Posts Tagged ‘broker’

Do Forex Expert Advisors Actually Work? The REAL Truth

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

It seems like all you hear about these days is how people are going crazy over these forex robots that have become so en vogue. But do they actually work? Think about it! In all this time that you’ve read about them in forums, chat rooms, etc….. have you ever know anybody who had success with them trading in a real (not demo) account? My guess is you haven’t.

Have you ever noticed that the ones you do hear about having success in the demo accounts, the moment they are traded on a real account with real money, the account crashes. Funny how that works, huh?

The fact is that I, not only wouldn’t trust the robot to trade for me, but I wouldn’t trust the broker I am using the forex robot on. Forex brokers (all brokers for that matter) are renowned for their questionable trading policies (e.g. hunting for stop losses), so you could imagine all the questionable tactics they could use on trading robot, which is something you have no control over.

Also, the fact that some automated system can tell you where the market is going to go is absurd. The market is too complicated for a machine to follow blindly based on the parameters of the developer. You think a forex robot has any idea what to do if the Fed comes out and lowers interest rates by half of a point instead of a quarter of a point. It would have no idea. This is something that they just cannot simulate.

John Templeton has been a successful forex trader after learning how to trade price action. Once he understood that all he needed to trade forex was on a plain chart with no indicators, his profits soared. You too could learn how to trade.

Stock Market Investing Help – Advice That Will Show You How to Make Money With Forex

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

As you know, the markets aren’t good right now. People are scared. Every day we watch wild swings and it’s all we can do as investors not to dig a hole in our backyards and bury our money. But not all markets are bad. Many investors are turning to the foreign exchange commonly know as Forex for profit opportunities.

If you don’t have a lot of experience with Forex the trouble is conquering the learning curve. But there are ways to master the learning curve easily and quickly, in fact, you can do it immediately and that starts with a Forex trading robot, bot for short.

What are Forex Robots?

Put simply: a Forex bot is mathematical software that scans the foreign exchange for profit opportunities and makes trades on your behalf. A Forex bot can do the work of a hundred individual stock brokers. Brokers would have to spend hundreds of man hours scanning through mountains of financial to find quality stock picks guaranteed to earn investors a profit. A Forex trading bot runs on your machine and does the same work of a hundreds brokers and does it in a fraction of the time. You can turn it on and do other things while your robot does the picking and trading work for you.

Do Forex Robots really work?

Yes, they work. However, be careful. They are some bad Forex bots out there. I link to one of the top bots out there at the end of this article. I’ve fully tested it with success. It works. But don’t take my word for it. Try the demo version and run some hypothetical picks in demo mode. Would you have made money? Run test picks for a couple weeks and discover your success rate. Is it high? If so, you now know your Forex bot works.

Is this expensive?

No. It used to be. In fact, stock pick software used to be so costly only the biggest investment and trading firms could afford to have it. Thanks to the internet and a dedicated group of traders who are also programmers the Forex bot can be had for about the cost of dinner and drinks. It’s cheap and well worth the investment because Forex bots work so efficiently and with so much success.

Discover more about Forex Trading Bots right now. You can start earning profit immediately. http://www.pagex.com/forex-bot

Commercial Loan Rate – Current Situation

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

There is currently a genuine state of confusion regarding commercial loan rates. The confusion is not just restricted to borrowers, either. Brokers, lenders and professional investors are all struggling to get a handle on what is going on with commercial loan rates.

Borrowers are under the impression that we’re at historic lows. They hear about the feds lowering rates and also hear national banks quote ridiculously low rates. What these national banks aren’t advertising is that their decline rates are at historic highs. Is difficult to be able to track a statistics like this but my friends and associates that work at intuitions like Bank of America, CITI etc tell me that there decline rate are at 95% or so.

So what that means is that they are cherry picking to an incredible degree (can you blame them?). The low commercial loan rates that they are advertising are only relevant for 5% of the borrowers that apply. Think about that for a moment, for every 100 people that fill out those 6 page applications, provide their tax return, etc, 95 of them are getting declined. As a comparison the decline rates are normally more like 50%.

The confusion is not just restricted to borrowers but to professionals in the industry as well. The spreads or margin are varying from one lender to the next more than we have seen. People in the business are struggling to understand why. Normally if you were to get 10 quotes on the same deal the commercial loan rates would be within .25 -. 35% of each other. Perhaps a few would tweak the prepayments or term, etc but their rates would be close. Now we are seeing commercial loan rates on the same deal varying between 2% -3%…

Part of the problem is that some of the lenders and banks themselves are having their cost of capital increase. Some of their credit rating are being lowered, as their balance sheets are scrutinised. So despite the Feds lower their rates, the margins that the banks charge (in order to cover their costs, risk and make a profit) go up as their cost of capital go up. So as one bank is more financial healthy than the next its costs of capital varies.

