A Forex Tutorial on Opening a Forex Account

By Bart Icles

Before you can start trading in the foreign exchange market, you must first be able to open and setup an account. Any forex tutorial will tell you that having a forex account is a prerequisite to trading. Very much like in trading in the equity market, currency trading will require you to open a trading account.

Each forex account, as well as the services that come with it, is different. Therefore, it is important that you are able to determine which one would best suit you. One of the things that will tell you more about the account you are about to open is leverage. Leverage is simply the ability to manage and influence large sums of capital using a relatively small amount of your own capital. One has to remember that the higher leverage means higher levels of risk.

Nevertheless, many forex investors see leverage as a major currency trading benefit because it can allow you to reap large gains even with just minor investments. On the other hand, leverage can also make you lose more than what you have invested if trading moves against you. Although there are firms that have protective stops to keep an account from going negative, it still helps to exercise extra caution. It also helps to remember these two contradicting scenarios when you try to determine your desired leverage when opening a forex account.

Commissions and fees also make trading accounts different. Major forex accounts normally allow you to trade without having to pay a commission fee to the broker. This is possible because in forex trading, you are dealing directly with market makers and you do not need to go through brokers. However, this does not mean that market makers do not earn money each time you engage in trading. When a trade is made, market makers gain the difference between the bid and ask prices.

There are many ways in which forex firms and the accounts that they offer can differ from one another. It is therefore recommended that you carefully evaluate each firm that you potentially would want to deal with before you commit to them. If you look back to your forex tutorial, it will remind you that each firm will deliver different programs, levels of services, and fees that can be above and beyond the actual trading costs. What is important is that you are able to review them well before making a decision, and when you do, see to it that you are dealing with a reputable firm. - 23221

About the Author:

When you learn forex currency trading it starts with a desire to learn and a drive to become a great trader. When you learn forexknow it is fun but takes dedication and a good teacher. But once you learn how to trade and do so successfully your life will change and you have options and financial resources you never had before.

Automated Forex Trading Robots - Can You Trust Them

By Kurt Naulaerts

Do you know why there is so much interest lately on forex trading? Today this market is attracting small and medium investors so banks and other financial establishments are no longer the only players. This market deals with trading the currency of one country for that of another country. This makes it one of the most dynamic financial markets of the world.

Courtesy of the internet, today anyone with web access, a forex brokerage account and some trading experience can participate successfully in forex trading. However to remain on top, it requires constant monitoring as global markets are open round the clock. With the help of these automated systems, you can pick up a currency, it's asking and selling price ahead of any buying. You need an amount as seed money and a broker then your buy and sell orders will be acted upon straight away.

The automatic forex trading systems can help you reap the profits of the market despite the fact that you are not a professional trader. The trading program acts like a human expert and manages the trading for you. Since you do not perform the actual trading yourself, these auto systems help you ave time. A reliable trading platform would let you manage a number of accounts at the same time which is impossible in manual trading. When you want to trade in multiple markets with multiple systems, these programs allow you to do this.

The auto forex trading system allows you the flexibility of trading at any time without your presence. Even when you are absent from your computer, you can not miss a single trade. You can then take full advantage of several forex strategies and varied systems. Each system is designed to be activated by some specific trade factors so you can spread your investment and get maximum returns with minimum risk accordingly.

The best part about these automated forex trading systems is that it does not take into consideration any human factors which often stand in the way of making rational trading decisions. This way you have the ability to manage and monitor several currencies at the same time as well as trade them as you like.

Even when you start using an automated forex trading system, you have to allow time to learn about trading of technical analysis and market indicators, otherwise, you can not make consistent profits. Several factors and conditions control the market, so no automated system can assure you of profits all the time. To suit your personal needs you can always program and customize the automated forex trading system. - 23221

About the Author:

Honest reviews on automated trading software are hard to find. I managed to find a Fap Turbo Review at http://www.thepowhatan.com/fap-turbo-forex-software

Stock Trading And Network Delays

By Lance Jepsen

Computer programmers have created an inexpensive solution for diagnosing delays in data center networks as short as a hundred millionth of a second. These very short delays measured in millionths of a second can cause multi-million dollar losses for investment banks running automatic stock trading systems.

The work was presented on August 20th, 2009 at SIGCOMM. The computer programming method was created by a joint task collaboration between the University of California and Purdue University computer programmers.

This small programming code can detect delays as short as a millionth of a second in a router. The code will also detect packet loss as small and rare as one packet loss in a million. Every router in a data center can run this small code.

The best part about this is that this solution requires no new hardware and has no performance penalty. The computer programmers call their invention the Lossy Difference Aggregator.

Institution stock traders and corporations that sell online stock trading platforms will go crazy for this technology. The reason is that if an online brokerage firm has a stock trading algorithm that reacts to an incoming market data feed even just 100 microseconds faster than the competition, they can buy millions of shares before their competitors.

