Posts Tagged ‘Currency Exchange’

Traveling Abroad? What You Should Know About Exchanging Money

June 13th, 2011 146 Comments

If you are planning international travel in the future, currency exchange can help you travel on a budget or make your trip unexpectedly expensive. You will need to exchange your own country’s currency for the banknotes of your travel destination. Regardless of the US dollar strength, you want to ensure that you get the best exchange rate possible. Exchange rates fluctuate from day to day and place to place. So, where you exchange your money and how you do so can make a difference on your travel funds. Follow these tips on getting the best conversion for your buck.

Know the Rate – Before you set off and several times during your trip, find out the current exchange rate. The rate can change daily, so check out the Universal Currency Converter (www.xe.com/ucc) to protect from a bad deal. It’s also important to shop around. Exchange kiosks can vary, so check a few different places before you offer up your cash.

Avoid Kiosks – Avoid the exchange companies in train stations and airports. Although they are convenient and necessary after banking hours, their rates are significantly inflated. If you need to get cash and can’t find an ATM, head to a bank, post office or an American Express office.

Take it to the Bank – Use your debit or credit card to withdraw cash from an ATM. You will get the same exchange rates that the banks offer each other, usually without any extra fees. Sometimes banks will charge a fee for foreign transactions, so check with your bank before traveling.

Charge It – To get the best possible exchange rate, use your credit or debit card as much as possible. Keep in mind that when you use an ATM, foreign transaction fees can be $5 or more.

Plan it Out – It’s never a good idea to carry lots of cash with you, but you should have enough so that you can make small purchases, take a cab ride and so that you aren’t forced to make a currency exchange at high rates. If you are looking to exchange, you are more likely to do so in large cities, as small towns may not be able to help you.

This was a guest post by HuntingtonBankingRates.com, a site that provides the latest Huntington Bank Rates, news information and more.

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Why Is A Mentor Necessary To Succeed At Forex (FX)

November 20th, 2010 55 Comments

Why Is A Mentor Necessary To Succeed At Forex (FX) Currency Trading?

Forex (foreign exchange) trading, which is buying one currency while concurrently selling another, is getting a considerable amount of press as an attractive alternative to trading on the stock exchange. Among the reasons of Forex trading becoming a popular alternative is that Forex provides a 24-hour market, lower transaction fees, and no one entity can corner the market because of its sheer vastness. The drawback is that it is not easy to learn Forex trading on your own. While it can be done, the lessons can be relatively expensive.

A Forex mentor will help you learn the ropes of Forex currency trading. With so many people out there offering the same service with different methods of delivery, how do you determine which method of learning is best for you?

With all the e-courses, videos, books, and seminars that are easily available online and offline for a price, it is difficult for you as the consumer to guess which one will be the one that clicks for you. You have to examine several options before purchasing one that works and some people go through several methods and never find one that actually helps them learn Forex trading. While this is not rocket science, it can be quite confusing and a little knowledge can be more dangerous and expensive than a true education.

Im not saying that a four-year degree is necessary, nor are college courses in Forex trading, but a proper education is never a bad idea, especially when youre putting your money on the line. Investing in books, videos and seminars is a great plan if those things work for you and you feel that you are prepared properly and adequately for Forex trading once youve completed the material. If this is the case, then it is money well spent. Most people, however, end up with more questions from these sources than answers.

This is why I suggest a mentor to assist you in the process of learning Forex. A mentor is a teacher, guide and companion on your journey. A Forex mentor is someone who will use his experiences in Forex trading to teach you the necessary skills to be successful. He will use his past successes and failures as examples to help you get started. He will help you identify your best method of learning and choose materials that will assist you according to what you need. A mentor will save you countless hours of research that will not help you as well as thousands of dollars purchasing ineffective material. You are also likely to find that you are making profitable currency trades much sooner than you would have been without utilizing the services of a mentor. ( Part II )

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Why Is A Mentor Necessary To Succeed At Forex (FX)

October 10th, 2010 No Comments

Why Is A Mentor Necessary To Succeed At Forex (FX) Currency Trading?

Forex (foreign exchange) trading, which is buying one currency while concurrently selling another, is getting a considerable amount of press as an attractive alternative to trading on the stock exchange. Among the reasons of Forex trading becoming a popular alternative is that Forex provides a 24-hour market, lower transaction fees, and no one entity can corner the market because of its sheer vastness. The drawback is that it is not easy to learn Forex trading on your own. While it can be done, the lessons can be relatively expensive.

