Is trading penny stocks riskier than trading currencies? This is a tough question to answer. Personally I think they are too different to say which is riskier. Currencies are often traded on margin. Some currency brokers actually allow leverage up to 500:1. This amount of leverage can very easily blow up a trading account.

Penny stocks can fluctuate extremely rapidly and also eat into a trading account.

One big advantage of currencies is you can very simply choose how much leverage you want to use. If you have an account size of 10k. You can easily place trades that are equal to your ,000 or use leverage.

One advantage of currencies is that there are no trading commissions. With stock trading you usually have a set fee for a each trade. Many penny stock brokers also charge additional fees for trading penny stocks. This may mean you have to earn good returns just to pay the greedy stock broker their fees.

If you trade forex with many retail forex brokers, they do not charge commissions. They make their money their the buy and sell (bid/ask) rate spread.

Trading both penny shares and currencies is highly risky. Be sure to take your time selecting a brokerage firm. For stocks a discount online stock brokerage is often best suited. For currencies a good solid retail broker with a good reputation and low spreads if often the best.

Be careful with forex brokers though, they are often not heavily regulated and they have been known to go bankrupt. You could have heard of the broker refco, they went bankrupt a couple of years ago. Many account holders lost all of their money.

One thing you can do is try a simulated stock trading account before trading a real account.

Think of how bad it would be if you lost your entire trading account because of your broker going bankrupt!

Technorati Tags: business, currency trading, discount stock broker, finance, forex broker, forex trading, investing, investments, money, online broker, penny stock, penny stock broker, stock trading, trade stocks, trader, trading

  

If you ask any really successful forex traders you’ll find, for sure, that nearly every one of them use some sort of a foreign exchange trading program, such as Forex Warlord. Automation is everywhere these days and forex trading is no exception. In fact in many ways the foreign exchange market is before the game because it’s so open to online creativity and automation.  

What you’ll find however is that many traders struggle before they find the right automated foreign exchange trading technique. Some buy them off the shelf and others have a programmer automate their own successful manual system, but they can actually have used a large amount of ‘money’ in demo accounts testing them before they found the right one.  

Even coming up with a robot yourself from a system that you are lucrative is not guaranteed to earn money. Automated trading is a different experience than manual trading and even the best currency exchange systems need some changing when they’re translated into currency trading software.  

So presuming that you aren’t a mega successful trader with a manual system that you are burning to have automated just for your own personal use, then probably you’ll be searching for something to buy off the shelf. How do you find the best FOREX trading program out there?

Testing a currency exchange trading program in a demo account before you go live is totally necessary, of course. You must accept this will take time and not dive into real money trading.

It’s also crucial to understand the first currency trading program that you test will not always be the best for you. Regardless of profits on paper or other people’s’s recommendations, you want to get something that you will understand and be ready to operate successfully, something that could be a decent fit for you.

The best perspective to take is to think from the outset that you’re going to have to test several foreign exchange androids before you find the one that works best for you. This does need some investment of time and cash but it is worth it. And before you panic at the idea of purchasing many androids to find one that works, remember that most of them come with a refund for no less than one month, regularly two. Take advantage of this.

Plenty of the robots are sold thru the net retailer Clickbank who will refund any returns with no question. Just be certain to apply to Clickbank for your refund and not the product developer’s support team. Of course , if you purchased some Nike trainers that did not fit you, you wouldn’t expect a refund from the president of Nike, would you? You would return them to the store where you bought them.

At the same time, you may wish to be certain that the product developer’s support team is there for you when you have technical questions about the software that you purchased. That is’s what they are for. Phonephone support is best, then you may have somebody run you through any problems. Emails should be answered in less than twenty-four hours. If you do not get that kind of support, you may want to look for another FOREX trading program.

Technorati Tags: automated trading, expert advisor, finance, forex, forex trading, investing, money, trader, trading

  

It is well known in the currency trading world that the trend is your buddy and any forex trading method based around following a trend, like No Loss Robot, is likely to be both simple and effective.  

It is easy to form trend lines on any currency exchange chart, but many people prefer to use candlestick charts for this as the candlesticks are such a clear visible signal. When trend lines are forming, you can use them as a signal to buy or sell the currency pair.

