The Forex API Trading Advantage

Ever wonder why institutional traders - forex dealers, hedge funds, money managers, treasuries, and corporations - don't trade the foreign exchange market via the dealer's resident platform?

Imagine for a moment that you are the coach of a football team and that the rules require you to signal the opposing coach every time your team is going to throw a forward pass. Is that a rule you could live with?

Would it surprise you to discover that a similar rule applies when you trade the forex using a dealer's resident platform? Well, it does.

As it stands today, when you trade with forex dealers via their resident trading platforms, you have no choice but to provide advanced notice of your intentions and this occurs every time a limit order is created or a submitted market order is accompanied by a standing stop loss or take profit order. The mere presence of these visible follow on orders on your dealer's server makes it easier for the dealer to trade against your position and/or collective/cumulative orders of others.

An API (Application Programming Interface) driven trading platform denies the dealer the advantage of having access to your exist strategy. Orders executed do not reside on the dealer's platform. They remain on your computer until the specified market price has been reached at which time they are forwarded to the dealer for execution.

In the final analysis, the advantage is obvious. API trading levels the playing field.

Institutional traders trade against the dealer's API using internally developed and costly proprietary platforms. Retail traders are well advised to either develop their own application to trade directly with their dealer or find a forex API trading platform they can use without incurring the extraordinary time and expense.

How to Ensure You Minimize Risk and Preserve Capital

The first and foremost thing you must think about when trading is to protect your capital and do whatever you can to ensure your risk is minimised to the utmost. If you can think in this frame of mind, rather than one of making money, you stand every chance of being a successful trader.

You have to educate yourself to become at ease with the aforementioned and that it should be your first consideration before you open a position. This may not be natural to you, but learn it you must. It really could save you a lot of worry and anxiety. Many including myself have been on the other end, and it's no fun I promise you.

What you will learn is that if you can preserve you capital, you will always have a trading budget for tomorrow. It certainly reaps the rewards to walk away from a position or trade that is too much of a risk

Spend a little time carefully weighing up that ratio of risk over reward, so that when you trade you plan - and you should have a plan - the ratio is comfortable for you. It's a good and crucial habit to form and will help you enormously to become a successful trader.

It is far better to let bad ten positions pass you by instead of taking a chance of allowing them to cause you grief. It's better to make one good trade than ten poor ones. For every trade you pass up on there will always be at least one other one just around the corner, always.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of searching for every opportunity at every moment to reduce the risk of you budget. Please do not misunderstand me; far from trying or seeming to be putting you off, I just want to promote your safe trading. You're here to make money but not by taking unnecessary risks.

Use Chart Patterns to Sky Rocket Your Profits

How to use Chart Patterns to trade

Many people don't know that the charts that we stare at day after day actually follow a series of patterns. These patterns are like a book that can be read if you actually know how. The stories that the patterns tell us can at times foretell the future, in essence, if you understand what the chart patterns are trying to tell you, you will be able to know how the market will move.

There are many chart patterns, depending on your chart setup you could have candle stick patterns and get involved with things like "shooting stars" or "hang man" if you use line charts you will be exposed to a different set of fancy names and interpretations of how to read and use this knowledge.

While it is all well and good to be able to actually find out about the fancy names and see the chart patterns emerge, I think you will be more interested in knowing how to utilize this knowledge to better your trading profits.

One chart pattern setup is called asymmetrical triangle. It basically tells you that the market is starting to narrow. This means to you that buying and selling pressures are starting to equal. With this knowledge, add on some technical indicators to see if there will be a chance of a break out soon. Now I had cases when the indicators showed up blank but the charts were screaming at me. At that point in time, what would you do?

My honest suggestion would be to sit and wait. It is always better to have cash in your pocket, than taking a risk in the market that you are not at least 70% sure you might make money. So when you use chart patterns, always include in at least one technical indicator and also please base your trading on a general knowledge of the fundamentals of the currency's economy.

Chart patterns can help you increase the odds of a successful trade as they essentially give us traders a head up on how the market might move. Although there will be other factors to consider, chart patterns are still a solid basic that traders looking to make consistent profits must learn.