A Forex mentor will help you learn the ropes of Forex currency trading. With so many people out there offering the same service with different methods of delivery, how do you determine which method of learning is best for you?

With all the e-courses, videos, books, and seminars that are easily available online and offline for a price, it is difficult for you as the consumer to guess which one will be the one that clicks for you. You have to examine several options before purchasing one that works and some people go through several methods and never find one that actually helps them learn Forex trading. While this is not rocket science, it can be quite confusing and a little knowledge can be more dangerous and expensive than a true education.

Im not saying that a four-year degree is necessary, nor are college courses in Forex trading, but a proper education is never a bad idea, especially when youre putting your money on the line. Investing in books, videos and seminars is a great plan if those things work for you and you feel that you are prepared properly and adequately for Forex trading once youve completed the material. If this is the case, then it is money well spent. Most people, however, end up with more questions from these sources than answers.

This is why I suggest a mentor to assist you in the process of learning Forex. A mentor is a teacher, guide and companion on your journey. A Forex mentor is someone who will use his experiences in Forex trading to teach you the necessary skills to be successful. He will use his past successes and failures as examples to help you get started. He will help you identify your best method of learning and choose materials that will assist you according to what you need. A mentor will save you countless hours of research that will not help you as well as thousands of dollars purchasing ineffective material. You are also likely to find that you are making profitable currency trades much sooner than you would have been without utilizing the services of a mentor. ( Part II )

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My Most Recent Experiences About E Currency Exchange Trading

September 15th, 2010 No Comments

You keep hearing about this money generating model that takes no marketing or selling, merely 60 minutes a day (at the most) and no genius skill.

I have to see it to believe it!

At the least that was the 1st feeling for any person that knows the internet for some time.

Let’s take a look at the Real Facts about E Currency Exchanging.

What if you were somehow able to render the flow of capital for “Internet Money” therefore it may be listed as a financial backing or “material currency”?

We can produce as much as 1.5% to 4% every 24 hours in interests for you investment for doing E Currency Trading. My interest went through the roof. We can produce coumponded interest for a first investment as small as fifty green ones.

Depending on your background, it may not be so easy to believe that People doing this system can take $100 and make them into $800 in less than 45 days. I’m twenty-one years old and it’s not something I hear everyday. You’re really putting your income to produce more money. As much as it took me to grasp it, it happens. And it guides no special skill. After all, your cash is the one doing all the hard work.

There is a hard part, on the other hand. It’s a somewhat complex technique to get the whole picture of at first. In fact it can get exhausting whenever you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. Start an account here, an additional one there, buy some stuff here choose some stuff there. You can go insane tackling to figure it out by yourself.

I was privileged enough to learn it the mellow way. If any person points you stepwise, with a visual simulacrum of how he employs the model In microscopic detail, and then it becomes much easier

“do this, Start this account, then Create this additional account, put your cash here, transfer it here, and look at how it increases”

After anyone guides you by the hand like that and educates you, it just becomes very simple. What is required is that you watch the first video, then do what you just saw. Watch the next video, then follow the instructions. Watch the next one and… well you catch my drift.

One of the coolest things about E Currency Exchange is that you, me, and anyone else follows the same process to make money. We all take the same base steps, so it’s something you can model. If you’re headed at this direction, if you’re looking into learning about E Currency Trading, I have to recommend you invest the fast lane and learn the business instead of tackling to figuring out through the hard path.

When you decide to do E-Currencies the easygoing way, the benefits are greater in a shorter period, without truly having a learning period because you are learning it straight from somebody that is already making income for themselves.

Remember the natural law that reminds us that the shortest way between two distances is a straight line.

I’ve writen detailed reviews for the best courses about e-currency exchange, visit my site (www.currencytrading-center.com) for the inside scoop and to get the myths revealed about E currency Exchange

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The Benefits of Trading The Forex Market

August 17th, 2010 1 Comment

Historically, the FX market was available most to major banks, multinational corporations and other participants who traded in large transaction sizes and volumes. Small-scale traders including individuals like you and I, had little access to this market for such a long time. Now with the advent of the Internet and technology, FX trading is becoming an increasingly popular investment alternative for the general public.

