Friday, October 31, 2008

You too Can Create Your Own SimpleForex Trading System

We are always on a look out for a best Forex trading system. What most new traders do not realize is that anyone can create his own trading system. Based on my experience I can say that a trading system I created for myself gave the best results. It is not a difficult task to create a system. All you need is a little experience with the charts. The next four steps can help you to create your own trading system.

1. Choose a currency pair and time frame that fits your trading style

First what you need to do is to pick a currency and time frame charts. Time frame needs to suit your trading style. If you trade part-time and look at your charts once a day then pick a daily charts. If you are a day trader and can continuously monitor your trades then pick 5-minute or 15-minute charts. It is very important since a system you are going to develop may not work for other currencies and other time frames. It is rare to find a universal trading system that would make good results for any currency pair and any time frame.

2. Pick parameters to generate buy-sell signals.

Now you need to pick some parameters that will generate buy and sell signals for you in your trading system. You may want to use certain indicators, pivot points, candlestick patterns or it can be some fundamental data. This is where your experience of observing the price action comes into play. Write down the rules of the signal. For example it can be something like "buy when price brakes above the upper Bollinger band; sell when price brakes bellow the lower Bollinger band". You need the rules for setting your stop-loss and take-profit levels as well

3. Back test the trading system

Now it's time to back test your system. You need to go as far back in time on the historical data of your chart. Now move forward one candle at a time and look at your parameters - indicators, candlestick patterns etc. Once your see buy or sell signal place a horizontal line at the price level you would enter the market. Then place horizontal lines at your stop-loss and take-profit levels. Continue to go one candle at a time. Once price hits one of the levels write down the result into a spreadsheet. If it was a gain you will write it with a positive sign if it was a loss you will write it with a negative sign. Do it at least 100 times. At the end calculate mathematical expectation of your system. If it is positive move to the next step if it is negative go back to the step number 2 and refine your parameters of buy and sell signals.

4. Paper trade your system.

Once you have the system with a positive mathematical expectation you need to forward test it to see how it performs in real time. Again take at least 100 trades in real time. Be patient. Market will always be there for you to trade on a live account. Once you have the positive mathematical expectation with the forward test results you are ready to trade your system on your live account.

Once you have some experience with constructing trading systems I promise you will be able to develop a system that will be the most profitable for you.

Friday, October 24, 2008

What are the Benefits of Forex Buy-Sell Signals?

Many people once they find out how hard it is to make consistent profit in Forex start looking for a remedy to their trading. I was one of them. I tried a few Forex buy-sell signal providers to trade currencies. From my experience I know that a signal provider is just another tool in your trading toolbox given that a provider is not scam.


I was wondering if those companies trade their own signals. I don’t know. The past results can be very easily taken form the historical data. Actually any trading system can be tweaked to give you significant profit on the historical data. It doesn’t prove anything.


It is amazing to see how one trader can take those buy and sell signals and make consistent profit while another trader using the same signals will fail to achieve any good result. Here is what happens with the second trader. After a few losses in a row he gets discouraged and decides to skip the next trade. To his surprise the next trade would be the most profitable one. Or it can be the opposite way. After a significant number of wins in a row he thinks he has a Holy Grail and loads up the next trade. It is that trade that blows all his previous profit. All he needed to do is just follow the signals with patience and discipline as the first one did. That’s the power of discipline.


It is funny to read reviews about some signal provider. One trader says it is a good one. He was able to make a lot of money trading with these signals. Another one says it’s horrible he lost all his money because of the signals. Can you see the difference already? The latter trader joined the signal providing company to be able to blame someone else in his failure.


People who trade currencies and look for signal providers that perform close to holly grail are the ones who are looking to give up the responsibility for their account to someone else. I’ve been there. I was the one constantly looking for someone to blame in my losses. A signal providing company was a great target to blame for my failures.


If one already achieved a level of discipline and consistency in his trading then he can use those signals to benefit in trading currencies. I strongly believe that the most important ingredients in trading are your mindset and discipline. If those ingredients are in place then any tool will help you to propel to success in trading. If not then there is a leakage in the toolbox. One will continue to blame his tools for inability to make him a profit.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Do Those Day Forex Trading Trainings Actually Work?

When I first started trading currencies in Forex and found that simply installing a broker's trading platform did not turn my PC into ATM I went looking for Forex education. If you are not making consistent profit trading probably you are looking for the educational information or training that can help you to become a profitable trader.

Since I took many courses and trainings I can give you a few tips on what to look for in a good Forex training. But first you need to realize that there a lot of scam is going around Forex and Forex training as well. So do your due diligence, check the training company's background etc. You even may want to find people who have taken the training course and find out what was their outcome in trading.

Now after you done your research on company what you should look in training itself? Based on my experience I found that it should address two issues for it to be really beneficial. First they need to work on your trading mindset. Or at least they should point that out. You will not believe how many courses claim to turn you into a successful trader but give you only introductory information into Forex. It can even be advanced but still introductory information.

