This will change on a second-by-second basis. As we noted earlier, you also need to take the spread into account, so there will always be a slight variation in pricing. For instance, if you exchange 1 USD for 17 ZAR, the sale and purchase price offered by your forex broker will be either side of that figure. The currency pairs with the most notable supply and demand attached to them will be considered the most liquid in the forex market. The supply and demand aspect is thanks to the investment of importers, exporters, banks and traders — to name a few.

The most liquid currency pairs are therefore the ones in high demand. When you feel you are ready to take the plunge and begin live trading, you need to select a forex trading system. There is a vast amount of trading strategies for you to pick from. This is because investors, speculators, corporations and banks have been trading for decades.

In this part of the forex trading PDF, we are going to explain a few of the strategies available to you. If you want to buy and sell currency pairs from the comfort of your home or even via your mobile device , you will need to use a trading platform.

Otherwise referred to as a forex broker, there are literally hundreds of trading platforms active in the online space. This makes it extremely difficult to know which broker to sign up with.

In the below sections of our forex trading PDF, we explain some of the considerations that you need to make. You should also look out for analysis tools available to you. In some cases, this might be embedded, while some offer tools such as technical analysis and fundamental analysis.

This is because it will save you a lot of leg work having to move between different sites and sources of information. Some of the fastest and easiest trading platforms are MetaTrader 5 MT5 and MetaTrader 4 MT4. Crucially, both MT4 and MT5 are fast and receptive trading platforms, both providing live market data and access to sophisticated charts.

It is essential before you begin trading seriously that you fully trust the trading platform you intend on using. This is especially the case if you intend on using a scalping strategy, for example. However, if you like to trade, it is vital for your peace of mind and your finances that you are fully confident with the fast execution of data transfer. This is also the case with the precision of quoted prices, and the speed of order processing.

All of these things are going to help you to have a successful forex trading experience. To enable you to make the most of new opportunities, the ideal forex broker will be available to you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, in line with the forex market opening hours. To save you from having to request that your broker takes action for you, your forex broker should enable you to manage your account and your trades separately.

By doing this, you will be in a much better position to quickly react to any shifts in the market, and hopefully, make the most of potential opportunities. This will enable you to gain better control over any open positions as and when they arise. It is important to ensure that your forex broker of choice is a reputable company, who will ensure that your personal information and trading funds are fully protected and backed up.

Segregation is frequently used amongst forex brokers as a way to separate your funds from the funds of the company i. their daily costs, debts and running costs. So, no matter what happens to the forex broker, your money is safe and segregated. If you find that a forex broker is unable to do this, we would suggest you find a better broker as it is standard practice these days. All of the brokers listed towards the end of this forex trading PDF are regulated by at least one reputable licensing body.

In terms of getting set up as an online forex trader, the steps remain constant regardless of which broker you decide to join. Below we list some of the steps that you will need to take. In order to open an account, you will need to enter some personal information.

Standard details requested by the broker will be things like your name, residential address, and contact details. Some brokers will also require your tax status and will ask you to provide more financial details such as employment status, net worth and any regular income. In this instance, you will usually need to answer some multiple-choice questions based on your experience. This is usually a fairly simple process. Known as KYC in the industry Know Your Customer , this simply means that the forex broker is going to need you to prove who you are.

Some brokers will verify this using scanned copies of documentation. Now you need to select your payment method of choice usually from a drop-down list.

Bear in mind that how long this takes to go into your trading account will largely depend on the payment method — so always check this before parting with your cash. Some brokers even support e-wallets like PayPal and Skrill. After reading our forex trading PDF you should now be feeling confident enough to begin trading.

However, we do recommend that you always try out a free forex trading demo first. This will allow you to test out your newly formed trading strategies before risking your own capital. In the next section of our forex trading PDF, we explore some of the more important technical indicators and market insights used by seasoned traders. First invented by Richard Donchian, the donchian channels can be adapted as you like, in terms of parameters. Should you choose to view a day breakdown, for example, the indicator will be created by taking the lowest low, and the highest high of that period so in this example 30 periods.

