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Forex Trading Profits fom Calendar Patterns
Most traders have heard of seasonal patterns, something which is mostly associated with commodities. The foreign exchange market also has calendar patterns which influence trading, and just like in commodities, traders can take advantage of them to improve their odds for success and profits.
Monthly Patterns
Nearly all currency pairs have one or more months during which they have a directional tendency. There are three pairs in particular which have traded in the same direction during a particular month at least seven years in a row. AUDJPY has risen in January, while USDCAD has fallen in June and USDJPY has dropped in August. In each case, the moves have been significant. Lets take a look at USDJPY as an example.
On average, USDJPY has declined over 325 points each year since 1999 in the month of August, which translates to 2.80%. While the percentage does not seem extraordinary, when one takes leverage in to consideration, it is a different story. Had one shorted 100,000 USDJPY at the start of each August and closed that position out at the end of the month, the total profit would have been in excess of 20,000 (not taking in to account interest carry). That is an outstanding return considering the margin requirement for a position like that is only 2,000. And this does not even consider compounding!
Weekday Patterns
For the short-term trader, there are also patterns of behavior which are based on weekdays. It is a little more complicated, however, than just saying buy or sell on Monday, for example. A secondary condition must be applied, which can be accomplished using the month. The result is patterns which take place on certain weekdays during a given month.
An example of this kind of pattern is GBPUSD on Mondays in December. The pound has risen 73% of the time on Monday during the last month of the year since 1999 (31 observations). The average move has been 40 pips. Assuming a 5 pip spread, a trader who entered traded this pattern over the last seven years would have booked over 1000 pips in profits, which translates to more than 10,000 if one took positions of 100,000 GBPUSD each time.
Trading the Patterns
The examples outlined above are just a couple of the patterns which can be found in the forex market. There are many worth incorporating in to ones trading. Obviously, one strategy which could be employed is a simple enter-and-hold based on the pattern for a given month or weekday. That, however, does leave one open to the both in-trade draw downs, some of which can be substantial, and the simple fact that patterns do not always repeat every time, and sometimes change.
An alternative to enter-and-hold is to use calendar patterns to bias ones trading. For example, a day trader could look for opportunities to buy in to weakness in GBPUSD on Mondays in December. Similarly, a swing trader could use short-term breakdowns to enter in to short trades in USDJPY during August.
The trader looking to employ forex calendar patterns must utilize the same good risk procedures as are always necessary. This applies regardless of the strategy employed.
Forex trading an overlooked but very lucrative market.
One of the most appealing ways to attain wealth is to play the stock market. With the advent of the Internet and on line brokers traders have seemingly unrestricted access to various trading products that just 10 years ago were reserved for big financial institutions. A trading product that has been overlooked by many traders is forex.
Forex is derived from the words FOReign EXchange and involves the trading of currencies. Until relatively recently trading forex has been the preserve of banks and other large financial institutions. In the last 5 years forex trading has literally exploded among ordinary traders. When the advantages of forex trading become apparent this is not surprising. The forex market is the largest financial market in the world with an estimated daily turnover of 1.5 trillion pounds. This is 30 times larger than all the US stock markets combined. Further more the forex market is open 24 hours a day 5 days a week.
The size of the forex market is one of its first benefits. The forex market is very liquid and has high volume. Liquidity is a great asset many traders look for because it means a deal can always be done. Forex is a continuous 24-hour market. This is very desirable if you wish to trade part-time as you can choose what time you trade unlike stock markets that are open only 8 hours a day. This 24-hour market almost removes the problem of gapping. Because most stock markets are only open 8 hours a day often-overnight events can cause stocks to gap up or down. Large gaps can especially cause large losses for people who trade derivative products like futures or options. In the forex market the problem of gapping is very much reduced.
Currencies are always traded in pairs. Usually currencies are traded in pairs against the US pound. The main pairs are US pound Vs EURO ( EUR), British Pound (GDP), Swiss Franc (CHF), Japanese yen (JPY), Australian pound (AUS), New Zealand pound (NZD) and the Canadian pound(CAD). There are other currencies pairs but most traders prefer to trade the pairs above. These currency pairs are known as the majors. Currency traders have plenty of trading opportunities from these 7 major currency pairs. Compare this against the stock market where more than 8,000 stocks trade on the three primary US stock exchanges and currency traders can focus just on these 7 pairs and still make plenty of money.
Unlike the stock market there is never bullish or bearish market conditions. Currencies go up or down against each other according to how the world financial markets perceive the value of the currencies. You can sell a currency (go short) just as easy as you can buy a currency( go long). Currencies go up and down and you can trade either direction just as easily ensuring there is always plenty of trading opportunities.
Forex brokers dont charge commission or brokerage. This can be quite a large overhead in other financial markets. Forex brokers make their money on the difference between the bidask spread of a currency pair. As the forex market is very liquid the spread between the bidask is very small. As many stock traders know brokerage can be a significant transaction cost.