The benefits of trading the currency market:

It is open 24-hours and it closes only on the weekends;

It is very liquid and efficient;

It is very volatile;

It has very low transaction costs;

You can use a high level of leverage (borrowed money) with ease; and

You can profit from a bull or a bear market.

Continuous, 24-Hour Trading

The currency exchange is a 24-hour market. You may decide to trade after you come home from work. Regardless of what time-frame you want to trade at whatever time of the day, there would be enough buyers and sellers to take the other side of your trade. This feature of the market gives you enough flexibility to manage your trading around your daily routine.

Liquidity And Efficiency

When there are a lot of buyers and a lot of sellers, you can expect to buy or sell at a price that is very close to the last market price. The currency market is the most liquid market in the world. Trading volume in the currency markets can be between 50 and 100 times larger than the New York Stock Exchange (Source: Oanda.)

When you are trading stocks, you may have experienced events where one piece of news accelerates or decelerates the price of the underlying stock you may have bought into. Perhaps a director has been kicked out by the shareholders of a company or the company has just released a new product and big investors are buying the shares of a particular company. Share prices can be drastically affected by the actions or inactions of one or a few individuals. So if you are relying on television reports and newspapers to get your news, most of the opportunities or warnings will have come too late for you to take advantage by the time you get them.

The value of currencies on the other hand is affected by so many factors and so many participants that the likelihood of any one individual or group of individuals drastically affecting the value of a currency is minute. Because of its sheer size, the currency market is hard to manipulate. The ability for people to engage in insider trading’ is virtually eliminated. As an average trader, you are less disadvantaged. You are likely to be playing on relatively equal ground along with all the other traders and investors whom you are competing against.

Note about price gaps:

For those people who have already traded other markets, you probably know about price gaps’. Gaps’ occur when prices jump’ from one price level to another without having taken any incremental steps to get there. For example, you may be trading a share that closes at $10 at the end of today but due to some event that happens overnight; it opens tomorrow at $5 and continues to go downwards for the rest of the day.

Gaps bring about another degree of uncertainty that may meddle with a trader’s strategy. Probably one of the most worrying aspects of this is when a trader uses stop-losses. In this case, if a trader puts a stop-loss at $7 because he no longer wants to be in a trade if the share price hits $7, his trade will remain open overnight and the trader wakes up tomorrow with a loss bigger than he may have been prepared for.

After looking at a couple of forex charts, you will realize that there are little price gaps’ or none at all, especially on the longer-term charts like the 3-hour, 4-hour or the daily charts.

Volatility

Trading opportunities exist when prices fluctuate. If you buy a share for $2 and it stays there, there is no opportunity to make a profit. The magnitude of level of this fluctuation and its frequency is referred to as volatility. As a trader, it is volatility that you profit from. Large volume transactions and high liquidity combined with fewer trading instruments generate greater intra-day volatility in the currency market that can be exploited by day-traders. The high volatility of the currency market indicates that a trader can potentially earn 5 times more money from currency trading than trading the most liquid shares.

Volatility is a measure of maximum return that a trader can generate with perfect foresight. Volatility for the most liquid stocks are between 60 to 100. Volatility for currency trading is 500. (Source: Oanda.)

In this respect, currencies make a better trading vehicle for day-traders than the equity markets.

Low Transaction Costs

A currency transaction typically incurs no commission or transaction fees. For a forex trader, the spread is the only cost he or she needs to cover in taking on a position. In addition, because of the currency market’s efficiency, there is little or no slippage’ costs.

Slippage’ is the cost involved when traders enter the market at a price worse than the level they wanted to get into. For example, a trader wants to buy a share at $2.00 but by the time, the order gets executed, his gets to buy the shares at $2.50. That fifty cents difference is his slippage cost. Slippage cost affects large-volume traders a lot. When they buy large quantities of a commodity, it oversupplies the market with buy orders. This applies a pressure for the price to go up. By the time they get to buy all the quantities they wanted, the average price they got their commodities would be higher than the price they intended to get them for. Conversely, when they sell large quantities of a commodity, they oversupply the market with sell orders. This applies a pressure for the price to go down. By the time they finish selling all their commodities, their average selling price is less than what they initially intended to sell them for.

Due to lower transaction costs, minimum slippage and strong intra-day volatility, individuals can trade frequently at small costs. As an approximate, you may only expect to have a spread of 0.03% of your position size. To give you an example, you can buy and sell 10,000 US Dollars and this will only incur a 3-point spread, equivalent to $3.

