ALL ABOUT FOREX

Advantages of the Forex Market What are the advantages of the Forex Market over other types of investments? When thinking about various investments, there is one investment vehicle that comes to mind. The Forex or Foreign Currency Market has many advantages over other types of investments. The Forex market is open 24 hrs a day, unlike the regular stock markets. Most investments require a substantial amount of capital before you can take advantage of an investment opportunity. To trade Forex, you only need a small amount of capital. Anyone can enter the market with as little as $300 USD to trade a "mini account", which allows you to trade lots of 10,000 units. One lot of 10,000 units of currency is equal to 1 contract. Each "pip" or move up or down in the currency pair is worth a $1 gain or loss, depending on which side of the market you are on. A standard account gives you control over 100,000 units of currency and a pip is worth $10. The Forex market is also very liquid. When trading Forex you have full control of your capital. Many other types of investments require holding your money up for long periods of time. This is a disadvantage because if you need to use the capital it can be difficult to access to it without taking a huge loss. Also, with a small amount of money, you can control Forex traders can be profitable in bullish or bearish market conditions. Stock market traders need stock prices to rise in order to take a profit. Forex traders can make a profit during up trends and downtrends. Forex Trading can be risky, but with having the ability to have a good system to follow, good money management skills, and possessing self discipline, Forex trading can be a relatively low risk investment. The Forex market can be traded anytime, anywhere. As long as you have access to a computer, you have the ability to trade the Forex market. An important thing to remember is before jumping into trading currencies, is it wise to practice with "paper money", or "fake money." Most brokers have demo accounts where you can download their trading station and practice real time with fake money. While this is no guarantee of your performance with real money, practicing can give you a huge advantage to become better prepared when you trade with your real, hard earned money. There are also many Forex courses on the internet, just be careful when choosing which ones to purchase. Investing in Forex Investing in foreign currencies is a relatively new avenue of investing. There are considerably fewer people are aware of this market than there are people aware of several other avenues of investing. Trading foreign currency, also known as forex, is the most lucrative investment market that exists. There are several factors that make this true among which, successful forex traders earn realistic profits of one hundred plus percent each month. Compared to some of the better known investment markets such as corporate stocks, this is an unheard of return on investment. It's very necessary to mention here that a person who invests in forex must, without exception, make it a point to learn the detailed, but simple strategies and information surrounding the market. This very fact is what makes the difference between successful forex traders and other traders. A few additional points, which create such powerful leverage for investors within the forex market are: The amount of capital required to begin investing in the market is only three hundred dollars. For the most part, any other investment market is going to demand thousands of dollars of the investor in the beginning. Also, the market offers opportunities to profit regardless what the direction of the market may be; In most commonly known markets investors sit and wait for the market to begin an up trend before entering a trade. Even then, investors, as a rule must sit and wait some more to be able to exit the trade with a nice profit. Given that the forex market produces several up, down, and sideways trends in a single day, it can easily be seen that forex stands head and shoulders above other markets. Additionally there are trading strategies, which are taught that provide for compounded profits; these are profits on top of profits. In addition, free demo accounts are available within the industry of forex trading, which facilitate the sharpening of skills without the risk losing any capital. And the advantage regarding the time factor in trading foreign currency is a very attractive point for any investor. Compared to one of the most sought after avenues of investing, which often requires forty or more hours each week, namely in the real-estate market, the forex market requires a much smaller demand on the investor's time. Forex trading requires approximately ten to fifteen hours each week to earn a full time income. It's easy to see that the advantages and great leverage that exist in the forex market, make it among the most lucrative, time liberating, and easy to enter by far. Why Trade the FOREX? My purpose for writing this article is to demonstrate to you the advantages of trading on the Forex market. However, there is one myth that I want to dispel before I go further. The myth is that there is a difference between trading and investing. To dispel that myth I quote from Al Thomas, President of Williamsburg Investment Company, who wrote "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It". He said "Everyone who invests is a trader, only the time period is different." It is a lesson that I took seriously after taking a beating in the stock market in 2000. So now, let's compare features of currency trading to those of stock and commodity trading. Liquidity - The Forex market is the most liquid financial market in the world around 1.9 trillion dollars traded everyday. The commodities market trades around 440 billion dollars a day, and the US stock market trades around 200 billion dollars a day. This ensures better trade execution and prevents market manipulation. It also ensures easily executable trading. Trading Times - The Forex market is open 24 hours a day (except weekends) which means that in the US it opens at 3:00 pm Sunday (EST) and closes Friday at 5:00 (EST), allowing active traders to choose the times they want to trade. Commodities trading hours are all over the board depending on which commodity you are trading. Including extended trading times US stocks can be traded from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm (ET) on weekdays. Leverage - Depending on your Forex account size, your leverage may be 100:1, although there are Forex brokers that offer leverage of up to 400:1 (not that I would ever recommend that kind of leverage). Leverage in the stock market can be as high as 4:1, and in the commodities market, leverage varies with the commodity traded but it can be quite high. Because the commodity markets are not as liquid as the Forex market, its leverage is inherently riskier. Although I was never shut out of a commodity trade by the day limit, the fear was always in the back of my mind. Trading costs - Transaction costs in the Forex market is the difference between the buy and sell price of each currency pair. There are no brokerage fees. For both the stock and the commodity markets, there are transaction costs and brokerage fees. Even when you use discount brokers, those fees add up. Minimum investment - You can open a Forex trading account for as little as $300.00. It took $5,000 for me to open my futures trading account. Focus - 85% of all trading transactions are made on 7 major currencies. In the US stock market alone there are 40,000 stocks. There are just over 200 commodity markets, although quite a few are so illiquid that they are not traded except by hedgers. As you can see, the fewer number of instruments allows us to study each one more closely. Trade execution - In the Forex market, trade execution is almost instantaneous. In both the equity and commodity markets, you count on a broker to execute your trades and their results are sometimes inconsistent. While all of these features make trading the Forex market very attractive, it still requires a lot of education, discipline, commitment and patience. All trading can be risky. The Benefits of Trading The Forex Market 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.

FOREX World

Is All About The free ebook will introduce the Forex market to you, read the following short abstract.

