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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.

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!

Frederick H. Ecker became President of the Metropolitan on March 26, 1929, and associated with him as Vice Presidents were Robert L. Cox and Leroy A. Lincoln. Mr. Cox died in January of the following year, and Mr. Lincoln immediately assumed the position of second in command. He succeeded to the Presidency in March 1936, when Mr. Ecker became Chairman of the Board. When the new administration took office in 1929, the country was enjoying what appeared to be great prosperity.

Many men in business and in public life believed that we had attained a depression less economy. Corporate earnings were at a high level. There was frenzied activity in the stock market and in the flotation of new securities. Prices of common stocks reached dizzy peaks. Credit was easy to obtain. The growth of the Metropolitan and of other life insurance companies reflected the optimistic spirit of the times. All prospered as a result of the great business activity and the high rate of employment at good wages then prevalent throughout the country.

The first hundred billion dollars of life insurance rates in force had been attained; predictions were being confidently made that within another 10 years the second hundred billion would be added. But in October 1929 came the first manifestation of a series of cataclysms which shook the country and the world. The first stock market crash came almost out of a clear sky. The full significance of this indication of economic distress was little understood at the time. Many people suffered immediate losses. Many held on to their securities while prices were dropping sharply, only to sell them at even lower figures at a later date, or to be closed out for lack of margin.

Nevertheless, there were many in high places that refused to believe that this was more than a temporary financial setback. Although the national income fell in 1930 and 1931, it was still at a fairly high level. Because of the low prices to which common stocks had fallen, various recommendations were made in the late autumn of 1929 urging the life insurance companies to make such purchases in anticipation of rapid economic recovery.

The State laws governing life insurance investments specifically forbade such venturing. Undoubtedly great havoc would have been wrought in the financial structures of many companies and great losses suffered by policy holders if such advice could have been taken. The market quotations as they dropped from month to month thoroughly confirmed the prophetic warnings of Mr. Ecker, and justified his insistence that the law limiting the character of the investment portfolio of Life insurance companies should remain essentially unchanged.

The life insurance companies stood firm. Because of the character of their portfolios, they were not seriously affected by the declining values. In some respects, the very nature of the upset at the close of 1929 reacted favorably upon the companies. Many individuals who had lost heavily in the stock market felt called upon to increase their Life insurance in order to make good the losses to the estates which they had hoped to build up for their families.

Thus, in the years immediately following the first stock market crash, ordinary insurance made unparalleled gains and was becoming closer and closer to offering term life insurance without exam. In 1930 the Metropolitan issued, exclusive of business revived or increased, close to $1,400,000,000 of ordinary insurance, the highest annual figure in the history of this department up to that time. But even this figure was exceeded by a considerable margin the following year, when a total of more than $1,460,000,000 was achieved. In fact, 1931 has remained the banner year for the writing of ordinary insurance in the Metropolitan.

Even in the industrial department there was an issue of $1,110,000,000 in 1930, only 8% less than in its peak year of 1929. In 1931 the industrial insurance issued still exceeded $1,000,000,000. In both the ordinary and the industrial departments, the total insurance in force continued to increase without interruption through the year 1931. Apparently, the economic situation up to that time had not yet seriously affected the ability of the American people to purchase or maintain life insurance.

Sarah Martin is a freelance marketing writer based out of San Diego, CA. She specializes in finance, business, and different types of insurance. For a free term life insurance quote, please visit http://www.equote.com/.

Forex: To trade or not to trade? Many are reluctant to associate with Forex trading because of its risks. Generally speaking, there are risks everywhere in our lives: May factories fails, not a customer May appointment if you open a store, stock market May crush, and if you are an employee, you get fired May undertaken during reduction. There are risks everywhere! The important question here is how you learn and maintain your own risk. So if you plan to participate in the Forex market, you have to learn risk management, instead of being terrified.