Market Club - A Review of MarketClub

Their has been a lot of talk about Marketclub system. They have been written about in both Kiplingers and Barrons magazines.

Marketclub has many videos promoting their product. Of course showing profitable trades. But the refreshing thing I saw in their videos was their willingness to admit they get it wrong sometimes as well.

I watched many tutorials of trades they were doing live and was quite impressed with the results.

Once I got my membership access to MarketClub I noticed that there is a LOT of information. It can almost be overwhelming. But the site is pretty well laid out to navigate easily. I was spending a good deal of time in the help section which was packed with videos to see how exactly to trade and some recent examples.

The trade triangles system that Marketclub uses is really kind of cool. It takes the emotion out of trading which I have struggled with in the past. By following the GREEN UP arrows for buy signals and RED DOWN arrows for sell signals, it takes the guess work out of trading.

You will have losses but I have found when the losses occur they are pretty small and pretty quick. Which was really interesting to me, I was doing some research on forex signals with the Marketclub trade triangles and found that when I had losses they were usually within a day or two of my entry. However the majority of my winning trades lasted for over a week. And the REALLY good ones longer than that.

They say that you will never miss a MAJOR move in the markets. And based on what I have seen with Marketclub I believe it. When the markets aren't trending you will have to deal with some losses and small winners. However they really do limit the losses with this system and is pretty impressive.

It isn't a day trading system. However, if swing trading is what you are looking for (trades lasting few days-few weeks) then market club may be worth checking out.

Overall I would highly recommend Marketclub. They do offer a 30 day trial as well.

Day Trading? The Only Four Order Types You Really Need

My broker's trading platform lists 22 distinct and combination order types that are available to me, including exotic things I have never looked into understanding, but all of that is just an unnecessary invitation to complicate what is a very simple process. If you are an active day trader, there are only four order types that you really need.

As a day trader, you can only be in one of three states: long, short, or flat. All of your attention should be devoted to deciding what state you want to be in, and the mechanics of how to get there should be as straight forward as possible.

The only four order types you really need for day trading are market orders, limit orders, stop orders and stop-limit orders. You can ponder what all those other order types (reserve, limit+TTO, market+trailing stop, . . .) are good for when you are out of the market counting your profits. Here are the basic four and when to use them:

Market Order -- The only time you should use a market is order is when you see your position going straight to hell in front of you and you need to get out right now at any price. When you place a market order, your broker's computer will liquidate your position at the first fillable price, which can sometimes be far worse than what you expected. If you manage the other three order types effectively, you will rarely need to liquidate a position with a market order. You should never enter a position with a market order.

Limit Order -- You should use limit orders to enter positions at a price better than your signal trigger point in cases where your research shows that such a tactic is more profitable than a stop order entry, and you should use limit orders to exit profitable positions at pre-determined exit points. The danger in limit orders is that you will miss a significant number of trades in some markets, and that in some trades the market will trade very near, but not all the way to, your profit target and then fade back to your original entry point, or worse, before you decide to cancel the limit order and get out with a market order.

Stop Order -- You should use a stop order to enter or exit positions if the market trades beyond your given trigger price. You should ALWAYS place a stop order to liquidate a position as soon as you enter the position, so if the market moves against you far enough to trade at the your previously selected "trade over" point, you will get out without further thought or action on your part. The only time you don't want to use a stop order for entries or stop-loss protection is if you are trading a market with such a wide bid/ask spread that you are almost guaranteed unacceptable slippage if you use a pure stop (also called a "stop market" order, because the order becomes a market order as soon as the market trades at your stop price). In that case, you will want to use a . . .

Stop-limit order -- This order acts like a stop order when the market trades at your price, except that it places a limit on the amount of slippage you can incur on the resulting fill. This is a useful order to use for position entries in a high-slippage market. The danger in using it is that you will often be unable to establish a position because the market runs through the limit after the stop too quickly for your order to fill and then never comes back to fill it. You will have to analyze the market you are in to see if the potential loss of a trade due to not filling the limit is more expensive than the inevitable slippage with pure stop orders. Sometimes it is better to swallow the slippage in exchange for always getting the position, while in some markets it is better to miss an entry here and there in order to keep slippage low.