The purpose of this ebookis to introduce the Forex market to you. As withmany markets there are many derivative of the central market suchas futures, options and forwards. For the purpose of this bookwe will only be discussing the mainmarket sometime referredto as the Spot or Cashmarket. The wordFOREXis derivedfromForeignExchange andis the largest financial market inthe world. Unlike many markets the FXmarket is open24 hours per day andhas anestimated$1.2 Trillioninturnover every day. This tremendous turnover is more thanthe combinedturnover of all the world's stockmarkets on any givenday. This tends to leadto a very liquidmarket andthus a desirable market to trade. Unlike many other securities (any financial instrument that canbe traded) the FX market does not have a fixedexchange. It is primarily tradedthroughbanks, brokers, dealers, financial institutions andprivate individuals. Trades are executedthroughphone andincreasingly throughthe Internet. It is only inthe last few years that the smaller investor has beenable to gainaccess to this market. Previously the large amounts of deposits requiredprecludedthe smaller investors. Withthe advent of the Internet andgrowing competitionit is now easily inthe reachof most investors. Youwill oftenhear the termINTERBANKdiscussedinFXterminology. This originally, as the name implies was simply banks andlarge institutionsexchanging informationabout the current rate at whichtheir clients or themselves were preparedto buy or sell a currency. INTERmeaning betweenand Bankmeaning deposit taking institutions normally made upof banks, large institution,brokers or eventhe government. The market has movedonto sucha degree now that the terminterbanknow means anybody who is preparedto buy or sell a currency. It couldbe two individuals or your local travel agent offering to exchange Euros for USDollars. Youwill however findthat most of the brokersAs with many markets there are many derivative of the central market such as futures, options and forwards. For the purpose of this book we will only be discussing the main market sometime referred to as the Spot or Cash market.The word FOREX is derived from Foreign Exchange and is the largest financial market in the world. Unlike many markets the FX market is open 24 hours per day and has an estimated $1.2 Trillion in turnover every day. This tremendous turnover is more than the combined turnover of all the world's' stock markets on any given day. This tends to lead to a very liquid market and thus a desirable market to trade.Unlike many other securities (any financial instrument that can be traded) the FX market does not have a fixed exchange. It is primarily traded through banks, brokers, dealers, financial institutions and private individuals. Trades are executed through phone and increasingly through the Internet.It is only in the last few years that the smaller investor has been able to gain access to this market. Previously the large amounts of deposits required precluded the smaller investors. With the advent of the Internet and growing competition it is now easily in the reach of most investors.You will often hear the term INTERBANK discussed in FX terminology. This originally, as the name implies was simply banks and large institutions exchanging information about the current rate at which their clients or themselves were prepared to buy or sell a currency. INTER meaning between and Bank meaning deposit taking institutions normally made up of banks, large institution, brokers or even the government.The market has moved on to such a degree now that the term interbank now means anybody who is prepared to buy or sell a currency. It could be two individuals or your local travel agent offering to exchange Euros for US Dollars. You will however find that most of the brokers and banks use centralized feeds to insure reliability of quote.The quotes for Bid (buy) and Offer (sell) will all be from reliable sources. These quotes are normally made up of the top 300 or so large institutions. This insures that if they place an order on your behalf that the institutions they have placed the order with is capable of fulfilling the order. Affairs Forex Dedicated ForexGlobal Forex Trading is one of the world's most prominent leaders in online foreign exchange providing forex traders the highest level of service, software and accountability in the industry. As a primary market-maker, Global Forex Trading offers individual and institutional clients instant click-and-deal trades on live currency price.Global Forex Trading offers more currencies for forex trading than most other future commission merchants (FCMs) with more than 60 Currency pairs, analytical services from forex industry leaders, up-to-the-minute world and financial news, customizable advanced forex charting and a 24-hour dealing desk with professional dealers ready to assist you anytime day or night.Opportunities from Around the WorldOpportunities from Around the WorldOver the last three decades the foreign exchange market has become the world's largest financial market, with over $1.5 trillion USD traded daily. Forex is part of the bank-to-bank currency market known as the 24-hour Interbank market. The Interbank market literally follows the sun around the world, moving from major banking centers of the United States to Australia, New Zealand to the Far East, to Europe then back to the United States.Until recently, the forex market wasn't for the average trader or individual speculator. With the large minimum transaction sizes and often-stringent financial requirements, banks, hedge funds, major currency dealers and the occasional high net-worth individual speculator were the principal participants. These large traders were able to take advantage of the many benefits offered by the forex market vs. other markets, including fantastic liquidity and the strong trending nature of the world's primary currency exchange rates.GFT gives you the access and resources to Trade ForexAs a primary market-maker in foreign currency trading, Global Forex Trading is able to offer smaller transactional sizes and allow traders of almost any size, including individual speculators or smaller companies, the opportunity to trade the same rates and price movements as the large players who once dominated the forex market.The forex market removes the traditional barriers that exist in other markets without restricting the forex traders' ability to make a trade at the right times

Trading Forex Futures

Foreign exchange and futures trading are becoming more and more popular all over the world mainly because of the promise of the great rewards that go with it.In the past, only major corporations and government institutions were able to cope with it due to the huge volume of trades that take place. Individual and small investors had been unable to participate because it was too overwhelming.
However, with the arrival of the Internet and the advancement of various tools of communication and correspondence, foreign exchange and futures trading have become within arms reach of many private movers and small timers. The Internet has allowed greater access to financial information that enables even individuals to make speculative investments, often without having to pay a single cent.
Forex trading, no matter what Web sites tell you about the behavior of currencies and futures, is not free from risks. As with anything in this world, particularly those that involve the exchange of value and money, there are certain pitfalls.
For instance, because currencies rise and fall nearly every second, what may be of maximum value at one time might suddenly transform into something nearly worthless at another.
Currency values in the foreign exchange market are highly volatile, so you must always be on your toes by keeping yourself updated with the changes every minute of the day. And since the forex market operates 24 hours a day, the monitoring could take quite an effort on your part.
You must also note that whenever one currency falls, another one surely goes up, because that’s how it goes. Currencies trade against each other.
Therefore, in order for you to be on the safer side (note that we said ’safer’, but not ’safe’), trade currencies that belong to the list of ‘majors’, such as the US dollar, the Japanese yen or the British pound. These monies are less likely to move too drastically because they are the most heavily traded currencies in the market.
A word of caution: do not engage in currency trading unless you’re truly prepared to do so. The lures of high returns might cause you to want to jump into the industry without so much as a bat of an eyelash, but you have to get yourself in-the-know first before you proceed.
Failure to adequately understand how the system works will cost you a lot of energy and mountains of money, if you’re not careful.
You can avoid getting into currency trading traps by keeping yourself up to date with the latest industry news and movements at all times. You can do this yourself, or you can hire an expert to do it for you (which, of course, entails an additional cost on your part).
Once you’ve already mastered how the foreign exchange and futures markets operate, you will also be able to prevent yourself from being duped into buying or selling currencies at inappropriate times. Knowledge allows you to make speculations and forecasts about what happens with currency values next.

Oil makes a splash in forex markets

The price of oil is one of the most important variables in the global economy. Traders and investors in capital markets, credit markets, commodity markets, and to a certain extent, forex markets, all incorporate oil prices into their models and strategies. Specifically, as the price of oil has soared, the currencies of resource-rich economies have predictably risen in tandem. The reasoning behind such a trend is as follows: when the price of oil rises, the total value of oil exports rises proportionately. In order to purchase oil from Canadian and Norwegian sources, (whose currencies are thriving), one must first exchange domestic currency for Canadian or Norwegian Currency, which creates demand for those currencies and their exchange rates to appreciate. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Indeed, the close tracking of oil prices and the Canadian dollar has been among the only predictable trends in currency markets in recent weeks as most other major currencies have drifted within ranges, moved more by positioning and technical trading than any fundamental story.

forex trade

Why trade Forex?24 hour trading One of the major advantages of trading forex is the opportunity to trade 24 hours a day from Sunday evening (20:00 GMT) to Friday evening (22:00 GMT). This gives you a unique opportunity to react instantly to breaking news that is affecting the markets.Superior liquidityThe forex market is so liquid that there are always buyers and sellers to trade with. The liquidity of this market, especially that of the major currencies, helps ensure price stability and narrow spreads. The liquidity comes mainly from banks that provide liquidity to investors, companies, institutions and other currency market players. No commissionsThe fact that forex is often traded without commissions makes it very attractive as an investment opportunity for investors who want to deal on a frequent basis.Trading the “majors” is also cheaper than trading other cross because of the high level of liquidity. For more information on the trading conditions of Saxo Bank, go to the Account Summary on your SaxoTrader and open the section entitled "Trading Conditions" found in the top right-hand corner of the Account Summary. 100:1 LeverageLeverage (gearing) enables you to hold a position worth up to 100 times more than your margin deposit. For example, a USD 10,000 deposit can command positions of up to USD 1,000,000 through leverage. You can leverage the first USD 25,000 of your investment up to 100 times and additional collateral up to 50 times. Profit potential in falling marketsSince the market is constantly moving, there are always trading opportunities, whether a currency is strengthening or weakening in relation to another currency. When you trade currencies, they literally work against each other. If the EURUSD declines, for example, it is because the U.S. dollar gets stronger against the Euro and vice versa. So, if you think the EURUSD will decline (that is, that the Euro will weaken versus the dollar), you would sell EUR now and then later you buy Euro back at a lower price and take your profits. The opposite trading scenario would occur if the EURUSD appreciates. Brief history of Forex tradingInitially, the value of goods was expressed in terms of other goods, i.e. an economy based on barter between individual market participants. The obvious limitations of such a system encouraged establishing more generally accepted means of exchange at a fairly early stage in history, to set a common benchmark of value. In different economies, everything from teeth to feathers to pretty stones has served this purpose, but soon metals, in particular gold and silver, established themselves as an accepted means of payment as well as a reliable storage of value.Originally, coins were simply minted from the preferred metal, but in stable political regimes the introduction of a paper form of governmental IOUs (I owe you) gained acceptance during the Middle Ages. Such IOUs, often introduced more successfully through force than persuasion were the basis of modern currencies.Before the First World War, most central banks supported their currencies with convertibility to gold. Although paper money could always be exchanged for gold, in reality this did not occur often, fostering the sometimes disastrous notion that there was not necessarily a need for full cover in the central reserves of the government.At times, the ballooning supply of paper money without gold cover led to devastating inflation and resulting political instability. To protect local national interests, foreign exchange controls were increasingly introduced to prevent market forces from punishing monetary irresponsibility.In the latter stages of the Second World War, the Bretton Woods agreement was reached on the initiative of the USA in July 1944. The Bretton Woods Conference rejected John Maynard Keynes suggestion for a new world reserve currency in favour of a system built on the US dollar. Other international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) were created in the same period as the emerging victors of WW2 searched for a way to avoid the destabilising monetary crises which led to the war. The Bretton Woods agreement resulted in a system of fixed exchange rates that partly reinstated the gold standard, fixing the US dollar at USD35/oz and fixing the other main currencies to the dollar - and was intended to be permanent.The Bretton Woods system came under increasing pressure as national economies moved in different directions during the sixties. A number of realignments kept the system alive for a long time, but eventually Bretton Woods collapsed in the early seventies following president Nixon's suspension of the gold convertibility in August 1971. The dollar was no longer suitable as the sole international currency at a time when it was under severe pressure from increasing US budget and trade deficits.The following decades have seen foreign exchange trading develop into the largest global market by far. Restrictions on capital flows have been removed in most countries, leaving the market forces free to adjust foreign exchange rates according to their perceived values.But the idea of fixed exchange rates has by no means died. The EEC (European Economic Community) introduced a new system of fixed exchange rates in 1979, the European Monetary System. This attempt to fix exchange rates met with near extinction in 1992-93, when pent-up economic pressures forced devaluations of a number of weak European currencies. Nevertheless, the quest for currency stability has continued in Europe with the renewed attempt to not only fix currencies but actually replace many of them with the Euro in 2001.The lack of sustainability in fixed foreign exchange rates gained new relevance with the events in South East Asia in the latter part of 1997, where currency after currency was devalued against the US dollar, leaving other fixed exchange rates, in particular in South America, looking very vulnerable.But while commercial companies have had to face a much more volatile currency environment in recent years, investors and financial institutions have found a new playground. The size of foreign exchange markets now dwarfs any other investment market by a large factor. It is estimated that more than USD1,200 billion is traded every day, far more than the world's stock and bond markets combined.