I can confirm based on my own experience that mindset is one of the most important things in trading. If a mentor or training company do not outline a strategy that you should work to develop your discipline and ability to control your emotions then the rest of information may be useless for you.

Second thing they need to clearly outline one basic trading strategy with positive math expectation to practice your trade execution. It should be as close to mechanical system as possible. Have you had this experience when advanced trader executes a trade everything is clear and smooth? When you look at the charts on your own the signals become vague and ambiguous so you hesitate to take a trade. That's because an experienced trader has a feel of market. In my opinion the only way to develop that kind of feel is to execute trades based on simple rules over and over again.

I believe those two things plus discipline to keep executing the trades no matter what was the result of the last trade will lead you to success in Forex. You see, many people think that if you acquire a lot of knowledge about market about worldwide economy you will become a successful trader. I personally met people who had top knowledge of market and economy but failed to make consistent profit in trading. On the other hand there are some traders who do not have such wide knowledge on those subjects but they manage to pull the profit from market on a monthly basis. The common trait of those traders is discipline and emotional control during the trade.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

How to Trade Breakout Strategy in Forex

Trading systems based on price breakout can be considered as a system based on oscillations. In other words traders who use breakout systems are not interested in long-term trades but immediate price movement.

Breakout trading systems are based on assumption that if price breached the boundary of a range then there is a high probability that the move will continue. It can last a short period of time but that can be enough to make a profit in a trade.

I believe breakout trading strategies is a good place to start for a beginner trader. It has number of benefits

1. It is the best exercise to practice your trading skills.
It can teach you some techniques that can be hard to learn in other strategies like buying the dips and selling the rallies. Most people don't feel comfortable trading such strategies. Breakout strategy on the other hand is easy to master.

3.Trading strategies on breakout have clear rules of setting stop losses.
It is very important for new traders because it helps to follow the right money management rules. Violating the money management rules is the most popular reason of failure in trading.

4.It will teach you to be patient since in most cases breakout systems work best if the trade is carried out to the next day.

5.This kind of trading systems will allow you to improve your trading skills.
Most of them require active participation in market compared to other systems like many trend following systems. Many traders are afraid to push the button when it comes to placing an order. Breakout systems can help you to overcome such fear by continuously executing mechanical trades. Most of them require placing pending orders that also relives the fear of taking action in market.

6.Even if you are in the habit of entering the market based on your discretion, breakout systems still can help you to better understand the dynamics of market. I believe any mechanical system can help you develop a feel for the market. The only thing you need to do is relentlessly execute the trades.

As any other system breakout systems have their own pros and cons. These systems can give you a good profit on volatile and trending market. But when market starts moving sideways the breakout system experiences losses. You can trade any breakout system as is. Placing the orders whenever price breakouts the range. Or you can try to filter out the sideways movement of price and stay out of market in those periods of time.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Forex Scams You Need to Be Aware Of

Forex is known as the currency exchange market. There are different parties participate in Forex such as banks, businesses, governments and individual traders from different countries. Therefore the transactions that are taking place require brokers and banks. More and more people become interested in trading Forex. As with any other popular trend there are many more new scams related to Forex are emerging every day. Majority of people who get involved in currency trading online do not even realize how many people out there are trying to take advantage of newcomer's hard earned money.

Individual traders and small business very often are looking to make big money with little investment. They usually become victims of scammers. Since Forex seen by many as an opportunity to make a quick profit many people do not question some issues that mast be researched. They tend to forget that they should invest their money with a broker who directly accesses to the foreign exchange market. There are two major types of scam in Forex business.

1. Broker scam.
As I mentioned many people do not realize that a broker they are choosing to invest money with must be a legitimate participant in the currency exchange market. There are so many so-called bucket shop brokers ready to take advantage of anyone who joins the currency trading business through them. Wikipedia gives the definition of a bucket shop broker as "a firm that takes the opposite side of retail customer orders without actually having them executed on exchange market." And in many states it is a crime.

This type of scam is based on the fact that 95% of traders loose their money very quickly. So what those fraudulent brokers do, they take that money from their clients as if they lost in the market, pay the profit to 5% successful traders and pocket the rest of the amount. Now imagine if a successful trader made a profit exceeding the loss of 95%. These brokers have nothing to do but to perform some sort of fraud on the account of this trader or fold their business and run.

2. Trading signals and software scams.
This type of scam is based on people's greed and laziness. Many companies claim that they provide buy and sell signals to Forex traders to make easy profit. Others are selling software programs that are supposed to give you correct signals when to enter the market and when to exit. Some companies are even selling the software that will be making trades for you.

These scammers are fishing for people whose major motivation is greed and laziness. Many people are looking for ways to make quick profit with little effort. Unfortunately there is no such thing. You can make a quick profit in foreign exchange but in the long run if you are not studying the market and yourself hard enough you will loose. I don't mean that every software and signal service is a scam. But they are only tools for trading currencies. Success depends entirely on individual who uses those tools.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Latest Facts About Forexrobots

Profitable trading is not an easy task. People tend to make trading errors due to their emotions and other human weaknesses. That's why new methods are being developed. One of them is called "Automated Trading". It is a way of trading using programs, software or robots without needing a human to execute the trades. Computer can beat a human at chess games. It can beat humans at Forex trading also.

