Sunday, June 27, 2010

Trading Techniques

Experienced traders will often say "trend is your friend" or "do not overtrade". What does it mean? The links below will lead you to pages where you can read more about basic trading guidelines, general information about the technical and fundamental analysis, and some simple ideas about risk management. These are just basics - you will need to read much more related literature to become a successful trader.

General Trading Guidelines
Plan your trade and trade your plan: You must have a trading plan to succeed. A trading plan should consist of a position, why you enter, stop loss point, profit taking level, plus a sound money management strategy. A good plan will remove all the emotions from your trades.

The trend is your friend: Do not buck the trend. When the market is bullish, go long. On the reverse, if the market is bearish, you short. Never go against the trend.

Focus on capital preservation: This is the most important step that you must take when you deal with your trading capital. You main goal is to preserve the capital. Do not trade more than 10% of your deposit in a single trade. For example, if your total deposit is $10,000, every trade should limit to $1000. If you don't do this, you'll be out of the market very soon.

Know when to cut loss: If a trade goes against you, sell it and let go. Do not hold on to a bad trade hoping that the price will go up. Most likely, you end up losing more money. Before you enter a trade, decide your stop loss price, a price where you must sell when the trade turns sour. It depends on your risk profile as of how much you should set for the stop loss.

Take profit when the trade is good: Before entering a trade decide how much profit you are willing to take. When a trade turns out to be good, take the profit. You can take profit all at one go, or take profit in stages. When you've recovered your trading cost, you have nothing to lose. Sit tight and watch the profit run.

Be emotionless: Two biggest emotions in trading: greed and fear. Do not let greed and fear influence your trade. Trading is a mechanical process and it's not for the emotional ones. As Dr. Alexander Elder said in his book "Trading For A Living", if you sit next to a successful trader and observe him or her, you might not be able to tell whether he or she is making or losing money. That's how emotionally stable a successful trader is.

Do not trade based on tips from other people: Trade only when you have done your own research. Be an informed trader.

Keep a trading journal: When you buy a market instrument, write down the reasons why you buy, and your feelings at that time. You do the same when you sell. Analyze and write down the mistakes you've made, as well as things that you've done right. By referring to your trading journal, you learn from your past mistakes. Improve on your mistakes, keep learning and keep improving.

When in doubt, stay out: When you have doubt and not sure where the market is going, stay on the sideline. Sometimes, doing nothing is the best thing to do.

Do not overtrade: Ideally you should have 3-5 positions at a time. No more than that. If you have too many positions, you tend to be out of control and make emotional decisions when there is a change in market. Do not trade for the sake of trading.

Technical Analysis
Technical analysis differs from fundamental analysis in that technical analysis is applied only to the price action of the market, ignoring fundamental factors. As fundamental data can often provide only a long-term or "delayed" forecast of market price movements, technical analysis has become the primary tool with which to successfully trade shorter-term price movements, and to set stop loss and profit targets.

Technical analysis consists primarily of a variety of technical studies, each of which can be interpreted to generate buy and sell decisions or to predict market direction.

Support and Resistance Levels
One use of technical analysis, apart from technical studies, is in deriving "support" and "resistance" levels. The concept here is that the market will tend to trade above its support levels and trade below its resistance levels. If a support or resistance level is broken, the market is then expected to follow through in that direction. These levels are determined by analyzing the chart and assessing where the market has encountered unbroken support or resistance in the past.

Popular Technical Analysis Tools
Moving Averages (MA): Indicators used to smooth price fluctuations and identify trends. The most basic type of moving average, the simple moving average, is the average of the past x bars ending with the current bar;

Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD): Indicator that utilizes moving averages to identify possible trends and an oscillator to determine when a trend is overbought or oversold;

Bollinger Bands: Bands that are placed x moving average standard deviations above and below a simple MA line;

Fibonacci Retracement Levels: Indicator used to identify potential levels of support and resistance;

Directional Movement Index (DMI): A positive line (+DI) measuring buying and a negative line (-DI) measuring selling pressure;

Relative Strength Index (RSI): Momentum oscillator that is plotted on a vertical scale from 0 to 100;

Stochastics: Momentum oscillator that measure momentum by comparing the recent close to the absolute price range (high of the range minus the low of the range) over a period of x bars;

Trendlines: Straight line on a chart that connects consecutive tops or consecutive bottoms of prices and is utilized to identify levels of support and resistance;

Fundamental Analysis
Fundamental analysis is the evaluation of non-visual information to evaluate trading activity and make trading decisions. Whereas technical analysts utilize charts and mathematical indicators to quantify price activity, fundamental analysts utilize market news and market forecasts to qualify price activity.