These four order types will cover almost any situation you will encounter while day trading, and using them to the exclusion of all of the more complex alternatives will keep your trading mechanics simple so you can focus on picking good trades and executing them well.

The Stock Market's Best-Kept Inside Secret - The E-Mini

I received an interesting magazine (or, maybe better described as a catalog) in the mail the other morning entitled "Home Business Connection". It was apparently sent to me because my name is on some mailing list. Beautifully designed and bearing a price tag of $5.95 per copy, I was tempted to open and read what it was all about. It is mostly full-page ads of 'home business' ideas...one after another, covering every possibility from the proverbial stuffing envelopes to much more sophisticated endeavors. Of course, each was headlined with bold declarations of being the "world's greatest home business" with promises of getting fabulously rich quick "absolutely guaranteed"! As I read through some of the ads (many were actually feature articles about certain types of home businesses), I couldn't help but compare all of them to my 'home business'.

Most were of the conventional type: find a product (usually made by someone else) then set up a way to promote, advertise and market it. Most were centered mainly on MLM or the Internet as the way to get fabulously rich. None bothered though, to explain how difficult it is to build and keep a good MLM downline, or, to get traffic to a web site. Made me wonder if those ads were directed to people who've never been 'round the block' at all, those whom it would be easy to put stars in their eyes with a little talk about making fabulous money in very short order? But, it is a good collection of home business ideas ...for anyone to peruse.

My home business is so simple I still have difficulty sometimes believing it myself. I sit down at my home computer each morning, turn on my e-mini trading charts and start watching for a good trade signal. What? You've never heard of an "E-mini"? Well, don't feel bad; I hadn't either ....until early 2002, even though I had been an active trader of stock options for over twenty years by that time. You see.... the 'e-mini' was introduced into the stock market when the Internet and personal computer were really coming into their own...back in 1997, as a trading instrument that average folks could afford to learn to trade, and take active roles in the stock market.

Most folks don't know much about trading; they think you just invest in stocks. That's all that the mutual funds and stock brokers have ever talked about (in their TV commercials and all of their advertising), but, in reality, those guys are not investors themselves...they are traders. But, they convince the rest of us that the smart thing for the public to do is turn all of our 'retirement dreams' over to them and let them manage our 'investments' for us...because they are the "professionals". Meanwhile, they are trading everyday...with their clients' money, but the account managers and the mutual fund company pockets all of the profits. Their clients (in those mutual funds) only get a mutual scr*****!

Oh, the typical mutual fund does realize [on average] about 10-15% appreciation growth of each portfolio per year, but the stock market [itself] -on its own, has historically done that, even through all of the Wars, Great Depression and even with 9-11 thrown in! Makes you wonder if brokers and mutual fund managers are, in reality, worth anything at all!

Anyway, back to the home business I found in trading E-mini's: I trade a couple of hours each morning, making 3 or 4 trades on my computer and put as my daily average goal about $500 dollars into my pocket. I never get greedy and try to stretch it....even though many days the market easily would let me. Just a nice little daily cash flow generator...that lets me grind out $500 a day, $10 grand a month and $125,000 a year. Not bad, eh? It really is that simple. The market is always there for me...every morning. I don't care whether it is going up (bullish) or down (bearish), I can make money either direction. (Something else those brokers and mutual fund managers will never tell you, or explain to you!) They'll just tell you to bring them as much money as you can and be prepared to invest with them for the long haul. 'Hold...and Hope' - that's the best the mutual fund investor has going for him or her.

If you've been thinking about or looking for a little home business idea that can generate a little extra cash flow for yourself, you'll enjoy checking out trading "E-mini's". You're invited to visit my web site where I provide 2-3 hours (a 'road map' for you) of free information on how you can get started trading e-mini's.

