Why Most Forex Traders Use Technical Analysis

For many years Forex traders based their trading decisions on fundamental analysis which examines both past and current political and economic events in order to predict movements in currencies.

However fundamental analysis is a difficult art requiring considerable knowledge and experience and the ability to handle and analyze enormous amounts of data. As if this were not enough, there is also considerable disagreement in many quarters about just what data is and is not important when it comes to fundamental analysis and, even when it is agreed that certain data is relevant, there is often further argument about just how much weight should be attributed to each factor in the equation.

Today there is also a second form of analysis which is widely used and which is known as technical analysis. While proponents of technical analysis would probably tell you that it is no easier and in many ways more difficult an art to master than fundamental analysis, the truth of the matter is that it is a lot easier to learn technical analysis and this in no small measure explains why so many traders are adopting it in preference to fundamental analysis and are opting for technical analysis training. Which method is better is of course a whole different argument.

In considering technical analysis it is necessary to understand its three underlying principles:

1. All sorts of things will produce movements in currency prices, including political and economic events, but the forces which produce currency price movements are not important. As far as technical analysis is concerned it is simply the price movements themselves which are important and not the reasons for them.



2. A currency price will follow a trend which can be identified by looking at the patterns which emerge in the market over time.



3. A currency price not only follows a trend in terms of looking at historical market data, but will continue to follow this trend in the future. In effect this principle reflects the technical analyst's view of human psychology and a belief that currency price movements are a consequence of the manner in which people have reacted, and will continue to react, in certain circumstances.

Many of the 'old school' and 'fundamentalist' Forex traders find it hard to accept the principles of technical analysis and still hold firm to the belief that you cannot accurately predict a currency's movement unless you have a sound understanding of just what factors affect the price of that currency and indeed just what effect these factors will have on its movement.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that many traders believe that this is not necessary and base their often extremely successful trading purely on technical analysis. No system, at least none that has been devised so far, will predict currency movements with one hundred percent accuracy but fundamental and technical analysis do a pretty good job.

In its simplest form technical analysis consists of taking historical price data (the foreign exchange market has over one hundred years worth of recorded price data) and feeding it into a computer which will then look for patterns in that data and display these in a graphical format. The trader can then look at the manner in which a currency's price is currently moving and compare this to similar past patterns to predict the future direction of that currency's movement.

This is of course a very much simplified view of technical analysis but in today's computer age it is easy to see why many younger traders entering the Forex market are drawn to technical analysis.

Forex Trading Strategies Are The Key To Successful Trading

Before venturing into the world of Forex trading it is vitally important that you stop and think carefully about the trading strategy that you are going to adopt, because forex trading strategies are the key to success in currency trading. There is no single strategy when it comes to trading in the foreign currency markets and every Forex trader has to develop his own strategy. It is important however to have a clearly defined plan from the very outset.

Some Forex traders choose to use a technical approach when it comes to trading while others are more at home with a fundamental approach. Both approaches are of course sound, but in reality most successful traders use a combination of the two to give them both an overview of the foreign exchange market and to permit them to plot specific entry and exit points for each currency trade.

The idea behind technical analysis is simply that prices rise and fall according to well established trends and that the currency market possesses clearly identifiable patterns which can be seen as long as you know what to look for. Knowledge and experience come into play here, but it is also a question of using the numerous analytical tools that are available and this means having a sound working knowledge not just the patterns of price movement but also of the tools at your disposal.

Many traders also rely on what are known as support and resistance levels. Here 'support' refers to a low price which is repeatedly seen as being the bottom of the market and from which there is a tendency for prices to rise. A 'resistance level is a high price beyond which a currency is rarely traded.

The principle here is that, should a currency break through either its support or resistance level, its price is likely to continue in that direction. So, if the price of a currency rises above its resistance level it is considered to be bullish and the price can frequently be expected continue to rise.

Another commonly used tool in foreign currency trading is that of moving averages. A simple moving average (SMA) shows the average price in a given time period (say 7 or 10 days) when the price is plotted out over a longer time period. Forex traders use moving averages to eliminate short term fluctuations in price and to provide a clearer picture of the movements in currency prices. A SMA can be plotted to indicate when prices are displaying a tendency to rise or fall. Prices which rise above the average will frequently continue to rise and, similarly, prices which fall below the average will often continue to fall.

These are just two of the many trading tools that can be used either in isolation or in combination and it is recommended that traders make use of several trading tools to analyze the market. If you are relying on just a single trading tool then trading can often be risky but, if the results from several different tools show that the market is moving in a particular direction then trading can be conducted with a fair degree of confidence.

Many traders will base their trading upon a fundamental analysis of the market and thus base their trading on such things as economic and political events, trade figures, inflations figures, unemployment rates and a host of other similar forms of data.

Fundamental analysis can be very powerful but it is perhaps at its most powerful when it is used alongside technical analysis, particularly as a tool to reinforce the indications derived from technical analysis.