There are numerous market events that move financial markets every week. Some affect every market instrument while others affect specific instruments. If the outcome of a market event has been fully discounted by the market, traders will not notice any discernible impact on their charts. If the outcome of a market event has not been fully discounted by the market, the result is either price appreciation or price depreciation and traders will see this activity on their charts.

Every week, there are fundamentally-important market events that are scheduled in every country at specific times. Similarly, there are fundamentally-important market events that may not be scheduled for specific times. Some countries (Germany, for instance) often do not schedule market events for specific times. The outcome of market events is sometimes leaked in advance in certain countries (Germany, for instance) for different reasons.

Market events include the release of economic data, speeches and testimony by government officials, interest rate decisions, and others.

Controlling Risk
Controlling risk is one of the most important ingredients of successful trading. While it is emotionally more appealing to focus on the upside of trading, every trader should know precisely how much he or she is willing to lose on each trade before cutting losses, and how much he or she is willing to lose in trading account before ceasing trading and re-evaluating.

Risk will essentially be controlled in two ways: by exiting losing trades before losses exceed your pre-determined maximum tolerance (or "cutting losses"), and by limiting the "leverage" or position size you trade for a given account size.

Cutting Losses
Too often, the beginning trader will be overly concerned about incurring losing trades. Trader therefore lets losses mount, with the "hope" that the market will turn around and the loss will turn into a gain.

Almost all successful trading strategies include a disciplined procedure for cutting losses. When a trader is down on a position, many emotions often come into play, making it difficult to cut losses at the right level. The best practice is to decide where losses will be cut before a trade is even initiated. This will assure the trader of the maximum amount he or she can expect to lose on the trade.

The other key element of risk control is overall account risk. In other words, a trader should know before start of trading endeavor how much of trading account he or she is willing to lose before ceasing trading and re-evaluating strategy. If you open an account with $2,000, are you willing to lose all $2,000? $1,000? As with risk control on individual trades, the most important discipline is to decide on a level and stick with it. Further information on the mechanics of limiting risk can be found in trading literature.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Introduction to Markets

Buying and Selling
Financial market is a mechanism that allows people to easily buy and sell (trade) market instruments at low transaction costs and at prices that reflect efficient markets. Financial markets have evolved significantly over several hundred years and are undergoing constant innovation to improve liquidity.

If you believe value of a market instrument is going to increase, then you would buy the instrument and at one point in the future you would sell it for a higher price. This is the basic motivation for trading on financial markets.

Orders and Positions
When you want to open a position you need to place an "entry" order. If and when the entry order executes, the position becomes "open" and starts its life on the market. At some point in the future, you will place an "exit" order to "close" the position. A position can be "long" (entry order is to buy and exit order is to sell an instrument) or "short" (entry order is to sell and exit order is to buy an instrument).


At the point when you place your entry order, you need to define price level at which you want to buy or sell certain instrument. You also need to specify type of the order and quantity of the instrument you want to trade. There are 3 order types:

Market Order
Placing a market order means that you will buy at the current "ask" (or "offer") price, or sell at the current "bid" price, whatever that price currently is. For example, suppose you are buying a market instrument and its current market price is 129.34 / 129.38. This means a participant in the market is willing to buy the instrument from you at 129.34 and / or sell it to you at 129.38.

Stop Order
Initiating a trade with a stop order means that you will only open a position if the market moves in the direction you are anticipating. For example, if an instrument is trading at 129.34 / 129.38 and you believe it will move higher, you could place a stop order to buy at 129.48. This means that the order will only be executed if ask price in the market moves up to 129.48. The advantage is that if you are wrong and the market moves straight down, you will not have bought (because 129.48 will never have been reached). The disadvantage is that 129.48 is clearly a less attractive rate at which to buy than 129.38. Opening a position with a stop order is usually appropriate if you wish to trade only with strong market momentum in a particular direction.