Automated trading is not perfect yet and computers can not think as humans do. If trading software is programmed with untenable or non-logical trading strategy it will fail. However experience shows that high quality software can be used to trade currencies profitably.

Here is the latest fact about trading software: in the Automated Trading Championship 2008 that started 1st of October the top Expert Advisor by the time of writing of this article mad $54,074 in profit (championship.mql4.com) having initial $10,000 deposit in the trading account. This shows that automatic trading software does work.

The major problem with such trading software is that they are programmed for certain market conditions. They will stop working as soon as the currency behavior will change. It is obvious even in manual trading. A system that works in trending market will lose money in ranging market. That's why if you decide to try automated trading you need to constantly update your software.

How about commercially available trading software and Expert Advisors? I have tried many of them. So far I found only one that is being updated accordingly to the market conditions. That allows it to be profitable most of the time.


I was constantly failing in the beginning of my experience with that kind of software. My equity curve looked like a trajectory of falling rock. The only problem for me was that over time those programs and Expert Advisors stop making profit as they did it before.

I tried different kinds of software and Expert Advisors. Finally found what I was looking for. I have posted my trading results with this one at Forex Opportunity. I gave more detailed overview as well as trading results on Metatrader platform.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Will I Blow My Account With Automatic Trading Software?

Many traders use some type of software in their trading. In Forex trading there are tow kinds of such software. First type is auxiliary software. It's an indicator that interprets the price action or some more sophisticated program that generates buy-sell signals. The second type of trading software is what I call automatic trading software. This software executes the trades in real time on your broker's platform. I would like to describe those two types of software in greater detail.

Auxiliary trading software

All traders are familiar with this type of software. The simplest version of it is and indicator of a price action. Some people build programs to generate buy and sell signals based on those indicators. These tools make analyzing the price data much more easy task. Keep in mind though that the most valuable tool in trading is your mindset. If it is in place then any software will make your trading more successful.

Forex automatic trading software

This kind of program is becoming more and more popular among Forex traders lately. It seems like it should be the best way to trade since the machine doesn't have human emotions such as fear and greed. So it should not be susceptible to trading errors due to those emotions. The reality is much more complex and interesting. If a successful trader uses the automatic trading software he makes profit in a long run. When a beginner tries to use such software he loses money.

What's the reason for getting different results? The problem with automatic trading is that it uses certain trading strategy only for certain market conditions. Once the conditions change software starts losing money.


My personal experience with Forex automatic trading

The same was for me. In the beginning of my trading experience I was constantly failing. My equity curve looked like a trajectory of falling rock. The only problem for me was that over time those programs and Expert Advisors stop making profit as they did it before.

I tried different kinds of software and Expert Advisors. Finally found what I was looking for. I have posted my trading results with this one at Forex Automatic page. I gave more detailed overview as well as trading results on Metatrader platform.

Also I highly recommend you to visit Forex-Opportunity.info to learn more about automated Forex trading. At least sign up for a newsletter to get a comprehensive trading advice

Friday, October 10, 2008

Benefits and Flaws of Automated Forex Trading

There are many different software being developed lately to automate trading in Forex. They are able to trade currencies without needing a person to execute trades. Automated trading is a field that began emerging not long ago. Automated trading has number of advantages over manual trading. Such advantages for example are:

It is executed by computer. Today information technology and computer science are developed to a very high standards. Computer can perform thousand calculations while human performs only one. It work outs logical computations without error and stores memory at incredible speed.

Trading on autopilot takes emotions out of your trading. It will never make decisions driven by greed and fear. The software never hesitates to take a trade or close a position. All the trades are based on set rules and criteria that eliminate the human psychological errors.

Trading software can take trades day and night without weariness. It frees a trader from the necessity to be glued to his trading charts all the time. Once a successful trading system is developed and optimized into a trading robot it can be left to run independently.

On the other hand automated Forex trading robots have a major flaw. They do not have the "feel" for market as a human trader does. If trading software is making profit once market conditions change it may start loosing money. That kind of change can be perceived only by a human eye. For example if behavior of the currency pair was predominantly trending and a trading robot was making profit. Once that currency pair becomes mostly ranging trading robot will lose money in such market.

Here is my personal experience with automated Forex robots. In the beginning of my trading experience with them I was constantly failing. My equity curve looked like a trajectory of falling rock. The only problem for me was that over time those programs and Expert Advisors stop making profit as they did it before.

I tried different kinds of software and Expert Advisors. Finally found what I was looking for. I have posted my trading results with this one at Forex automatic robots. I gave more detailed overview as well as trading results on Metatrader platform.

Also I highly recommend you to visit Forex-Opportunity.info to learn more about automated Forex trading. At least sign up for a newsletter to get a comprehensive trading advice.