Forex

Forex options, are another component that draws similarities with the stock market, they offer traders more security in being able to limit riskand increase profit when trading in the market. There are generally two types of options an investor can choose from, the first being a traditional option. This gives the buyer the right but not the obligation to purchase a currency at a set or agreed price and time. If a trader has taken advantage of Forex options and during the agreed time the currency being bought appreciates, the trader can sell this currency at a profit.
However, if the currency depreciates the trader loses only the premium paid for the option. The second type of Forex options available is known as SPOT- Single Payment Options Trading. The Forex trader dictates this type of option, it is a prediction from the trader on what they forecast will occur on the Forex market. If the trader is successful the profit potential can be unlimited and if the SPOT is not a success only the premium is lost. Forex options give investors another tool with which to limit losses and increase profits, they are particularly popular at periods of economic reporting.
Transactions in options on FOREX carry a high degree of risk. Purchasers and sellers of options should familiarize themselves with the type of option (i.e. put or call) which they contemplate trading and the associated risks. You should calculate the extent to which the value of the options must increase for your position to become profitable, taking into account the premium and all transaction costs.
The purchaser of options may offset or exercise the options or allow the options to expire. The exercise of an option results either in a cash settlement or in the purchaser acquiring or delivering the underlying interest. If the option is on a leveraged position, the purchaser will acquire a FOREX open position with associated liabilities for margin. If the purchased options expire worthless, you will suffer a total loss of your investment which will consist of the option premium (transaction costs on FOREX are usually zero - no commission). If you are contemplating purchasing deep-out-of-the-money options, you should be aware that the chance of such options becoming profitable ordinarily is remote.
Selling ("writing" or "granting") an option generally entails considerably greater risk than purchasing options. Although the premium received by the seller is fixed, the seller may sustain a loss well in excess of that amount. The seller will be liable for additional margin to maintain the position if the market moves unfavourably. The seller will also be exposed to the risk of the purchaser exercising the option and the seller will be obligated to either settle the option in cash or to acquire or deliver the underlying interest.
If the option is on a leveraged position, the seller will acquire an open FOREX position with associated liabilities for margin. If the option is "covered" by the seller holding a corresponding position in the underlying interest or a future or another option, the risk may be reduced. If the option is not covered, the risk of loss can be unlimited.
Certain brokers in some jurisdictions permit deferred payment of the option premium, exposing the purchaser to liability for margin payments not exceeding the amount of the premium. The purchaser is still subject to the risk of losing the premium and transaction costs. When the option is exercised or expires, the purchaser is responsible for any unpaid premium outstanding at that time.
Many people think of the stock market when they think of options; however, the foreign exchange (FOREX) market also offers the opportunity to trade these unique derivatives. Options give retail traders many opportunities to limit risk and increase profit. Here we discuss what options are, how they are used, and which strategies you can use to profit.

How to take a loss

There are quite a few books written on how to make money in the market. Some of them are even written by people who have made money as traders! What you don't see often, however, are books or articles written on how to lose money. “Cut your losers and let your winners run” is commonsensical advice, but how do you determine when a position is a loser? Interestingly, most traders I have seen don't formulate an answer to this question when they put on a position. They focus on the entry, but then don't have a clear sense of exit—especially if that exit is going to put them into the red.

One of the real culprits, I have to believe, is in the difficulty traders have in separating the reality of a losing trade from the psychological sense of feeling like a loser. At some level, many traders equate losing with being a loser. This frustrates them, depresses them, makes them anxious—in short, it interferes with their future decision-making, because their P & L is a blank check written against their self-esteem. Once a trader is self-focused and not market focused, distortions in decision-making are inevitable.

A particularly valuable section of the classic book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator describes Livermore 's approach to buying stock. He would sell a quantity and see how the stock responded. Then he would do that again and again, testing the underlying demand for the issue. When his sales could not push the market down, then he would move aggressively to the buy side and make his money.

What I loved about this methodology is that Livermore's losses were part of a grander plan. He wasn't just losing money; he was paying for information. If my maximum position size is ten contracts in the ES and I buy the highs of a range with a one-lot, expecting a breakout, I am testing the waters. While I am not potentially moving the market in the way that Livermore might have, I still have begun a test of my breakout hypothesis. I then watch carefully. How are the other averages behaving at the top ends of their range? How is the market absorbing the activity of sellers? Like any good scientist, I am gathering data to determine whether or not my hypothesis is supported.

Suppose the breakout does not materialize and the initial move above the range falls back into the range on some increased selling pressure. I take the loss on my one-lot, but then what happens from there?

The unsuccessful trader will respond with frustration: “Why do I always get caught buying the highs? I can't believe “they” ran the market against me! This market is impossible to trade.” Because of that frustration—and the associated self-focus—the unsuccessful trader does not take any information away from that trade.

In the Livermore mode, however, the successful trader will see the losing one-lot as part of a greater plan. Had the market broken nicely to the upside, he would have scaled into the long trade and likely made money. If the one-lot was a loser, he paid for the information that this is, at the very least, a range-bound market, and he might try to find a spot to reverse and go short in order to capitalize on a return to the bottom end of that range.

Look at it this way: If you put on a high probability trade and the trade fails to make you money, you have just paid for an important piece of information: The market is not behaving as it normally, historically does. If a robust piece of economic news that normally sends the dollar screaming higher fails to budge the currency and thwarts your purchase, you have just acquired a useful bit of information: There is an underlying lack of demand for dollars. That information might hold far more profit potential than the money lost in the initial trade.

I recently received a copy of an article from Futures Magazine on the retired trader Everett Klipp, who was dubbed the “Babe Ruth of the CBOT”. Klipp distinguished himself not only by his fifty-year track record of trading success on the floor, but also by his mentorship of over 100 traders. Speaking of his system of short-term trading, Klipp observed, “You have to love to lose money and hate to make money to be successful…It's against human nature what I teach and practice. You have to overcome your humanness.”