In many ways it does not matter what trading strategy you adopt as long as you are happy that it can provide you with clear expectations about movements in the market and indicate to you just where you should be trading and when you should enter and exit individual trades.

A sound knowledge and understanding of fundamental and technical analysis should be every forgein currency trader's starting point when it comes to building a Forex trading strategy.

The Second Most Commonly Seen Forex Trading Mistake

The most commonly seen mistake in Forex trading is that of establishing a set of trading rules and then failing to stick to them because traders let their emotions come into play and allow their hearts, rather than their heads, to rule their trading. It is this very same problem of emotion that also leads to the second most commonly seen mistake in Forex trading - that of doubling up on a losing trade.

If you find yourself in a losing trade then, providing you've done your homework and conducted the trade on the basis of your market analysis, the simple fact is that the market has unexpectedly moved against you.

This is something which traders experience every day and is a fact of Forex trading. It happens because, despite the fact that we like to believe that the market is predictable, it is not. It is certainly true that the market will frequently follow a pattern which modern trading tools will pick up, allowing us to trade profitably most of the time. The market however also has a mind of its own and it will frequently catch out even the most seasoned of traders.

When you get into a loss in an open trade it is human nature to feel that this is a temporary situation and that the market will reverse in your favor and turn your loss into a profit. If it did not then it would mean that you would have to admit that you were wrong about the trade and this is something that many of us don't like doing.

However, human nature will often take you even further and urge you to confirm your original decision and to show your confidence in it. This commonly means doubling up on your losing trade to show your confidence in it. You are also urged into taking this action subconsciously because, once you have proved yourself right, your profit will also be that much greater as the trade recovers from a now low position. Put simply, greed also plays a part at this stage.

Now from time to time you will be lucky and the market will reverse and give you a good profit. Unfortunately however is compounding the error you have already made by doubling up on a losing trade and encourages you to repeat this action the next time you find yourself in a similar situation. In most cases of course your luck doesn't hold and the next time you try this trick you lose heavily.

You found yourself in a position in which your judgment about a trade was being challenged and you were faced with the possibility of having to admit that you were wrong.

You had done your homework and there was no reason why you should not have opened this trade just as you did. Unfortunately, the market then decided that it was going to take an unexpected turn which you could not reasonably have been expected to predict. You did not make a mistake, but simply experienced the unpredictability of the market which is part and parcel of foreign currency trading.

In most cases the mistakes which most Forex traders make are nothing more than a case of letting emotion rule their trading decisions. As long as you do your homework and stick to your trading rules you won't go far wrong but, if you permit your emotions creep in and influence your trading, you will find yourself in a growing number of losing trades.

The Most Commonly Seen Forex Trading Mistake

Successful Forex traders know that their success comes from establishing a set of trading rules and then following these to the letter. It is perhaps not surprising therefore to find that the most commonly seen Forex trading mistake is that of traders breaking their own trading rules.

The greatest danger any foreign currency trader faces is that of emotion and trading rules are established quite simply remove emotion from the trading equation.

Another danger for most traders is that posed by greed. None of us like to think of ourselves as being greedy but this is particular deadly sins that is always close by and has a habit of creeping up on us when we are not paying attention.

A successful trader can quite easily find himself in a winning run of trades earning perhaps $2,000 a day and think to himself that, if he can get this sort of profit day in and day out, it has to be possible to earn $2,500 or $3,000 every day. However, in order to test this theory the trader needs to push himself by relaxing his trading rules so that they can make up a few extra trades each day.

With a bit of luck profits may well increase over the following days, but how long is this going to last? The answer in most cases is not long and time and again traders find that any short term gains disappear. The result is all too often that they move from being one of the truly successful traders to being one of the 90% of traders who regularly lose money.

It is very easy to allow greed to tempt you into breaking your own trading rules and once in a while this strategy will prove successful. However, you are now beginning to trade on emotion and, as with many things in life, having done it once it is much easier to do it again and again.

In the world of foreign currency trading your trading rules are your best friend and breaking them will start you down a very slippery slope.

The Value Of Simulated Forex Trading To Currency Trading Success

As a novice you will probably begin trading by opening a Forex demo account and your first few trades will be paper trades, or simulated Forex trading, as you learn how the market works and how to use some of the trading tools. It is not long however before you are ready to move on and to put your paper trading days behind you.

But is it such a good idea to leave paper trading behind you?

Many successful Forex traders today are discovering that continuing to trade on paper from time to time can be both helpful and profitable.

Problems often arise for traders when they find themselves with a losing trade. Despite the fact that losing trades are an everyday part of trading life, you are always going to be affected by a trading loss and there is often a strong, albeit often subconscious, urge to recoup the money you have just lost as fast as possible. This frequently means that you go right back into the market but, because you are in a losing frame of mind, your next trade often also results in a loss or a less than spectacular gain.

For many traders the answer to this problem is to follow a losing trade with a paper trade.

