Category Archives: General Forex

Option Trading Strategies – One Step Forward

If you are new in the options trading and just got finished with familiarizing with the idea, you might probably be thinking about option trading strategies. Even you have all the basic ideas about options trading, you’ll need a good strategy to make this work for you.

Before you start your trade on option, you must figure out a strategy. Simplest strategy is a long call option. Which is just buying a single call option. But it is just one among many other option trading strategies. Some of them are much more complex, incorporating buying and selling many options, both put and call. In general, they can be divided into three types. One being bullish, which believes the market rates will rise. The next is bearish, which believes the market rates will fall. And the last being neutral, believing the market rates may not change.

As it is said earlier, option trading strategies can be complex and incorporate buying of multiple put and call options, which may increase the chance of profit or decrease the amount of maximum risk. They can all end on same days or different days. Have same strike price or different ones. It all depends on the market understanding of the buyer and their future plan.

An example can demonstrate how a good strategy can be helpful in options trading. Say, you’ve bought a call option and a put option both of a stock at a strike price of $100. If the price of the options are $5 each, your total cost of the option is $10. Now, if the price of the stock increases up to $120, you can exercise the call option and your net gain would be $120 – $10 – $100 = $10. But if the price falls below $80 then you can buy the stock directly at $80 and exercise the put option. In that case also, your gain would be $100 – $80 – $10 = $10. So, if the market moves either way, you can gain from this strategy. Only way you will lose if the market doesn’t change, in that case your risk would be limited to only $10.

A very basic of the option trading strategies is to buy options that are greatly under-priced. In this way, the window of profit increases and the maximum risk amount decreases. Another very important key is the knowledge of what happening in the market. It can enable you to find a position in which the market moves to direction you want. It is not as simple as it sounds, it depends on a thousand factors which can go wrong, but it is a requirement to do successful trading.

So, it is a good idea to know more about various option trading strategies and applying a good strategy for option trading business. For this, you can consult various licensed firms and consultants to get good advice.

Automated Forex Technical Analysis Trading Software on Mt4

There’s a numerous choices of technical analysis trading software, however don’t assume that every software provides traders with effective and trust-able trading features and options. Among several trading platforms, one shines out the most: MetaTrader 4.

Forex Technical Analysis Trading Software

Metatrader 4 offers you strategy testers, expert advisors, together with indicators, which allow fx traders to conduct evaluation tests on their personal trading systems with past historical market info. Advanced traders who know programming will find themselves able to write their trading system into a program and run their system on the past data to see how well their trading system performed in the past by just a press of the button.

To make things far more convenient, the open sourced software metatrader 4 have a lot of developers creating apps for the application. Introducing a type of software range we find it extremely useful are tools which allow the trader to draw lines on the chart and to instruct the lines to perform trade entry and exit executions automatically when price touches or breaks through them. This software is commonly mentioned in the community called trendline EA or trendline break EA. The drawing of line is all that is required for the trader to automate his trading work.

Explaining in more detail, you draw lines in the chart manually by hand, and when price breaks across or touches the line, will instruct the technical analysis trading software to make trade entries or exits. This will effectively frees up the forex traders’ time to look at the computer screen while waiting for the signal.

The drawing of lines now serves two functions, to perform technical analysis and also to execute trade entries and exits from there. Lines on the Mt4 charts are not just a visual marking tool but also the traders’ automated technical analysis trading software. In other words, they made most of manual forex trading systems to perform automated.

Look at the possibilities of how one can trade forex market in spite of having a day job. Trading this classical chart patterns in the past requires constant monitoring of the market, but now trading these technical chart patterns on automation are made possible.

Time-tested and commonly mentioned in most of technical analysis trading reports.

1) Breakouts

2) Support Levels And Resistance Levels,

3) Envelope Patterns Or Channels Trading

4) Triangles Chart Patterns- symmetrical triangle, ascending or descending triangles

5) Trading based on 2 stochastic lines and other oscillators (as a trade filter, entries or exit)

6) Fibonacci levels – application of these indicators enable forex traders to make a profitable entry into the market.

Technical Analysis Trading Software Offers Trade Versatility

There are many more indicators for forex traders to incorporate into their manual fx systems and made automated. Whether you want them to work as a trading filter, entry signal line or exit signal lines, it is now possible with the many automated technical analysis trading software on metatrader 4 or Mt4.

Most importantly, automated technical analysis trading software must be able to consider the unique experiences and personality of the trader putting on the trade position- the ‘edge’ that enables the trader to combine objective chart information with his own understanding and experience so that these crucial information will be passed onto and used by the software to perform key trading processes like trade signal recognition, trade entry and exit and trade management.

This technical analysis trading software will make forex trading in mt4 works in a similar fashion just like an actual manual trader trading the markets (and if not even better).

Pre- Requisites To Support Resistance Trading

Support Resistance Trading is most often used by traders. As traders will plot charts with trendlines and key horizontal levels to mark the support and resistance levels, this will only constitute half of the battle to more profits; the other half requires the trader to be able to trade these levels.

Every Trader Has His Own Support Resistance Trading System

Somehow, each trader has his own way of identifying key support and resistance levels and there are some who do not even know how to plot. The next few points will highlight what are support and resistance levels so that a trader is able to plot and use them effectively without compromising the quality of his trading performance for his support resistance trading strategy. Therefore it serves as a foundation to support resistance trading.

Key Foundations To A Good Support Resistance Trading System

Using Trend Lines

Trend lines in support resistance trading are used to depict the direction of price on a chart. These trend lines are often used to enter trades whenever the market touches or breaks through them. As trend lines drawn are subjective in nature, there is a possibility that the price can choose not to respect the support or resistance line a trader has plotted.