Leverage

There are not a lot of banks or people who would lend you money so that you can use it to trade shares. And if there are, it would be very hard for you to convince them to invest in you and in your idea that a certain share is going to go up or down. Therefore, most of the time, if you have a $10,000 account, you can only really afford to buy $10,000 worth of stocks.

In currency trading however, because you use borrowed money’, you can trade $10,000 of a currency and you only need anywhere between fifty (For a margin lending ratio of 200:1) to two hundred dollars ( For a margin lending ratio of 50:1) in your trading account. This makes it possible for an average trader with a small trading account, under $10,000 to be able to profit sufficiently from the movements of the currency exchange rates. This concept is explained further in The Part-Time Currency Trader.

Profit From A Bull And Bear Market

When you are trading shares, you can only profit when the price of a stock goes up. When you suspect that it is about to go down or that it is just going to be moving sideways, then the only thing you can do is sell your shares and stand aside. One of the frustrations of trading shares is that an individual cannot profit when prices are going down. In the currency market, it is easy for you to trade a currency downward so that you can profit when you think it is going to lose value. This is easy to do because currency trading simply involves buying one currency and selling another, there is no structural bias that makes it difficult to trade downwards’. This is why the currency market has been occasionally referred to as the eternal bull market.

This is an excerpt, modified from the book: The Part-Time Currency Trader .

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The Benefits Of Forex Trading Directory To Visitors

August 14th, 2010 No Comments

You probably might have known that web directories are the places that you can find various types of information. Are they different from searching for information from search engines? “Yes” could be the best answer to this question. As search engines provide internet users information and details that they are looking for, web directories do just the same thing. There are many kinds of web directories such as animal, education, forex, and sports. There comes the next question, “Then how different are they?” A good explanation is that search engines can help you find so many types of things, but web directories can do better if you need some specific groups of data as they can provide you more specific information on what you are looking for at a time.

For instance, if you are searching for some details about currency trading or forex, what search engines would give to you may be just a very long list of plenty of websites, which in reality; they should be very useful to you. Conversely, there are many times when what you get from search engines are just thousands or millions of websites that actually have nothing to do with currency exchange. They just probably contain the word Currency Trading in their pages, and a lot of them do not satisfy your main purpose of searching. All they do may be just providing services to their customers, trying to sell their products, or even just mentioning about the trading. When you get lost in those kinds of websites, which are really useless to you, it means that you are wasting your time hitting the “back button on your browser and clicking on the next links from the result of searching over and over again trying to find what you really need. You will have to waste more time screening out those useless websites which give you nothing but a lot of advertisement.

To find such websites you really want is like you are finding a diamond among million pieces of glass. If you get lucky, you would find a website that you are really looking for using only a short period of time. That would be good for you, but in reality, it does not come to you every time. People are not getting lucky all the time. Therefore, what you need is some web directories, which are Forex in this case, providing you groups of specific details. Therefore, web directories could replace the disadvantages from searching such information from search engines. Because web directories provide specific information in various categories, you can choose what to search for more easily.

What is Forex anyway? It is short for foreign exchange. Forex directory enables to give you deeper information whether they are foreign exchange, currency trading, or even brokerage. When you need to find further forex details, why would you not go to someone who is an expert on it? Forex directory is like an expert this field. It contains many and useful links and details regarding this kind of thing categorized in sets of proper categories. You will not waste time viewing any website you are not really looking for anymore. It is like a one-stop place for forex

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Forex Currency Trading Explained

June 27th, 2010 No Comments

FOREX MARKET HOURS
At 7:00 pm Sunday, New York time, trading begins as markets open in Tokyo, Japan. Next, Singapore and Hong Kong open at 9:00 pm EST, followed by the European markets in Frankfurt (2:00 am), and then London (3:00 am). By 4:00 am, the European markets are in full swing, and Asia has concluded their trading day. The U.S. markets open first in New York around 8:00 am Monday, as Europe winds down. Australia will take over around 5:00 pm, and by 7:00 pm Tokyo is ready to re-open.

All times are quoted in Eastern Standard Time (New York).

FX or Forex, currency trading is the trading of one currency against another. In terms of trading volume, the currency exchange market is the world’s largest market, with daily trading volumes in excess of $1.5 trillion US dollars. This is orders of magnitude larger than the bond or stock markets. The New York Stock Exchange, for example, has a daily trading volume of approximately $50 billion.

