If you are new to Forex, you are likely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information you are finding about currency trading. Although the concept of trading the currency markets is simple to understand, the actual trading methodologies and understanding of how, why and when trades are executed can be hard concepts to grasp and fully understand. If you aren't aware by now, forex trading is not without substanial risks.There are several schools of thought on how a new trader should progress from learning to actual live trading. In this article we will discuss the best ways for a new trader to learn how to trade the forex and make their first live trades.
To start out, I can not stress enough the need for hands on trading. This is why you will often hear it recommended that new traders start trading with a demo account. What is a demo account? Many online forex brokers offer something known as a "demo account" which is a fake account that you can trade until you feel comfortable trading your own funds. Demo accounts behave just like real accounts, the only difference is that the money you are trading is not real and no actual trades are ever executed.
The purpose of using a demo account if you are new to Forex trading is to get you comfortable making trades and to help you become familiar with the brokers trading platform. You can cut your proverbial teeth so to speak without risking any of your own funds. This makes demo accounts good for a brand new trader who just wants to see how trading works. There are some drawbacks however to using demo accounts to learn Forex trading.
The biggest downside to using a demo account is that you will likely only be able to trade standard size accounts with a demo account. If you intend to trade mini accounts, as many beginning forex traders do, a standard size demo account is going to behave differently than a mini account. Your margins are very different for a standard account versus a mini account. If you become accustomed to trading a standard size account, your trading methodologies will show it. This is because the larger margins offered on standard size accounts allow you to take greater profits from smaller movements in currency prices.
The other major downside to trading with a demo account for learning forex is that as a trader, you need to carefully manage the emotional aspects of trading real money. Since a demo account is fake money, detachment is easy to come by. Once you start trading your actual funds, you might just find that your tolerance for risk is much more conservative. Ideally, as you are learning to trade you are also learning how to manage your risks most effectively.
So what is a beginning trader to do? What is the best way to learn to trade the Forex, hands on?
Once you have read, studied, and completed any courses on Forex trading that you may be taking, you are ready for probationary live trading. The single best way to trade the Forex is to just Do it. Now, this does not mean to jump in and trade a full size account with real money, this would be an enormous risk for a new trader and not a very smart move indeed. What you can do is to find a broker that offers mini accounts. Mini accounts typically start at $200 and typically give you 100:1 leverage. That said, as of this writing, there is one broker (Easy-Forex) that allows you to trade a live mini account for as little as $25.
For less than you paid for any of your books, courses or training materials, you can actually try live trading. You will be amazed at how after just a few trades, the stubborn concepts seem to start making sense and you begin to understand Forex trading.
Now, if you do decide to begin your trading with one of these tiny mini accounts, you should start by making several very small trades. You should also be trading with the same system or methodology that you are trying to perfect. Your profits will likely only be a few dollars since you are trading on a small margin. This is good, however because the reverse is true as well, you are only ever risking a few real dollars. If you happen to have a series of loosing trades and wipe out the funds in your demo account, you can consider it the least expensive education you could possibly get in actual forex trading. Much better than loosing large sums of funds, and more realistic than trading a demo account. Just learn from the experience, and consider it a good deal on a valuable lesson.
Once you are comfortable trading your mini account, you can always have it converted to a regular account (with an additional deposit) if you choose. Overall, it cant be stressed enough, the best way to learn the Forex is to have experience with live hands on trading. This article showed you ways that you can do this at a minimal cost and with the smallest amount of risk.
Article source http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/amber-lowery/2365.htm
Monday, December 8, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Forex Mini Account - Am I Eligible?
If you were just learning about Forex Markets a good idea for you would be what is called the Forex mini account. The mini account is also great for those who want to start off with a fairly low investment. A mini account can be opened with only $250 while a regular one has to involve a minimum of $2,500. The option of the Forex mini account is definitely a more realistic option for smaller businesses that would like to get involved in the world market with very little available capital.Many people wonder if those who are owners of these Forex mini accounts suffer any disadvantages because of the need for less capital. In most cases they do not, and than can definitely be a huge draw to those looking at the world market and not wanting to get taken advantage have by larger companies. Free trading platform and small spreads are just as easily available to Forex mini account holders as they are to anyone else involved in the Forex markets.
