The Dangers Of Getting Emotional About A Forex Trade

Anyone who has seen the film Wall Street will undoubtedly remember Michael Douglas telling Martin Sheen not to get emotional about a stock. This is good advice for people trading in the stock market, but it is absolutely vital for people involved in Forex trading.

It is very easy to find yourself caught up in a trade. You open a position because you feel good about it and then you hang in there even if the market starts to move against you because you just know that the market is going to turn back in your favor. From time to time of course it does but, as a general rule, it doesn't.

The problem here is that you allow yourself to become attached to a trade and your decision to stay with it is very much an emotional decision. Also, because you are emotionally attached to a trade you view closing your position as an admission that you were wrong to have opened it in the first place.

Trading within the Forex market has to be driven by the market indicators and your trading decisions must be based on what these indictors are telling you and not on how you are feeling. If you are going to be a successful trader then you have to be ruled by your head and not by your heart.

There will be times when you find that you have an emotional attachment to a specific currency and that the majority of your trading tends to be in that currency. There's nothing wrong with this. You may even feel sometimes that the time is right to buy a particular currency. That's okay too. The mistake is not to follow a feeling about a particular currency but to open a position purely on the basis of this feeling.

If you have a feeling about a currency then begin by checking it out and take a look at the market numbers. If the numbers tell you that the time is right to open a position then do so but, if they tell you that it's not a favorable market then, no matter how you feel about it, you should not get into the market.

Similarly, if you have opened a position and the indicators tell you that the market is moving against you and that it is time to close your position then do so. Your heart may well tell you to 'hang in there' but it is the market and not your heart which pays your bills

In Forex trading you will win on some trades and will lose on others and that's nothing more than the way the market works. It is not a question of whether you are right or you are wrong. The market will frequently move unexpectedly and catch out even the most experienced of traders.

The secret lies in following the market indicators, recognizing that you are going to lose in a trade and getting out as quickly as you can to minimize your loss. You can then move on to your next, hopefully profitable, trade.

The 4 Main Types Of Order In The Foreign Exchange Market

There are various different ways in which traders can place orders to buy and sell currencies and this gives foreign exchange traders considerable flexibility in planning their trading strategies and allows them to both maximize their profits and minimize their losses.

Market Order

The simplest form of order is the market order in which the trader simply buys or sells a currency pair at the current market price. Because of the enormous size of the market and its high liquidity there is little if any delay or slippage in the market and market orders are in essence guaranteed.

Limit Order

A limit order allows the trader to set the price at which he wants to take his profit and close out his position. For example, where a trader has bought GBP/USD at 1.9450 he might place a limit order at 1.9465 so that, if the price rises to this level, his position would automatically be closed and he will take his profit.

Stop Loss Order

A stop loss order is another form of limit order but in this case it indicates the maximum loss which a trader is prepared to take. In our example above the trader could place a stop loss order at 1.9430 so that he would limit his losses to 20 pips if the market turned against him.

Entry Order

An entry orders is an order which is only filled when the market meets certain conditions which are specified in the order. An entry order can take the form of either a limit entry order or a stop entry order.

Limit Entry Order

Let's start by assuming that the market price for the GBP/USD is 1.9740-45. This means that a trader can enter the market to sell at 1.9740 or buy at 1.9745. A trader could place a limit entry order to sell above the current market price at a level of say 1.9750 and this order would then only be executed if the market price reached this point. Similarly, he could place an order to buy at a price below the current market price - in this case below the buying price of 1.9745. So, were the trader to place a limit entry order to buy at 1.9730 this order would only come into effect if the price dropped to this point.

A limit entry order is commonly used where a trader believes that a currency is trading within an upper and lower range and is expecting a reversal in the currency's price movement.

Stop Entry Order

A stop entry order is frequently used when a trader believes that a currency which has been trading within an upper and lower range is about to break out of that range and he wants to either buy at a price above the present market price or to sell at a price below the current market price.

Our GBP/USD trader above, who can enter the market to buy at 1.9740 or to sell at 1.9745, might place an order to sell at say 1.9735. In this case the trader believes that the currency will reach this level and then continue to fall. Alternatively, he might place an order to buy at say 1.9750 again believing that the market will reach this level and continue to move in the same direction.