So what’s the happy ending? We currently don’t have one. If you’re thinking of buying or refinancing a commercial property in the next few months we would suggest getting it done now as in maybe a while before things re-stabilize and commercial loan rates become more universal.

Jeff Rauth is President of Commercial Finance Advisors, Inc out of Birmingham, Michigan. He has a STORE for commercial loan brokers. Contracts, spreadsheets, books, etc. Products starting at $4.95! Check it out commercial mortgage broker store or commercial loan rates

Use a Forex Chart as Your Secret Weapon

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

Learning to use a forex chart will greatly improve your ability to become a profitable forex online trader. As with stock exchange investing there are several popular chart types used to visually analyse trading data. Some of the forex chart types include bar charts, candlestick charts and point and figure charts.

The forex chart can be very useful when looking to analyze markets when using technical analysis. The technical style of trading ignores fundamental factors and is only used with the price action of a market. This can be good to also remove the emotional effect trading has on your mental state.

With a forex chart you are able to see the movement of the market in a visual format. In addition to the standard chart you can add indicators or oscillators to help you make decisions about when to get in or out of your currency trades.

In case you do not know what an indicator is, it is a series of data points used to help predict movements in currencies. Some of the more popular indicators used on forex charts are moving averages, waves and bollinger bands.

Bar Charts – are quite often used in security market technical analysis. Bar charts are quite easy to construct making them quite popular. The charts are constructed by showing intra-day, daily, weekly or monthly movement as a vertical bar. Opening and closing prices are shown by horizontal marks to the left and right of the vertical bar respectively.

Candlestick Charts – were the secret weapon of the Japanese traders until Steven Nison of Merrill Lynch made the use of this chart popular in western markets. The candlestick chart is credited to Munehisa Homma, a Japanese rice trader in the early 18th century.

The candlestick is the graphic representation of the price bar: the open, high, low, and closing price of the period. The candlestick has become a widely used tool in online currency trading.

When you use the candlestick in your forex chart there are many patterns that you can learn to identify to help with your technical analysis. There are 12 you really should learn. Some of them include morning star, evening star, shooting star.

When using forex charts you should be using live data feeds. This means the data you are seeing in your forex charts is based on actual currency rates at the time you are viewing the chart.

To get your data and software for your forex charts you have free options and paid options. Quite often after selecting your forex broker you will receive some for of forex charting through their trading platform.

With the paid options you normally would pay for a data feed to construct your forex charts. This is typically a monthly subscription. You are quite often able to receive a free trial before committing to a subscription.

I currently use FXCM Trading Station and it comes with a built in forex chart. You can ask your broker what they recommend if you are wanting more advanced forex charting options.

If you are considering getting into the forex market and trading currencies I strongly recommend learning what you can about using a forex chart to help with your trading.

If you find this all too difficult you may instead wish to use a Forex signal service however this comes at a cost. It is always best to rely on your forex chart knowledge.

Looking for more forex trading information, visit forextradingonlineinfo.com. Sign up for the newsletter and receive a bonus report.

Forex Speculation – Trading the Foreign Exchange Market

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Forex, the foreign exchange market, is the global market that trades currency and is largely influenced by the products and portfolios of a person or businesses country. Large financial institutions, businesses, and some individuals, earn millions each day by making careful decisions on what currency to buy or sell.

The foreign exchange market is similar to the stock markets that exist in many countries but instead involves one global market making it the largest market in the world. Forex speculation is necessary because the rate of currency never stays the same. The value of the United States dollar changes each minute in response to the current and foreign events. The same is true for currencies world wide making the entire market move quickly and requiring quick decisions that can make millions.

Many new foreign exchange traders have been attracted by the opportunity to make large amounts of money in a relatively short amount of time. What many do not realize, or chose to overlook, is that there is always the chance that an investor will lose a great deal of money because of bad investments. To avoid making bad choices in the foreign exchange market a great deal of Forex speculation is necessary. This speculation is used to help determine which currencies should be bought and which must be sold.

