Mini Forex Trading Platforms

Thu Dec 04, 2008

:: 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

Central Bank says forex rate set at Hr 7.4-7.5 per U.S. dollar considered to ... Kyiv, Dec. 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) - The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) says it intends to protect the forex rate set at Hr 7.4-7.5 per U.S. dollar, the head of the group of advisors to the NBU Governor, Valeriy Lytvytsky said.
updated on 4 Dec 2008 at 3:56am

Forex Automated Trading Signals Sell GBP/USD With Breakout2 (Daily FX) Our Forex Automated Trading Signals sold the British Pound against the U.S. Dollar using our flagship Breakout2 system. The strategy, which has had a historic 66% accuracy percentage and an average per trade profit of 137.5 pips, appears to be following the downward trend.
updated on 3 Dec 2008 at 11:01pm

Forex Automated Trading Signals Buy Into GBPJPY Range (Daily FX) Our Forex Automated Trading Signals bought the British Pound against the Japanese Yen using the Range1 trade. The trade is currently above par, with 44 pips of P/L at the moment.
updated on 3 Dec 2008 at 9:16pm

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 ]

>> 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

Day Trading For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance)) by Ann C. Logue
Amazon Price: $16.49
Customer Review: Very good book, informative, the right level of detail, well written, easy to ready, a good starting book to learn about day trading.

Forex Patterns & Probabilities: Trading Strategies for Trending & Range-Bound... by Ed Ponsi
Amazon Price: $53.55
Customer Review: Excellent book which everyone who is new to forex trading should read and backtest strategies discussed by the author.

The FX Bootcamp Guide to Strategic and Tactical Forex Trading (Wiley Trading) by Wayne McDonell
Amazon Price: $44.10
Customer Review: I feel I can read it over and over and still find more insight. A lot of information displayed in such a clear manner. A must read for traders at every level!