active forex trading
mini forex trading platforms --> Thu Jul 29, 2010
:: Mini Forex Trading Platforms ::

If you are fairly new to the Forex Market trading a mini forex trading platform is the next logical step after practicing in a demo environment. With smaller trade sizes (1/10th the size of a standard transaction), higher leverage (200:1), and a minimum account deposit of just $250, mini accounts allows you to add the psychological component of trading in a live environment, test your trading strategies(currency trading mechanical system) without risking large amounts of capital, and gain the ability to capitalize on trading opportunities.

Dealing Spreads

Normal dealing spreads are 3-5 pips for the major currency pairs. Using these very low spread mini forex trading platforms means after gaining 3-5 pips your trade is already break-even.

EUR/USD 03 pips EUR/CHF 07 pips
USD/JPY 04 pips EUR/CAD 10 pips
USD/CHF 05 pips EUR/AUD 15 pips
USD/CAD 05 pips GBP/JPY 09 pips
GBP/USD 05 pips GBP/CHF 15 pips
EUR/JPY 04 pips CAD/JPY 10 pips
AUD/USD 04 pips CHF/JPY 09 pips
NZD/USD 04 pips AUD/CAD 10 pips
EUR/GBP 03 pips AUD/JPY 08 pips
NZD/JPY 10 pips AUD/NZD 13 pips



FOREX TRADING NEWS

FOREX-Euro hits 11-week high vs broadly weak dollar FOREX-Euro hits 11-week high vs broadly weak dollar
updated on 29 Jul 2010 at 5:11am

FOREX-Euro hits 11-wk high vs broadly weak dollar FOREX-Euro hits 11-wk high vs broadly weak dollar
updated on 29 Jul 2010 at 3:53am

FOREX-Euro dips vs yen on Japan exporter selling FOREX-Euro dips vs yen on Japan exporter selling
updated on 29 Jul 2010 at 12:30am


Latest TRADING articles

>> How To Think Like A Master Trader
by Tim Wreford

Do you think like a winner or a loser? Here are 6 key elements of a winning trading mindset:

1. Have a trading objective. You must know what you are trying to achieve before you can set about creating a plan to achieve those goals. Are you trying to create a certain level of income from trading or creating a pension fund? Break down your overall aim into achievable steps. Creating an income of $100,000 per year is daunting but breaking that down by 220 trading days (after holidays etc) per year means averaging $450 per day. That's 9 ES points per contract per day or just 1 ES point trading 9 contracts per day. Be realistic with your trading capital.

Once you know what you are trying to achieve you can start to formulate a plan to achieve that goal. You must then have the belief that you will achieve that goal and that confidence comes from a well developed trading plan. The more you visualise your goal being achieved the stronger your belief and confidence will be.

2. Have a trading plan. Your trading plan acts as a road map to achieving your goals. It must be as detailed as possible. Your trading plan also acts as a guide to your daily trading - compare your daily trading performance to your plan and ensure you are still on the right path.

3. Plan each day. Before each trading day starts you must know exactly what you will do in any situation. We don't know what the market is going to do but we can make sure we know what we are going to do. Without a daily plan you will be reacting to the market, you will get in late on moves and panic when the market doesn't do what you want it to. Be pro-active and plan your day in advance - you shouldn't have to make any decisions when the market is open.

4. Monitor results. Regularly compare your actual trading results to your trading plan. Periodically you will find that adjustments will need to be made to your plan to improve it and move you forward towards your goal.
[ read more ]

Advertisement

>> Trading For A Living - Part two
by Geoff Turnbull

In part one of this article I started to look at the financial implications of giving up the day job to instead start trading full time for a living. There are more than just monetary considerations as we will see later, but for now, there are some more costs to ponder.

More Costs!
Let’s move on to equipment. Presumably you already have a PC and internet connection by virtue of the fact you are reading this on the internet. But are these both up to the job of trading full time? Again the specifications for both hardware and ISP will depend largely on your trading style, but if you’re relying on a 100Mhz Pentium II and a dial up service, you’re setting yourself up for failure. So budget for quality equipment, budget to keep it up to spec, and budget for some repairs too – expect the unexpected. Many traders make the mistake of saying “This will do me whilst I start out, and I’ll get something better when I make some real money”. This is quite simply false economy, you are unlikely to ever make real money with a substandard setup (and this applies equally to substandard software and data feeds). This is a cut-throat business and 95% fail, you must give yourself every advantage you can. You wouldn’t enter the Indy 500 in a go-kart with the intention of buying a better car when you’ve won a few races, and the same thing applies here.

Earnings
When you’ve added this all together, you have a pretty good picture of how much money you need to generate from your trading in order to live. Does your past performance suggest you will be able to meet this target? It’s tempting to say “When I go full time I’ll make much more”, but how do you know this is the case? Perhaps you can take a couple of weeks holiday and try it out – if you don’t make enough in that two weeks then you’re not ready. A few weeks really isn’t enough time to know if you’re going to succeed though. An ideal next step then is to cut your day job hours to part time and trade maybe two or three days a week. This way you know you have some money coming in, you get to trade for real, and if it all goes horribly wrong you are probably better placed to get back into full time employment than someone who quit the working world completely.