When observing the moving average on a donchian channel you can look at averages stretching from 25 days to the last days. The direction which is permitted is determined by the direction of the short-term moving average. With this in mind, you should think about opening one of the following two positions:. You will need to sell your pair in order to exit your trade if you open a long position and visa-versa.

This is another commonly used forex indicator. The simple moving average aka SMA operates at a slower rate than the present market price known as a lagging indicator. Furthermore, it uses a lot of historical price data. In fact, more so than most other strategies. A good indication that the latest price is higher than the older price is when the long-term moving average is below the short-term moving average.

This could be considered a buy signal due to an upward trend in the market. In the opposite scenario when the long-term moving average is higher than the short-term moving average, this of course points towards a sell signal due to a downward trend. Moving averages are usually used as evidence of an overall trend, rather than purely forex trading signals. Of course, this is a great way to make your breakout signals much more productive. If you are alerted to a sell signal, this indicates that the short-term moving average is below that of the long-term moving average, so you might want to place a sell order.

However, if you are given a signal to buy, this usually means that the short-term moving average is higher than that of the long-term moving average. Using breaks as trading signals, the breakout is considered a long-term strategy. The breakout itself occurs when the market goes further than these consolidation limits — whether that be lower or higher.

As such, a breakout must take place whenever a new trend occurs. By looking at breaks, you will have a good indication of whether or not a new trend has begun. In this case, you might want to use a stop-loss order to give you a better chance of avoiding a substantial loss. As glamorous as a career in forex trading might sound, there are a number of risks that you need to take into account.

In the below sections of our forex trading PDF, we explore these possible risks in more detail. The transaction risk is in relation to the exchange rate and any time zone differences.

This means there is a chance that at some point between the beginning and end of a contract that the exchange rates could be subject to change. The risk of this happening elevates with the more time that passes between entering a contract and settling the same contract. This generally leads to investors withdrawing investments, and as a result, your return will be lower.

The good news is that when a currency rate is on the rise, chances are that the respective currency will be stronger. When this does happen, your returns could be higher. This is because seasoned investors like to gain exposure to stronger currencies. The higher your leverage is, the higher your losses or benefits will be. Of course, this means leverage can affect your trading in a positive or negative way — depending on which way it goes.

The final part of our forex trading PDF is to explore which brokers are popular with both newbie and seasoned traders. Each of the forex trading platforms listed below has been pre-vetted, meaning that you can be confident they tick most boxed. This means that each platform is regulated, offers heaps of forex pairs, has low commissions and fees, and supports several payment methods.

AvaTrade is an established broker that offers thousands of financial instruments. On top of stocks, indices, commodities, and cryptocurrencies all via CFDs , you can also trade heaps of forex pairs. There are no trading commissions to pay, and spreads are very competitive. You can either trade via the AvaTrade web-platform, or via popular third-party provider MT4. The platform is heavily regulated, with several licenses under its belt. com is an FCA, CySEC, ASIC, and NBRB-regulated online broker that offers heaps of financial instruments.

All in the form of CFDs - this covers stocks, indices and commodities. You will not pay a single penny in commission, and spreads are super-tight. Leverage facilities are also on offer - fully in-line with ESMA limits. Once again, this stands at on majors and on minors and exotics. If you are based outside of Europe or you are deemed to be a professional client, you will get even higher limits.

Getting money into Capital. Having made it this far through our forex trading PDF, you should by now have an understanding of how technical analysis works, and have a good grasp of the macroeconomic fundamentals which guide currency values.

Armed with all of the useful information included in this guide, you should be ready to get out there and start trading forex. Hopefully, making a profit and learning more along the way.

If you are a trader with somewhat limited funds, you might find that swing trading suits you best. If you have a larger trading fund available to you, you might have a more profitable experience with fundamental based trading.