The first step in using trend lines for acurrency exchange currency} trading strategy is to ascertain whether the market is rising, falling or is stable within certain parameters. Of course there’ll always be fluctuations, but at certain times you’ll see clear patterns.

1. If the price is rising

If the price is going up, first draw a straight line thru the highest highs on the chart. This line will be sloping upward. Then draw another line through the lowest lows on the chart. If this line is also going upward and is roughly parallel to the 1st, you’ve got an rising trend.

You can then use these two lines as support and resistance lines. This means that you can assume that while the trend continues, the price will remain in the area between these 2 lines. any time that the price hits the top line you might sell, on the assumption that it’ll fall back. In a way this strategy means going against the trend, but you would only hold that position for a short while.

or, any time that the price hits the base line you might buy, on the assumption that it will soon rise again. In this situation you follow the trend which is commonly a better methodology. However, you should keep in mind that there will at some specific point be a real reversal and you could be caught out by this.

2. If the price is falling

If the price is going down, you can follow an analogous strategy to the previous system. The lines you draw will be going downward but you would still buy when the price hits the lower line and sell when it hits the upper line.

3. If the price is stable

If the price is really not going anywhere, then the lines that you draw through the highest highs and the lowest lows will either be horizontal and parallel to each other, or they’ll be converging ( drawing closer together ) or diverging ( drawing apart ). If they’re horizontal, you might use them as support and resistance lines in the same way. If they’re diverging, it is not a nice time to trade. Wait for a trend to form.

If the lines are converging, they might point to a breakout. In this situation you should not treat the lines as support and resistance lines but wait for the price to go beyond either one of them and continue in that direction. So if the price breaks above the higher line you would buy, expecting it to continue in that way for a while. Similarly, if the price breaks above the lower line, you would sell.

Like all forex techniques, these aren’t guaranteed. There is always a likelihood of trades going against you, so you check your signals against other indicators and always use stop losses. Always test your system in a demo account before going live. These steps will help you to develop a successful foreign exchange trading technique.

Technorati Tags: expert advisor, finance, forex trading, investing, money, robot, strategy, trader, trends

  

Currency exchange scalping could be a rewarding business but it is also terribly risky. A large amount of people are drawn into forex scalping methods by hearing about people who make a lot of money that way, but noobs regularly get their fingers badly burned.  

The reason? There are many traps in this type of forex trading system and the majority fall into one or another of them terribly fast. So here are 5 typical mistakes as pointed out by Correlation Code, that you must avoid if you need to earn money with scalper strategies.  

1. Leverage too high

The high quantity of leverage available to foreign exchange traders is one of the reasons why you can make so much money from a little investment balance, but at the same time, it’s important to avoid over leveraging. Forget about getting the most important possible position on every trade for a minute, and concentrate instead on risk management. Be sure that whatever stop loss you are using doesn’t involve you in an unsuitable risk per trade, and adjust your position size accordingly .

Here’s a good way to work out your risk per trade. Rate how badly you would feel if you lost your whole fund balance according to this scale: one = devastated; 2 = very bad; three = bad; four = not too bad; five = cool, it’s all part of the game. Then check the end of the article for the outcome of the quiz.

2. Shortage of patience

Patience is one of the most significant qualities that any forex trader desires to develop and it is especially true of scalpers who sit watching the market, often for hours at a time. It is easy to think that you see the conditions coming right and then to jump in thinking you may maximise your profits by getting in early. You did not have the patience to hang about for the signal set by your system. Over trading in this way almost always leads to losses in the long run.

Patience is also needed in another situation : when you missed an opportunity to trade. Might be that you went to snatch a coffee and when you get back, your ideal trading situation has come and gone. The temptation is to leap in and chase after the price, but it can simply rebound on you. Better to wait patiently for the subsequent real trading opportunity.

3. Trying for more

Many folks believe that forex scalping methods will bring them huge profits really fast. This isn’t true. Most scalping systems do not make many pips on each trade. Many beginners are disappointed by this and quickly start trying for more.

