Archive for the 'forex' Category

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Jeez, no wonder there is slippage!

Published on 4 years, 7 months ago in forex and forex articles. 1 Comment

Why the requote? why the slippage?

I have seen chit chat about how brokers handle news releases. Traders says it is wrong for a broker to withdraw their orders or increase the spreads, and/or requite orders more than normal. These events happen for specific reasons that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the broker tying to cheat the trader out of money. Let me explain why:

In the minutes that lead up to a news event, some traders will enter a trade with the expectation that the news event will cause the trade to go a certain way. The banks will remove their orders so they wont get whipped into or out of trades. Traders that use technical analysis will remove orders as they tend to avoid news events. Hedge Funds and other big players are already into the market and are waiting for the news tow “settle” so they can make their decisions after the fact.

As you know, to keep spreads tight we need liquidity.

Banks provide liquidity to the ECN’s and retail brokers. However due to the lack of liquidity, the bank spread widens and so down the chain it travels. ECN’s are passing the banks offers on. And so spread widen up to their customers. The retail brokers have just opened huge hole in their risk since they cant hedge their net exposure (this is when they shut down or requite the most)

With no trader in the market in the second following the news there are only 2 prices the one just before the news, and the price that is hit seconds after the event, sometimes 30-50 pips (or more) away from the pre news price. This is basically a price “gap”

Back with another steamy pile soon!

CMSForex – Where’s the $500?

Published on 4 years, 7 months ago in forex brokers. 5 Comments

Remember few months back where we announced that CMS Forex is giving $500 away for people who tried their demo and make $500? From what we’ve concluded, their service and response to users are really awefully slow when it comes to the free bonus, and there are many who hasn’t really gotten the amount.

According to Dan who tested their VT Trader platform, it seems really buggy too; I wouldn’t recommend them if a trading platform is buggy when you’re executing your positions.

So far, I’ve only heard of one successful deposit of the bonus. Where’s the $500 bonus? Or rather, where’s the customer service people?

FXCM Releases Financial Data

Published on 4 years, 7 months ago in forex brokers. 0 Comments

Well, its always nice of Jaclyn to send updates of their brokerage firm to us to update our users (win-win situation). I do encourage any forex firms who wish to share with us on their latest offer to email me (free publication for you! more information for our readers) anytime.

FXCM Group Balance Sheet

The FXCM Group has released its latest balance sheet. The numbers reflect the group’s financial strength and status as of August 31, 2007. Highlights include:

Over $120 Million in Capital* (Assets Minus Liabilities)
Over $96 Million In Operating Cash (Excludes Client Funds)

This release marks the second time this year that the forex broker has publicly disclosed its financials. FXCM believes that financial transparency in the retail forex industry is more important than ever in light of the NFA’s new financial requirements. Furthermore, we challenge other forex firms to follow our example.

Drew Niv, CEO of the trading firm, commented: “FXCM is proud of our continued financial discipline and strong balance sheet. We believe clients should have the necessary information to make intelligent choices.”

Forex Capital Markets, LLC Far Exceeds

The NFA’s New Capital Requirements

The National Futures Association (NFA) has officially announced that a new increased $ 5 million capital requirement for all Forex Dealer Members will go into effect on December 21, 2007. Although this new $5 million capital requirement has yet to take affect, NFA’s president and Chief Executive Officer has already testified before congress that capital levers for Forex Dealer Members should be raised to $20 million.

Forex Capital Markets, LLC, an NFA member firm, is the US regulated entity of the FXCM Group. As of August 31, 2007 Forex Capital Markets, LLC had an adjusted net capital of $60,268,390.

According to Niv, “The financial resources for FXCM (Forex Capital Markets, LLC) far exceed both the recently announced increased $5 million capital requirement level as well as the $20 million capital level proposed by NFA’s president and CEO in his recent congressional testimony.”

Money Management

Published on 4 years, 7 months ago in forex. 0 Comments

Let’s say that I told you my target batting average was 40% which means I’d be happy getting only 4 out of 10 trades right.