Either way, w e do recommend trying out a free demo account where possible before trading with your hard-earned money. As well as reading helpful guides like ours, actually learning by doing will also provide you with a better sense of how it all works and how you might like to trade yourself.

What does forex mean? Forex as a term refers to 'foreign exchange'. You will make money in two different scenarios. You either buy a currency pair for less than you sell it for long order , and you sell a currency pair for less than you bought it for short order.

The spread is the difference between the bid and ask price of a forex pair. This gap in pricing must be included in your profit and loss forecasts, and it is how the broker ensures that the platform always makes money. This is why short-term retail Forex traders should trade only during active banking hours and avoid looking for trading opportunities when the forex market hours clock stops ticking.

Technically speaking, if you exchange U. Dollars to get some British Pound for pocket money at an Airport Foreign Exchange Kiosk after arriving in London, in the middle of the night, it would be also considered as a foreign exchange trade.

However, as you can guess by now, large billion-dollar, cross-border, transactions do not happen at 3 a. at the parking lot of the Heathrow Airport.

These market-moving transactions happen among large banks during their respective banking hours. Moreover, not all branches of a certain big bank will do these large-scale cross-border transactions. For example, a small branch of the Bank of America in Louisville, Kentucky. However, its downtown Manhattan branch in New York will certainly engage in large-scale foreign exchange deals. Similarly, a branch of the Swiss multinational investment bank, UBS Group AG, in Bangkok will have a lower transaction volume in the Forex market compared to its branch located in a major Asian financial hub like Singapore.

Hence, banking hours in the time zone of major financial centers like Tokyo in Japan, Singapore City in Singapore, Frankfurt in Germany, London in the United Kingdom, and New York in the United States generate the bulk of the trading volume in the Forex market. Therefore, liquidity and volatility are usually higher when markets are open in these time zones. Besides banks engaged in commercial cross-border currency transactions, institutional investors and hedge funds speculating in the international stock exchanges also generate a high volume of foreign exchange transactions.

Hedge funds with international exposure often buy and sell a large number of stocks across the globe to diversify their portfolios. Coincidentally, some of the major forex exchange hubs also host the major stock exchanges. For example, the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange are located in, you guessed it right, in New York; The London Stock Exchange is located in London, and the Tokyo Shoken Torihikijo is based in Tokyo.

So, cross-border investments that require moving funds from one end of the globe to another generally contributes to a higher level of trading volume in the global foreign exchange market. Furthermore, when banks and stock exchanges in more than one major financial centers are open simultaneously, the trading volume and liquidity go up substantially.

This is why the beginning of the New York trading session has usually generated the bulk of the trading opportunities for short-term traders because it opens when the London trading session is also open across the Atlantic. Hence, if you overlay the trading volatility in a forex market hours chart, you can see that it spikes up when trading begins in the financial center located next in the time zone. And so Overlapping hours of the London trading session and the New York trading session is the best time to trade forex, since the market is most active.

If you are a swing trader or a trend trader who likes to keep positions open overnight or several days at a time, then paying attention to the forex market hours chart in figure 2 may not be that important. However, most Forex traders are day traders and different trading sessions based on the time zone and geographic location of the financial centers around the world will have a substantial impact on the bottom line.

While the actual trading strategy you have may not change, knowing when to trade can certainly help you stop wasting time looking for trades when are no trading opportunities in the market. Furthermore, success in Forex trading in highly depends on timing, as trends can often reverse and wipe out the profits in your open trades. Knowing when to enter and exit the market based on active Forex market hour can have an immensely positive impact on your profitability and aid in building the confidence you need to succeed in this agile market environment.

Let's take a look at three major Forex market hour-based strategies you can apply today to improve your win rate and increase profitability. Price gaps are the areas on a price chart that represents a missing price data in a chart. While a lot of brokers also show price gaps in line charts, it is best illustrated in a bar or candlestick chart. When a currency pair sharply goes up or down with no transaction in between, it is represented in a price gap. While most brokers suspend trading during the weekend, the fact is that economic news and geopolitical events still occur on Saturdays and Sundays.