It is enticing to let a trade run when you should be closing out, hoping to get bigger profits than your system allows for, but doing this could probably just leave you losing the small profit that you nearly gained. The target should be to make comparatively steady profits, accepting some losses but avoid the mistakes that lead to large losses. That way you’ve a chance of ending up with a profit on the final analysis. So remember, any profit is good profit.

Quiz results: whatever number you checked, that is’s your % risk per trade. So if you checked option 2, you shouldn’t risk more than 2 percent of your total funds per trade in currency exchange scalping.

Technorati Tags: expert advisor, finance, forex, Forex Robot, investing, money, scalping, trader, trading

  

Although it may seem obvious to most stock market swing traders there are a number of simple rules that you can follow which will ensure that you have more success when buying stocks:

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These stock indexes generally only contain major blue chip stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 mainly contains techical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to easily buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a smaller spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered very liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to avoid stocks that are bellow $10 as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between $5 and $10. Avoid buying a stock that is below $5 at anytime.

Another consideration is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option in order to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings release, stocks often drop significantly if you come out with a poor report. Earnings are released 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

 A675645879

Technorati Tags: call, finance, invest, investment, money, options, put, stock market, stocks, trader, trading

  

Bonds are one of the main stream types of investment along with stocks and real estate, and if you want to learn how to trade bonds make sure that you get a good education in the subject 1st. There are certain things you must understand about bonds before you start investing in them. Not fully understanding these things may cause you to purchase the wrong bonds, at the wrong maturity date.

Like all investments it is important to learn about what you are investing in, and certainly don’t just take the advice given to you by a bond seller without checking it out first yourself. The three most important points that must be considered when purchasing a bond include the par value, the maturity date, and the coupon rate.

The par value of a bond refers to the amount of cash you will receive when the bond reaches its maturity date. In other words, you will receive your initial investment cash back when the bond reaches maturity.

The maturity date is of course the date that the bond will reach its full value. On this date, you will receive your initial investment, and the interest that your money has earned.

Corporate and State and Local Government bonds can be “called” before they reach their maturity, at which time the corporation or issuing Government will return your initial investment, along with the cash that it has earned thus far. Federal bonds can not be “called”.

The coupon rate is the interest rate that you will receive when the bond reaches maturity. This number is written as a percentage, and you must use other information to find out what the interest will be. A bond that has a par value of $2000, with a coupon rate of 5% would earn $100 per year until it reaches maturity.

Because bonds are not issued by banks, many people don’t understand how to go about buying one. There are 2 ways this can be done.

You can use a broker or brokerage firm to buy them for you or you can go directly to the Government. If you use a brokerage, you will more than likely be charged a commission fee. If you want to use a broker, you should shop around for the lowest commissions!

Purchasing directly through the Government isn’t nearly as hard as it once was. There is a program called Treasury Direct which will allow you to buy bonds and all of your bonds will be held in one account, that you will have easy access to. This will allow you to avoid using a broker or brokerage firm.

More advanced traders may try to buy and sell bonds to take advantage of the price movements, you can even swing trade them. But this is a very risky business if you don’t know what you are doing, you will need to take a swing trading course if this was something that wanted to, but again most people just buy and hold.

A890578432

Technorati Tags: banks, bonds, broker, invest, investment, money, stocks, swing trade, trader, trading

  

Technical analysis of the stock market, or any other market such as Forex, Bonds, Futures, is how most traders and investors make their trading decisions. This is as opposed to fundamental analysis which most people more agree is pretty much done as a way of making trading decisions, unless of course you are Warren Buffet!.

You only have to think back to major stock market scams like Enron to know that it is almost impossible for the average, and even very sophisticated fund manager or hedge fund trader to really know what the real financial state of a company is.

Just by reading the balance sheet and other quarterly reports they release gives you a very limited insight into the real health of the company. Whereas the technical analysis charts of the company tend to give the real picture of what the market thinks of the value of the company. In the case of Enron even simple technical analysis told you to SELL when the stock was in the $80-90 range, this is why technical analysis of stocks is so popular.

