Even the best Forex traders need to regularly refresh their knowledge and gain new information that is related to the currency trading. There are on-line Forex resources that provide information, news, books, communities, tools and other important advantages to the traders for free. Here is the list of the most useful Forex resources that are worth to be visited daily by every trader:
Bloomberg.com — business and currency news that create the fundamental background for the Forex market. I prefer to browse these news everyday before making any trading decisions.
Forexfactory.com — apart from the usual Forex tools, there are forums that are actually visited by many new and professional traders that share their experience with different trading systems, Forex brokers, expert advisors, etc.
Forex-tsd.com — a large Forex community focusing mainly on the technical tools for trading — such as expert advisors and indicators for various platforms (usually, MetaTrader 4).
Earnforex.com — a lot of useful and free information for all Forex traders, including books, brokers’ descriptions, reviews, articles and other goodies with the new updates almost everyday.
Talkgold Forex Forum — a very popular forum in the past, it still remains a place where many «old school» Forex traders share their knowledge and discuss Forex related issues.
Those are the resources that I visit everyday. If you know some other popular and useful sites for the Forex traders, you can mention them in the comments to this post.
The Less Known Evil of the Leverage
4:39 AM
forex, leverage, money management
Trading with leverage is extremely popular among the Forex traders. High leverage is considered dangerous because of the risks associated with the fast moving money and poor money management tactics practiced by the majority of the traders. Besides the well known danger of multiplying your losses, there is another evil hiding behind the leverage, which can wipe your trading account easily.
High leverage is advertised by many brokers. Some traders believe that the higher their leverage is the faster they will become rich and the Forex brokers that offer ridiculously high leverage are even praised. But in fact, there is a very practical and mercantile reason for the Forex brokers to offer high leverage — higher earnings.
The higher is the leverage the more money is paid by the trader to the broker in the form of the rates spread. The value of the pip that trader wins, loses or pays as a spread depends on the leverage. With 1:100 leverage a 2 pips spread for the 1 standard lot of the USD based currency pair is worth $20. That’s not a big amount if you have $100,000 account, but if your total trading account is just $2,000? That’s 1% lost despite the fact if you win or lose this position. With 1:10 leverage that spread would worth you only $2. Without leverage the spread payment to your broker would be as low as 20 cents.
Remember that the leverage comes with a price, which is quite high and which is often overlooked by the traders. If you want to learn trading profitably on a real account, try to the leverage as low as possible. Switch to the higher leverage only if you really know what you are doing. Don’t try to become rich quick with the help of the leverage. It won’t allow you.
High leverage is advertised by many brokers. Some traders believe that the higher their leverage is the faster they will become rich and the Forex brokers that offer ridiculously high leverage are even praised. But in fact, there is a very practical and mercantile reason for the Forex brokers to offer high leverage — higher earnings.
The higher is the leverage the more money is paid by the trader to the broker in the form of the rates spread. The value of the pip that trader wins, loses or pays as a spread depends on the leverage. With 1:100 leverage a 2 pips spread for the 1 standard lot of the USD based currency pair is worth $20. That’s not a big amount if you have $100,000 account, but if your total trading account is just $2,000? That’s 1% lost despite the fact if you win or lose this position. With 1:10 leverage that spread would worth you only $2. Without leverage the spread payment to your broker would be as low as 20 cents.
Remember that the leverage comes with a price, which is quite high and which is often overlooked by the traders. If you want to learn trading profitably on a real account, try to the leverage as low as possible. Switch to the higher leverage only if you really know what you are doing. Don’t try to become rich quick with the help of the leverage. It won’t allow you.
Variety of Forex Scams
5:05 AM
forex ebook, forex scam, forex strategy
Apart from being potentially profitable, Forex market becomes more dangerous nowadays. There many scams in the Forex industry and they vary in types and scales. If you want to start trading Forex you should know a lot about such scams to avoid losing your hard-earned money. And if you are the experienced Forex trader you’ve probably already got hurt from some Forex scam and if not — you should also know about Forex scams to avoid them in the future.
- Forex broker scam. It was very popular several years ago, but its popularity seems to fade now. Usually it’s just some set-up Forex broker site that promises the good trading conditions and offers some basic «bucket-shop» trading simulation to attract large customer base and run away with their money. Just do your research on a broker before depositing money and you’ll be safe from such scams.
- Forex strategies selling. There are hundreds «successful» Forex trading strategies selling on the Internet. Many traders tend to believe that they can spend $300 on such a strategy and become rich with it. In reality the best thing that money can buy is education. Sold strategies are usually nothing but crap. Not only they won’t make you rich, they will probably make you lose your account margin.
- Forex e-books selling. Overrated and hyped e-books with a lot of marketing and a little use (if at all) are the actual problem of many industries. Forex e-books selling for ridiculously high prices and promising to tell you «the best kept secrets of the millionaire traders» are nothing but wasted money. You’d better lose that money in Forex trading, trying to find your own strategy and getting some real practice.
- Scam Forex managed accounts. Some people like the idea of Forex, but don’t like to trade on this market, they prefer to invest in it. That’s where managed accounts come to play. It’s a good idea to have some company or a private trade to trade for you and earn a share of profit. But unfortunately there also scam players here. They will just take your money and disappear. Some scam managers will probably even pretend that they are really trading and will show you some profit, hoping that you’ll deposit more. Don’t fall for such scams, thoroughly research your manager or better invest in some reputable managing company.