It should only be used as a guide to determine a trader’s trade intention of a buy, sell or stand aside base on the trend.

Generally accepted practice to draw a trend line in support resistance trading is by connecting three or more consecutive lows increasing in price for up-trend or consecutive highs decreasing in price for down-trend.

Drawing Support

Support line is drawn across consecutive candle lows which indicate an area where buyers and sellers are balanced, therefore price unable to go lower. This level serves as a spring-board to push price higher, suitable for buy entry.

Drawing Resistance

Resistance line is drawn across consecutive candle highs which indicate an area where sellers and buyers are balanced, therefore price unable to go higher. This level serves as a spring-board to push price lower, suitable for sell entry.

Note that support and resistance levels can often swap roles whenever price breaks through them. This is when price breaks through a support; it will serve as a resistance level as the market will want to test this level before proceeding to fall further. The same also goes for resistance level becoming a support level.

Use Round Numbers

Round numbers are excellent to be used as potential support and resistance levels as it represents the psychological factor in supply and demand. Traders are humans with tendencies to prefer round numbers for entry or exits as it is easy to remember and calculate profits.

Using Daily Ranges

Daily high and low of every trading day represents key support and resistance levels for support resistance trading. Often, the market will want to test these levels. The validity of these daily levels can only be taken for the last two to three days as support and resistance levels.

Use Long Term Support And Resistance For Support Resistance Trading

Look out for resistance and support levels from longer timeframes as the validity of price respecting these values are often strong. Moving to shorter timeframes, the validity will decrease but these are the levels where a trader can hunt for bargains and make their move.

Support Resistance Trading Conclusion

The above six point gives an idea to the trader on how to start plotting key support and resistance levels as a foundation to trade analysis and trade entries for support resistance trading. This will eventually boost a trader’s confidence and trading performance.

Understanding The Ropes of Commodities Trading

The commodities market is one of the oldest trading grounds in the world. In the earlier times, the producers of commodities such as grains would trade with consumers. The same concept continues today except that it is much more sophisticated. The main aim of such trading is to make the maximum profit when the prices of the commodities fluctuate. Speculators and day traders are the ones that largely look at commodity trading.

The commodities market is also known as the futures market with a great deal of trading being down based on future shares. But the main issue that crops up here is that you need to buy majorly into commodities futures contract in order to be able to get an exposure as well as foothold among several others in the same category. This can be an expensive affair. The other way to go about it is to buy shares that directly relate to the company that is making the product. This will bring you closer to the management and help you get a clear understanding of how the company functions.

Off late, contract differences are also being made available for commodities. Having this option gives the trader an upper hand and also provides for a stable monetary vehicle that is needed for speculative work. When you go through or are a CFD broker, there are several common global commodity markets you can look into like that of gold and silver, the vast energy markets like oil and natural gas, those related to base metals like copper, as well as agricultural commodities like cocoa, wood or even wheat. There are a few CFDs that are largely based on spot and most on futures market. These have a great deal of underlying value.

What this essentially means is that there will be an expiry date that comes with each contract. What this expiry date is will vary from one contract to another. It will be based on the settlement date of any associated futures contract.

CFD brokers handle this particular situation in two different ways. The first is that the broker will allow for an automatic rollover. This then moves on to the next monthly contract when the current underlying futures contract comes to an end. The other option is that he will go in for a cash based settlement. This he may want to with an offer to take over the following month’s contract manually.

Basics Of CFDs And Its Trading

CFDs are contract for differences that are used for trading these days.

Online trading has become a lucrative option because of the ease of the process and lesser time needed to complete transactions. In the past, people had to trade manually and visit the trading company from time to time. These days, almost all the transactions are happening from mobile devices or computers. The internet revolution has changed the world of trading. You can buy and sell financial instruments like CFDs in just a matter of minutes.

Online Trading Basics

When you are doing online trading, you need to be aware of a few best practices. Using these best practices will ensure that all your transactions are proper. For CFD trading, you don’t need to be a financial geek. Just basic knowledge of contracts for difference will give you the confidence to do online trading. Reading a few articles on online trading, will give you more in-depth knowledge of the entire process.

You will need a good trading website which will give you all the resources and help needed for understanding the basics of online trading. If you are new to CFD training, you can join an online seminar that is designed by financial experts. You will find thousands of seminars on the internet, but not all of them will provide relevant basic details about contract for differences.

Cfd Trading Basics

Generally, it is seen that the online seminars cover the basic definition of CFD, the trading platform, and charting and trading strategies. You can also visit few local seminars, which will give you a brief insight on topics such as risk management, profit making in a falling market, efficient online trading and the like. If you are a registered member of a good online trading website, you can get good training programmes via e-mail. Online trading websites generally send across a tutorial that gives you a bigger picture of online trading.

The benefits of online trading are immense, but you need to work smartly. If you are not internet savvy, it is recommended that you take a crash course in internet and browsing skills. The ability to use the Internet optimally will give you a cutting edge over competitors. If you have taken the first step towards online trading, don’t look back. There are ups and downs in online trading, but with a little smart thinking, you can surely succeed in this challenging domain.

If you have taken a trading decision, you may need a second opinion on that decision. You can consult financial advisors who are well equipped with knowledge of the market conditions. Before you start trading in CFDs, you will have to understand how they work and the risks involved in selling and buying them. Most online trading websites have a product disclosure statement that tells you more about the financial instrument and the risks involved in dealing with those financial instruments.

After getting all the necessary information you need to know about online trading, the next step is to open an online trading account. To open an account, you will have to check out the procedure by visiting the website of any reputed online trading company.