bigger sums or money in riskier trades with the hope of achieving larger returns – often over extended trading time frames but they may still use the similar strategies for shorter times as well. Very much the ‘crash and burn’ trader.

 So where do you think you sit? Are you a disciplined trader with correct money management and risk rates, or a trader that will take over the top risks with all or nothing gains? If you are the latter, you won’t be around for long, that’s a guarantee.

 If any of this leaves you a bit bewildered, you need to gain some knowledge, so commence your Forex training with Top Dog Trading, you will learn a huge amount and it will help you trade with safety to win pips not risk everything.

 Never trade without having all of the facts! Click Here To Get Your FREE Five Day Video Trading Course