In the foreign exchange market the major currencies are the United States dollar, the British Pound, the Euro, the Japanese Yen, and the Swiss Franc. These are only a few of the currencies being traded on the global market but they are the ones most often traded. In the Forex market you decide which currency you wish to sell based on its current value and potential to make money while buying currency that you believe will later make you money. Since foreign currency trading is done 24 hours a day with time changes world wide causing overlaps that will eventually affect foreign currencies leading to Forex speculation.

While the Internet and home computer access has made it possible for anyone to enter the world of foreign exchange trading Forex speculation is not something that should be attempted by just anyone. Even with the many classes, courses, and seminars available through the Internet and in real life learning the art of Forex speculation takes time, practice, and experience. Well known foreign exchange brokers have been known to make a mistake from time to time and inexperienced individuals can find themselves in financial ruin if they are not careful.

If you are interested in Forex trading and have no experience in the foreign exchange market it is in your best interest to find an experienced Forex broker to handle your trades. Finding a broker that is experienced in Forex speculation can help make your venture a success. Keep in mind, the foreign exchange market is not a guaranteed way to make money. Research your potential broker and begin with cautious investments. Investing a great deal of money into the fast paced world of foreign currency exchange could lead to a great loss if one is not careful.

This article brought to you courtesy of http://www.privatefxclub.com. We publish the trade desk thoughts of a team of real institutional traders. Visit now for more on forex speculation. Link: Private FX Club online.

Why is a Good Broker Essential?

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

It is hard to define good and bad, especially when they are terms slapped on to something as subjective as a brokerage service.

A broker serves a few primary functions in the trading cycle. The brokerage takes orders from sellers and buyers and matches them. The broker also provides the most recent prices and most brokers provide a charting service as well. These services are not provided for free, the broker takes a commission from you each time you trade. This charge is called the pip spread. What that works is that when you enter a trade, you are automatically in the red. This spread varies from broker to broker but on the whole as a market, pip spreads for trading the majors are very low as compared to trading exotic currencies.

A good broker can then be define as a broker who provides the basic services and keep the spreads low and fixed. The issue about floating spreads is that there are times when the spreads can go to atrocious levels and that means if you place your stop loss too low, there is a high possibility that you get kicked out of a trade through no fault of yours or because of any market movements. The good thing about having fixed spreads is that you can work the spreads into your trading plan. That gives you control of how you want to direct the trade.

The reason why having a good broker is essential to your profits is that; you want to have reliability and stability when you trade. The last thing you need is a brokerage that might go bust, or not pay you or worse take your money and run! I have had experience with brokers who refused to pay out my profits especially if they were large good runs and these brokers even made it such that it seemed that it was a technical error so they were not liable to pay! As you can imagine, I quickly closed my account and switched services. The crazy thing was that the broker refused to give me MY money! After a few phone calls and a couple of weeks later I finally managed to resolve that ugly spat and recovered my funds.

Reliability and stability are absolutely essential for traders to have especially when we are faced with an ever changing market. With market situations as such, the last thing you need is for your broker to pull a fast one on you. For example when you are in the midst of a trade and suddenly the trade window hangs. It might be a technical issue you think, so you log back on immediately. To your surprise you realize that your trade has been canceled and that the money you placed into the trade was lost! This is something that you don’t need, so you try to contact the broker, but you emails never get answered and your calls fall on deaf ears.

At this point in time the only thing you can do is to switch brokers. This will affect your trading and throw a wrench into your profits. Choose a good broker at the onset and you will fair better in the long run.

Dr. Joshua Geralds is a successful Investment Specialist with over twenty years experience increasing the income of people world wide. Visit http://www.pipsalot.com to learn how to make steady profits through safe trading and down load your FREE e-book “Money Management” for a limited time only!

Forex Trading Currency Pairs – How to Choose Which Currency to Pair

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Forex trading involves making worthwhile decisions at all times. In choosing Forex trading currency pairs, it is highly advisable that new traders should focus more on one currency pair. The best pair to begin with is those that contain a small spread, so that would be EUR-USD.

In general, brokers will have to charge 2 pips when a trader will buy EUR-USD but worry no more since there are no brokers who would merely charge less than one pip.

Furthermore, one can also choose GBP-USD since it is very much similar to EUR-USD although it possesses a higher spread and bigger volatility. That being said, one should try the Forex trading currency pairs of GBP-USD after a few months of trading with EUR-USD.

However if you are happy and contented with the result of EUR-USD, just forget about the other.

On the other hand, USD-JPY and USD-CAD are totally different from the Forex trading currency pairs of EUR-USD and GBP-USD given the fact that they are highly dependent on two unlike countries, Canada and Japan that also possess a different economy and location from GB, Europe, and USA.