Klipp's system was quick to take profits (hence the idea of hating to make money), but even quicker to take losses (loving to lose money). Instead of viewing losses as a threat, Klipp treated them as an essential part of trading. Taking a small loss reinforces a trader's sense of discipline and control, he believed. Losses are not failures.

So here's a question I propose to all those who enter a high-probability trade: “What will tell me that my trade is wrong, and how could I use that information to subsequently profit?” If you're trading well, there are no losing trades: only trades that make money and trades that give you the information to make money later.

Goodman’s Swing Count System

The Principles of Goodman’s Swing Count System were informally set forth in a series of annotated commodity charts from the late 1940’s to the early 1970’s. These trading studies simply titled ‘My System’ were the work of Charles B. Goodman and were never published.

I met Charles Goodman at the Denver, Colorado offices of Peavey and Company (later, Gelderman) in the fall of 1971. It was the occasion of my maiden voyage in the great sea of commodity trading (later, futures). In 1971 silver prices were finally forging ahead to the $2.00/ounce level. A 10-cent limit move in soybeans elicited a full afternoon of post-mortems by traders and brokers alike.

The Peavey office, managed by the late and great Pete Rednor employed eight brokers (later, account representatives). The broker for both Mr. Goodman and I was the colorful - and patient - Ken Malo. Brokers, resident professional traders - including Mr. Goodman and the Feldman brothers, Stu and Reef - and a regular contingent of retail customers drew inspiration from a Trans-Lux ticker that wormed its way across a long, narrow library table in the back of the office. Most impressive was a large clacker board quote system covering almost the entire front office wall. This electro-mechanical quotation behemoth made loud clacking sounds (thus its name) each time an individual price flipped over to reveal an updated quote. Green and red lights flashed, denoting daily new highs and lows. Pete, apart from being an excellent office manager was also a fine showman using the various stimuli to encourage trading activity!

Almost everyone made frequent reference to Charlie’s huge bar charts posted on 2 ½ by 4-foot sheets of graph paper, mounted on heavy particle board and displayed on large easels. No one ever really knew what the numerous right-hand brackets ( ]) of varying lengths scattered throughout each chart meant. But there was always a great deal of speculation! The present work finally reveals the meaning of those mysterious trading hieroglyphics.

The quiet chatter of the tickertape, the load clacking of the quote board, the constant ringing of the telephones. The news ticker that buzzed once for standing reports, twice for opinions and three times for ‘hot news’, the squawk boxes and Pete Rednor’s authoritative voice booming, ‘Merc!, Merc!". What a spectacular scene it was! No wonder that this author, then a 21-year old trading Newbie would soon make commodity futures and currency trading his life’s work.

But nothing made a greater impression on me than the work of Charles B. Goodman. He instilled first, some very simple ideas: "Avoid volatile markets when at all possible" - "Trade only high percentage short term ‘ducks’ " - "Sit on your hands, Dad, sit on your hands". It didn’t take long for me to adopt the ultra-conservative ‘Belgian Dentist’ style of trading, that is - "Avoiding losing trades is more important than finding winning trades"

The Belgian Dentist approach carried with me when I developed my famous AI trading system in the 1980’s - Jonathan’s Wave. Even though it generated 48% annual returns with a zero expectation of a 50% drawdown (according to Managed Account Reports) it drove the brokers berserk because it could easily go a full month without making a single trade!

Charlie’s trading advice, I am certain, allowed me to survive the financial Baptism of Fire that destroys most commodity and currency trading Newbies in a matter of months, if not weeks.

Mr. Goodman was to be my one and only trading mentor. Over the decade that followed he entrusted to me many, if not most of his trading secrets. To the best of my knowledge he shared this information on his work with no one else in such detail.

Charlie and I spent hundreds of hours together analyzing the trade studies from My System. We also analyzed hundreds of other commodity, currency and securities charts. Charlie was happy with My System being ‘organized’ in his mind. But as a new generation technical analyst, I was anxious to see it formalized on paper and eventually in source code on a computer. (To be honest this created a small amount of friction between the two of us - Charlie was dead set against formalized systems and believed strongly in the psychological and money management elements of trading.) Notwithstanding, by 1979 I was finally ready and able to formally state the principles of My System. Because of its equal concern for price measurements (parameters) and price levels interacting together (matrices) I originally renamed My System ‘ParaMatrix’. My first investment management company in the mid-1970’s was ParaMatrix Investment Management and I acted as both a registered Investment Advisor (SEC) and Commodity Trading Advisor (CFTC).

Contrary to ongoing speculation, only two copies of my original 1979 ‘Principles of ParaMatrix’ ever existed. I possess both of them. Charlie’s original My System trade studies were mistakenly destroyed shortly after his death in 1984. What remains of them are the 200 or so examples I copied into Principles of ParaMatrix.

The present work, Goodman’s Swing Count System (GSCS), is a reorganized re-issue of Principles of ParaMatrix with updated charts and a simplified nomenclature that I am sure Charlie would have appreciated; "Keep it simple, Dad!" he would always advise. I’ve also expanded on Charlie’s ideas by ‘filling in’ some less formed ideas such as his market notation, or calculus as he referred to it, and a method for charting which I have dubbed Goodman Charting.

Two of Charlie’s less well-defined ideas are NOT included in this work: 1) Dependent/Scaled Interfacing and 2) Time-Based (cyclical) measurements. There are also a number of intra-swing formations I have not discussed.

My own direction in futures and currencies turned in the 1980’s to artificial intelligence (Jonathan’s Wave) and in the 1990’s and today, artificial life and cellular automata (The Trend Machine). In spite of, or perhaps because of these complicated ‘cutting edge’ computer efforts I continue to view Goodman’s Swing Count System (GSCS) in a very positive light. To this day, the first thing I do when I see any chart is a quick Goodman analysis!

GSCS is a natural ‘system’ for pursuing the conservative Belgian Dentist approach to trading, even without the aid of a computer. This article, in fact, could be used to make Goodman analysis without a computer at all! But it is in fact intended as an introduction to the CommTools Analytic Suite GSCS software. That software is intended as a supplemental tool only for doing Goodman chart analysis.

GSCS trade opportunities are as frequent today (perhaps more frequent) than they were 40 or 50 years ago. I believe the system’s foundations have well stood the test of time. Patterns today are no different than they were decades ago - nor are the twin human emotions - Fear and Greed - that create them. GSCS is an excellent method for finding support and resistance areas that no other method spots, and for locating potential turning points in any market. One of its best suits - it can easily integrate into other trading techniques and methodologies.

I would never recommend or advise anyone to use a 100% mechanical trading system, GSCS or any other!

Is it really a ‘system’? Depending upon your perspective GSCS is between 70% and 90% mechanical. The program available from CommTools, Inc (www.commtools.com) represents the kernel idea of mechanizing perhaps 80% of the system. I now believe attempting to completely code Charlie’s work would be inadvisable.

Mr. Goodman passed away in 1984. It was always his desire to share with others - although as is usually the case with true genius - few wanted to listen. These days we are ever more bombarded ever more cryptic and computer-dependent software programs and ‘black-boxes’. Perhaps now is the time for the simple yet theoretically well-grounded ideas of GSCS to populate.

The publication of this brief work and the GSCS software, I hope and pray, would meet with Charlie’s wishes. His work in extracting an objective and almost geometrically precise (ala Spinoza) trading system out of a simple trading rule (the ‘50% rule’) is most remarkable. It has certainly earned him the right to be included in the elite group of early scientific traders including Taylor, Elliot, Gann and Pugh.

Conforming to the spirit of the original My System, I’ve attempted to keep theoretical discussions and formulations to a necessary minimum. Trade studies in Part 3 of this article must still be considered the crux of GSCS, even though I am pleased with the formalization of most relevant principles in Part 2. The trader weary of theoretical discussions and intrigue will find all the concepts and principles delineated in the trade study examples. Nevertheless, those who invest time in the theory of GSCS will undoubtedly discover an area for further exploration where many new and fresh ideas are waiting to be mined.

In Mr. Goodman’s worldly absence, the responsibility for this work and its contents is solely mine, for better or for worse.

Theoretical Overview and Definitions

The cornerstone of GSCS is the age-old ‘50 Percent Retracement and Measured Move’ rule. This rule, familiar to most traders goes back almost as far as the organized markets themselves. It has been traced to the times when insiders manipulated railroad stocks in the 19th Century.

