Showing posts with label Forex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forex. Show all posts

The reality is that the numbers do not lie, almost 90% of those who are starting for the first time in the financial markets like Forex just fail and lose their hard earned money. In fact, there are only a few traders who makes huge profits and live comfortably with this activity. The question that comes to mind then, is why many people fail when begin to trade in the market?

In my opinion it is not a matter of intelligence, since even highly intelligent and prepared people is swept by the market very easily. In fact it is not uncommon to see doctors, lawyers, economists, engineers and similar losing large amounts of money constantly, money that they can not afford to let go as if nothing. It is also possible to find people whose skills and academic preparation is not the best, but they have being successful  market speculators and therefore earns tons of money.

In my opinion that the factors limiting the success that all traders would like to have are the following:

1. The nature of the market: Anyone with some experience in the markets knows that is not easy to trade in any financial market. Anyone who says otherwise probably is lying or does not know what he's talking about. The reality is that the market tends to be quite erratic and full of unpleasant surprises just waiting for the traders. It is not uncommon for a trader to spend hours analyzing the market and waiting for the right moment to enter and suddenly, once in position, the price makes a sudden move against and take  him out of the game moments later, only to resume the direction that the trader had predicted at the beginning. The most we can hope for is to put the odds in our favor with a good strategy and do not ever expect to find a system that works 100% of the time since that does not exist.

2. The psychology of the trader: The trader's worst enemy is not the market but himself. I could say that a 99.99999999999999999999% of the time, the main cause of failure of a trader is his psychology. To trade successfully in an environment as difficult as the financial markets requires cold blood, and above all a good psychology. A trader who has the best strategy in the world will never have success if not prepare its mind for  everything that the market holds. For example, a trader must be sufficiently cold-blooded to accept both losses and gains and know that some days he just can not win and the best practice is therefore cease to trade that day and accept losses. Given the personality of many people who do not like losing, that is a very difficult of  trading.

3. The lack of preparation of trader: It is very common that many people begin to trade believing that the market trading is simple because only have to guess if the market goes up or down. These people do not take into account that the market is affected by multiple variables, so it requires adequate preparation to meet the various conditions that arise. If we begin to trade thinking  that everything will be easy and we do not need proper preparation,  sooner or later we will get a nasty surprise. The speculation in the markets requires study and preparation as anything else in life. Would you let  that anyone with no preparation in medicine make you a heart surgery? I guess not. It takes years of study for that. Something similar can be said about the trading.

4. The search for the perfect system: Many times the speculator spend more time searching for a perfect trading system than studying the market itself. Is important to understand that there is no such thing, even the best trader using the best system loses sometimes, that's inevitable. Even, some experts say that a system that gives a 50%-60% of winning signals can be considered a good system. The search for the "perfect system" makes some traders spend thousands of dollars buying systems that promise easy money but in reality are worthless and only cause that the buyer will lose even more money.

Dear reader, this Forex course is designed to help you in making the right choices right from the beginning. It is especially designed to save you time and therefore does not discuss every detail. Rather you have to trust the assessment of a professional trader. We will commence together with a discussion of a selection of brokers with full knowledge that these brokers albeit not exclusive offer a pretty decent level of service. In further articles of this series you will get an idea of what successful Forex trading means and why most people will unfortunately not succeed.

You cannot expect to become a profitable trader after reading through my articles – that takes years of practice – but you can expect that this series will help you to avoid a number of traps and therefore time and money.
The selection of the right broker depends on the following factors and questions that need to be answered:

Does the broker offer segregation of client/firm funds? If it does not avoid the broker with real money.
Is the broker subject to strict governmental regulation? Avoid those that are not. Brokers located in Europe especially the UK, Germany, and Switzerland should be on the safe side. Brokers that reside within countries without strict regulatory oversight, such as Cyprus, should at least be looked at with a suspicious eye.
Here is a list of brokers that I do recommend (not in rank), albeit it is not exclusive: FXCM UK, GFT UK, Interactive brokers (25k lot size minimum), Saxo Bank, Dukascopy, Tradestation
Most of these brokers also off CFD trading. Interactive Brokers e. g. is the best all-around discount broker that I know of, Forex trading however is only one of their smaller businesses. Therefore liquidity can be limited.
See if the broker offers the Metatrader platform, which is interesting if you think about semi-automatic trading.

A quick discussion of the brokers introduced:
GFT UK: Superior charting package, sophisticated service. A bit expensive at times, they really charge you for almost everything.
FXCM UK: Superior service for bigger accounts having the Active Traders platform. Very good research provided by their own portal website.
Saxo Bank: Superior customer service, free research and signals depending on account size.
Dukascopy: Good research on their website, superior spreads, good execution.
Tradestation: The best charting package available but a bit expensive.

Get a demo account with a selection of brokers and chose the platform you like best. If you like the Metatrader platform, maybe a provider like Alpari or AAAFX might be interesting. However I suggest to do some proper research on these brokers before you make a choice. Once you have established your demo account you must learn how to use the software. Please ensure you read the manual of the demo platform of your choice in full but if you lack the proper time to do so go and give the customer service a call or use the live chat function offered by many brokers. This way you can also test the broker´s ability to handle your requests during times of crisis.

In the next article we will discuss your next steps towards profitable Forex trading.

Quotes in a banking marketplace can be a bit treacherous given any upon all sides we take in a marketplace is essentially dual conflicting positions.