In this case you trade seriously and in exactly the same way that you would trade normally but run the trade on paper. You study the market indicators, open a trading position, put a stop loss order in place and then track the trade. As the trade progresses you move your stop loss order as the market moves and, finally, you close out your position when your market indicators tell you to do so.

This paper trade might result in a profit or a loss but, as the trade is only being made on paper, it doesn't matter one way or the other. The importance of this trade is that it allows you to clear your mind and to put your previous losing trade behind you. Even if this paper trade results in a loss the affect is positive because you are happy knowing that you have not actually lost any money.

Having run this paper trade you are now ready to leave the world of simulated Forex trading and return to live trading and can open a new trading position in a winning frame of mind.

Forex Traders Need To Be Objective

A difficult lesson for Forex traders to learn is that within the currency market almost anything can happen at any time. Because new traders spend a considerable amount of time learning the mechanics of the market and focusing their attention on finding a method for predicting movements in the market, it is only natural that they also come to believe that there are rules which govern the movement of the market. This is not the case and this catches many traders out.

Forex traders use a number of tools to judge when the time is right to open or to close a position, but the majority of traders will also have one particular tool which is their favorite and which they will rely on more than any other. So, once they have opened a position, they will watch their favorite indicator and base their trading decisions to a large extent on what this single indicator tells them.

This is fine until this indicator begins to tell them one thing while the other indicators are telling them something else. They are now in an open position and their favorite tool is telling them for example to hold that position while everything else is indicating that they should close their position and get out of the market. More often than not the trader will hold his ground and will end up in a losing trade.

The problem is quite simply that the trader has created an expectation in his own mind about the market and is not looking at the market objectively. He is using his favorite tool to reinforce this expectation rather than stepping back and looking at the wider picture. He is also probably being encouraged in this view by the thought that he must be right and by the profit in this trade which is being forecast by his favorite indicator. He is in effect seeing the money rather than the market.

The foreign currency market is, by its very nature, unpredictable and, were it not so, the market would soon collapse as we all made a profit on every trade we opened. Of course there are numerous tools to help us to predict the direction of the market and thankfully they do a pretty good job most of the time. Occasionally however even the best of tools in the hands of the best traders come up against an unexpected turn in the market.

Getting it wrong is a feature of Forex trading and traders need to learn to accept losses as an inevitable part of foreign currency trading. More importantly traders need to learn how to avoid getting into a position where they can be proved right or wrong. To do this you need to understand and accept that the market has a will of its own and have to remain objective and follow market movements, rather than try to get the market to go in the direction you want it to, if you are going to succeed.

# Trading A Market Which Is Always On The Move

The Forex market never stands still and even though it may move quite slowly at times it is nevertheless always on the move. It is of curse this movement which provides the opportunity to make money buying and selling global currencies, but it can also make it difficult to decide when to open a trade, close a trade or simply stay out of the market altogether.

Probably the greatest problem with the fast moving foreign currency market however is that it plays on our natural sense of greed and this can present traders with a very real danger.

We all like to make a profit, but what level of profit is acceptable? If you are in a trade which is showing a profit of $2,000 should you close your position and take your profit or hang on in there for $2,500? You are trading to make money and so, when the market is moving in your favor, it is only natural to want to ride the wave all the way to the beach. The difficulty however often lies in knowing when you have hit the beach and in not waiting for the undertow to start dragging you back out to sea again. Once the undertow catches you it can drag you back out to sea again very quickly.

Most Forex traders enter foreign currency trading with a clear picture in their mind's eye of just what they intend to do with all the money they are going to make and that is no bad thing. It is extremely important for you to have a goal, as well as a plan of action to allow you to reach that goal, and it certainly helps if you create a visual image in your mind of something concrete you are aiming for.

The problem however is that you could well find that you are tempted to try to reach your goal sooner than you had planned or that you create a bigger and better goal as you go along, allowing your natural tendency towards greed creep in and to start taking control of your trading.

Another commonly seen problem is that of failing to understand that it is not money which drives the market.

Think about this for a minute. It doesn't matter if you have $10,000 or $100,000 in your trading account because whatever sum you're looking at it is not going to make the slightest difference to the way in which the market moves. By the same token, it doesn't matter if you are looking at a $750 profit or a $750 loss in an open trading position because this again will not make any difference at all as far as the market rising or falling is concerned.

The fact that you are doing well in a trade and have made a profit of $750 does not mean that this profit will turn into $900 or $1,000 if you wait a bit longer. It is of course human nature to find yourself caught up in your 'winning streak' and to convince yourself that there is more profit to come.

It is also human nature to find that, having already lost $750 in an open trade, you will try to convince yourself that things will turn around if you keep your nerve and just hold on a little longer.

It is essential that you set a goal and have a plan to reach that goal but your trading decisions must be based on what is happening in the market and not on your goal.

Money should have no influence on whether or not you enter or exit a trade, or stay out of the market altogether, and these decisions should be based solely on what your analysis of the market tell you.