As a result, the valuation of different currency pairs can change after the brokers suspend trading on Friday. When the market re-opens on Monday morning, at a. in Sydney time, you will often see that there is a huge gap between the closing price of Friday and the opening price on Monday. For example, let's say a hostile country like Iran might have announced to test a nuclear weapon after the market closed on Friday. As a result, the value of the U. Dollar may drop during the weekend. Trading price gaps on Mondays can be very profitable as most often gaps are filled before the actual trend takes place, be it the continuation of the trend in the direction of the price gap or a complete reversal.

While the uptrend continued throughout Monday, a bearish retracement started on Tuesday, July 2, , and the gap was filled before the uptrend resumed. Hence, often major trends start and end during the London Forex market hours. If you are a Forex trader who applies breakout trading strategies, it makes perfect sense to look for breakout trades at the opening hours of the London market open. To do so, of course, you need to trade in smaller time frames like the 5-minute or the minute charts.

In terms of the actual trading strategy, trading during the London market opening hour is no different than trading any other time of the day. However, given the significant increase in trading volume at this time, it makes breakout trading much more lucrative. But, as soon as the market opened at a. If you are a breakout trader, and only have an hour to trade per day, looking for trading opportunities during the London market opening hours can often provide you with ample trades that you may not find at any other time of the day.

As we discussed earlier, when the market in New York opens, the London trading session has already progressed halfway for the day.

As a result, the trading volume in the Forex market typically reaches the highest during the day at the opening hours of the New York trading session.

To illustrate the situation at the opening of the New York trading session, take a look at figure 5 to see how the trading volume spiked up the moment market opened.

Most short-term intraday traders decide to trade during the second half of the London session. Because during this time, two of the largest financial centers are operational, which increases liquidity in the market. High market liquidity is a pre-requisite of low spreads and short-term traders who only bag pips at a time need low spreads to reduce their cost of business.

If you are an intraday trader, trading during this particular time of the day will certainly be going to increase your odds of success regardless of which technical trading strategy you are pursuing.

In the traditional investment environment, volatility is seen as an adverse condition that is associated with risks. In fact, academic finance loathes volatility and try to develop investment strategies that reduce its effect on a portfolio. However, speculative trading, such as trading in the Forex market, requires a decent level of volatility to generate profits. After all, without ample volatility, when the market remains too calm, no profitable trades can be executed. Hence, knowing which time of the day the Forex market remains most active is an integral part of becoming a successful trader.

The best time to trade the global foreign exchange market is when other traders are active in the market and trading volume remains healthy enough for spreads to remain tight.

When banks, stock markets, and commodity exchanges in major financial centers are operational, it creates the underlying liquidity in the Forex market that is necessary for volatility. You can be a price action trader, or your strategy might rely on a combination of technical indicators to generate trading signals.

Regardless of how you trade, knowing when to trade can make or break your strategy. Contact Us Copyright © forexchurch. com All rights reserved. Before using this website, you must agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

Unlocks access to the leading crypto trading analysis, signals and trading tools. World class development team backed by Quant developers and VC investors. Our Forex trading PDF, it is widely believed that forex is one of the biggest and most fluid or liquid asset markets in the world. Sometimes referred to as FX, currencies are traded 24 hours per day — 7 days per week.

In simple terms, refers to the process of exchanging one currency to another — and generally speaking, this will be for tourism, commerce, trading and many other reasons. In this forex trading PDF we are going to talk about what forex trading is and some of the commonly used terminology in the industry.

Essentially, it is the action of selling or buying foreign currencies. Of course, these are all used by banks, corporations and investors for a variety of reasons like profit, making a trade, exchanging foreign currencies and tourism. One of the major benefits with forex trading is that after opening a position, traders are able to put in place an automatic stop loss as well as at profit levels this closes the trade. The forex market is a place to buy or sell against each other a variety of national currencies, globally.