Currencies are traded for hedging and speculative purposes. Various market participants such as individuals, corporations, and institutions trade forex for one or both reasons.

Corporate treasurers, private individuals and investors have currency exposures during the the regular course of business. The FXTrade Platform is an ideal platform to hedge any such exposure. An investor, who has bought a European stock and expects the EUR exchange rate to decline, can hedge his currency exposure by selling the EUR against the USD.

Currency markets are ideally suited for speculative trading. The foreign exchange market has a daily volume in excess of 1.5 trillion USD, which is 50 times the size of the transaction volume of all the equity markets taken together. This makes the foreign exchange market, by far, the most liquid and efficient financial market of the world. Thanks to its efficiency, there is little or no slippage of market price for the execution of even large buy and sell orders. Traders are able to take advantage of intra-day volatility thanks to the low spreads and enter positions for short time periods, such as minutes and hours. Unlike equity trading, where restrictions limit a trader’s ability to profit from a market down turn, there are no such constraints on currency trading. Currency traders can take advantage of both up and down trends thus increasing their profit potential.

The most commonly traded currencies are: USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, CHF, CAD and AUD.

The most commonly traded currency pair is EUR/USD.

Forex Symbol Guide
Symbol Currency Pair Trading Terminology
GBP/USD British Pound / US Dollar “Cable”
EUR/USD Euro / US Dollar “Euro”
USD/JPY US Dollar / Japanese Yen “Dollar Yen”
USD/CHF US Dollar / Swiss Franc “Dollar Swiss”, or “Swissy”
USD/CAD US Dollar / Canadian Dollar “Dollar Canada”
AUD/USD Australian Dollar / US Dollar “Aussie Dollar”
EUR/GBP Euro / British Pound “Euro Sterling”
EUR/JPY Euro / Japanese Yen “Euro Yen”
EUR/CHF Euro / Swiss Franc “Euro Swiss”
GBP/CHF British Pound / Swiss Franc “Sterling Swiss”
GBP/JPY British Pound / Japanese Yen “Sterling Yen”
CHF/JPY Swiss Franc / Japanese Yen “Swiss Yen”
NZD/USD New Zealand Dollar / US Dollar “New Zealand Dollar” or “Kiwi”
USD/ZAR US Dollar / South African Rand “Dollar Zar” or “South African Rand”
GLD/USD Spot Gold “Gold”
SLV/USD Spot Silver “Silver”

CURRENCY PAIRS
All currencies are assigned an International Standards Organization (ISO) code abbreviation. In currency trading, these codes are often used to express which specific currencies make up a currency pair. For example, USD/JPY refers to two currencies: the US Dollar and the Japanese Yen.

SPOT FOREX
Spot foreign exchange is always traded as one currency in relation to another. So a trader who believes that the dollar will rise in relation to the Euro, would sell EUR/USD. That is, sell Euros and buy US dollars. The following is guide for quoting conventions:

What does it mean to be “long” or “short” a currency?
Being long means buying a currency. Being short means selling a currency.
If a trader goes long USD/JPY, he or she buys US Dollars and sells Japanese Yen. Buying a currency is synonymous with taking a long position in that currency. A trader takes a long position in a currency if he or she believes it will appreciate in value.
If a trader goes short USD/JPY, he or she sells US Dollars and buys Japanese Yen. Selling a currency is synonymous with shorting that currency. A trader would short a currency if he or she believes it will depreciate in value.

CURRENCY TRADING: BUYING AND SELLING CURRENCIES
All Forex trades result in the buying of one currency and the selling of another (currency trading), simultaneously.

Buying (”going long”) the currency pair implies buying the first, base currency and selling an equivalent amount of the second, quote currency (to pay for the base currency). It is not necessary to own the quote currency prior to selling, as it is sold short. A trader buys a currency pair if he/she believes the base currency will go up relative to the quote currency, or equivalently that the corresponding exchange rate will go up.

Selling (”going short”) the currency pair implies selling the first, base currency, and buying the second, quote currency. A trader sells a currency pair if he/she believes the base currency will go down relative to the quote currency, or equivalently, that the quote currency will go up relative to the base currency.

