How would you like to be able to potentially make money trading currencies in the Forex markets? Better yet, how would you like to be able to potentially do this within strict risk control parameters? Even better yet, how would you like to potentially do it with a minimum of effort on your part? I'm talking about only10 minutes a week. Well, I am here to tell you a few key principles or secrets to potentially make it happen.
Secret #1
The Forex markets are heavily advertised as being a great way to make money, which is very misleading. The unwary would-be Forex trader is led to believe all she has to do is open a Forex account to gain access to one of the many excellent Forex trading platforms, begin trading and then become rich in no time. So what's the secret? The Forex market is a highly liquid, potentially profitable market to trade, sure enough, but only if you have a winning edge methodology that you can apply to these markets. Without such a methodology, the hapless trader will quickly lose money trading the Forex as they would any market.
Secret #2
The Forex markets are heavily advertised as commission-free. True, but unlike the futures market, entering and exiting positions in the Forex markets is done by buying at the high end of a rather wide bid/ask spread and selling at the low end. So the difference in the spread is your cost of doing business. This cost may be acceptable for swing and long term traders, but may not be acceptable for day traders. So if your goal is to make money, you may not wan to day trade the Forex markets.
Secret #3
While swing trading could be potentially profitable trading the Forex markets, there is potentially greater opportunity trading the long term trends. Currencies have always moved in long sweeping mega-trends that potentially offer low risk entry points and the potential opportunity to ride a long money making trend (sometimes for several months). The following wisdom from legendary stock trader Jesse Livermore is equally applicable to the Forex markets:
"And right here let me say one thing: After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets. I've known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying and selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit. And their experience invariably matched mine — that is, they made no real money out of it. Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money. It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance."
Secret #4
Potentially the best way to trade for the longer term is to trade off of the weekly charts, thus avoiding the day-to-day volatility that wreak havoc on one's account or at a minimum shake you out of your position prematurely and potentially missing a big money move altogether. By definition, then, a potential winning edge methodology based on a weekly chart only requires analysis once a week after the futures markets close for the week each Friday. You then simply update your chart, determine the following week's entry, trailing stop loss and profit target orders, which should be placed before the futures market opens on Monday. A clarification is in order here, even though we are trading the Forex market, we can use the weekly futures markets charts for determining exit and entry orders that can then be executed in the Forex market. And these same signals, by the way, are equally executable in the futures markets. It becomes a matter of which market platform you prefer to trade the currencies.
It should be clear from this discussion that there is no magic to trading the Forex or currency futures markets. The magic is in the potential winning edge methodology that you apply to these markets that makes the money.
by Bill Poulos
