Trade Forex

Fundamental Announcement Planned For This Week

dinarav — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 03:27:24 +0000

In a couple of past posts I have mentioned trading fundamental announcements. I have realized that many of you may be interested in what announcements that I plan on trading. Also I have not posted about how to find these announcements. I use 2 differents calendars to find these announcements. On the weekends I make a list of all the announcements I can feasibly trade for the next week. I try to trade at least six of these a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. It all really depends on the profit I have made. If I make a decent profit early in the week, I will not trade the ones that require me to get up in the middle of the night for example. With no further ado, here is my tentative trade plan for the week. All times are listed in central standard time.

Sunday 9/28/08

4:45 pm NZD Trade Balance

Monday 9/29/08

4:45 pm NZD Building Consents

8:30 pm AUD Building Approvals

9:00 pm NZD NBNZ Business Confidence

Tuesday 9/30

3:30 am GBP Current Account

3:30 am GBP Final GDP q/q

3:30 am GBP Revised Business Investment

6:50 pm JPY Tankan Manufacturing Index

Wednesday 10/01

3:30 am GBP Manufacturing PMI

8:30 pm AUD Trade Balance

Thursday 10/02

1:00 am GBP Nationwide HPI

Friday 10/03

3:30 am GBP Services PMI

I rely on two fundamental announcement calendars for this information. The first of these is Forex Factory. I only trade the ones that are listed as heavy impact. I also trade off of PFX Global.

Both of these sites are incredible. Forex Factory has incredible forums listing any and all forex topics that you could imagine. PFX Global has a very interesting outlook on trading forex. They also some pretty decent free forex courses. As I trade these fundamentals I will update this blog with the results of the largest gains and losses. If the loss or gain is only a few pips I do not list it, who really cares if I lose or gain 3 pips. Anyway that is the tentative trade schedule for the week, hopefully I will be very profitable with these announcements. I will be trading 2 micro lots at a time this week, since last week ended profitably.
Happy Trading!
rgrace

Summary of Trade Results For Last Week

dinarav — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:06:08 +0000

My account balance for the end of the week is: 1370.92. This is a gain from my large loss. The reason for such a small gain is I have temporarily cut my lot size down to 1 micro lot. This is until I can consistently show a gain. Every week I will increase my micro lots by one, as long as I am profitable for the week. If I encounter an unprofitable week I will lower my lot size by 1. I will continue the increase until I reach 1% of my account size. At this point I will trade until I have one full month that is profitable. Then I will continue raising my lot size until I reach 2% of my account risked on each trade. I have read in many books that good money management is the number one contributing factor to success in the forex market. Conversely the lack of money management is the number one cause of failure in this market.

Hwppy trading!

rgrace

Trading Gains

dinarav — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:42:03 +0000

As I posted last, I have been trading Fundamental Announcements following the Explosive Profits Strategy. So far, so good. I made 65 pips a couple nights ago. That would have been a decent gain if I were still trading 7 micro lots. My lots have been cut to 1 micro lot, until I gain more experience in trading. This has been done to minimize my losses. This has of course minimized my gains as well. The trade was an incredible trade, it only took about 2 hours till completion. My gain was only $6.50 due to the small lot sizes traded. This is a paltry sum, but as I stated earlier this money is education money. I am trading so that I can learn. As I progress and stay profitable my lots will slowly increase until I am able to make good money trading. I am expecting this to take a year or more, I only hope my account can survive to become profitable. So far for the week I am up 38 pips, I have had a few losses that cancelled out a little of my profit. If I were trading mini lots this would be a $38 profit. If I were trading a standard lot it would be $380, not bad for a beginner. Sorry I have not been updating as often as I would like, I am working a full time job during the day, then getting up at all hours of the night to trade forex. I have been running on fumes, getting about 3-5 hours of sleep a night. This will all be worth it in the end though. I am determined to learn this business, and when I do the results will be shown here. I am sorry if this post is incoherent, I am very tired right now and not in the best of moods. I will read it again this weekend and make modifications as needed.

Happy Trading!

Rgrace

Biggest Loss Yet

dinarav — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:26:18 +0000

As I stated in a previous post, I have been trading according to Trade Money. There have been ups and downs trading this strategy. Up until last night I was slowly making gains and my account balance was slowly but steadily growing. Last night, I was trading a fundamental announcement on the GBP/USD. The price shot up around 50 pips in less than a minute. Following the strategy in “Explosive Profits” from the afore mentioned web site, I waited for the price to pull back. Then I placed an entry order above the price with a stop of 20 pips. It was not very long and my order was triggered, and then stopped out for a 20 pip loss. I was trading 7 micro lots so that was a 14 dollar loss. I tried another entry, again stopped out. Before it was over with, I was down over 100 dollars. I am aware that a hundred dollars is not a whole lot of money. It is however a lot when compared to the total amount of money in my account. My account total was $1467, the loss of last night brought me to $1367. This is about a 7% total loss of my account. That is a lot for three hours of trading. These losses came as a result of a break of my trading rules. One of my rules is quit trading after two consecutive losses, which was not followed. As a result of last night I have come to realize that trading this way is unsustainable, if it continues I will not last much over a year if that. These losses really caused me to rethink my position on trading Forex. The way that I see it I have four choices, and they are as follows.