An open trade or position is one in which a trader has either bought or sold one currency pair and has not sold or bought back an adequate amount of that currency pair to effectively close the trade. When a trader has an open trade or position, he/she stands to profit or lose from fluctuations in the price of that currency pair.

Forex is the backbone of all international capital transactions. Compared to the slim profit margins rendered in other areas of commercial banking, huge profits are generally produced in a matter of minutes form minor currency market movements. Some banks generate 60% of their profits from trading currency aggressively.

Trading volume has been growing at a rate of 25% per year since the mid-1980s and therefore it is not difficult to accept the notion that the currency market is one of the world fastest growing industries. What used to require days to accomplish in Europe or Asia now oly takes a few minutes. Needless to say, technology has changed everything and millions of Dollars are moved from one currency into another every second of every day by major banks through computers and for the average investor, with the touch of a computer key.

Foreign exchange is the backbone of all international capital transactions. Compared to the slim profit margins rendered in other areas of commercial banking, huge profits are generally produced in a matter of minutes from minor currency options market movements. Some banks generate up to 60% of their profits from trading currency aggressively.

Transactions in foreign currencies take place when one country’s currency is purchased (exchanged) with another country’s currency. The price agreed upon or negotiated for the currency purchased is referred to as the foreign exchange rate. Major commercial banks in the money market centers throughout the world are responsible for the majority of foreign currencies bought and sold.

Trading volume has been growing at a rate of 25% per year since the mid-1980s and therefore it is not difficult to accept the notion that the currency options is the world’s fastest growing industry. What used to require days to accomplish in Europe or Asia now only takes a few minutes. Needless to say, technology has changed everything and millions of Dollars are moved from one currency into another every second of every day by major banks through computers and for the average investor, with the touch of a phone.

FOREX BASICS – What’s a PIP
A “pip” is the smallest increment in any currency pair. In EUR/USD, a movement from .8951 to .8952 is one pip, so a pip is .0001. In USD/JPY, a movement from 130.45 to 130.46 is one pip, so a pip is .01.

CALCULATING THE WORTH OF A PIP
How much in dollars is this movement worth, for example, per 10,000 Euros in EUR/USD? How much is one pip worth per 10,000 Dollars in USD/JPY? We will refer to the size, in this case 10,000 units of the base currency, as the “Notional Amount”. The formula for calculating a pip value is therefore:

(one pip, with proper decimal placement / currency exchange rate) x (Notional Amount)

Using USD/JPY as an example, this yields:

(.01/130.46) x USD 10,000 = $0.77 or 77 cents per pip

Using EUR/USD as an example, we have:

(.0001/.8942) x EUR 10,000 = EUR 1.1183

But we want the pip value in USD, so we then must multiply EUR 1.1183 x (EUR/USD exchange rate): EUR 1.1183 x .8942 = $1.00

This is in fact a phenomenon you will see with any currency in which the currency is quoted first (such as EUR/USD or GBP/USD): the pip value is always $1.00 per 10,000 currency units. This is why pip (or “tick”) values in currency futures, where the currency is quoted first, are always fixed.

Approximate pip values for the major currencies are as follows, per 10,000 units of the base currency:

USD/JPY: 1 pip = $.77 (i.e. a change from 130.45 to 130.46 is worth about $.77 per $10,000)

EUR/USD: 1 pip = $1.00 (.8941 to .8942 is worth $1.00 per 10,000 Euros)

GBP/USD: 1 pip = $1.00 (1.4765 to 1.4766 is worth $1.00 per 10,000 Pounds)

USD/CHF: 1 pip = $.59 (1.6855 to 1.6866 is worth $.59 per $10,000)

Spread
The spread is the difference between the price that you can sell currency at ( Bid) and the price you can buy currency at ( Ask). The spread on majors is usually 3 pips under normal market conditions.

Market Hours
The spot Forex market is unique to any other market in the world; trading 24-hours a day. Somewhere around the world a financial center is open for business and banks and other institutions exchange currencies every hour of the day and night, only stopping briefly on the weekend. Foreign exchange markets follow the sun around the world, giving traders the flexibility of determining their trading day and the ability to take advantage of global economic events.

