Trust Yourself

When you turn on the TV (especially mainstream media) you are inundated with news of the demise of the dollar. Business news, national news and even your local news channels are leading into events with reports of the dollar and the economy. Analysts are featured and opinions are smattered across the airwaves in an attempt to provide an oracle response to current economic events.

Beware the source and follow your system.

In these volatile times it is easy to get caught up in the hype provide by all the news media and analyst. It is natural to want to look for guidance. Remember to trust your system and more important trust yourself. You, after all, are the single largest determinant of your success.

Your approach should remain consistent, almost impervious to the events occurring because you follow your plan with discipline and ruthless detail to executing at optimum performance.

Be disciplined and follow your plan. If market conditions don’t suite your style – sit this one out until conditions provide your with your personal edge!

Happy Trading!!

ForexJourney

How to Adopt the Traits of a Successful Trader

Hey Traders,

Here's a post by Heather Johnson that will serve you well in your trading – Enjoy!

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Not all Forex traders were cut from the same cloth, but the most successful investors do have several things in common. Whether you are a newcomer to trading or you are a seasoned pro who is trying to improve your game plan, the following suggestions may help you out. Below are five ways to evolve into a successful trader:

1. Become a lifelong student – Never stop learning about the business you are in. If you think you know everything about the Forex market, then think again. The successful trader is a lifelong student who constantly absorbs new information about the ever-evolving climate of Forex trading.

2. Be courageous – It's hard to overcome your fears when you are dealing with an unpredictable investment. Even if you are equipped with extensive knowledge about the market, you still have to put your money at risk every day. Reserve a small amount of apprehension (just enough to keep you sensible), but don't hesitate at every turn.

3. Hone your math skills – You are wading through a sea of mathematical information every day when you look over your charts. The most successful traders know how to take that large amount of information and pull out necessary information.

4. Be patient – Become a long-term investor and put all notions of overnight success to rest. You must adopt a stoic attitude, as you make the most informed decisions about your business and leave the rest to fate.

5. Learn to love trading – Maybe you already do love trading and that's why you are involved with Forex. However, many people are either too wrought with anxiety to enjoy it or merely see it as a job. If you don't like trading, don't trade. A great trader will love the roller coaster ride he/she is on.

Are the above suggestions obvious? Perhaps, but many of us take a wrong turn somewhere and need some simple advice to get us back on track. In order to stay on top of your game, you will need to constantly reinvent yourself, as there is no world that calls for flexibility more than the Forex market.

About the Author:

Heather Johnson is a freelance finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor for CurrencyTrading.net, a site for currency trading and forex trading
information. Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com .


ForexJourney.com

Happy Trading!!

Standard Deviation Channel

I recently read article about, about standard deviation channel, (which as you may already know is one of my favorite indicators), and I was shocked, although author of this article explained what standard deviation channel is in mathematics but it had very little to do with Forex or any other financial market. Furthermore, I read other articles about standard deviation channels and what I found out is that they all were giving useless information to readers, so here is the right way to use standard deviation channel.

First of all, authors suggest that, when price will reach upper line, it is time to take SHORT position and vice versa, when price will reach lower line you should take LONG position because market is oversold.

This is true only if market is trending. It is quite safe to treat then lower line as support line and upper line as resistance line, and more over (depending on your standard deviation channel settings) 95% of price movement will happen between this two lines, as long as market is trending. The obvious question here is how to tell if Forex is trending, but this question is beyond the scope of this article, at least for now J.

What I like about standard deviation is that it allows to easily determine trend, you just need to draw channel over the selected period of time and that’s it, you have detected trend. However to use this indicator efficiently you need some experience, ideally you should see channel on the chart before you draw any lines on it. If you don’t see it, then do not worry it is all about experience.

How to use correctly Standard Deviation Channel

If market is in uptrend, you should take ONLY long positions, when price will reach lower line. Never take SHORT position in uptrend when the price will reach upper line, that do NOT mean that market is overbought, in uptrend price can easily go waaay over upper line and hit STOP LOSS, of trader who was stupid enough to take SHORT position in bull market.

Obviously, the opposite goes for market in downtrend, do not take long positions on lower line, NEVER.

Most importantly, this indicator is called standard deviation channel and you should use it only with CHANNELS not with any random piece of chart, below is the stock market chart with two correctly drawn channels.

Economic Calendar

Earlier, actually in the last post i wrote about importance of knowing what economic data that affect Forex market will be relased and when. This information alone can save you a lot of pain, because, after some key economic indicators are relased, prices in just few minutes can go +200 pips up, and then out of sudden 300 pips down.