Wherever two foreign currencies are being traded, you can be sure that a forex market exists regardless of the time zone. In this section of our forex trading PDF, we are going to run through some of the most commonly used forex trading terminologies in the industry. The pip represents the smallest amount possible a currency quote can alter.

For instance, 0. The differentiation between the sale price and the purchase price of a currency pair is known as the spread. The least popular least commonly used currency pairs usually have a low spread. In some cases, this can be even less than a pip.

When trading the most commonly used currency pairs the spread is often at its lowest. The total value of the currency pair needs to surpass the spread in order for the forex trade to become profitable. In order for forex brokers to increase the number of trades available to its customers, they need to provide capital in the way of leverage. Before you can trade using leverage, you must sign up to a forex broker and open a margin account.

Contingent on the broker and the size of the position, leverage is usually capped at if you are a retail client non-professional trader. Some offshore forex brokers will offer much more than this if you are seeking higher limits. It is because of the aforementioned example that you should exercise caution when using leverage.

Should the worst possible scenario happen and your account falls below 0, you should contact your forex broker and ask for its policy on negative balance protection. The good news is that all forex brokers which are regulated by ESMA the European Securities and Markets Authority will be able to provide you with this extra level of protection, ensuring that you never become in debt with your broker.

Margins are a good way for traders to build up their exposure. Put simply, in order for a trader to maintain position and place a trade, the trader needs to put forward a specific amount of money first — this is the margin. Rather than being a transaction cost, the margin can be compared to a security deposit.

This will be held by the broker during an open forex trade. It is commonplace for forex brokers to give their customers access to leverage see above. In order for you to lower your risk of exposure and offset your balance, you might consider hedging.

This is a procedure which involves traders selling and buying financial instruments. When there are movements in currencies, a hedging strategy can reduce the risk of disadvantageous price shifts. The protection of this technique is often a short term solution. Traders often turn to hedge in a panic as a result of the financial media reporting volatility in currency markets.

This is usually down to huge events like geopolitical turmoil conflict in the middle east , global health crisis COVID and of course the great financial crisis of To counteract negative price movements, market players will tactically take advantage of attainable financial instruments in the market. This is hedging against risk in its truest form. Hedging will give you some flexibility when it comes to enhancing your forex trading experience, but there are still no guarantees that you will be totally protected from any losses or risks.

While it can take some time to get your head around heading in the forex markets, the overarching concept is that it presents both outcomes. That is to say, irrespective of which way the markets move, you will remain at the break-even point less some trading commissions. More specifically, the spot trade is a spot transaction, with reference to the sale or the purchase of a currency.

Essentially, spot forex is to both sell and buy foreign currencies. A good example of this is if you were to purchase a certain amount of South African rands ZAR , and exchange that for US dollars USD. If the value of the ZAR increases, you are able to exchange your USD back to ZAR, meaning you get more money back in comparison to the amount you originally paid. CFD is basically a contract which portrays the price movement of financial instruments. So, without having to own the asset, you can still make the most of price movements, whilst also avoiding the need to sell or buy vast amounts of currency.

CFDs are also accessible in bonds, commodities , cryptocurrencies, stocks, indices and of course — forex. With a CFD you are able to trade in price movements, cutting out the need to buy them at all. This section of our forex trading PDF is all about forex charts. When it comes to a MetaTrader platform, traders can use bar charts, line charts and candlestick charts.

You can usually toggle between the different charts, depending on your preferences, fairly easily. The first record of the now-famous candlestick chart was used in Japan during the s and proved invaluable for rice traders.

These days, this price chart is without a doubt one the most popular amongst traders all over the world. Much like the OHLC bar chart see below , candlestick charts provide low, high, open and close values for a predetermined time frame.