For my risk/reward I am going to go with 1:3—This means for every dollar I risk my profit will be $3. The max I want to make on a trade is $300

Here are my trading results for week one

Trade 1: -40 Pips

Trade 2: +20 Pips

Trade 3: -60 Pips

Trade 4: -120 Pips

Trade 5: +90 Pips

Trade 6: +10 Pips

Trade 7: +50 Pips

Trade 8: -50 Pips

Trade 9: -40 Pips

Trade 10: -80 Pips

Totals: -390 Pips in losing trades and 170 pips in profitable trades. (not looking so good….) A pip loss of -220

Remember the Money management rules???

Here is how each trade would break down:

Trade 1: -40 Pips= 0.25 Lots Traded (Each Pip Move – $2.50) -$100

Trade 2: +20 Pips= 1.5 Lots Traded (Each Pip Move = $15) +$300

Trade 3: -60 Pips= 0.16666 Lots Traded (Each Pip Move = $1.67) -$100

Trade 4: -120 Pips= 0.08333 Lots Traded (Each Pip Move = $0.83) -$100

Trade 5: +90 Pips= 0.3333 Lots Traded (Each Pip Move = $3.33) +$300

Trade 6: +10 Pips= 3 Lots Traded (each Pip Move = $30) +$300

Trade 7: +50 Pips= 0.6 Lots Traded (each Pip Move = $6) +$300

Trade 8: -50 Pips= 0.2 Lots Traded (each Pip Move = $2) -100

Trade 9: -40 Pips= 0.25 Lots Traded (each Pip Move = $2.50) -100

Trade 10: -80 Pips= 0.125 Lots Traded (each Pip Move = $1.25) +$-100

As you can see with the money management in place, we made a profit of $600!!

This is why when someone says “I make 100 pips a week” it does not impress me very much. We actually lost 220 pips in the above example and we still made money!

It is best to focus on risk/reward, and set your lot size based of your stop loss/target prices.

For more info on private placements and managed forex email info@fxfidelity.com

Almost all of the banking loans are in the business for helping people out of their money problems. While this helps, many borrowers do not choose the option as the best debt solution because of the interest rate that the borrower has to pay be it any online loans or one of the most the most frequently applied for car finance loans. Many people interpret it as investing the amount borrowed at a much higher risk than can be involved in any online credit card.

Types of Forex Broker

Published on 4 years, 7 months ago in forex, forex brokers and forex for beginners. 4 Comments

Now let’s come back and touch base on our forex curriculum guide. We’ll still side track a little on how to trade, and focus a little on how to pick your choice of forex broker. First before identifying your type of broker, we’ll learn on pips spread.

What is Pips Spread?

Spread is usually forex brokers main source of income. Before you place an order on either a buy or sell position on a particular currency pair, they will present you with two prices, one bid and one ask price, where the difference is known as pip spread. Let’s take a look with our Meta Trader demo again now.

I clicked on Order on GBPUSD. Look at the circle, on the bid and ask price. The bid price is the one that’s moving up and down on the market, the ask is what the broker is asking for. Notice the difference in bid and asking price.. you get that? AHA! Yes, that’s the pips spread, and that’s what brokers earn.. USUALLY. Read on.

There are mainly two types of brokers in the market, namely the Retail brokers and the ECN brokers.

Retail Brokers

These are the modern day bucket shops that usually work against you and profits when you lose money. These market makers allow you to open accounts with very minimal money, use insane leverages, lets you use micro and mini lots and allows you to demo with their trading platform for practices.

ECN Brokers

ECN brokers usually protects clients interest. Usually most of the time they won’t do requotes or even cancel your order after being placed. The Ask and Bid prices are not fixed and spreads sometimes can even be zero. Commissions are usually fixed, usually at only half a pip.

Your funds are usually seperated when you place the deposit onto a bank account and the broker will not use the funds for their expenses. In case anything happens to the broker, your funds will still be in your bank account, safe.

