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Posts Tagged ‘Time Frames’

Best Time Frame to Trade Forex

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Successful traders have said over and over again that the surest way to success is to trade a time frame that fits your personality best. There are three major time frames that can be summarized as day trading, swing trading and position trading. In order to help you decide which is best for you we will now take a look at an overview of each.

Day trading or intraday trading are quick trades that often last anywhere from minutes to hours and take place within the same trading day. Day trading is also known as scalping and trades are very rapid, usually small in size and many trades are taken each day.

The pros of day trading or scalping include smaller risk per trade through smaller stops losses and take profits. You can make money quicker although it takes deep focus in order to day trade.

There are always downsides to everything and with day trading you can loss money extremely rapidly as well as due to the amount of trades taken intraday traders pay a high level of brokers fees through commissions or the spread. Small mistakes like not respecting the stop loss levels can turn into very steep losses in a short amount of time or even worse blow out an account.

Swing trades can last from anywhere from one day to several days or even weeks. Typically swing traders try to catch price retraces or trend reversals using indicators or price action to help tell the tale of the tape. Using swing highs and lows from recent price action traders use these points of reference for placing their entries and exits.

One of the most loved time frames there are too many advantages to swing trading to talk about right now but among them are the ease of trade involved as you are trading higher time frames which result in less time needed to watch the market as needed when day trading.

One of the biggest disadvantages of swing trading is that traders tend to get emotional tied to their position believing they are going to be correct even if the position gets away from them. Even worse is when traders average down into a trade creating more of then not an even bigger loss.

Position trading often known as trend trading is also known as the buy and hold method where positions can be opened anywhere from a day until several months or longer. Traders open a position on what looks to be the start of a new trend and actually add to that position as the trend develops, taking profits along the way and adding even more size on pullbacks as they resume back toward the trend.

Some traders tell of the position trading style to be the easiest and most profitable. Fitting into any active lifestyles as often traded on the daily time frame it is also the most desirable! One signal period a day makes it very easy to manage and adjust new and open trade orders.

There is always a downside and when it comes to position trading the largest con is that often traders give back big gains while trying to hold a position for even larger gains.

Which time frame appeals to you and your personality? Are you the type of trader who likes lots of action and the rush of trading, or maybe do you like the detachment that swing trading or position trading brings? The first thing aspiring traders need to do is figure out which time frame suits them best before developing a trading method around the time frame.

Strategies You Can Use in Forex Trading

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Forex is a trading ‘method’ also known as FX or and foreign market exchange. Those involved in the foreign exchange markets are some of the largest companies and banks from around the world, trading in currencies from various countries to create a balance as some are going to gain money and others are going to lose money. The basics of forex are similar to that of the stock market found in any country, but on a much larger, grand scale, that involves people, currencies and trades from around the world, in just about any country.

Different currency rates happen and change every day. What the value of the dollar may be one day could be higher or lower the next. The trading on the forex market is one that you have to watch closely or if you are investing huge amounts of money, you could lose large amounts of money. The main trading areas for forex, happens in Tokyo, in London and in New York, but there are also many other locations around the world where forex trading does take place.

The most heavily traded currencies are those that include (in no particular order) the Australian dollar, the Swiss franc, the British pound sterling, the Japanese yen, the Eurozone eruo, and the United States dollar. You can trade any one currency against another and you can trade from that currency to another currency to build up additional money and interest daily.

The areas where forex trading is taking place will open and close, and the next will open and close. This is seen also in the stock exchanges from around the world, as different time zones are processing order and trading during different time frames. The results of any forex trading in one country could have results and differences in what happens in additional forex markets as the countries take turns opening and closing with the time zones. Exchange rates are going to vary from forex trade to forex trade, and if you are a broker, or if you are learning about the forex markets you want to know what the rates are on a given day before making any trades.

The stock market Is generally based on products, prices, and other factors within businesses that will change the price of stocks. If someone knows what is going to happened before the general public, it is often known as inside trading, using business secrets to buy stocks and make money - which by the way is illegal. There is very little, if any at all inside information in the forex trading markets. The monetary trades, buys and sells are all a part of the forex market but very little is based on business secrets, but more on the value of the economy, the currency and such of a country at that time.

Every currency that is traded on the forex market does have a three letter code associated with that currency so there is no misunderstanding about which currency or which country one is investing with at the time. The eruo is the EUR and the US dollar is known as the USD. The British pound is the GBP and the Japanese yen is known as the JPY. If you are interested in contacting a broker and becoming involved in the forex markets you can find many online where you can review the company information and transactions before processing and becoming involved in the forex markets.