A stop entry order is commonly brought into play when a trader foresees large movements in the market.

How To Analyze Movements In The Forex Market

Like many other markets the Forex market is driven by supply and demand. When there is a demand for a currency its price rises and when there is an excessive supply of a currency its price falls. This may seem simple enough but unfortunately predicting movements in currency prices can be extremely difficult.

Today there are two main methods used to predict movements in the Forex market:

Fundamental Analysis

Fundamental analysis was the dominant predictive tool in the Forex market until the mid 1980s, although it has since declined in popularity. Fundamental analysis focuses its attention on the political, social and economic factors which drive supply and demand and is based upon such things as interest rates, inflation, unemployment and economic growth rates. All of these different indicators are used to assess a currency's present performance and then to predict its future movement.

The problem with fundamental analysis is that the trader has to keep up with events and to analyze a huge amount of data. Additionally, there is a great deal of debate about just what data needs to be included in any fundamental analysis and how much weight should be put upon each of the different indicators.

On thing about which there is general agreement is that a country's balance of payments is key to fundamental analysis as it shows the flow of money in and out of the country. In theory, a balance of payments of zero will produce a stable price while a balance of payments deficit or surplus will cause the currency to fall or rise.

Technical Analysis

Technical analysis is based simply upon movements in currency prices and uses historical price data to predict future prices.

The main principle behind technical analysis is that history repeats itself and that price movements today merely follow well established patterns. The second principle is that it is not necessary to study current market information to predict movements in the market as this is already reflected in currency prices. It is simply the movement in prices themselves that needs to be studied in order to predict the direction in which prices are moving.

Technical analysis uses charts to provide a graphical representation of the market over time and allows the trader to identify trends in the pattern of price movements. There are various different charting techniques used today including such things as moving averages, oscillators, candlestick charts, Fibonacci retracement levels, Bollinger bands and others

Calculating Interest On Forex Trades

One of the great things about Forex trading is your ability to trade using leverage, effectively borrowing sometimes as much as 1,000 times your capital to make a trade. But borrowing money for currency trading is exactly the same as borrowing money for any other purpose and you will have to pay interest on your loan.

Currency transactions involve both buying and selling currencies however and this means that interest payments due on money which you borrow to fund a sale can be offset by interest earned on the currency you buy. If this seems a bit confusing we will take a look at an example in a minute but, first, let's take a moment to look at the subject of interest rates in general to see the wider picture as it affects the foreign exchange market.

Central banks set interest rates to meet a country's monetary policy and interest rates raise or lower the cost of a currency. High interest rates will make it expensive to buy a currency and low interest rates will make a currency more affordable.

As an example of how interest rates are used imagine the government of a country with high inflation. With the price of goods and services rising rapidly, the government might decide to raise interest rates. This would increase the cost of the country's currency making borrowing more expensive and both demand and consumption fall. As demand begins to fall, so the rate at which prices rise will also begin to fall and inflation will come down.

In a similar fashion, a country experiencing recession might decide to lower interest rates in an effort to stimulate the economy into growth. As the cost of the currency falls, so too will the cost of borrowing and investors, companies and individuals will be enticed to borrow and thus spend more, increasing demand and stimulating supply to meet that increased demand.

The interest rates which are set by central banks also determine the rate at which the commercial banks can borrow from the government and the rate at which they lend to their customers, which of course includes foreign currency traders.

So how do interest rates impact Forex trades?

Imagine a trader who buys GBP/USD. In this case he needs to borrow US Dollars to buy UK Pounds and will both pay interest on the US Dollars he borrows and earn interest on the UK Pounds he buys.

As long as the Bank of England interest rate is higher for the UK Pound than the interest rate set for the US Dollar by the Federal Reserve, the trader has the opportunity to earn more in interest on his holding of UK Pounds that he is paying on the US Dollars he had borrowed.

In general however, unless the difference between the two interest rates is significant, any net gain or loss will usually be quite small. It also has to be remembered that interest rates are set at an annual rate and that most trading position are held open for only a short, or very short, period of time. This acts to lower any interest gained or paid significantly.