Don't bother to call up a mutual fund manager and ask him or her about it, though. They'll just laugh at you.

10 Tips For Preparing For a Profitable Trading Day

Every great athlete, musician and professional where the stakes are high, knows that warm up and preparation can make a big difference to performance. Here are 10 tips -trading advice for preparing for your best trading day.

Mental Prep

1. Harness the power of intention

As you become more and more focused as a trader and as you learn to clear your emotions the power of your intention will become stronger and stronger. Begin the day by setting the intention that you will be successful, that you will be profitable, and that you will be safe. If possible visualize it, or feel that it will happen.

If any feelings or thoughts come up contrary to that intention (e.g. I lost yesterday perhaps I'll lose today) go straight to the next point and clear that thought/feeling.

2. Clear limiting thoughts and emotions

Did anything happen yesterday or on previous trading days that is bothering you? Anything happening in your personal life that may be affecting your state of mind? Any recurring thoughts or feelings that come up during the trading day?

Read my blog post about emotional clearing - learn Core Transformation and clear that crapola out. And for any of you hardcore guys out there that are thinking this might be a bit touchy feely, I suggest you look at this in purely financial terms. Learning these techniques will help you get the success you want. And nobody needs to know!

3. Brain power

Make sure that you have exercised and eaten properly so that your mind is clear and fresh. Have the right snacks at hand so that you can keep your blood sugar balanced, so that you mind stays fresh and optimally focused.

Timing

4. Know when you are going to trade

You may say "How do I know when I am going to trade ahead of time?". In response I'd say, "if your trading system doesn't tell you when you are going to be trading ahead of time, then you are missing out on a huge advantage". As you'll see from the various blog posts I've written on cycle trading, I am convinced that time is as important a factor in determining entries as price. This is why I use a combination of cycles and harmonics in addition to regular technical analysis to determine entries.

Adopting this trading methodology was the single biggest contributing factor for me in becoming a consistently profitable trader, because I can calmly prepare for the times that I am going to trade and I can relax my focus during the times when I know I should be on the sidelines.

Practical Details

5. Are there any economic numbers being released today?

Know exactly what time they are and watch out if you are trading around these times as there may be some dramatic fluctuations in price movement. Unless your strategy specifically includes trading these numbers, many traders prefer to sit on the sidelines until the numbers shake themselves out.

6. Any significant business or world news today that may affect the markets?

Days when companies release earnings or when there are other significant events, make the market jumpy. You need to be forewarned so that you can decide either to sit out, or to be extra vigilant.

7. What happened in the markets overnight?

Same idea as point 4.

Discipline

8. Review your discipline commitments

If you are someone that has problem over-trading or pulling the trigger, or if you have challenges following your system, make a list of discipline commitments. List out those things that you commit to in terms trading discipline. e.g. I will only take trades on signals that my system gives me. Go through them before the trading day begins and refresh your resolution.

I had a lot of trouble with over trading in the early days. As I got absorbed in the market action it was like becoming hypnotized, my discipline went out the window. I actually had to set an alarm clock to go off and every 30 mins I would re-read my discipline commitments to force myself to snap out of it, and refocus on following my trading rules.

9. Review you trades from yesterday and your trading journal

Reviewing you trades from yesterday is a great way to refine your skills and learn more about your strengths and weaknesses. If you had a day where you were able to execute your trades flawlessly based on your system (whether or not they ended up being profitable) you can consolidate the confidence that brings. If you had a day that left an emotional mark because of losses or mistakes you can go back to point 2 and clear them.

If you found that you were unable to execute your trades effectively its another opportunity to revisit your trading rules, your discipline commitments, and refresh your intention that today you will trade your system.

Opening

10. Give thanks

Give thanks to your self, and to whatever power of the universe that you respect for the opportunity to trade - which is nothing more than an opportunity to master yourself.

The state of gratitude is a great inner state to approach the day. It buoys your optimism and invites to you the circumstances for success.

As the French say "Bon courage" - and have a safe and profitable day!