DIAGRAM 1-1: The 50 Percent Retracement and Measured Move Rule

The first systematic description of THE RULE was given in Burton Pugh’s The Great Wheat Secret. This book was originally published in 1933. In 1973, Charles L. Lindsay published Trident. This book did much - some say too much! - to quantify and mathematically describe THE RULE. Nevertheless, must reading for anyone interested in this area of market methodology. Edward L. Dobson wrote The Trading Rule That Can Make You Rich in 1978. This is a good work with some nice examples. But none of these, in my humble opinion, even scratch the surface, relative to Goodman’s work.

In 1975 a well-know Chicago grain floor trader, Eugene Nofri, published The Congestion Phase System. This small but power-packed volume detailed a short term trading method using simple but effective ‘congestion phases’. While not precisely a work on THE RULE it touched - from a different perspective - some of Charlie’s ideas.

Diagram 1-2: A Congestion Phase

[I mention Nofri’s work also because Charlie was especially taken by its simplicity and because it can work well in conjunction with GCSC. The idea of melding GCSC with a congestion phase approach ought to produce a method of finding those high percentage ‘ducks’ that the Belgian Dentist so much loves! Charlie also felt that Hadady’s work on Contrary Opinion was a natural ‘fit’ especially since the GCSC support and resistance points seldom lie where anyone else thinks they should.]

Still, in the end, it was left for Charles B. Goodman, the great grain trader from Eads, Colorado to extract all the logical consequences from THE RULE and transform it into a robust, almost geometrically precise system.

The logic of THE RULE is quite simple. At a 50% retracement, both buyers and sellers of the previous trend (Up or Down) are ceteris paribus ‘in balance’. Half of each holds profits and half of each holds losses.

Diagram 1-3: A Market Tug of War

The equilibrium is a tenuous one, indeed. The distribution of buyers and sellers over the initial price trend or swing is obviously not perfectly even: Some buyers hold more contracts than other buyers. They have also different propensities for taking profits or losses. Nor does it account for the buyers and sellers who have entered the market before the initial swing or during the reaction swing. Not all of the buyers and sellers from the original swing may be in the market any longer.

Remarkably, GCSC eventually takes all of this into account - especially they buyers and sellers at other price swing levels, called matrices.

Nevertheless, the 50% retracement point IS often a powerful and very real point of equilibrium and certainly a ‘known and defined hot spot’ of which one should be aware. Remember both the futures markets and the currency markets are very close to a zero-sum game’. It is only commissions, pips and slippage that keep them from being zero-sum. At the 50% point it doesn’t take much to shift the balance of power for that particular swing matrix.

THE RULE also states the final (3rd) swing of the move - back in the direction of the initial swing - will equal the value of the initial swing. The logic of this idea, called the ‘measured move’ is seen in the following diagram. At the ‘D’ point one side (in this case the buyers) have won and the sellers are ‘wiped out.’

Diagram 1-4: The Measured Move and ‘Unwinding’

As we have alluded to examples of THE RULE occur at ALL price levels or matrices and many are being ‘worked’ simultaneously in any given ongoing market. This is a critical point. In modern terminology it would be said that price movements are ‘recursive’. Simply stated this means that without labeling you could not really tell the difference between a 10-minute chart and a daily or weekly chart - they all exhibit the same behavior and operate under the same principles of Parameter and Matrix.

The bar graphs below were taken from actual market data. It is functionally impossible to tell apart the time units, with respect to the chart action.

Diagram 1-5: The Markets are Recursive

Now we can begin to informally define SIX of the SEVEN CONCEPTS in THE RULE that Mr. Goodman used to construct GCSC. What had been neglected by previous theorists, users, writers and purveyors of THE RULE was this:

The 50% point is indeed an equilibrium point. As such, the equilibrium must ‘give way’ BUT EITHER SIDE (buyers or sellers) in either a downtrend or an uptrend may prevail at any given matrix or price level.

Goodman realized both the possibilities for a REVERSAL (as in the case of the completed measured move) and a PRICE SURGE. A price surge would be the equivalent to the sellers (in an uptrend) and the buyers (in a downtrend) winning the tug of war within a matrix. In price action this means prices would fall or rise to at least the beginning point of the initial swing!

Diagram 1-6: Price Surge - The FIRST Concept

In other words - the measured move is not a done deal - the 50% retracement (Diagram 1-1a) could also become a ‘V’ or inverted ‘V’ as in the next diagram. The 50% retracement is not a reversal point (necessarily) but should be considered as a ‘point of interest’ where prices may be more likely than randomly to decide whether to continue or reverse.

It may not sound like much, but it is a major discovery.

Clearly price surges are implicit in THE RULE. But they are not visible on a chart unless you are looking for them and unless you are considering the 50% retracement as a ‘point of interest’ and not necessarily a reversal. In fact, most practitioners perceive a price surge as a failure of THE RULE!

Even more importantly, Goodman discovered the implications of THE RULE occurring simultaneously at all price levels. I remember EXACTLY the day and place when Charlie showed me this one - it hit me as truly a grand revelation on the markets!

Diagram 1-7: THE RULE at Multiple Levels (Matrices) of Operation - The SECOND Concept

Here you are: The initial (primary) trend and secondary (reaction trend) as well as reversals (measured moves) and surges are relative to price matrix context. What is one thing in one price matrix may well be its opposite in a higher (or lower) matrix.

(It’s true - Elliot Wave Theory contains the same concept. But with GCSC you can tell BEFORE (in many instances) which it is. In Elliot you can only tell AFTER. GCSC is a predictive system, while Elliot - grand and elegant as it is - is primarily a descriptive system.)

All Price Matrices (levels) - in theory - are part of a larger price matrix,

All Price Matrices composed of smaller price matrices

Of course there is the practical limitation of the smallest possible fluctuation.

Besides Reversals and Surges GCSC matrix concepts include Domination and Generation.

Clearly prices do not always seem to find any kind of equilibrium at the 50% retracement price area. Or, so it may seem. This leads to the third Grand discovery:

The extent a price swing overshoots or undershoots its ideal 50% retracement that price value will be ‘made up’ on the next price swing within the matrix.

Now THIS is the trading rule that can make you rich!

For example, if prices fall only 40% of the initial trend and reverse, the measured move will actually be either 90% or 110% of the measured move point and value of the primary (initial swing in the matrix. The 10% difference - GCSC holds - MUST be made up eventually. This is the concept of Compensation.

Diagram 1-8: Examples of Compensation within a Matrix - The THIRD Concept

Furthermore: If the difference is not fully made up in the final price swing of a matrix the cumulative ‘miss’ value will carry over through each price subsequent price matrix until it does. This is the concept of Carry Over. A ‘carryover’ table is used to add and subtract cumulative carry over values until they cancel.

Diagram 1-9 Carry Over - The FOURTH Concept

When no Carry Over remains, the price matrix is said to have ‘cleared’ or ‘cancelled’. This is the GCSC concept of Cancellation. Cancellation is critical to finding GCSC support and resistance points and other chart ‘hot spots’ where something much less than random is likely to occur.

Diagram 1-10: Cancellation - The FIFTH Concept

The exact method for these important concepts is more fully described in this article, Part 2.

We can now get an early glimpse of what the strange brackets on Charlie’s charts were all about.

Diagram 1-11: Meaning of the Brackets Revealed

Charlie had even more ideas:

The importance of a ‘hot spot’ in relationship to its likelihood of being an important point of support or resistance, reversal or continuation, increased when two or more price matrices cancel at the same price or same price area. This is the key concept of Intersection. There is no analogous concept in Elliot, the most common ‘competitor’ to GSCS. Intersection makes GSCS much more objective and testable than other swing systems.

Diagram 1-12: Intersections - The SIXTH Concept

This article has covered micro formations. Charlie also had compiled a dozen or so extremely valuable macro formations - combinations of micros.

I encourage the reader to examine some charts and find simple areas of the intersection of two (or three) matrices. You will see at once that these points are GOLDEN to the trader. If I had, after 30 years of studying the markets one idea to impart it would be to show you an example of a GSCS intersection in 2 or 3 matrices.