Online automated exchanges like the American Stock Exchange use custom designed hardware boxes that are very expensive. These boxes are put on routers and key points in a data center network. These external hardware boxes are too expensive to put on every router within a data center network making it difficult to trouble shoot and find a problem router. By the time the problem is detected and fixed, it will cost the company anywhere from 2 to 4 million dollars because of delayed buy and sell orders.

Router vendors will now be able to add this programming code to every router at no extra cost to the customer. Expensive external router monitoring hardware will no longer be needed.

The way a router's performance is measured now is that an external hardware device tracks when a packet arrives and when it leaves and then takes the difference of those times.

Instead of summing the arrival and departure times of all packets traveling through a router, the computer programmers new system randomly splits incoming packets into groups and then adds up arrival and departure times of each of the groups separately. As long as the number of losses is smaller than the number of groups, at least one group will give a good estimate.

Calculating the difference of the groups arrival and departure times and then dividing by the total number of messages gives a very accurate estimate of the average delay of a given router. This approach requires so little computer programming code that it really is about the same code as a simple counter.

With this computer programming code built into every router, a data center manager will be able to quickly pinpoint the offending router and interface that is adding extra millionth of a second delays or losing even one packet in a million. - 23221

About the Author:

Written by Lance Jepsen. Learn how to get your revenge on traders that have been taking your money. Get free expert stock trading analysis and tips by going to stock trading

Trading Systems Introduction

By Maclin Vestor

A good trading system is about much more than just selecting stocks. Certainly that is important as well. However, a good trading system will provide the ability for you to protect against losses, manage your money, add proper leverage when necessary, and also select a stock selection maximizing your reward and minimizing your risk.

The guess work is taken out of the way for you. The stock is purchased when criteria is met, the amount of stock purchased is also based on certain criteria. The stock is sold when criteria met, and there are protective measures against a stock's demise, and where possible and appropriate leverage is created to maximize the returns without taking on more risk than you can handle.

This trading system will be talked about in 5 additional parts in addition to this intro. This post is designed to explain the trading system, its functions and how it operates.

1) Exit strategy. Every good system trader will first know the exit strategy. It doesn't matter what vehicle selection you use, if you have no exit strategy, you're stuck. The trick is to understand that unless you want to get trapped in an investment you have to know when you're getting out.

A good exit strategy has both loss protection, and profit taking, and sometimes even a 3rd stop. The first 2 might be a maximum loss, and a maximum gain before taking profits, while the 3rd one will be a trailing stop that rides the gains up, and will sell the remaining shares. There are other exit strategies such as hold forever and write covered calls against it to collect income, or protective puts in place of a stop-loss.

2) Protection. Although #1 covers most of the protection, there are several other ways to protect yourself. Protection is vital to allow you to stay in the game. Many people know that if you lose 20% you need a 25% gain to make up for it. Losses not only can result in a series of losses that wipe you out, but they also hinder your ability to gain in the future. a 95% loss for example requires a 2000% nearly impossible goal to make up for this loss. So even if you flip a coin and have a 50% chance of gaining 200% or 50% chance of losing 95% of it, you should probably not take it if all your money is at risk, because it doesn't have the downside protection A series of wins followed by 1 loss would prevent your ability to stay in the game. Even though those odds SEEM fair, they are not without proper protection. Protection ensures that you won't have that 95% loss, and it absolutely restricts that loss to a fixed amount, rather than take 100% risk.

Such forms of protections are writing calls, in this situation you are given a premium so if the stock tanks to zero in a worst case scenario you'd still end up with the premium, this is minimal protection, and only protects a marginal amount of decline before the losses continue. The other form of protection would be buying a protective put. This actually in fact does protect against catastrophic losses. The lower your stock goes if/when it crashes, the more you make from your put or puts. You are the one paying a small amount in order to protect against any sort of decline below the designated price. The lower this price, the cheaper the option. If a stock is at $50 and you buy a protective put at a strike price of 40, you will NOT be protected against losses from 50 to 40, but beyond that you will be protected to the downside.

These are somewhat more sophisticated forms of protection. Basic forms of protection are diversifying, and perhaps being short. If you buy a stock at $100, and you short one in the same sector at $100, if the whole sector goes up, you are betting not that the market will go up, not that the sector will go up, but that stock A that you are long will outperform stock B in a bull market, and stock B will under perform stock A in a down market. This offers protection although it may limit the gains as well, Plus, you actually have to be right in your thesis.

In addition, if you are short, and the stock market booms, you may get a margin call and be forced to sell. Also, if you do not use money management, you are at risk of a short term swing requiring you to sell all of your shares of the stock that went up, in order to pay for those that you were short that went up, and if you can't cover your short, your entire account is in jeopardy of being wiped out.

So rather than being short, I recommend replacing it with buying put options, although this has lots of risks involving time decay as well that you must understand before investing. Using a business entity such as a C Corp or a LLC is another form of protection that can protect you potentially against higher taxes, and personal financial trouble such as a bankruptcy on your record if you intend on using forms of leverage such as loans.