So what is the secret to technical analysis?, I’m about to tell you, here are my golden rules:

* Only use 3-5 simple technical analysis indicators

* Make sure that you understand how the indicators that you have selected work, what the parameter settings are and in what market conditions they are effective

* After selecting your indicators and parameter settings don’t mess with them.

The real secret to technical analysis is to get VERY familiar with your choosen indicators, and really this can only be done by watching and studying the market, so that you get to the point that you TRUST them.

The fact is that in any market, for each bar period, there are only 5 pieces of information, the open, close, high, low and volume, yet there are now hundreds of indicators. Most of these indicators are displaying much the same information and so are redundant.

For the record my set of indicators are:

* 4 Simple Moving Averages

* Bollinger Bands

* MACD

* Stochastics

But the way I use them is quite special, to learn more about how to become an expert at technical analysis visit:

Top Dog Trading Review

A767342187

Technorati Tags: bonds, Day Trading, investment, money, options, stock market, stocks, technical analysis, trader

  

There is a lot of hype surrounding options trading, and for good reason, it’s a good way make a lot of money fast, or can be used to grow your capital consistently month after month.

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of money trading options, but of course you can also lose money just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go full out on margin you get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that the reverse can happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk management plan is.

What I’ve just described is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much lower dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you trades options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become very good at trading stocks. This is because you really need to be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non-directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very useful skill you have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.

Technorati Tags: Day Trading, finance, forex, investment, money, options, stocks, trader, trading

  

One of the most popular technical analysis indicators is the simple moving average also known as SMA, if you learn how to use these correctly they can be a very useful tool to help you to make good trading decisions.

The 50 simple moving average, or 50 SMA, is simply the sum of the last 50 values for each period, divided by 50, this is a moving window, as time moves on so does the average. Notice that I used the term period because this indicator works on any time period in exactly the same way.

It can be used on monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 30 minutes, 15 minute and on whatever time period you want to monitor and trade. Although the SMA is the most widley used there is also the exponential moving average or EMA. This is a weighted version of the formula using the mathematical exponent function to give more weight to the more recent values, this has the effect of making it a slightly faster average that many traders prefer.

The truth is that it probably does not matter if you used the SMA or the EMA, what does matter however is that you use one or the other and then be very consistent with it. Do not switch between them, it is more important that you learn to trust your chosen indicator then a slight difference in its value.

The SMA is oftern used to determine what the trend of the stock is, depending on the value used it could be a short term, medium term or long term trend. An important point to note is that moving averages are most useful when the stock is trending, if the moving average is flat, i.e. horizontal on your chart it can become very choppy, this is a good time to stay out of the market.

The general rule is that if the chart price is above the SMA the trend is up, if below the trend is down. This is very important to know because it forms the basics of trend trading and trading with the trend.

For the short term trend many traders like using a 5-8 SMA or EMA, here is a trading secret, never trade again the direction of the short term tend, actually this is really just common sense when you think about it.

Moving averages can often act as support or resistance, many traders use the 15, 21 or 30 SMA for this purpose.

There are a number of other very important moving averages that you need to know about, these are the 50, 100 and 200 SMA, and this mainly applies to the daily and weekly charts. A lot of big players in the markets, the mutual funds, investment banks etc use the 50 and 200 SMA as support and resistance, if they decide to buy or sell based on these you need to follow suite, the 100 to a lesser extent. These are very useful averages to watch if you trade EFT’s like an Oil ETF.

A useful tip is that when a stock breaks through one moving average it will often move all the way to the next, for example, if a stock breaks the 30 it may move to the 50 before finding some support or resistance.

A844534297

Technorati Tags: Day Trading, forex, moving average secrets, options, stocks, trader, trading

  

There is a lot of hype surrounding options trading, and for good reason, it’s a good way make a lot of money fast, or can be used to grow your capital consistently month after month.

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is to learn and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options trading and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of cash trading options, but of course you can also lose just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go on margin you can get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not quite as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that the reverse can happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk management plan is.

What I’ve just described is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non-directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much lower dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you trades options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become an expert stock trader 1st. This is because you must be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non-directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very useful skill you have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.

Technorati Tags: Day Trading, finance, forex, investment, money, options, stocks, trader, trading