Live forex traders love this chart due to its visual appearance and the range of price action patterns utilised. This allows you to gain a better understanding of how live trading works before you take any big financial risks in the market.

As the title suggests, this one is a bar chart, and each time frame a trader is looking at will be displayed as a bar. In other words, if you are viewing a daily chart you will see that every bar equates to a full trading day. With this price chart, traders are able to establish who is controlling the market, whether it be sellers or buyers. OHLC analysis was the starting block for the creation of the ever-popular candlestick charts please further down. It is a great tool for looking at the bigger picture when it comes to trends.

The line chart arranges the close prices at the end of that time frame; so in this case, at the end of the day, the line will connect the closing price of that day.

In this section of our forex trading PDF, we are going to talk about the different ways in which you can sell and buy a forex position as well as things to look out for. When it comes to forex trading you can trade both short and long, but always make sure you have a good understanding of forex trading before embarking on trades. After all, forex trading can be a bit complex to begin with, especially when mixing long and short trades.

In a nutshell, going long is usually a term used for buying. So, when traders expect the price of an asset to rise, they will go long. When forex traders expect the price of an asset to fall, they will go short.

This means benefiting from buying at a lesser value. To achieve this, you simply need to place a sell order. The current exchange rate of a forex pair is always based on market forces. This will change on a second-by-second basis. As we noted earlier, you also need to take the spread into account, so there will always be a slight variation in pricing. For instance, if you exchange 1 USD for 17 ZAR, the sale and purchase price offered by your forex broker will be either side of that figure.

The currency pairs with the most notable supply and demand attached to them will be considered the most liquid in the forex market. The supply and demand aspect is thanks to the investment of importers, exporters, banks and traders — to name a few. The most liquid currency pairs are therefore the ones in high demand. When you feel you are ready to take the plunge and begin live trading, you need to select a forex trading system.

There is a vast amount of trading strategies for you to pick from. This is because investors, speculators, corporations and banks have been trading for decades. In this part of the forex trading PDF, we are going to explain a few of the strategies available to you. If you want to buy and sell currency pairs from the comfort of your home or even via your mobile device , you will need to use a trading platform. Otherwise referred to as a forex broker, there are literally hundreds of trading platforms active in the online space.

This makes it extremely difficult to know which broker to sign up with. In the below sections of our forex trading PDF, we explain some of the considerations that you need to make. You should also look out for analysis tools available to you. In some cases, this might be embedded, while some offer tools such as technical analysis and fundamental analysis. This is because it will save you a lot of leg work having to move between different sites and sources of information.

Some of the fastest and easiest trading platforms are MetaTrader 5 MT5 and MetaTrader 4 MT4. Crucially, both MT4 and MT5 are fast and receptive trading platforms, both providing live market data and access to sophisticated charts. It is essential before you begin trading seriously that you fully trust the trading platform you intend on using.

This is especially the case if you intend on using a scalping strategy, for example. However, if you like to trade, it is vital for your peace of mind and your finances that you are fully confident with the fast execution of data transfer. This is also the case with the precision of quoted prices, and the speed of order processing. All of these things are going to help you to have a successful forex trading experience. To enable you to make the most of new opportunities, the ideal forex broker will be available to you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, in line with the forex market opening hours.

To save you from having to request that your broker takes action for you, your forex broker should enable you to manage your account and your trades separately.

And so Overlapping hours of the London trading session and the New York trading session is the best time to trade forex, since the market is most active. However, just because you can trade the market any time of the day or night doesn't necessarily mean that you should. Most successful day traders understand that more trades are successful if conducted when market activity is high and that it is best to avoid times when trading is light. Hence, the concept of Forex Market Hours derives from the notion that when major financial markets are open in a given time zone, the volume and liquidity in the market remains high, which in turn reduces the difference between the bid and ask prices and helps traders to fill their orders relatively easily without incurring slippage. Since most participants trade between the hours of a.

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