3) Money Management and Control. A good trading system will have a form of control. it will allow you to not give up that control when things go bad. In other words, it allows you to manage your money. Money management is very important. Perhaps one of the most important things is position sizing. If you buy $10,00 of stock for one stock when you only have $10,000 in your account this is very poor money management. Continue to do this, and eventually you will suffer a large loss which will be great, and it will be very difficult to gain enough to make up for it. In addition, if the price goes lower depending on your system, you may want to give yourself flexibility. Extra cash on the sides is another form of money management. It doesn't have to be cash per say, but some form of safety. Various forms of currency, sometimes some gold, bonds, and money market accounts that are all fairly liquid would be a few examples.

4) Leverage Leverage is about using your abilities to gain, the strength of your trading system and various tools to minimize risk, and increase gain. When you take on leverage, you should be able to reduce your position size in comparison to your capital, and still have a similar reward or gain.

Forms of leverage include options, the further out of money option you purchase, the more leverage you have if that stock does make a strong move. You can also sell options to raise capital to invest in some cases.

Another from of leverage is a loan. Whether it's a credit card, a home equity loan, going on margin, or a business loan for an asset holding company, or even taking a company public and using the capital to invest, the idea is to gain money at x% and to invest it and make a greater return than x%. if you can do this, and manage money well, and protect yourself, Your gain is only limited to the amount of capital you can borrow at the maximum of slightly less than what you expect to gain. Generally however, if you use a loan, you should have a form of cash flow or income that will cover the costs of the loan just in case your investment goes wrong. That's another form of money management while using leverage. Money management should be treated much differently under different forms of leverage.

5) Finally, the stock selection vehicle. You need some method to select your vehicle, based on this and your other factors you will determine time horizon and a methodology of trading. The system will help you choose your trading stocks, and exactly what to do with them. You can play around with different trading systems, but generally you should first attempt a good exit strategy and make sure your controls on parts 1-4 of your trading system are sound, and try tweaking them

Stock Trading Systems that are well defined will leave very little room for error. If you learn to use a trading system, you can choose to enhance the essential skills it takes to making your trading system better.

Unfortunately, many day traders are slaves to the computer screen and can miss a moment. Focus on building the better trading system, and not placing the better trade, and you will give yourself some valuable time. If you are really using a system, you don't need to be the one to place the trades, and can instead higher someone to do the work for you. You can use that extra time to improve your system, or find new ways to invest, or learn how to become a better trader.

You can learn other tips like this at the System Trading|Stocks Trading Systems blog, which is full of tips for day trading, options, swing trading, momentum trading, and advice on building a trading system. - 23221

About the Author:

Maclin Vestor teaches about How To Buy Stock Online. You can even learn about virtual stock markets and advice on the Stock Market For Beginners at his blog.

Debt Consolidation

By Bob Jones

Debt consolidation offers borrowers the opportunity to get out of serious debt and to regain charge of their lives again. Many people owe a lot of money and frequently scrabble to find ways to repay their debts. Debt consolidation opportunities are frequently the wisest choice in this case, as they can aid debtors pay off both secured and unsecured loans.

Debt consolidation offers debtors the opportunity to reorganize their lives along with their debts. If they choose to go with one of the debt consolidation options, then a qualified company representative will help them combine their bills into one convenient monthly instalment.

The various debt management options can assist you by fixing the interest rates on your personal loans, mortgage loans, credit cards, and other loans. To summarize, debt consolidation is that you will pay off your debt sooner and have more cash left over later.

If you own a home and your credit is bad, you may want to find a bad credit mortgage lender to help you reduce your monthly instalments and interest rates. However, be careful because some mortgage lenders will increase your rate of interest and mortgage instalments while claiming to reduce your bills.

There are, however, loans available that do provide genuine options, such as early pay-offs, cash back loans, lower interest rate loans, lower monthly mortgage payments, etc. Yet, lenders are well aware that families can sometimes run into problems and instead of taking advantage of this, they will work hard to help them get out of debt and raise their credit score. There are also lenders that will combine your mortgage, interest and bills and credit cards into one monthly payment after remortgaging your home.

There will always be some debt consolidation options, so never give up all hope, no matter how bad your situation is. There are many debt consolidation opportunities from different places, such as government or local citizens' advice bureaux; debt counsellors; bank managers; financial advisers, and the Internet. If you are in financial dire straits, you should check out these debt consolidation options very carefully.

Finally, if you are in a debt crisis, don't just give up and accept that you will lose your home, vehicle, and / or business. Instead, become the type of person who tackles problems proactively to find a solution before you get that far in debt. Start seeking out a good debt consolidation expert now. - 23221

About the Author:

If you have fallen on hard times and are thinking about debt consolidation assistance, just visit our website called Debt Consolidation and Reduction