There are also some additional benefits to being a holder of a foreign exchange mini account. Those who own these mini accounts only needs fifty dollars as a margin deposit for a ten thousand dollar trade. This benefit of having leverage is one of two hundred to one, when you own a mini account. This means the trader can trade more in a commodity than the amount of money they available to them.
There is also another advantage with an FX mini account, in regards to losses and minimizing its losses. This type of accounts contract size is 1/10th the size of standard contracts and this is how they can save themselves from too much of a loss. These mini lots in a mini account are excellent way to save money in potential losses, depending on you set up your stop loss.
Also with a Forex mini account you are allowed more flexibility in regards to customizing your trades and minimizing your risks. This means that those with less money in their bank account can do better in this type of account. They can feel more comfortable in using the mini accounts because of the advantages and the fact that they have less risk because of them. This can help those with smaller bank accounts have a chance to invest in more areas without as much of the risk. In the end, Forex mini accounts are the best way to go for those with not as much cash available to them and yet want to minimize risk, and still be able to trade on the world market.
Article source http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/michael-williams/7527.htm
There are also some additional benefits to being a holder of a foreign exchange mini account. Those who own these mini accounts only needs fifty dollars as a margin deposit for a ten thousand dollar trade. This benefit of having leverage is one of two hundred to one, when you own a mini account. This means the trader can trade more in a commodity than the amount of money they available to them.
There is also another advantage with an FX mini account, in regards to losses and minimizing its losses. This type of accounts contract size is 1/10th the size of standard contracts and this is how they can save themselves from too much of a loss. These mini lots in a mini account are excellent way to save money in potential losses, depending on you set up your stop loss.
Also with a Forex mini account you are allowed more flexibility in regards to customizing your trades and minimizing your risks. This means that those with less money in their bank account can do better in this type of account. They can feel more comfortable in using the mini accounts because of the advantages and the fact that they have less risk because of them. This can help those with smaller bank accounts have a chance to invest in more areas without as much of the risk. In the end, Forex mini accounts are the best way to go for those with not as much cash available to them and yet want to minimize risk, and still be able to trade on the world market.
Article source http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/michael-williams/7527.htm
Friday, December 5, 2008
Forex - Understanding The Difference Between Mini-account & Standard Account Forex Trading
In forex, for the retail investor, things are totally different than the banks and institutions who trade with each other 24 hours per day on a daily basis and in the millions with actual transactions occuring (usually 2-3 days later also known as the Spot Value).
Investment banks will take out a credit check on each other, a bit like when a person applies for a mortgage. Whilst currency trades are placed and completed real-time either by computerised system or telephone, the actual transfer of funds happens a couple of days later.However, with the retail forex trader, usually, the trade is only placed in the brokers books and no real transfer of funds occurs, although the retail investor is in effect trading with the banks at almost the same quotes and with a very similar spread these days.
So who is the forex broker and what is their relevence in the answer to this forex topic? The retail investor places their trades through the environment of the margin broker. Trades are placed in real time and via a trader who receives the order from the investor, either buy (long), sell (short) or close position.
The broker not only allows retail investors to trade forex live with the banks, but also provides a system of leverage. This means that the broker only requires a deposit to represent the amount of currency a person wants to control, so long as the deposit is enough to cover any losses that might be incurred by the trade.
Take for example a margin leverage of 100:1 given to you by the broker. This means to control $100,000 of real currency (1 lot), you need to provide security to the broker of only $1000. Each 'pip' movement in price will cause your equity to increase or decrease by $10. For example if the currency pair you are trading is GBP/USD (also known as cable) and the price you are quoted is 1.8484, this means 1 UK pound sterling is equal to 1.8484 US dollars.
So, if you are controlling 100,000 units of currency (or you have placed a buy/sell forex trade of '1 lot')in the above case, each time the price changed by 1 pip - ie. 1.8484 changes to 1.8485 - you gain or lose $10 US. This is because 0.0001 x 100,000 = 10 and you have opted to control 100,000 units of currency.