Limit Order
A limit order is an order to buy below the current price, or sell above the current price. For example, if an instrument is trading at 129.34 / 129.38 and you believe the market will rise, you could place a limit order to buy at 129.28. If executed, this will give you a long position at 129.28, which is 10 pips better than if you had just used a market order. The disadvantage of the limit order is that if the instrument moves straight up from 129.34 / 129.38 your limit at 129.28 will never be filled and you will miss out on the profit opportunity even though your view on the direction was correct. Opening a position with a limit order is usually appropriate if you believe that the market will remain in a range before moving in your anticipated direction, allowing the order to be filled first.

For both entry and exit orders you can specify price levels at which you want them to be executed. You have to specify entry levels when you place you entry order, while most trading systems would allow you to specify exit levels at any time.

Calculating Profit
The objective of trading is to buy a market instrument and later sell the same market instrument for a higher price. In case of margin trading, trader can also sell a market instrument first and later buy the same market instrument for a lower price. Either way, trader has to close position in order to lock in the profit.

Let us assume that you open a long position by buying a market instrument for 129.38 (quantity of 10000) and few hours after that, you close the position by selling it for 129.52 (same quantity of 10000). These two trades would bring you profit of (129.52 - 129.38) * 10000 = 1400.

We can also say that these two trades would bring you 14 "points" profit. A "point" is the smallest increment in an instrument's price. For the instrument in the above example, one point is 0.01 and for an instrument denominated with 4 decimals, one point would be 0.0001. Expressing position profits in points is often very useful for quick calculations and estimates.

One point, from the example position above, would bring you 0.01 * 10000 = 100 profit, denominated in the same currency the market instrument is denominated in.

In case of Forex, currency pair denomination will be in the counter currency (JPY is the counter or quote currency in the USD/JPY pair) and you may need additional currency conversion to get profit calculated in the currency your trading account is denominated in.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

What Is Marketiva?

What is Marketiva?
With more than 800,000 serviced users, 500,000 unique and live trading accounts, and more than 3.8 million live orders executed each month, Marketiva is one of the most popular over-the-counter market makers in the world providing Forex, Indexes and Commodities trading services.

May I open a test account and try the system first?
Because live and virtual trading desks co-exist within one Marketiva account, you may try our system with a regular account and later use the same account for live trading. In any case, you can open your Marketiva account for free!

How much money do I need to start trading forex right now?
With its flexible quantity specifications and $5 cash reward, Marketiva allows you to start trading with no money down. Due to strict lot specifications, many other over-the-counter market makers require at least $500 to start with.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

General Forex Information

What do I need to do in trading?
Your goal in trading is to buy at a lower price and sell afterwards for a higher price. For example you can buy a market instrument (quantity of 10000) for 1.2349 and sell it later for 1.2458. You will make a profit of 109 (in currency the instrument is denominated in).

What can I trade on the market?
Marketiva provides spot forex trading services in the following currency pairs: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF, USD/CAD, AUD/USD, NZD/USD, EUR/JPY, EUR/GBP, EUR/CHF, GBP/JPY, AUD/JPY, CHF/JPY, GBP/CHF, EUR/CAD, EUR/AUD, AUD/CAD. There may be other instruments added in the future.

When is the market open for trading?
You can trade from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00 New York local time. Virtual trading is open at all times. The following approximate market schedule is based on New York local time: Japan markets open at 19:00 followed by Singapore and Hong Kong that open at 21:00. European markets open in Frankfurt at 2:00, while London opens an hour later. New York markets open at 8:00 (NYSE opens at 9:00). European markets close at 12:00 and Australian markets start again at 18:00.

Is there an easy way to start trading?
The easiest way to start trading is to click on a market instrument in a price window. When [Send Order] dialog shows up, you can set [Quantity] field to 1 or more (depending on the amount of money you have on currently active trading desk). When you click button, the order will go into the market.