AUS-USD possesses a direct relation with the gold price thus when the gold price goes up, the currency is expected to go up, too. In view of this, if you simply follow the gold price as well as the economy of USA then you can surely predict the movement of AUS-USD.

Now that you are aware of the safe Forex trading currency pairs to go for, expect that your risk is low.

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Review the Equipment Lease Contract Before Signing On the Dotted Line

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Many business people don’t know that equipment leases can be negotiated. They do a quick read-through of the contract, see that the monthly payments are what was represented, and sign where indicated. Not carefully reviewing each paragraph of the agreement can be costly. Long, drawn-out contracts are often developed by leasing companies to gain added revenues and advantages for themselves. Consequently, in this situation, it is to the detriment of the lessee.

This article discloses some of the terms and conditions that are contained in lease contracts, but can often be negotiated. A properly trained lease broker can be invaluable in helping the lessee discern the points of contention and negotiate a fair and equitable agreement.

1. Credit or commitment fees: Some leasing companies will charge you a fee simply to process the credit application. Others may charge a fee to keep the credit commitment open after the application has been approved. These are ridiculous fees that I would advise never paying.

2. End of term option: This is a critical point in the contract. Beware of language that allows you to buy the equipment at a “mutually acceptable price” as opposed to fair market value. When a lessor states they will sell you the equipment at a mutually acceptable price, they can back you into a corner by charging just about what they want. Fair market value and $1 buyout leases are legally defined and more quantifiable.

3. The never-ending lease: Some leasing companies try to lock you into a leasing situation forever and the only way to escape is to pay an inordinate fee. Beware of a lease that gives you three options at the end of the term: a. Buy the equipment at a “mutually agreeable price”. b. Extend the contract at a mutually agreeable price, or c. Return the equipment to the lessor and strike a new deal at a mutually agreeable price. These are all poor options for you, the lessee and only serve to benefit the profit of the leasing company.

4. Equipment pass title fees: These are fees that some lessors charge when the lessee chooses to buy the equipment at the end of the lease term and obtain clear title. These fees can be as high as $250 or more.

5. “Put” at end of lease: Make sure that you have an option to buy the equipment at the end of the lease and not a put. A put may result in lower monthly payments, but requires you to buy the equipment, as opposed to an option, which gives you a choice.

6. Delayed payment to vendor: Some leasing firms delay payment to the vendor for the purpose of increasing their yield. This is unethical, creates a hardship for the vendor, and makes your company appear in a bad light.

7. Up-front broker fees:Some lease brokers charge an up-front fee at the onset of the relationship. I have never charged such a fee because my compensation is based upon a successful completion of the transaction and is a percentage of the amount funded.

These are some of the items to look for when reviewing an equipment lease. Keep in mind that competition among leasing companies is intense and they do not want to lose your business. Do not be shy about asking that these fees be taken out of the agreement.

Kent Harlan has been a CPA since 1984 and has provided consulting, accounting and financial services to several industries. He is the owner of Ozarks Capital Funding, LLC, a Springfield, MO based company offering business and heatlhcare financing.

Does your company need to finance new equipment or refinance your existing inventory of equipment? click here to apply.

EMAIL: kenth@ocflink.com
WEB: http://www.ocflink.com
PHONE: 417.849.7394

Commercial Mortgage Brokers, More Important Now Than Ever

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

As the credit crisis deepens, many borrowers are realizing that working with a commercial mortgage broker makes a lot of sense and is more important than ever. Virtually all banks and lenders have severely tighten their credit standard to the point that most borrowers are having a very difficult time finding any banks that will even consider their loan request.

Bottom line, 95% of all commercial mortgage loan requests are being turned down cold. So one of the keys here for the borrower is to figure out which banks are still really funding deals and how to structure the loan request so that it has the highest likely hood of closing. And good commercial mortgage brokers knows both.

Tapping the experience and resources of a commercial mortgage broker is an excellent way to do this. A knowledgeable commercial mortgage broker is in essence shopping banks and lenders everyday and everyday for years. The good ones know what is going on behinds the scenes with banks as they have long term relationships with associates that inform them of any internal issues. The folks in the bank know how important the broker is to their personal success and will not miss lead the commercial mortgage broker, in fear of destroying future business. So a commercial mortgage broker worth his “salt” should be able to take you to a bank or lender that’s in a valid position to fund your loan.