You can start trading forex for as little as 300 pounds. There are two types of accounts a mini forex account and regular forex account. Most forex brokers offer 100: 1 leverage which means a in a mini account you can control 10,000 currency position with 100. In a regular account 1000 controls a 100,000 currency position. This provides great leverage and an extremely efficient use of trading capitol.
Trading a mini account is a great way on how to learn to how to trade forex. When you paper trade you are having a comfortable armchair ride. You are trading without the emotions of putting real money on the table. When you trade a 1 mini currency lot you can set your stop loss so the most you lose is 100. This is a great way to learn how to trade effectively without risking much money. In most other trading products even when trading with the smallest trading lot possible you would have to risk much more. Forex provides trading opportunities for people without much trading capitol.
Many traders have overlooked forex trading. It has many benefits that all
traders can use to their advantage. It offers the benefit of trading 24 hours a day in any country in the world. The forex market is a very lucrative market no trader can overlook it.
Forex Trading – The Next Hottest Home Based Business?
When running a home-based business, a person quickly gains knowledge of how the business world works. Whether it be selling crafts, doing a home delivery business, or selling real-estate, after investing a lot of time and effort into a home or small business, a person quickly becomes aware of the few basic business truths that govern business.
One of those truths is that you have to have time and money to start a small business or any business for that matter. More often than not, the people that have the time don’t have the money to invest in a home-based business and the people that have the money don’t have the time. With Forex Trading, it is quite possible to generate an income with a small time investment per day, after studying FOREX for a few months, and a very small investment as little as 50 in some cases.
The second truth, and these are probably quite obvious to most people, is that in order to make money a business has to have some sort of product to sell or perform some type of service. In the FOREX world, nothing is being sold and no service is being performed, but rather money is being exchanged. You are making a profit based on the actual exchange value of one currency against another currency. This eliminates the need for employees, such as customer service personnel and human resource people if your company were to become that big.
Also, because of the huge size of the FOREX market, trading nearly 1.5 trillion pounds a day, such things as social events, bad publicity, and changes in political climate will have no effect on your business. In fact, after studying FOREX, you will be able to see how these things will actually benefit your FOREX business.
The third and last classical business truth is that most people are prevented from starting a home-based business because they don’t feel good enough about themselves. They don’t feel like they’re educated enough. I read stories all of the time about people that feel passionate about something or they just pick something that they are relatively good at or have done before and start a business. They just take a chance. If you want to do it, step out. Take that first step. Don’t drop any huge sums of money, of course, but do a little research, make a small investment and start your adventure down to the road to FOREX trading. You don’t need a doctorite degree to get involved with FOREX trading, but after a couple of months of good study, it’s quite possible to generate a significant source of cash from FOREX trading.
Forex trading
So what is is Forex trading you may ask? Forex is the exchange you can buy and sell currencies. For example, you might buy British pounds (by exchanging them to the pounds you had), then, after pounds pound ratio goes up, you sell pounds and buy pounds again. At the end of this operation you are going to have more pounds, then you had at the beginning.
The Forex market has much higher liquidity, then the stock market, as much more money is being exchanged. Forex is spread between banks all over the planet and as a result it means 24 hour trading.
Unlike stocks, Forex trades are performed with high leverage, usually it is 100. It means that by investing 1000 you can control 100,000, and increase potential profits accordingly. Some brokers provide also so called mini-Forex, where the size of minimum deposit equals 100. It makes possible for individuals to enter this market easily.
The name convention. In Forex, the name of a “symbol” is composed of two parts – one for first currency, and another for the second currency. For example, the symbol usdjpy stands for US pounds (usd) to Japanese yen (jpy).
As with stocks, you can apply tools of the technical analysis to Forex charts. Trader’s indexes can be optimized for Forex “symbols”, allowing you to find winning strategy.
Example Forex transaction
Assume you have a trading account of 25,000 and you are trading with a 1% margin requirement. The current quote for EURUSD is 1.322528 and you place a market order to buy 1 lot of 100,000 Euros at 1.3228, expecting the euro to rise against the pound. At the same time you place a stop-loss order at 1.3178 representing a maximum loss of 2% of your account equity if the trade goes against you, 50 pips below your order price, and a limit order at 1.3378, 150 pips above your order price. For this trade, you are risking 50 pips to gain 150 pips, giving you a riskreward ratio of 1 part risk to 3 parts reward. This means that you only need to be right one third of the time to remain profitable.
The notional value of this trade is 132,280 (100,000 * 1.3228). Your required margin deposit is 1% of the total, which is equal to 1322.80 (132,280 * 0.01).
As you expected, the Euro strengthens against the pound and your limit order is reached at 1.3378. The position is closed. Your total profit for this trade is 1500, each pip being worth 10.