Remember, Carry Over is to the same or NEXT larger price matrix. The above are examples of Independent Intersections. That is, each price level Carry Over calculation is kept separate from the others and ‘tallied’ at the end of each matrix. Charlie had also developed (much less precisely) a concept of Dependent Intersections but it is quite complex, beyond the scope of this article and worth of further codification into software at a future date.

If you would like more information on Parts II and III, comprising a complete tutorial on GSCS, or if you have questions, I would be happy to hear from you.

News Trading

I want to explain to you how so-called News Trading is the latest method devised by the marketing wizards to take your money.

The more subtle marketing wizards package it very scientifically. They use impressive looking historical statistics to show how price action unfolded immediately after certain economic data releases. See the pattern, they trumpet, and make money from it.

The less subtle approach explains how to beat the gun with proprietary data feeds on supposedly important data releases. In reality, most of these data releases have never had any significant impact on the forex market before, but despite this, the marketing wizards invite you to join them in the shoot-out by paying a monthly subscription in the belief that this will help you beat the market makers.

Before I go any further in showing you how to really lose your money, your mind and your interest in this most lucrative market, let me just tell you why I think you can pay attention to what I have to say on the topic. Apart from the fact that I describe in my book, Bird Watching in Lion Country – Retail Forex Trading Explained (BWILC), the absolute necessity of real-time analysis and the folly of basing a trading strategy for the long-term on very short-term technical analysis indicators - or other illusionary patterns - I also explain a term which I coined: “relational analysis”. This simply means that, if you are trading forex, you have to relate three things all the time: price, time and events.

News trading as a concept has mainly to do with “events” and specifically with those anticipated events that cause prices to move more than usual, but only briefly - brief even in terms of short-term trading. News trading as offered by the marketing wizards takes this concept and then distorts it to rob you of your money.

Non-farm payrolls: March 1998

My mentor is an institutional bond trader who has a simple view on technical analysis: “if the prices are high, it may be time to sell and if the prices are low it may be a time to buy”. (He amusingly referred to traders’ screens filled with every conceivable squiggle, line and indicator as Playboys – dirty pictures.)

The point he was making is that trading decisions were not made based on technical analysis other than for the basic positioning it could give you as regards where the price is now, relative to where it has been recently. If you are closely monitoring the market you will have a feel for this anyway, but charts are helpful for a quick snapshot picture.

Noting and being acutely aware of upcoming economic data releases was one of the main elements of his analysis and approach to understanding the market and price action. This is what he based his trading decisions on. At the time I started trading in 1998 I was only vaguely aware of things like CPI, PPI, trade balance, money supply, and unemployment – all the things that give economists and analysts that warm and fuzzy feeling – but I quickly acquired an interest, figured out what each of them meant and started using the Sunday papers’ business section to monitor releases and follow the comments.

At this stage I was trading bonds on margin here in South Africa.

I had no live real-time price feed, nor a charting service. After a few months I got a pager-based informational price feed which was about as real-time as you could get. In addition to price changes it also informed me of economic data releases. If you saw a price change occour that made you to want to trade, you used the phone to call the broker - who wasn’t in the primary business of fielding these sorts of calls - and so, if you were lucky you got through to someone who was willing to help, and that help usually took the form of discussing how stupid your anticipated trade was.

My dumbest trading idea ever

Now, you have to understand, there is a psychological element to all of this. Big price moves are exciting – and they lure traders. If you could figure out how the prices would react to the data releases you might just have it made, I thought. But my mentor explained to me why this was about my dumbest idea. Of course I knew everything, and disagreed. “Look”, I said “Here are all the examples, I have this cracked.” But I didn’t. And he explained to me why. Let me first give you some background.

One of the things that I realized when looking into the phenomenon of News Trading (2006 retail FX version) was that it was brand new in the forex market (you’ll see how new below.) I have been watching economic data and its effect on short-term forex pricing since I started in forex in 2000/1. I did this because this is the genetic code of the forex market. Very early on I bought a book by Brian Kettell, “What drives the Currency Markets”? This book contains a dedicated chapter on the phenomenon of expected economic data releases and the academic research on their impact on the US dollar, in the very short term and also in the longer run. With the right perspective of the market all data releases make sense, as do price action around these data releases. (I am not talking about the on-the-release spikes.)

When I decided to write this newsletter, something prompted me to go to my 1999 diary in which I did some initial, and to me, important research on price behaviour and relating different markets’ influences on the market I was involved in (the South African government bond market). And then I almost fell on my back. What did I see?

On Friday 5 March 1999 at 15:30 local time I wrote:

“US Employment as expected. 14.16% à 14.11% !!!!”

I was referring to the non-farm payrolls report. My note indicated that it had come out as expected and my exclamation marks indicated that it had triggered a relatively big price move on the South African bond market.

Consciously or unconsciously, relating price, event and time has been a part of my trading from the very beginning and a constant feature of my analysis. It has become the genetic code of my 4 X 1 strategy and relational analysis. I watched the effect of the non-farm payrolls for probably 5 to 6 years before many so-called forex gurus caught on. In fact, many of them mechanically recited the mantra “don’t trade on a Friday, play golf” until quite recently.

If repetition is the mother of all learning, my news watching experience may have been behind what I said to my clients in my Daily Briefing (GMT 06:00) on non-farm payrolls (GMT 12:30) October 6, 2006:

You can also rest assured that the new bread of news traders will have an increasing tussle with their clearinghouses - a fight the news traders will lose and due to the historical sentiment that the jobs report is the big one, the day that April / May 2003/4 - can't exactly remember which one - will be repeated and the blood will be flowing is nearing. Someone is going to get sick of it and run the market and shake out every trade straddle and news trader trick in a million mile radius ...

The following is a visual representation of what happened with that release:

Fig 1: Shoot-out on FX Street

The last 30 minute candle gives the picture. In the bottom right corner the time is indicated as 08:40:29. The data release was at 08:30 and the pre-release price was 1.2670 (EURUSD). The action during these ten minutes dwarfs the preceding price action of more than 60 hours. According to News Trading 2006, the spike from 1.2670 to 1.2710 should have had follow-through as the increase in non-farm payrolls was only 50,000 whereas 125,000 was expected. Even a significant adjustment to the previous month simply negated the impact of the 50,000 and brought the month’s net adjustment in line with the three month average. (This supposedly should have resulted in a “no trade” due to no volatility. Big revisions to previous jobs reports are a standard feature and part of the expectations.)

My dumbest trading idea ever - reborn: Class of 2006 News Traders

The idea of doing something on News Trading came to me after I had launched my Bird Watching Newsletter in August 2006. The first two newsletters covered the topic of leverage. I didn’t know what I was going to do for the third. And then it came to me as a flash-back to my days as an early bond trader, how I was going to beat the market. Dumb idea, the dumbest I have ever had. That was then, now it is 2006, but history is repeating itself. There are a lot of newbies thinking they are sitting on the best idea since sliced bread, but as they’ll find out, they are just being plain dumb.

I cottoned on to the revival of the “dumbest trading idea ever” (2006 version) when one of my clients who was trading a live account contacted me on the Instant Messenger, with an ominous “what’s happening here?” “Here” was the market and a recent data release, and “what was happening” was basically nothing. Yet my client was bothered. Why? (As background I should perhaps just mention that my main source of real-time information and analysis is CNBC Europe. All economic data releases are discussed beforehand, flashed instantaneously, and analysed afterwards. My television is near me, either with the sound on (not very often), or with the sound way down, which allows me to see the ticker and news flashes.)

So for a moment I was taken aback by the client’s question because as far as I knew nothing had happened and, the way I had anticipated it, nothing was supposed to happen. It was some minor data release in the US of no real consequence for forex and the release was basically as expected. However, zooming in on my very short-term charts I saw there had been a flurry of price action around this mundane data release and a relatively significant spike and then a reversal but, all said, no big deal, yet my client was anxious. Why?

And then the penny dropped. News Trading had become the big new thing. I should have picked it up, the signs were all around me. Marketing wizards were punting it. Bird Watching affiliates had become big on “News Trading” recently. I checked and sure enough, there had been a number of recent referrals from those sites. New clients increasingly had “News Trading” in their vocabulary. I should have seen it earlier, but there it was, the new manifestation of my old dearest and dumbest trading idea ever, the News Traders of 2006.