1. Quit trading Forex altogether.
2. Strictly demo trade for a while.
3. Continue trading as I have been.
4. Lower my lots by quite a bit till I get everything under control.

Option #1 is totally out of the question. I am in this for the long haul, I will trade until I am forced to quit. Hopefully I will eventually be able to make a living off of this.

Option #2 Demo trading is good for learning the trading software and good for trying out new strategies, but I have come to realize it is not like real trading. I demo traded until I was profitable for a full month, then when I went to a real money account I was unprofitable. The main reason for this is that demo trading does not involve emotion. When there is real money on the line you are tempted to move your stop to breakeven or to a small profit. This sounds like a good idea. What happens though, is your gains are a lot smaller than your losses. This means that you have to have a higher percentage of successful trades. For a few weeks I have had a 75%+ success rate on my trades. But still, my losses far outweigh my gains. Please note these are my opinions on the subject, I do suggest that you demo trade until profitable. Just be aware that real trading is quite a bit different.

Option 3 is totally out. As I have stated, this type of trading is not sustainable. If I lasted a year it would not be much longer. Not to mention the fact that I cannot take many more losses of that magnitude.

Option 4 is the only real option for me. So, this is what I plan to do. I will trade a single micro lot and keep trading the same strategy. Most of my losing trades have been from not following the rules. Also, a lot of my trades have been profitable. The problem is very few have made it to my full profit level, due to me being overly cautious and moving my stop too early. I plan on using the compounded gains method as taught in Forex Surfing from Trade Money. When I get to the point where I am consistently profitable for a week I will raise the amount of lots by one. On the weeks that I am not profitable I will lower the lot by one. This will be the method I will follow until I am again trading 1% of my account, consistently profitable. When I make it to this point I will trade 1% for a month profitably, before I consider moving it to the 2% mark. This last rise will be a lot at a time as well.

I am sorry that I have not been posting very much, between work, trading forex, learning forex, and other projects, I have been pushed to the limits. Now, things have slowed down a bit, so hopefully I will be able to post at least a few times a week. I hope to eventually post every day.

Happy Trading

rgrace

Forex Strategies

dinarav — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 18:11:22 +0000

There are many forex strategies floating around on the internet. In my brief forex adventure thus far, I have tried several strategies. Money has been lost with them all. I believe a lot of it has to do with my implementations of the strategies. The strategies that I have tried are making money for the authors. I firmly believe that. The point I am trying to make is, regardless of what strategies you use, you will lose more money at first than what you will gain. All strategies are subjective, and they all take practice. Find a strategy you enjoy trading, learn as much as you can about forex, and trade small amounts of money or demo trade the strategy for a while. Demo trading will be a subject of a future post. Of all the strategies I have tried, none of them has been complete. Not only that, but I have not enjoyed trading any of them.

That is until I found what I believe to be the ultimated free forex strategy. This strategy is incredible, the basic strategy is incredibly simple. It can be expanded to be as complex as you would like. It is a complete trading methodology. It consists of 4 ebooks, each ebook covering a different set of strategies. This system can be used in any market conditions, whether ranging or consolidating. This system also does not require a huge stop loss, which means you can trade more lots total while still not exceeding your risk percentage.

What is this system you may ask?

Trade Money . These books are written differently than any I have seen thus far. Most of the other books I have read have tons of history and extraneous theory that will never be used. And quite frankly, most of them are so dry and boring that it is hard to stay awake after reading them, much less learning anything from them. This system is different, the books are easy to read. The system is understandable with very little forex knowledge. And thus far, I have been more profitable with this system than any other. Yes, I have lost money with this system. Most of my losses are, however from not following the system, or from marginal trades that I knew I should not have made in the first place. This system is incredible and worth far more than the cost. Did I mention it is free? Visit the site, start reading. Start with the book “Forex Surfing”. Read the ebook, then apply the methods either in demo, or with tiny amounts of real money. Then read the book again, and practice the system more. With me the first 2 times I read the book and practiced, I realized I was actually trading the strategies wrong. I was not waiting for a trading opportunity, I was trying to force one. Only after you can successfully trade that strategy, should you move on to others. These books cover consolidation, fundamental announcement trades, trends, patterns, range trading. The thoughts and methods can also be applied to any other trading strategy or method you are familiar with. This is an incredible system and the best I have seen thus far. This is also the only strategy I will be using for a while. Results will be posted as time goes on. I hope you have a wonderful day and have fun trading.