The amazing thing though is that you as a retail trader have only used a security measure of $1000 deposited with the broker in your brokering account and the only cost for placing the trade is a small spread (no comission in many cases) of say 2-3 pips in which the broker makes his profit regardless of whether your trade is successful or not. And the chances of you losing that entire $1000 in the trade are extremely slim, especially if you use risk management and safeguard your capital from losses by setting a "stop loss" - a topic out of the scope of this article.
So what about mini-forex trading. It's a subject which many people seem to want to know about. What is a mini-forex trading account? What is mini forex trading? Mini Forex trading is quite simple to explain given the above information. In light of the information that is told to you above about retail forex trading in general, the use of a mini-account is exactly that!
Rather than trading 1 whole lot each time (ie controlling 100,000 units of currency using only 1000 units of security or deposit to trade for a profit of about $10 per pip depending on the forex currency pair you and trading) you can use a mini-account (sometimes this is entirely indistinguishable from a standard account) to trade a fraction of a lot. This could technically be as little as 0.1 lot (ie $1 profit per pip) or half a lot - $5 profit per pip etc. This is the authors understanding of mini-forex-trading.
In conclusion then, mini forex trading is explained away by understanding what a 'lot' is in forex. Once you understand that forex is traded in 'lots' and what '1 lot' means to the investment banker/forex trader in the bank and to the retail investor using margin leverage provided by a broker, you can understand that mini-forex trading is forex trading on a mini-scale. Instead of trading in lots or multiples of lots (more than one) the retail investor uses a smaller deposit with the broker and trades for less profit, but less risk as well and not needing so much profit to start out with, eg 0.1 lots or 0.5 lots. Some forex brokers these days will allow currency trading with a deposit of as little as $500 into a customers account.
Article source http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/sam-beatson/5818.htm
Investment banks will take out a credit check on each other, a bit like when a person applies for a mortgage. Whilst currency trades are placed and completed real-time either by computerised system or telephone, the actual transfer of funds happens a couple of days later.However, with the retail forex trader, usually, the trade is only placed in the brokers books and no real transfer of funds occurs, although the retail investor is in effect trading with the banks at almost the same quotes and with a very similar spread these days.
So who is the forex broker and what is their relevence in the answer to this forex topic? The retail investor places their trades through the environment of the margin broker. Trades are placed in real time and via a trader who receives the order from the investor, either buy (long), sell (short) or close position.
The broker not only allows retail investors to trade forex live with the banks, but also provides a system of leverage. This means that the broker only requires a deposit to represent the amount of currency a person wants to control, so long as the deposit is enough to cover any losses that might be incurred by the trade.
Take for example a margin leverage of 100:1 given to you by the broker. This means to control $100,000 of real currency (1 lot), you need to provide security to the broker of only $1000. Each 'pip' movement in price will cause your equity to increase or decrease by $10. For example if the currency pair you are trading is GBP/USD (also known as cable) and the price you are quoted is 1.8484, this means 1 UK pound sterling is equal to 1.8484 US dollars.
So, if you are controlling 100,000 units of currency (or you have placed a buy/sell forex trade of '1 lot')in the above case, each time the price changed by 1 pip - ie. 1.8484 changes to 1.8485 - you gain or lose $10 US. This is because 0.0001 x 100,000 = 10 and you have opted to control 100,000 units of currency.
The amazing thing though is that you as a retail trader have only used a security measure of $1000 deposited with the broker in your brokering account and the only cost for placing the trade is a small spread (no comission in many cases) of say 2-3 pips in which the broker makes his profit regardless of whether your trade is successful or not. And the chances of you losing that entire $1000 in the trade are extremely slim, especially if you use risk management and safeguard your capital from losses by setting a "stop loss" - a topic out of the scope of this article.
So what about mini-forex trading. It's a subject which many people seem to want to know about. What is a mini-forex trading account? What is mini forex trading? Mini Forex trading is quite simple to explain given the above information. In light of the information that is told to you above about retail forex trading in general, the use of a mini-account is exactly that!