The only drawback is that the minimum sum to join an ECN broker is usually high (10,000.00 USD and above)

Which is better for you?

If you have at least 20 – 30k to spare for trading, ECN brokers is best since they can protect your interest and money. But if you just started with forex and have little to spare in this case, depositing and starting with a Retail broker is not a bad idea till you are confident to switch to an ECN.

FXCM’s New Lower Spreads

Published on 4 years, 8 months ago in forex brokers. 2 Comments

Jaclyn sends me an update on FXCM’s New Fractional Price Pip,

FXCM (www.fxcm.com) announced today they will now offer Fractional Pip Pricing. Clients can now see an additional digit in the price quotes.

Instead of quoting full pips, FXCM will now quote prices in tenths of pips. The digit representing a tenth of a pip appears to the right of the two large bold face digits:

“The Benefit is clear,” Drew Niv CEO of the forex broker stated, “Fractional pip pricing should reduce bid/ask spreads on all the more popular currency pairs.”

FXCM’s policy is to provide clients with access to the very best spreads. FXCM introduced No Dealing Desk execution, and as one of the largest FDM’s*, FXCM has strong liquidity relationships with some of the world’s leading banks. We constantly press these banks to supply the most favorable prices to our clients.

As a result, the banks are now providing streaming six-digit prices to FXCM. While competition intensifies, Fractional Pip Pricing should reduce bid/ask spreads even further.

“FXCM is delighted to pass these more accurate, tighter prices to our clients” said Niv.

For full details on Fractional Pip Pricing view this video: http://forex.acrobat.com/p68453006/

Mailing List Sign Up

Published on 4 years, 8 months ago in forex. 0 Comments

Our sites have been screwed up by DDoS pretty much lately and I’m still deciding on whether to switch to a new provider. In the meantime, for more updates on new forex articles and private investment opportunities as well, do sign up with our mailing list.

Definition of DDoS

– On the Internet, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. The flood of incoming messages to the target system essentially forces it to shut down, thereby denying service to the system to legitimate users.

A hacker (or, if you prefer, cracker) begins a DDoS attack by exploiting a vulnerability in one computer system and making it the DDoS “master.” It is from the master system that the intruder identifies and communicates with other systems that can be compromised. The intruder loads cracking tools available on the Internet on multiple — sometimes thousands of — compromised systems. With a single command, the intruder instructs the controlled machines to launch one of many flood attacks against a specified target. The inundation of packets to the target causes a denial of service.

While the press tends to focus on the target of DDoS attacks as the victim, in reality there are many victims in a DDoS attack — the final target and as well the systems controlled by the intruder.

We will be renaming No Bullshit HYIP to No Bullshit Investment to tackle the genuine ones instead of having games all over for the past 3 years. Only the legitimate businesses will be focused. Scam warnings will still exist. (That’s why we got DDoSed)

To avoid such things from happening again, sign up for our mailing list where we have a monthly e-zine for you on investments and forex, speed bulletins on possible happenings around the region affecting them and some parts on digital currencies as well. Your email will be safe with us and rest assure there will not be any spams coming in from us. Privacy to us is very important.

Sign Up Today!

Forex Trading Is Tough? You Just Really Need Practice

Published on 4 years, 8 months ago in forex, forex articles, technical trading and winning trade. 2 Comments

I’m not good at explaining stuffs, except I can only say, the more you practice, the better you get. And treat all demos as serious as how you would treat your own money. Here’s two trades triggered on my account. One from yesterday (USDJPY) and the other today (GBPJPY).

USDJPY +101 pips (still running)

GBPJPY +137 pips (still running)

First step, Don’t Ignore Fundamentals

First for the fundamentals, I do look out on whether will there be any economic indicator releases which might affect my technical trade. None for the dollar, yen or pound that might.

Your Trend Lines Matey

I could do better with the help from Mouteki’s methods found actively popular in Forex Factory (kudos to their niche forum on forex) and would rewrite a trendline tutorial on the next few entries. Go with your trend lines. They are extremely important to determine your positions for either a long or short. Break outs pips are fairly nice and can be rewarding to pocket if you read it right.