rgrace

Free Forex Education

dinarav — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:31:41 +0000

Forex education is vitally important for any trader. As I stated earlier, that is not what this blog is about. There are many places on the internet to get an education in Forex. There is also a lot of information available for free. The best general overview course I have found is The School of Pipsology. After going through that course a few times, you will begin to get a basic understanding of the market. It is not a complete education in Forex, such a thing does not exist. Forex is such a large market, with so many factors affecting it, making it impossible to know everything. If you decide to trade Forex, you will need to make a commitment to education for the rest of your trading career.

The School of Pipsology

This is an amazing course. It touches on a lot of topics. When you leave this course you will not instantly be profitable. This course introduces a lot of different methods, and explains the basic terminology. It will create a firm foundation upon which to build. It does not delve deeply into the topics it covers, but it does give an excellent broad overview. That should give you a sense of direction to further your forex education. The course is full of information and, best of all, it is free.

The School of Pipsology.

Introduction to Forex

dinarav — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:08:32 +0000

Forex (FOReign EXchange) is a currency market. The Forex market is traded in pairs. When you buy or sell a pair, you are actually buying one currency and selling another. This sounds confusing, but actually it makes sense with an analogy. Lets pretend you are in Japan. After getting off of the airplane, you realize you need some currency. Would you take Japanese yen? Exactly, they will not take US Dollars either (or Great British Pounds, or Euros etc.). So, you have to exchange your currency for theirs. What do you do? They take your currency and exchange it for their currency. This is the same as selling USD (United States Dollar), and buying JPY (Japanese Yen). The currency listed first is the one you buy or sell.

What affects Forex you might ask?

If you purchase more than usual this month, it affects forex. Actually, it would take you and millions of other people to affect the price of Forex. Forex is based on the global economy. Following is a short list of factors.

-Unemployment

-Gross National Product

-Disasters

-Wars

Everything significant, that happens any where in the world causes prices to change. These price changes of course are where you make you profit or your loss. As you have probably guessed by now, it is impossible to know every factor involved in any trade. Forex trading does have considerable risk. If you trade without educating yourself, you will eventually lose your money. If you continue trading, without education you will lose all of your money.

Why would I trade Forex?

Please note, I am not trying to convince you to trade Forex. If you trade Forex, you will have losses. With education, I believe your profits could exceed you losses consitently. Like everything else, you get better with practice. There is not a Forex trader alive who has not experienced losses. Losses are part of the game, period. I have been trading Forex for 3 months, and I have improved a lot. There have been some large losses. There have also been some good gains. My account for the last couple of weeks has been growing, though it is still below the original balance. Eventually, my account will grow consistently.

There are plenty of opportunities in Forex. Most currencies change 100 pips (similar to a point in the stock market) or more on a daily basis. Price movement can equal profit, it can also equal a loss.

This has been a brief overview of the forex market. There is more to come, along with links to much more detailed information. The information provided here is just to give you enough information to follow along with my blog. There are some very good courses and articles out there for free that do a lot better job of teaching than I could ever dream of. The links to some of these sites are forthcoming.

Stay tuned for the next blog entry,

rgrace

Forex Trading

dinarav — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:30:20 +0000

Forex trading is an exciting way to make money. It is also an easy way to lose money. Many sites are out there to teach you the basics. There are also many sites that will teach you the more advanced concepts. There are even sites that will automatically trade for you for free.

This site however is different. My primary goals are not to teach you. What I plan to accomplish is to show you what it is like to trade Forex. Forex trading looks easy, and many sites say that it is easy. What I have found, is that Forex is extremely complex. Forex systems are interesting and a lot of them work. Just because the system works for one person, does not mean it will work for you. I started trading about 3 months ago and have lost a little over $500. There have been many profitable days. There have also been many unprofitable days.

The plan for this blog is as follows. As I continue to learn forex trading, I will post major gains or losses here. All of the information on the trades will be available here as well. The reasons behind the trade will also be posted here. My account total will be updated in each blog entry, including the percentage gained or lost.

My goal as a trader is to learn the market. Hopefully, I will become a professional forex trader eventually. My hopes are that we all will learn from this experiment and that it will make us better traders overall.

There will also be another one of my blogs linked to for reviews of certain products or brokers I have used. As I grow my account, I intend to purchase forex products for the sole purpose of reviewing them and sorting out the good from the bad.

Thank you for visitng,

rgrace