Rather than trading 1 whole lot each time (ie controlling 100,000 units of currency using only 1000 units of security or deposit to trade for a profit of about $10 per pip depending on the forex currency pair you and trading) you can use a mini-account (sometimes this is entirely indistinguishable from a standard account) to trade a fraction of a lot. This could technically be as little as 0.1 lot (ie $1 profit per pip) or half a lot - $5 profit per pip etc. This is the authors understanding of mini-forex-trading.
In conclusion then, mini forex trading is explained away by understanding what a 'lot' is in forex. Once you understand that forex is traded in 'lots' and what '1 lot' means to the investment banker/forex trader in the bank and to the retail investor using margin leverage provided by a broker, you can understand that mini-forex trading is forex trading on a mini-scale. Instead of trading in lots or multiples of lots (more than one) the retail investor uses a smaller deposit with the broker and trades for less profit, but less risk as well and not needing so much profit to start out with, eg 0.1 lots or 0.5 lots. Some forex brokers these days will allow currency trading with a deposit of as little as $500 into a customers account.
Article source http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/sam-beatson/5818.htm
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Why You Should Get Started With Mini Forex Trading
If you are new to the world to currency trading and aren't ready for a full time Forex trading account find out why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account. With just a couple of hundred dollars you can set up a Mini Forex Trading account and enjoy many of the same privileges that a full account enjoys.
A normal Forex account requires you to put a minimum of $2500 into the account and for many that's far more than they have to play with or want to play with. That's why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.A Mini Forex Trading account let's a person play, find out if they like what they see, and decide whether it's an investment portfolio
that appeals to them and it's why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.
Although there are some restrictions on the mini account there are very nominal. A Mini Forex Trading account handles 10% of what a standard account is and the PIP is also 10% and it is why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.
When you get involved in mini trading you are actually marginal trading which means that you are borrowing money so that you can complete a trade without having to put the full amount up yourself. This is called leveraging and it's why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.
When you open your mini account and you put the minimum $250 in your account and that gives you 5 mini lots to trade. So see why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account? On a normal account the leverage would be 4:1 and the heavy leverage of 200:1 might be a bit hard to take but in Mini Forex trading this is not considered over leveraging.
The investor's risk on a Mini account offsets the lower risk of losses which are 10% the amount that would be lost on a regular Forex trade. This actually makes it easier to run a trading strategy that is more disciplined. So you see why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account?
If you want to invest less than $10,000 using a Forex mini account is the way to go. Now that you know why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account what are you waiting for?
Copyright © 2007 Joel Teo. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author's information with live links only.)
Article source http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/joel-teo/13426.htm
A normal Forex account requires you to put a minimum of $2500 into the account and for many that's far more than they have to play with or want to play with. That's why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.A Mini Forex Trading account let's a person play, find out if they like what they see, and decide whether it's an investment portfolio
that appeals to them and it's why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.
Although there are some restrictions on the mini account there are very nominal. A Mini Forex Trading account handles 10% of what a standard account is and the PIP is also 10% and it is why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.
When you get involved in mini trading you are actually marginal trading which means that you are borrowing money so that you can complete a trade without having to put the full amount up yourself. This is called leveraging and it's why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account.
When you open your mini account and you put the minimum $250 in your account and that gives you 5 mini lots to trade. So see why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account? On a normal account the leverage would be 4:1 and the heavy leverage of 200:1 might be a bit hard to take but in Mini Forex trading this is not considered over leveraging.
The investor's risk on a Mini account offsets the lower risk of losses which are 10% the amount that would be lost on a regular Forex trade. This actually makes it easier to run a trading strategy that is more disciplined. So you see why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account?
If you want to invest less than $10,000 using a Forex mini account is the way to go. Now that you know why you should get started with a Mini Forex Trading account what are you waiting for?
Copyright © 2007 Joel Teo. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author's information with live links only.)
Article source http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/joel-teo/13426.htm
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