And where News Trading is present, sorrow, loss and confusion is never far behind. It was all so familiar. Of course it was much sexier now with instant information, many different feeds to choose from, analysts by the dozen, gurus by the bagful, and those exhilarating 1 minute and 5 minute tick charts tracking the rising and falling account equity of 1 minute-a-day News Trading “millionaires”, but the results were the same: people losing money.

Hop-a-long Cassidy and the Forex Kid

At school I read cowboy books. The only author I can remember now is the legendary Louis L’Amour.

Crossfire Trail; Showdown at Yellow Butte; Last Stand at Papago Wells; The First Fast Draw; The Quick and the Dead; The Sacketts; Hanging Woman’s Creek and many more.

If you haven’t read the books I am sure you would have at least seen a traditional western movie. The plot is pretty simple. There are cowboys and there are crooks. The crooks come to town and cause havoc. In ride the cowboys and you know the shooting is about to start. All the decent folk get out of the way, mothers grab children off the street, stores close, windows are boarded, old people get off the boardwalk, someone peeks from behind a curtain. There is danger in the air, and before you can say “shoot-out”, Main Street is cleared. The action starts, guns blaze, the bad guys turn tail. And sometimes there is an interesting sub-plot - some testosterone driven wannabe Kid with a gun joins in. He’s been told beforehand not to, but he can’t be dissuaded. He reckons he’s slick with a fast draw but he’s just an amateur. He comes up against the pros and the result is a dead Kid.

One of L’Amour’s books is called The Daybreakers … sounds a bit like The Day Traders.

The Class of 2006 News Traders know when there will be a shoot-out, they know it is going to be ugly, but they can’t be talked out of it. They’re the wannabe Kid. Don’t join the shoot-out, the greybeards tell them, but no, they know better.

The problem with shoot-outs is that so much can happen and there is a lot that can go wrong. For instance, the other guy can be faster on the draw. But he can also have a back-up man somewhere behind you, just in case. Crooks come in pairs (as do currencies). Shoot-outs are unpredictable, lead flying in all directions, and the only guy who benefits is the funeral parlour owner (the forex broker?).

News Trading 2006 version

As far as I can see there are two main strategies used by the Class of 2006 News Traders.

Strategy 1 – The fast draw

This dumb strategy asserts that by being quicker than the broker who gives you the prices to trade on, you can actually make money on a variety of data releases.

This can’t be done consistently, but people fool themselves into thinking it can with one or two text book examples, and using the perfect science of hindsight.

Strategy 2 – follow the leader

This strategy, equally unsuccessful, believes that if the prices go in one direction after the news release they will in the vast majority of cases continue to do so. This, despite good evidence that price action following data release is pretty much a random walk. Of course, this is not enough to deter Hop-a-long Cassidy and the Forex Kid, and they will grimly hang in there until the last bit of life blood is drained from their account.

Slick marketing wizardry shows technicolour examples of fantastic big directional moves on news releases according to the classic News Trading models, ie, the straight forward shootout. Recently however the reviews of their trades are punctuated, with “classical reversals” (being shot in the back?), exceptions to the rule, and other qualifications - only the traders using the professional services offered at a price (like opening and funding a live trading account) are privy to this “inside info”. In other words, simplistic marketing is used to lure Forex Kid to the shoot-out and the moment he arrives he is caught in a deadly crossfire. Doesn’t this sound ominously like the intra-day technical analysis models touted by the self-same forex marketing wizards?

Why do Hop-a-long Cassidy and Forex Kid keep ending up in the mortuary?

It is simply a fact, based on statistical probabilities, that when there is more than a certain amount of lead flying about, you will be hit.

When the shoot-out of data releases starts, the wise old men of Forex Town, sitting on the veranda’s day in and day out watching the daily lives of Forex Town’s folks, vacate Main Street. That is why they are old – remember the adage: there are old traders and there are bold traders but there are no old bold traders.

Many readers (at least all those who have read Bird Watching in Lion Country) know that one of the major delusions of retail forex created by the marketing wizards is that the forex market is ideal for technical analysis. Every marketing wizard trick was initially built on this illusion. People with a deep understanding of technical analysis, which most starry-eyed newbies in the forex market don’t have, know that one of the pillars of technical analysis is accurate volume information. If a move occours on high volume it is much more meaningful than a move on low volume (because a move supported by volume is likely to continue and not peter out in a false break).

Where’s the volume control?

In the spot forex market there is no reliable real-time volume information available, particularly on the retail level. Notwithstanding this, extreme importance is given to technical analysis by the marketing wizards and volume was simply substituted by fast price moves, which, I might tell you, is a wholly inadequate replacement. In other words, a relatively large / fast intra-day price move is seen as extremely important - it must have been on large volume, the argument goes. This, however, is bogus. A large, fast move in the forex market can be caused by almost anything.

Believing it is volume just because the price is moving fast and far, will cost you dearly.

On an intra-day level, fast and relatively large price moves are usually caused by a lack of liquidity. In fact it is a situation of lower, not higher volume and the pros actually don’t like trading if they feel the liquidity is thin and they are not getting the prices they want.

Volume in the currency market can come from two sources: either very large single transactions by a single or handful of participants with the same objectives, or many participants with smaller transactions with the same objectives at any given time. If you for one moment think a number of rational, professional money managers, traders or executing agents will use an erratic data release to do large transactions, you will seriously have to rethink even your most basic assumptions about the forex market. Since 2001 there has been an explosion in general forex market volumes and a large portion of this increase was due to the growth in the numbers of hedge funds and smaller money managers like Commodity Trading Advisors (CTA). It is certainly fair to assume that this large increase in the number of participants contributed to both better liquidity and larger volatility across all time frames in the FX market.

Nobody in his right mind, with his business or bonus at stake, is going to do highly leveraged trades and take undue risks when price movements are random. You have to understand that this is simply not how professional investors or traders, responsible for other people’s money, trade. Highly leveraged gambles on intra-day events are just not part of their repertoire. These guys are pros, and if it is not part of their repertoire, it should not be part of yours.

Don’t trust your mother, but trust your forex counter party

Because the forex market is not a centralized exchange regulated by exchange rules which assure participants that their transaction will be honoured, you have to trust your counter party. What makes this dynamic so interesting is that your counter party also has to trust you and that if this mutual trust is violated someone is going to come short.

Unfortunately retail traders are prone to seek opportunities to exploit the perceived faults in their counter parties’ armour. The moment that this threatens the sustained profitability of the counter party these schemes fall flat – they always have and they always will.

Scalper arbitrage was probably the first of these schemes. As marketing wizards competed to lure more clients, they decreased spreads and margin requirements which opened opportunities for arbitrage pip scalpers to enter the fray using a variety of tricks at the expense of their counter party – the market maker. The pip scalpers had fantastic demo account track records. Things changed the moment the market makers’ (real) money was on the table. This was probably the first fight that the retail traders (the pip scalpers) lost hands down against the market makers, who simply instructed their dealers to identify the pip scalpers who didn’t heed the warnings, and take them out. Problem solved.

The second one was straddling news releases. The thing the retail traders tried to exploit was marketing wizards luring clients with guaranteed fixed spreads and guaranteed stops. It was basically just the US non-farm payrolls that really attracted this group a few years ago. They would place entry orders on both sides of the market just before the data release. Apparently a win-win scenario. So what did the market makers do? They refused to guarantee that they would execute your price on the level you had entered it. As a result they could enter you at a bad price and then take you out on the stop on the retracement and even if you then made money on the other leg of the straddle, it was hardly enough for you to cover your loss on the first stopped-out leg.

However, systemic risk for the market maker remained a problem. If a few hundred or thousand retail traders take 100:1 and 200:1 bets on a data release, the market maker became seriously exposed. Market makers are there to make money, not to run the risk of blowing up on one economic data release.

The problem was that they had to cover themselves against the positions taken by the non-farm payroll straddlers by hedging their exposure at their own clearing houses. Now you try to convince a big bank dealer to take a huge position one minute before non-farm payrolls release. He will send you packing. So the market makers couldn’t off-set their risk and thus had to carry the risk of huge and highly leveraged positions themselves. One bit of bad luck and a whole month’s profits could be wiped out.