Fibo? Hmm

Draw Fibo retracement levels. The levels you should be looking closely at are 38.2, 50.0 and 61.8. Again, if you do not understand how to draw them. I’ll touch them in the next few entries in conjunction with our Forex Trading Guide for Beginners. Trend lines and Fibonnaci Retracement levels work like perfect partners in crime.

MACD (Optional)

I like to look at MACD as my oscillator indicator for directions on overbought or oversold. Personally, I’ll be looking at longer duration charts (4H, Daily) to confirm the trend, and shorter duration charts (30M, 1H) to determine a new short or long position.

200EMA/SMA Lines For You Baby! (Optional)

Again, its individual preference. Any traders will argue on their own system and trading methodology, but in my case (All thanks to Dan), 200EMA/SMA lines works amazingly as a guide on market direction. My MACD could tell me where the direction is, and the lines will be where the price action of the candles might be going. Candle formations can tell you alot on market sentiments of buyers and sellers too. You can check out our candlestick tutorial if you’re interested on price action and candle stick formations (Our Nobs Network friend J swears by price action)

Stop Loss! Stop Loss!

Always set your SL level even for Buy/ Sell Limit or even Buy/ Sell Stop positions. They might be triggered and head to nowhere to your benefit (Or worse, margin call? lol). I’ve spent time tweaking my own SL levels by swapping my charts to line charts to look closely on the support and resistance level and picking a number comfortable to my benefit, the general guideline is never to lose 5% of your account size in all open positions.

Setting the SL too small might be a problem too, so again, practice and you’ll be able to spot which pairs are usually the volatile ones that might trigger your stoploss for nothing. (The Cable is one good example).

SL can also be your good friend to bag pips if you’re not sure whether you should be exiting soon (Just move it up and don’t be greedy so you can set targets of how many pips you should be locking). At least you wont have to pay pips spread to your broker if its goes towards your intended buying direction. No?

PIP away!

Identify a good exit with Fibonacci, Trendlines, and Support and Resistance from short to long term charts!. Bottom line, Practice!

Shinzo Abe Steps Down as Japan Prime Minister

Published on 4 years, 8 months ago in forex economic news and forex insights. 0 Comments

Somehow I think this might be relative to our favorite USDJPY, GBPJPY and EURJPY with his sudden decision to quit.

From Reuters,

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe abruptly announced his resignation on Wednesday after a year in power dogged by scandals, an election rout and a crisis over Japan’s support for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan.

The hawkish Abe, who took office almost 12 months ago promising to boost Japan’s global security profile, had seen his clout dwindle after a drubbing in July upper house elections, but the announcement came as a bolt out of the blue.

“I determined today that I should resign,” a weary-looking Abe told a news conference. “We should seek a continued mission to fight terrorism under a new prime minister.” ( Read More from Reuters )

Whilst I don’t see any big movements at all in the foreign exchange after the announcement, this might be a medium to long term effect on Japan’s economy with his decision to leave the cabinet, leaving it in such dire state, even before any impressive reforms introduced with his short term in the parliament and especially with the unrest on the country’s politics at the moment.

One of those failed person to succeed as a PM of a country I guess. Uh oh.

NonFarm Payroll Results, Lets Get Back And Look At The Technicals

Published on 4 years, 8 months ago in forex economic news and forex encounters. 1 Comment

Caught fire with the NFP result? Shouldn’t be if your a technical trader!

Forex Factory:USD

Nonfarm Employment Change

-4K

110K

68K

GBPUSD

All duration charts were showing the candles are above 200ema/sma lines. MACD shows that there’s decent strength still for the buy side, and the breakout on the top trendline since the candle is closer towards the top (Easier to break the resistance)

EURUSD

The same as of GBPUSD’s situation, no difference!

USDJPY

Only difference of it, breaking towards the downside. MACD, 200EMA/SMA lines, trendline breaking works here.

Point: Trendlines work.