Technology and Stock Trading

In the 1920s, the United States experienced a big blow when the stock market crashed. This event is now known as Black Tuesday. This started a series of problems for the country and created widespread social problems. The Great Depression, this period is commonly called, lasted for almost a decade, was believed to have been caused by an extensive stock market speculation and the unequal distribution of wealth.

Before this historic market crash, different kinds of people were getting rich due to the high return of investment (ROI). The "roaring twenties" as the decade was termed, was a period of growth for the US. Unfortunately, with limited information, speculation on the stock market during this time was comparable to gossip, and this was the very reason why the Black Tuesday happened. Sure, people read the newspaper, but this wasn't enough, as people didn't have a good picture of the whole stock market.

Nowadays, trading in the stock market is both complex and simple. Before a traders and investors decide to invest in certain stocks, they need to know a lot of information. Firstly, they have to determine the trend that the stock market will take - whether the market will experience a period of growth (a bull market) or if it will experience a decline (a bear market). By knowing the trend of the market, the investor can then decide how long he will retain the investment and how much he will invest. To determine whether the stock market will continue its trend or it will reverse its course, investors use indicators such as the Simple Moving Average (SMA) or Exponential Moving Average (EMA), Relative Strength Index (RSI), Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD), Bollinger Bands. These indicators use the price of stocks to determine the direction of the market.

Just like the market of goods and services, the stock market also relies on the price and demand, in this case, it is called volume. Price refers to the trend of prices of stocks while volume refers to the amount of stocks being traded. To determine the volume, traders and investors look at the daily volume of stocks sold in the stock market. In most cases, trading tools combine these two information to find out if there are more sellers than buyers in the stock market, which could then, inevitably affect the price of the stock and the amount sold each trading day.

There are cases when there is high volume of sales but the prices in the market have dropped. For some investors, this could mean that the bigger players have backed out and it is a sign of a downward trend. Smaller players will soon follow suit causing lower sales. On the other hand, a stock can also experience a high-volume day and high prices. This means that the stock is up and bigger investors such as institutional investors and mutual funds will buy more, thereby boosting the market even more.

High-volume, low-price days don't always mean that the market is going to continue on a downward trend. These down days can sometimes be a precursor to a reversal of course. Institutional investors and mutual funds can sometimes take advantage of the low price of stocks to purchase at bigger volume. If this happens, the market can move to the opposite direction making stock prices to go up and the stock market starts a new cycle.

Get Rid of Common Investment Pitfalls

It is sure that most of the investors make money when markets are going up but when the Bull Run gets over most of the inexperienced investors will have all stocks which they should not have bought.

So following points will make you to understand how to tackle such mistakes and make your portfolio defensive and reap good returns.

Proper Planning and Goal in Mind

Generally it is observed that investments are not being done with proper planning and goals in mind. Instead the investments are made based on factors like year end tax saving, a broker/or friend tip, hot news, surplus of money at a given point of time and so on. Due to these factors, naturally, the investment will be done regardless of the true value of the investment instruments.

For example, an investor may end up investing in expensive stock pr end up in investing when stock market is on the way on correction and many more.

So the investment decision should be backed up with proper planning and guidance keep your goal in mind.

Choose Stocks Carefully

It is true that you have decided your investment horizon and kept your objective clear but it is also important that you choose your stocks carefully and do proper analysis before investing.

Basically investors opt for hot stocks of the moment but these stocks may not be beneficial for long term plans.

On the other note your stocks need not be at the top of the charts but they would have shown satisfactory revenues across all cycles of the financial year.

Avoid too many stocks in your portfolio

This is very common issue among many investors because they have read somewhere about the word called Diversification and then they become collectors and keep adding stocks in their portfolios. But investors should remember that adding too many stocks in the portfolio would create complexity to manage and also becomes overhead to track the companies.

So how should be the Ideal Portfolio

An ideal portfolio should have at least 5 to 8 stocks from at least 3 different sectors.

But there is not any rule to have such type of portfolio if you are capable to manage then you have even more number of stocks in your portfolio.