Picking Up the forex dealer right

One of the best ways to avoid unnecessary risks is to avoid fraud dealer.

Forex is a special market operations without centralized. Thus, unlike regulated futures, there is no central Forex market for buyers or sellers, therefore the price offered by different dealers Forex May vary widely. When you’re negotiating Forex market, you are totally relying on the integrity of the concessionaire for fair treatment.

Besides, you must select a right Forex dealer to avoid scams. It May be Forex dealers who are not legally regulated and perhaps investment scams, especially on the Internet. Be very careful about who you’re dealing with Forex and always check carefully on investment offers.

Stop order

The Forex market can move against you. No one can predict with certainty how the exchange rate will, and the Forex market is volatile. The fluctuations in the exchange rate between the time you place the trade and when you try to liquidate it will affect the price of your contract Forex and the potential profits and losses thereof. To avoid losing all your investment capital, you must have a pre-arrangement on your risk profile. A solid risk profile is limited forex dealer not to exceed the risk that you can not handle. For example, if you have 100000 to invest, you can say you’re willing to risk 10000 of this capital with the possibility of winning another 100000. This can be easily implemented by a fund manager so that your losses can be limited to 10% or 5% of capital invested.

Avoid excessive margin trading

Another way to manage your risks well Forex market is trade without overleveraged. Forex dealers offer high leverage* which in turn allows clients to trade more volume. Also, trade highly leveraged in May to increase your profit or your loss. It is high possibilities that are losing money more than he or she can afford a room for negotiation.

Forex can be extremely beneficial to a variety of people. It gives enormous leverage* rate, it gives incompatible liquidity of your money it gives to facilitate commerce on the Internet, and it can certainly give you a lot of money if you trade intelligently. Like any other business trade, if you’re new, the best advice you can get is to learn and practise more before you test your “wings”. Seminars, e-books, Internet, documents, video courses – all these are good for your loan. You can also test your skills on the free demonstration. After all, Forex trades 24 hours a day and it is always to make money on the market, so why not be patient until you’re quite ready for it?

The diversification in Forex trading

Diversification is another way to manage risks in Forex market. Trading a currency pair will generate little input signals. If you want to reduce your risk of Forex market, it would be better to diversify your transactions between different currencies.

Try trade at the same time on different pair of currency. Say you have a capital of $ 1000, instead of putting all your money in the long EUR / USD, you can split the money half long EUR / USD and GBD / USD ($ 500 each) that these two currencies are strongly correlated and tends to move in the same direction.

Conclusion

It goes without saying that knowledge is another key to managing your risk. Before arriving in Forex market, the best thing you should do is educate yourself. What drives the currency price trends? How to read data analysis? How to read indicators table? To find out details on how the currency price and how to trade foreign exchange in order to avoid unnecessary risks.

You come to this article probably because you are new to FOREX and the search for lectures on the Internet. To be frank, Forex can be very profitable but the risk is below is equally great. But what else in life does not present a risk? You can be fired from your job, a plant malfunction of May, stock market collapse of May, your boss May fugue with your salary, and hey! These are all risks. Learning in risk management is the key to managing your life.

Commerce intelligently, and get the maximum Forex – good luck!

* Without proper risk management, this high degree of leverage can lead to large losses as well as gains.

http://www.autotradingfx.com

http://www.autotradingfx.com/articles/understanding-risks-forex-trading

Diversification as defined by the American Heritage dictionary is: “To distribute (investments) among different companies or securities in order to limit losses in the event of a fall in a particular market or industry”.

The primary goal of diversification is to “capitalize on returns” through investments in different areas so prevent a total wipe of your positions should the market turn against you. Nearly all investment specialists have the same opinion that, diversification is absolutely necessary to avoid risks for long-term investments.

Just imagine that you have an account in Forex, and you only trade the EUR/USD, can you diversify your position?