An important point here is that commercial mortgage brokers are in essence on the same side of the table as the borrower. They get paid when the loan closes. Most do not make hourly consulting fees, etc. They invest their time, effort and resources into your deal and are betting they can get it done. If they are experienced, they will only take your deal to a bank that can really close it.

Keep in mind one of the annoying problems out there for borrowers shopping banks on their own is that many bank loan officers have many quotas besides closing loans… most of these quotas go against the borrowers goal of closing their loan. For example, bank loan officers have weekly meeting and loan application quotas. So they may try to schedule a meeting with you and get you to fill out a loan application and send in all tax returns/financials even though they know they can’t get the loan funded.

They are trying to save their job. Again, they get to justify their job with their manager at your expense and your time.

Good, experienced, commercial mortgage brokers can save you a lot of time and energy by taking you right to the most viable banks from the beginning. And, believe it or not, they can also save you a lot of money as well.

Jeff Rauth is President of Commercial Finance Advisors, Inc out of Birmingham, Michigan a national commercial mortgage brokerage firm. 248 885-8797. He also has a STORE for commercial loan brokers. Contracts, spreadsheets, books, etc. Products starting at $5. Check it out commercial real estate loans or commercial mortgage brokers

Forex Course Trading – There Are So Many Forex Courses Which One is the Best For Me?

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

The Foreign Exchange markets (Forex or FX) were deregulate in 1997 allowing the private investor access to markets banks, brokerage firms and other large financial institutions once had a monopoly on. The novice FX traders quickly entered the market and just as quickly they realized they were in for a long learning curve if they were ever going to make this a profitable transition and thus a market was created for Forex Course Trading. Numerous types of educational programs where produced, refined and marketed to the public. Today there are so many courses it can be a mind boggling task attempting to select the one best suited for you particular needs. I will attempt to clarify this a little bit for you and make the decision making process a little simpler.

The first point I want to make is that the majority of the course are extremely inexpensive usually running $100 to $200. I know you saying to yourself that is not inexpensive. But, when you take into consideration that one small trade of a currency can easily make up the purchase price of the course then it is VERY inexpensive. The next subject is the types of courses. There are wide assortment of curriculum available covering extremely varied topics. The major segments the courses can be broken into are the following; comprehensive or covering everything A to Z, profiting quickly through mentoring, make money starting with small amounts, and very specific to the developers own experiences and how they profited using them.

If I was a complete novice to the markets I would start with a comprehensive course that provided an education on all aspect of the markets. After all, education is the corner stone of success in what ever field you attempt to enter. Are you really going to purchaser software and start trading something you know NOTHING about? This is a real bad idea, unless of course you need the losses to reduce you capital gains made else where to decrease your tax burden.

A few of the comprehensive courses you could try would be the following. The Peter R. Bain course titled Forex Mentor which has been around seemly forever and has had thousands of satisfied customers. This course covers everything and has been refined a thousand times over. Another class you could take would be Fap Winner which offers a great education and a personalized mentoring program. Those are just two of the TOP TIER rated courses and there are a few more. Just read the reviews of the courses which are available everywhere and the home page of the course and determine which one you think will be best for you.

The next step you could take would be to enroll in a course like The Forex Brotherhood or Forex Trading Made E-Z. The Forex Brotherhood is run by Jason Alan Jankovsky a professional Forex trader who essentially allows you to copy his complete trading portfolio. In other words you are virtually assured to be profitable immediately with this course. But, then again you would have NO idea of how and why you were making money for an extended time as you are just coping his ever move. But, it is a great place to start if you want to make money fast and you don’t really need to know how. Or you are willing to take your time learning, because he will teach you, it is just not going to be too quickly. The Forex Trading Made E-Z program was developed by an ex pilot who has found a very specific way of trading currencies and making money at it, which of course he teaches you.

After reading this article it is easy to see there are many different types of courses available, only a few were mentioned above. If your out to make a fast buck and you are not concerned with why or how you are making it then there is a course for you. If you want to turn this into a career and want financial independence, then there is a course for you. If you want to buy a piece of software and turn on the automatic trader and start making money, well there really is NOT a course for you, but you will have losses you can use to offset you gains made else where to reduce your tax obligation.

We have researched, tested & reviewed 100s of Forex Courses, Software Systems and Brokerage Firms which we only list our TOP 10 to help you LEARN FOREX TRADING

For 100s of FREE FOREX TUTORIALS please visit LEARN CURRENCY TRADING Good Luck! I look forward to seeing you on the trading floor making money!