At the same time it will be helpful to reduce the risk if you keep your portfolio balanced. Balanced portfolio consists of some large cap stocks and some mid cap stocks and even you can have some small cap stocks. If possible you can even add some mutual funds. Again in mutual funds you can have equity related funds, balanced and debt funds.

Stick to your plans

Most of the time it has been observed that many investors change their portfolio especially in Bull Run by adding some hot stocks to there portfolio. The money that was finding its way into steady investments in a planned way suddenly changes direction towards some hot stocks thus exposing the portfolio to risk that was well on track for good returns.

If possible this should be avoided.

Take tax into consideration (mutual funds)

This is again one of the common pitfalls that often happen with most of the investors while selling the mutual funds units.

While selling the mutual fund units investor must consider tax implications. If investors do some analysis then he could have saved from his tax payments by just postponing his selling plan by just one month. A little planning here can help you to make extra bit.

Finally, Steps to fine tuning your portfolio

Gain appropriate knowledge of stock market, mutual funds etc and do right asset allocation yourself.

Step 1 would help you to determine how much of your money should be in stocks, how much in mutual funds and again in mutual funds how many in diversified funds and how much in balanced and debt funds.

Once you decide financial instruments then decide your time horizon. The money which are you investing in stock market should be more then 5 years to get good returns while investment for shorter period should go for mutual funds like balanced and debt funds.

The Most Important Aspect of Day Trading Forex

What is the meaning of trade? Very simple trading means giving money or article in exchange of obtaining something. In other words purchasing something and paying the price of the article in cash or kind.

So, trading involves money and money is the most important thing in the present day life. Just as money is used to buy goods for daily use in the same way foreign currency is used to buy and sell foreign products or foreign money.

Quite confusing isn't it? No, don't worry. It is very simple. It means when any person wants to buy or sell any item from another country he has to pay in the currency of that country. In addition, he has to give the currency of his own country, and in exchange he will get the currency of the desired country. This is the system of foreign exchange which is called Forex for short. Trading forex can be both fun and extremely profitable.

What Does It Mean To Day Trade Forex?

Is the word day trade sounding familiar? Yes, as the word implies day trading means the amount of trade done in one day. The day traders start their business as soon as the market open and close their business with the closing of the market. They do not roll over the day's business to the next day.

In the same way there are traders in the Forex markets who are involved in day trading Forex. There are lots of risks involved when you day trade Forex. Mostly because the trader has to settle all his outstanding accounts before the close of the day. This may amount to heavy loss as the rates may fall by the time the day ends.

Most of the individual traders who are actively day trading Forex follow a proven system for success. Day trading forex is in fact simple when you have help. The help I'm referring to is called automation software. Automation software makes day trading and profiting from forex virtually guaranteed. To be a successful forex day trader, having the right

A Few Rules For Day Trading

Short-term, or day trading, is mostly played out by reading price and volume. Understanding this price/volume relationship is critical if you're to survive the fast pace of short-term, leveraged trading. Being able to read the course of sales and the market's depth is imperative, like a musician reading a score; understanding the layered, intricate rhythms and where the next note or bar is coming. The same goes for trading, which is a digital mind game.

You need to understand how the numbers flow from the market. All the indicators traders have created will only confuse the issue. They are derived from price and volume anyway, but they are walking sticks. When trading derivatives you'll need to sprint. Indicators only interpret the market action, so don't take your eye off their foundation; price and volume.

Investing capital long term is fairly easy compared to short-term trading. Many research companies offer reasonable advice and most is easy to access, but if you're looking to maximise your capital return, or just fancy a flutter, look into short-term trading.

Choose your "trading time frame" and understand it: who's in control of your frame, where is the momentum, where's your entry and exit within that time frame? Then, trading the small, friendly trend until it ends takes discipline, courage and patience.

Trading shorter time frames also brings a whole host of complications; emotional trading is the number one complication, as price, in technical trading, is psychological.