This mainly affects day traders or scalpers, and the EUR\USD currency pair. I belive there are many ways you can deal with market moving indicators, but i will list two of my ideas i have came up with:

• Few minutes before economic data announcement hedge your position.
• Not all Forex brokers allows to hedge, if yours not, then you can close your position before data release and open a new one after market will "calm down".

And obviously do not make new trades (other then hedges) before economic data announcement.

More over important economic data dictates trend of the market, so you can use it for simple Forex fundamental analysis.

But the most important question here is, where do i get this data and how will i know which is important and which is not? My all time favourite source for economic data is bloomber economic calendar, which you can find here: ECalendar.

I like this calendar because, it places icon next to particular event, which tells me how important this event is, so i do not have to make my own research on every single event.

From my experience i can tell you that, two events responsible for the biggest moves are: Employment situation and FOMC meeting.

7 signs of bad investment

Buying stocks on stock market or taking positions on Forex, often involves great deal of emotions, especially when you invest a lot of money, or you are starting out with trading and you are not comfortable with putting your money on the risk.

When it comes to money emotions are hard to control however, before you make decision to put money into some stocks, you can try to determine if there are any deadly signs of bad investment behind your decision. (For a full article visit ASXNewbie website, i will just list quickly those signs and make my comments on it).

Here they are: 7 signs of bad investment

1. Research, lack of research is probably one of the greatest mistake you can make, if you make good research, then you can get at least some confidence in your trade, which is important when it goes bad at the beginning.
2. Hesitation on fundamentals, this mainly applies to stock market, Forex traders rearly have to focus on fundamental data
3. Buying stocks for long term with no end in mind, it speaks for itself.
4. Not being aware of important announcements, on Forex it is useful to know when important economic data will be released, such as employment situation which is responsible for a big price changes in short time.
5. Sometimes investment needs care, especially if you trade long term
6. It is not a shame to get rid of bad investment or position, this goes back to the do not risk more then 5% of your capital on the single trade.
7. Doing what everyone else is doing, this is often mistake of unexperienced trader, be your own guru, do not look at other to know what to do, especially if they are losesr.
   

Mentioned article is more relevent to stock market, so i changed a bit all seven points to make them fit perfectly Forex market.

Societe Generale reveals how it was duped in trading scam

Do you remember when lately SocGen anounced that junior trader frauded over $70 bilion? That is a lot of cash and this case has to be explained to public opinion and it seems that bank managers and trader which is partly as i belive responsible for such a big loss are trying to do it.

It maybe not article about Forex but, it is about trading, maybe even about great tragedy. We always learn from mistakes, and it is better to learn from someones else mistakes then yours so i advice you to read it.

Here is a short excerpt to encourage you to reading, by the way it is quite long.

"French bank Societe Generale has admitted that a gap in control systems allowed a junior trader to take a $73 billion losing bet on European share prices, but defended its handling of the world's biggest trading scandal.

Prosecutors said the trader, 31-year-old Jerome Kerviel, would remain in custody until Monday after handing himself in on Saturday and was co-operating with a probe into how the bank racked up $7 billion losses on alleged illicit deals.

Kerviel's new lawyer said he had been doing a trader's job by taking on risk and accused the bank of setting him up for a public "lynching" by letting him carry all the blame.

"He has not embezzled anyone, he hasn't taken a cent for himself and he was just doing his job as best he could," Christian Charriere-Bournazel told Reuters."

Read more here Checks by SocGen missed $73 billion wrong-way bet

Forex reserves swell $3.2 bilion

Another interesting article about forex reserves.

"Foreign exchange reserves rose by $3.16 billion in the week ending January 18, 2008 taking the total reserves to a record $284.98 billion. Money market dealers said that the rise in the forex reserves was largely on account of subscription to the IPO of Reliance Energy that closed on January 18.

The public offering is expected to have drawn in large scale funds from foreign institutional investors. During the same week, the BSE’s benchmark index, Sensex, had dipped about 1,000 points to close at 19,700 with most FII selling shares.

The foreign currency assets stood at $276.13 billion while the reserves with IMF was down by $1 million to $433 million, according to the data released by the Reserve Bank of India in its Weekly Statistical report. In the two weeks ended January 18, forex reserves rose by $8.3 billion. For the second consecutive week, the government’s deposits with the Reserve Bank rose."

Read more here Forex reserves swell $3.2 bn on IPO inflows