FOREX or The Foreign exchange rate market is an international market where various currency exchange transactions take place; this is in the shape of simultaneously buying one currency and selling another. The most commonly traded currencies are referred to as Majors; over 85% of daily transactions on Forex trading involve the Majors. These seven currencies are the US Currency (Dollar, USD), Japanese Yen (JPY), Euro (EUR), British Pound (GBP), Swiss Franc (CHF), Canadian Dollar (CAD) and Australian Dollar (AUD). The Forex system in operation today was established in the 1970s when free currency exchange rates were introduced, this period also saw the US Dollar overtake the British Pound as the benchmark currency. Prior to this and in particular during World War II, exchange rate remained more stable.

Forex trading in simplest terms is the buying of one currency and the selling of another. Forex trading, also referred to, as FX is open to corporations, small businesses, commercial banks, investment funds and private individuals, it is the largest financial market in the world averaging a daily turnover of over $1 trillion dollars, making it a diverse and exciting market. It is a 24-hour market enabling it to accommodate constant changing world currency exchange rates . According to New York time, trading begins at 2.15pm on Sunday in Sydney and Singapore and progresses through to Tokyo at 7pm, London at 2am and reaches New York at 8am. This leaves investors free to respond to global political, economic and social events when they take place, day or night.

Unlike trading on the stock market, the forex market is not conducted by a central exchange, but on the interbank market, which is thought of as an OTC (over the counter) market. Trading takes place directly between the two counterparts necessary to make a trade, whether over the telephone or on electronic networks all over the world. The main centres for trading are Sydney, Tokyo, London, Frankfurt and New York. This worldwide distribution of trading centres means that the forex market is a 24-hour market.

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Forex Currency Trading – The Basics

June 25th, 2010 1 Comment

Forex is the name given to the foreign exchange market, where international currencies are bought and sold. Due to the development of free exchange rates, the market began in the 1970s and has become the world’s largest financial market with a daily turnover of US$1.9 trillion. To put that into perspective, that’s over thirty times the daily turnover of the rest of the US equity markets combined.

Unlike normal stock markets which are traded on exchanges that are located in a specific place, Forex currency exchange takes place via an Over The Counter (OTC) or interbank market. This means that transactions are conducted electronically between brokers.

Thanks to this and global time zones, Forex is a genuine 24 hour financial market. The day begins in Australia and moves around the globe as each of the leading financial markets open in Tokyo, London and New York. So it’s always possible to find someone who is willing to buy or sell international currencies. This gives investors the chance to respond to price changes caused by a variety of economic, social and political events at any time of the day or night.

There are two main reasons for trading currency on Forex. Approximately 5% of Forex trades are undertaken by multinational companies and governments who buy or sell products and services in a foreign country and have to convert their profits into their domestic currency. Forex allows them to hedge (or protect) their profits so that in the even of a dramatic currency fluctuation, their profits won’t be reduced.

However, the other 95% of Forex activity is due to people or organizations trading for short term profit. Forex allows you to trade virtually any currency, although in practice most activity (85% of total turnover) relates to the major currencies which include the US Dollar, the Euro, the Japanese Yen, the Swiss Franc, the British Pound, the Australian Dollar and the Canadian Dollar.

Trading on the Forex exchange involves simultaneously buying one currency and selling another. For example, if you buy USD/EUR, that means you buy the US Dollar and sell an equivalent value of the Euro. Closing you position involves buying the Euro and selling the US Dollar.

The price of all currencies traded on Forex are influenced by the laws of supply and demand. If the demand for a currency outstrips the supply, the price rises. Alternatively, if supply is greater than demand, the price of a currency will fall.

Forex trading has a number of significant advantages that make it an extremely attractive form of speculation.

First, due to its size and lack of exchange controls, it’s almost impossible for any person or organization (including central banks and governments) to significantly influence prices for an extended period of time. This means that you can enter the market secure in the knowledge that your investment is competing on a level playing field with every other investor around the world.

Second, due to the vast size of the market, the liquidity is excellent. So unlike the position with many stocks and shares where you might find it hard to sell certain investments, you can open and close Forex trades almost instantly as there are always scores of international buyers and sellers.

Third, it’s relatively easy and cheap to get started trading Forex. All you need is an internet connection, a broker and perhaps $500 – $1000 to open a trading account. Once you’ve got these things you can trade 24 hours a day from Sunday afternoon through to Friday evening. And thanks to the availability of information on the internet it’s possible to find all the data that you need for the purposes of analysis and decision making.

Fourth, it’s possible to make substantial short term gains with relatively little capital thanks to the number of daily fluctuations in currency prices and the ability to leverage your capital (often up to 100 times) thanks to margin trading.