I say this because new traders think they are trading money, and that's true, but the numbers come much later. In the beginning it's their belief about money they're trading; the primary emotional obstacle that needs mastering. Our relationship to our money is deep; it's our security, safety and happiness. When our money goes into the market, a part of us, our psyche, has also entered the market. Our thoughts have connected us to the market; we are the market.

When the market goes on the roller coaster along with our trading capital, we're at the emotional mercy of ourselves and the markets and the markets reflect that. The most common comments I hear from new traders are "shoulda, woulda, coulda". Total responsibility for all your own actions is an absolute in trading professionally. Until a new trader can become detached from the emotional - fear/greed/money/thingy - they are doomed.

My motto while learning to trade is less is more, meaning using less capital per trade so that at least one can think more clearly. But the irony here is that new traders find using small amounts of capital boring, so they tend to use an amount that gives them an emotional experience, ultimately leading them into deep waters. Defensive trading and capital preservation are number one on the learner's list.

Once a trader's mind becomes detached from the fear of loss and starts to focus on the game at hand, the natural flow of numbers coming from the markets becomes clearer.

See destiny unfold and then without reacting, clearly choose clean entries and exits, based on a knowing faith about the market, such as volume, price, action and its momentum, supported by a little money management. You'll be on your merry way as a budding new trader. Now you begin to realise the importance of trading methodologies and having systems in place.

An expensive pitfall for the new trader are trading software programs promising to solve all your problems. You finally realise that if these programs actually worked they wouldn't be selling them.

You realise this trading-shorter-time-frames business is going to take some real work and understanding, so after some hard thinking you seek out a mentor, someone who is actually out there trading. Now you're on the right track. All you need in software is a reasonable charting program with a good data feed that shows you the bars and the volume. Next is getting alongside someone in your local area who has been trading for at least five years. This is one of the best first moves you can make. They are probably happy to help for free because they have been along the same path.

Or you could join a local trading club. Trading has multidimensional benefits, but it takes time. Becoming familiar with the markets is a relationship that requires respect, not ego.

Peter Mathers, trading analyst tradinglounge.com.au and the CFDlounge.com.au

Some Benefits of Day Trading - And What It's Worth to You

One of the many benefits of Day trading is that it can be considered in the context of made to order. You can do exactly as you please with your day, and it is your day. Trade from any place you like if you'd rather not visit your office. Such as modern technology is in this age, you are free to trade even when traveling.

It's not too expensive to set up either. Maybe you consider day trading to be you own small business, in which case you can run it from a personal computer or laptop. Who doesn't have one or the other nowadays?

Should you decide you'd like to relocate, or maybe go on a vacation, simply drop your business into your laptop case and off you go, taking your trading account, capital and all, with you.

It goes with a day trader's territory in that you are responsible to no one. You'll wonder how you ever put up with having a boss, whether they were good or bad. Want a day off, want to get up a bit later, want to work in your pyjamas - no problem. Put up you feet, make yourself comfortable and go to work at your trading platform. Get you positions and management sorted out for the day, shut down your computer and chill.

Over time, when you find yourself to have evolved your own trading approach, you can set your speed, a fast day or slow day. I like to consider a slow day as creating a bit of freedom for myself, relaxing, maybe a spot of work in my garage tinkering with my kit car, or even just casually studying over my trading charts and software. The day's free.

Make Money by Trading

Have you ever wondered how some people can sit in an office for a couple of hours a day and yet make close to $1,000,000 a year? Yes there are lots of people in this world that make a million dollars or more a year by sitting in an office and trading.

If you were given the choice to do the very same, to sit around and trade your way to riches would you do that? This sounds almost too good to be true. I tell you, it is too good to be true. How many new traders have been lured by the false promise of a quick buck that they pour all their live savings into a trading account, only to lose it all in 6 months.

The only way to be able to make money by trading is following:

1. Proper money management

2. Disciplined trading

3. Trading plan

4. Knowledge of market forces

5. General world knowledge

Many retail or private investors fail to grasp either one or another of the above 5 points. This makes their investing and trading like a visit to the casino. How then can you as a trader make money by trading?