The market maker makes the rules

There was a particular non-farm payrolls day a few years ago during which, just before the release, the market was run up about 60 or 70 points and on the data release it was run down about 150 points. Blood flowed on “Forex Street”. The shoot-out was rigged. Rumours abounded that a large futures company caused this outrageous price movement. The market makers had had enough and changed the rules of the game to restore order and prevent news release straddles that could harm them.

How did they do this? Well, they made adjustments to their business practices and their contractual arrangements with clients. Spreads are fixed under normal market conditions and so stops will be honoured under normal market conditions, but not under abnormal market conditions – market makers were free to widen their spreads and thereby pass the risk on to the trader. Sometimes they simply wouldn’t allow traders from entering orders shortly before keenly watched data releases. And the decision as to what constitutes normal and abnormal market conditions rests exclusively with the retail forex market maker. Problem solved.

The Class of 2006 News Traders vs Market Makers

Straddling is no longer an option, so News Traders do the next best thing. They try to beat the gun by guessing the direction of the market’s first move, and then they try to benefit with highly leveraged positions.

There are a few challenges, however:

Being fastest on the draw. This means you need to get a good price close to the pre-release price and before your market maker removes the arbitrage opportunity (initial price spike according to News Trading theory) in an instant.

Being fastest on the draw also means you have to draw faster than the rest of the mob trying the same thing. The risk of them jumping the gun enters the equation.

Before you can actually start drawing to shoot, you have to decide what this data release actually means and how all those who react after you, will react to the data release. What will have the main and immediate affect, the headline or the details?

In other words you must take a guess if this data release will indeed cause a large enough move for you to risk taking the highly leveraged position and secondly, you have to guess correctly the direction of this move vis-à-vis the US dollar.

Opportunists who can see what is going on don’t try to jump the gun but jump in counter the first spike, causing more erratic price movements.

Here is a challenge for anybody who thinks he is going to make a living by consistently beating the odds in a well-publicised shootout with the ever-evolving dynamics I have described above.

Let’s assume you will be able to beat the gun and regularly get an extremely good fill on your news trade. All you will be dependent on then is to analyse the market correctly to understand if the first spike will be up or down (let’s look at it from a USD perspective).

How do you determine that? Well that’s the question, and it doesn’t have a simple answer, despite what the News Trading gurus, analysts and TV talking heads say. There are simply too many factors playing a role: the history of this particular data release, expectations, how far expectations are off or might be off, the actual figures of the data release, the expectations’ reaction to its own expectations, the expectations reaction to the data, it just goes on and on until the final result is just another bout of randomness.

If you don’t believe me try tossing a coin over a period long enough to get a representative sample and then compare your results with that of your guru’s.

News Traders – architects of their own demise.

Let’s look at the dynamic the Class of 2006 News Traders cause in the FX market:

They don’t straddle the market beforehand. They jump in the market on the data release mostly in the same direction (there aren’t many gurus promoting this loony method to lose money). What happens? They cause a sudden great demand for a currency, let’s say euro. As a result euro’s price spikes up - I am talking a few seconds. Our news traders’ orders get filled usually at a worse price than they had hoped for but nevertheless they are in the market and then two things happen – this is before most professionals, still looking at the details of the release, even paid attention to the immediate price action. First this sudden demand just vanishes, so there is no upwards momentum to cause the follow-through the news traders hope will give them their measly pip target on their highly leveraged position. Secondly the weak “highly leveraged” hands with a few pips profit decide to get out, and in a wink there is suddenly euro supply and a turnaround materialises.

During all of this you have a market maker trying to make a decent market for decent clients and now having to manage this crazy action in a traditionally illiquid market. It took a very prominent forex market maker specialist - in fact the one currently with the highest net capital according to the CFTC reporting - about two months to figure out that they have a bunch of hooligan traders on their hands that could cause them serious damage. Their response, as I mentioned above, was to start fooling around with the spreads in order to discourage and chase away News Traders.

Fixed and floating spreads are a topic of a future newsletter, but understand this: widening spreads, thus increasing the cost and the risk to deal, is a basic protection mechanism of the forex market. In the week following 9/11 the New York Stock Exchange was closed as a protective measure against market meltdown. The forex market increased the spreads to 30 - 40 pips on the most popular pairs and 80 – 100 pips on the less liquid pairs.

News Trading is fundamentally an arbitrage opportunity, but like all arbitrage opportunities it will vanish very quickly if the market catches on. There is already evidence that this is happening and this evidence is clear from the reporting of the sudden change in fortunes of some of the gurus now selling this as a subscription opportunity. Whereas past records are reportedly flawless, recent records are certainly not.

In this case, just as with the initial pip scalpers, the arbitrage is basically a duel between the mob of retail traders and their market maker. There will only be one winner.

The death knell for News Trading as a popular strategy

Why do people latch on to News Trading? Because they buy the pitch sold to them by marketing wizards that News Trading is the new way to become a consistent winner. There is no other reason. Unfortunately marketing wizards have already realized that News Trading can make good money for them (but not for you). Here is the proof:

One of the biggest forex marketing wizard companies is behind the popularisation of the 2006 News Trading fad. You must understand that News Trading only makes sense if it is done highly leveraged and very regularly. According to this specific crowd you must push the leverage and you must, wait for this, “place close stops”, because “it will be suicide to use the high leverage without close stops”. (And this is true, but it is only a half-truth, and as with all half-truths it is the other half that kills you.) If this strategy were to be put forward by an individual he would appear foolish. But touted and encouraged by a market maker and their introducing brokers it appears legitimate and savvy.

I downloaded a free report some two years ago from a company. The report gave statistical evidence regarding very short-term price behaviour and supports my contention that it is basically random and that there is no edge to be derived from searching for repetitive linear patterns in these very short-time frames. This company has now changed its view on the randomness of short-term price behaviour. Needless to say they now push News Trading. Unlike some outfits who ask subscription fees for their services (guessing which way the market will go after data releases) everything is free, but you must open a trading account to use their automated News Trading service at the big marketing wizards mentioned above. Even documentation prepared by the big marketing wizards above is provided by this company.

It is pretty clear who sits behind the current popularisation of News Trading. The beneficiaries of regular highly-leveraged-tight-stop trading strategies are the market makers and their marketing agents who promote the viability of this kind of hair-brained trading.

(I again want to point out that while professionals may even play along and have a punt on some data releases it will never be a consistent feature of their professional strategy to expose themselves to any great degree. Yet this is what you are encouraged do: take all your trading capital, gear it up like crazy and take a punt on what is essentially an event with a 50 / 50 probability of satisfying your highly leveraged bet. The placement of a close stop practically ensures that in every instance you do not make money, the market maker gets a nice pay out in addition to whatever he made on the spread.)

And that is why I say you can bet your bottom dollar that most fools who try News Trading will lose. Different game, but the same people are selling it. Here is an example of why you should be very afraid.

A prominent and respected analyst at one of the largest market makers (and marketing wizards) wrote an article on News Trading in which the technical analysis approach to intra-day trading is debunked. Now this should make your ears prick up because they were (and still are) the very ones punting it – to take your money. Ever innovative, they have come up with News Trading as the big new thing, though in this research article news trading in the spot forex market is discouraged.

So what is the solution – can retail traders win?

Yes they can win. They can win if they first of all do not fall for the tricks of marketing wizards. In order to be able to do that you must understand the market very well. Secondly you need to have a strategy that is, or has aspects of it, used by professionals. Thirdly, and this is very important - you must not catch the unwanted attention of a market maker. Do not violate the trust relationship that is supposed to exist by trying to exploit weaknesses in the system and create a scenario where your market maker can only lose. He holds the aces because he can change the rules of the game. If you have a strategy that offers a winning edge, you will be able to negotiate this market and make money without resorting to any fundamentally flawed concepts and tactics which attract the sort of attention from your counter party that will end up costing you money.

There is more than one way to make money trading any market and there are a myriad of factors playing a role in being successful, including having a scientific edge, being a master of relevant analysis and working through the constant changes in the markets. Success as a trader does not come cheaply, it does not come overnight and it does not come from running after every fad touted by marketing wizards. Success is hard earned, requiring application of, and dedication to, sound trading and business principles. Bird Watching in Lion Country – Retail Forex Trading Explained is a thorough introduction to what you need in this regard and it explains in sufficient details my strategy and methodology that have served me and my clients well.