However, due to rapid fluctuation of currency prices and marginal trading, Forex trading carries significant risks, so caution must be required when deciding which trades to make.

When it comes to decision making, there are two basic Forex trading strategies, technical analysis and fundamental analysis.

Technical analysis relys upon using price charts, trend lines, support/resistance levels, highest price, lowest price, transaction volumes and various other mathematical formulae to identify trading opportunities. This is based upon the belief that everything that may influence the price of a currency has been considered by the market and factored into the current price.

Crucially, technical analysts don’t try to defeat the market. The are content to predict short term, minor fluctuations using patterns from the recent past and the belief that history will repeat itself. The main disadvantage of the method is that all the results are purely historic and cannot always be relied upon as an accurate guide to the future.

Fundamental analysis looks at wider factors such as the national economy of the currency, the political stability, employment figures, industry figures, interest rates, tax policy and a wide range of other economic indicators. However, before basing your investment decisions on these factors alone, it’s important to consider both technical analysis and the fact that market expectations can influence the price of a currency as much as reality.

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Introduction To Forex Trading

June 15th, 2010 No Comments

There are many markets: markets for stocks, futures, options and currencies. These are probably the most accessible markets for everyday traders like you and I. People easily understand the basics of trading shares. I began trading shares first and then I moved on to trading currencies.

If you do not know a lot about currency trading, allow me to introduce it to you. It is what I trade and I believe that it is one of the best markets to trade because of its efficiency. The transaction costs to execute a trade are minimal and most brokers provide you with the tools and data you need to make your trading decisions, they usually provide them for free. The market is open 24 hours a day which allows you to design your trading hours around your daily commitments. It is very volatile, which is great for those people who are looking for day-trading opportunities.

The foreign exchange market is the market in which currencies are bought and sold against one another. People may loosely refer to this market under different labels, including foreign exchange market, forex market, fx market or the currency market.

The foreign exchange market is the largest market in the world, with daily trading volumes in excess of $1.5 trillion US dollars. All transactions involving international trade and investment must go through this market because these transactions involve the exchange of currencies.

It is the most perfect market that exists because it has a large number of buyers and sellers all selling the same products. There is a free flow of information and there are little barriers to participate.

The currency exchange market is an over-the-counter (OTC) market which means that there is not one specific location where buyers and sellers can actually meet to exchange currencies. Instead, transactions are conducted by phone, fax, e-mail or through the websites of brokers who specialize in currency trading.

The major dealing centres at the time of writing are: London , with about 30% of the market, New York , with 20%, Tokyo , with 12%, Zurich , Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Singapore , with about 7% each, followed by Paris and Sydney with 3% each. Because of the fact that these centres are all over the world, foreign exchange traders can execute transactions 24 hours a day. The market only closes on the weekends.

THE MAIN PLAYERS’ IN THE FOREX MARKET

The five broad categories of participants are: consumers, businesses, investors, speculators, commercial banks, investment banks and central banks.

Consumers, including visitors of countries, tourists and immigrants, do need to exchange currencies when they travel so that they can buy local goods and services. These participants do not have the power to set prices. They just buy and sell according to the prevailing exchange rate. They make up a significant proportion of the volume being traded in the market.

Businesses that import and export goods and services need to exchange currencies to receive or make payments for goods they may have bought or services they may have rendered.

Investors and speculators require currencies to buy and sell investment instruments such as shares, bonds, bank deposits or real estate.

Large commercial and investment banks are the price makers’. They are the ones who buy and sell currencies at the bid-and-offer exchange rates that they declare through their foreign exchange dealers.

Commercial banks deal with customers on one hand, and with the Interbank or other banks, on the other hand. They profit by utilizing the bid-and-offer spread. The bid price is the exchange rate that the buyer is willing to buy and the offer price is the exchange rate at which the seller is willing to sell. The difference is called the bid-offer spread. They also make profits from speculating about whether the exchange rate will rise or fall.

Central banks participate in the foreign exchange market in their effective duty as banks for their particular government. They trade currencies not for the intention of making profits but rather to facilitate government monetary policies and to help smoothen out the fluctuation of the value of their economy’s currency.

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This is an excerpt, modified from the book: The Part-Time Currency Trader, featuring examples of how to trade these currency pairs.

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