The answer is readily presented in the 5 points above. Master them and use them to your advantage.

Money management is not about how much to trade but also when to trade. Have there been times when the indicators are telling you not to do anything, but the price action on the screen seems crazy? You feel that if you don't take the trade then you might lose out on a good thing. Use proper money management and be disciplined, stay on the sidelines and not trade. Trade your plan and plan your trade.

A disciplined trader will always take the trades that follow the pre-defined indicators. That is why only the most disciplined traders are the most successful ones. Having a trading plan is also essential for you if you want to trade correctly and consistently make a profit. More often than not, if you failed to plan the trade before hand, you will lose your money when you trade.

One thing you will realize if you have been trading for a while is that many new traders seem to forget to read up and understand about the current situation of the world right now. There is a big issue to not know what is happening right at your doorstep! Know about how countries are being affected by climate change; learn about how policies will change the way a nation work. This is fundamental to your trading and should be part of your daily routine as a trader.

To make money as a trader, please remember the above 5 points and be sure to make each a daily activity when you trade, or risk losing your money!

Day Trading - 5 Ways You Can Make Your Day Trading Software More Pleasing to Your Eye

You have found and subscribed to a day trading package you love. Now you need to spend a few hours running through it and getting it set up so that you find it very difficult to tear yourself away from! Yes, it really does get like that. I know as I go there too.

The problem is, there are almost too many tools and sometime you can be blinded by the huge choice. But I figure that's a good thing, always better to have to many than not enough. Remember too, that they cater for all trading styles.

1. One thing I really like is being able to set up the price bars to my liking. I prefer to use the candlestick method as I think they offer more clarity than the other price indicators. They take little more than a glance. I have them set up showing blue for a price rise, red for a fall.

2. I think the screen background is useful too and prefer a white backdrop, maybe because it's rather like reading off a page.

3. I think that 3 sets of indicators are plenty, any more become too fussy and confusing for me. But you may prefer more, even just two. For me though, three's a good number for verification. Depending on your day trading software, you can set indicators up either at the bottom of the screen in a separate box, or directly over your price bars

4. If your software allows it, I find a vertical price scale at both ends of you chart is better. It's only a clarity thing, but I find it really helps.

5. Most software allows a zoom in, zoom out facility. Now this is really cool, as it allows you to "macro" analyse the finer details of where you price bars and other indicators fit into the bigger picture.

There's a bit of a taster to encourage you to get the most from you day trading software package. It can be a bit daunting at first, but I've no doubt that you'll be "surfing" your screen before you know it.

Day Trading - 5 Suggestions For Using Day Trading Software

It wasn't so long ago that day traders had to rely on a set of coloured pencils and a piece of paper and mental arithmetic to draw their charts. All that has changed now though. There are sophisticated day trading software programs for a very reasonable outlay that will steer you through the maze of systems that are available to help present a clear picture of and for your analysis.

1. Whatever timeframe suits you, whether by the minute, hour, day, week or longer term, there's a day trading software package to suit your needs.

2. Always try and get a free trial before you buy anything. This should be no problem. The only thing I would caution is that there may be a restriction or two on using the complete package to advantage. It shouldn't take too long for you to your liking.

3. Depending upon which markets you intend to trade, some packages may offer a better format than others. Professionals will likely trade many positions in multiple markets and use more than one software supplier.

4. If convenient, I would try and use a separate computer or laptop to do all your trading on. If you're a beginner, just one will suffice, and it also depends upon your budget of course. You may have more than one computer user in your household and if so, a computer or computers dedicated to your trading would be better if you can manage it.

5. You can never have too many screens for trading software! I use two, but will shortly upgrade to at least another one. This is because quality of clarity on your monitor really helps and the larger you can get the overall trading screen the better. This comes into its own for data feed too.

A far cry from drawing pencil and paper charts, not to mention the precious time you'd spend. There's some truly amazing software today, being improved and upgraded all the time. It's fun too, trying out all their tools to end up with a screen display you like. If you get bored of it, make a change. It's important to have pleasing visuals when day trading.