The option of part time work is a luxury many of us don’t have however. So does it have to be all or nothing – trade or work? Why not keep the day job and trade outside your working hours as well. If you are trading and end of day strategy, then this is easily achieved by doing your research in the evening and placing the appropriate combinations of Stop and Limit orders with your broker. For day traders, certainly practising is easier if your intended market is not your home market, for example if you want to trade the US and you live in the UK where you can come home and paper trade in the evening. There are other try before you buy options open to the day traders who want to practise trading their home market outside of normal hours though. eSignal allows you to download tick data for any symbol and play it back in real time or speeded up so you could trade the whole day in an hour. Other vendors have similar offerings, and if you have an IB account you can use AutoTrader to record tick data during the day for playback into a demo version of SierraCharts or QuoteTracker for free. [read more]

>> IS TRADING JUST A MIND GAME?
You must change your mental attitude first from a normal person to that of a speculator. Almost all traders I have met, except a few successful ones who really made millions and billions trading in the market, simply waste all their time trying to learn the easiest part in perfection, like about how to read data and charts, and trying to perfect entry and exit skills, etc.

But trading is a mind game and without having a right frame of mind, it is a losing game even before it starts. Training a trader’s mind is the first step for any successful trader but almost all new traders neglect that part and that explains why more than 95% of traders are a failure in the long run.

Acquiring the knowledge of the market is not difficult for anyone with average intelligence after a few years of hard study in the market. But it is neither the level of intelligence nor the knowledge that decides the outcome of the market operations of a trader. It is the decision making process that is so hard for most traders to overcome and that is the main reason for a success or a failure for all the traders. Some find it easy to make decisions and stick to it and most find it so hard to make decisions and stick to it.

Unfortunately, any decision making process in trading is a pain-taking process and humans tend to avoid pains and go for pleasures even if for temporary ones. [ ... read more ]

Forex Trading Books
In Association with


Forex Strategy 10: Low Risk/High Return Currency Trading by ROB BOOKER
Amazon Price:
Customer Review: This is the most simple common sense fairly useless Forex book I have ever read, actually its more like a pamphlet. Does not explain 10 strategies, just repeats to try to make 10pips in any trade, which is very hard to do with a 10-pip stop loss in this very fast paced moving mar...
 
Day Trading For Dummies by Ann C. Logue
Amazon Price: $16.49
Customer Review: this book was excellent...it helped me realize this was a profession that just was not for me...saving me countless dollars in mistakes and inefficiencies...it trully paid for itself
 
High Probability Trading Strategies: Entry to Exit Tactics for the Forex, Fut... by Robert C. Miner
Amazon Price: $44.10
Customer Review: This is one of the best book I bought on trading. The method suit my trading style very well as a swing trader. It helps me to systematically identify whether the market is in a trend or correction and what position it is in - at the start, middle or end.
The title of the ...
 
The Ed Ponsi Forex Playbook: Strategies and Trade Set-Ups (Wiley Trading) by Ed Ponsi
Amazon Price: $44.10
Customer Review: The book was full of information. But like the other reviewer said, it was information most average trader already knows. I know that Ed means well and he must of put a lot of effort to write his book, which is not that bad, but I just wish someone would write a book on how the...
 
In Serena's Web by Hooper, Kay
Amazon Price:
Customer Review: This book is one of her early releases through the now defunct Loveswept Romance line. Her ability to take the "formula" of their line and add humor and quick-pacing is what lifted her out into the mainstream of contemporary romance / mystery. But as with Nora Roberts' early st...
 
How to Make a Living Trading Foreign Exchange: A Guaranteed Income for Life (... by Courtney Smith
Amazon Price: $44.10
Customer Review: This book contains some solid forex systems that do make money in the long run, no doubt about that. Even though the author only reveals the backtest of the powerful Conquistador system, most of the other winning trading setups (like the new Donchian system) have been fully backt...
 
Forex Patterns & Probabilities: Trading Strategies for Trending & Range-Bound... by Ed Ponsi
Amazon Price: $53.55
Customer Review: The only reason i wouldnt rate this book a 5 is because some of the strategies discussed are already readily availible on the internet. other than that good back with a good section on money management.
 
Beat the Forex Dealer: An insider's look into trading today's foreign exchang... by Agustin Silvani
Amazon Price: $37.80
Customer Review: The author seems to have been in the forex industry for many years. My guess is that he sat down one weekend and said to himself: "I can write a book about how the forex market works and how the little guy can survive". I give the book four stars because this is the only book tha...
 
The FX Bootcamp Guide to Strategic and Tactical Forex Trading (Wiley Trading) by Wayne McDonell
Amazon Price: $44.10
Customer Review: This book brings a lot of things into perspective and gave me a much better approach to trading.
 

 
Copyright © 2009
www.5p-business.com