The answer is YES. A very resounding yes at that as well! Even if you trade just one currency pair you still should diversify your holdings. In a while we will go through just how to do that. Let us first explore the advantages and disadvantages of diversification in Forex.

One of the advantages of having a diverse holding would create more stability in your account. Just image if one trade turns against you (which is highly likely) you have at least some other trades that would win. Thus your final profit and loss statements for a day will show a profit. If you had just one trade most likely you would be facing with a loss for the day.

A disadvantage of diversification is that there is the possibility that you get carried away and over diversify your positions. Focus is needed to maintain profitability in your account, an over diversification will dilute that focus which makes it difficult to grow your account.

To illustrate the above 2 examples let’s work through some figures:

For instance you fund your account with $10,000 and each position size you take is normally 5% of your total account. How should you diversify your account?

There are three ways of diversifying and I recommend that you do at least two. First method is that you break your 5% into 1% each and trade with 1% per trade instead of a huge 5% in a single trade.

Second is that you trade different time frames, for instance you normally trade 5 minutes, now have two position one 5 the other 15 minutes.

Third, you can trade non related currency pairs. For example The EUR/JYP and the GBP/USD

Based on your money management rules, use at least 2 of the above 3 points to help you diversify your positions.

Next we have to address the issue of over diversification. It can be a potential problem if you lose focus and over diversify. As the old saying goes, “too many cooks spoil the broth” over diversification is like that. I would suggest that you should have no more then 3 positions opened at any point in time.

For example, you decided to use 5% of your account to trade and instead of having in all in one trade, you slit it up into 2 different trades with 2 pairs.

You use 2.5% to trade the EUR/JPY and the next 2.5% to trade GBP/USD. This spreads out you risk a fair amount. You can still focus on these two trades and if thing go well you will earn on both. If one fails there is a chance that the other will win.

There is that possibility that both trades turn against you. That’s why at the onset you only use no more than 5% of your account to trade!

Diversification is a part of good money management; it will protect your account and help you make more money in the long term.

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!

Known as equity swaps in the institutional market, they originated in the UK in the 1980s. Contracts for Difference (CFDs) are an agreement between the investor and the CFD provider to settle the difference in cash between the price at which the CFD trade position is opened and the price it’s closed.

On The Positive side

A CFD will mirror the performance of a stock without owning them, and the profit/loss is determined by the difference between the buy and the sell price. Because contracts for difference trade on margin, investors only need a small proportion of the total value of a position to trade.

A CFD will also mirror any corporate actions that take place. The owner of a share CFD will receive cash dividends and participate in stock splits. Traders use CFDs as they allow them to leverage into “stocks” for little upfront cost. Moreover, in a falling market, you can sell the CFD you don’t own and buy back when it has slipped in price value enough for you to pocket the difference and make a profit.

On The Downside

There are some significant disadvantages to trading CFDs, many of which are based around the fact that they are an OTC (over the counter) derivative. That means that the CFD provider, not a Securities Exchange, is the counterparty to your contract and it is their terms and conditions, designed to benefit them, that you agree to. The downside to CFDs include;

• The deposit is not a down payment for the balance of the CFD trade, but rather a margin held by the provider as protection against any possible losses. This means that an investor may receive a margin call demanding more money if they have bought into the stock thinking it was heading up and the share price falls.
• Given this, we suggest the use of a stop loss that is activated by the CFD Provider (broker) at a % move in the underlying share price against the trade. You would adjust this according to your individual leverage scenario. This should quash any margin call demands.
• You are liable to pay interest on the total transaction amount, regardless of the amount of margin that you have contributed.
• As an OTC (over the counter) derivative you are not offered the same protection as when you purchase shares. For example, some CFD providers are not obliged to use the stop losses you specify, they may also ‘bundle’ together orders from other traders and give you an average price.

Why Contracts for Difference

Leverage.

The leverage level offered by the CFD provider magnifies the underlying movement of the stock. Most providers set differing leverage levels and you can find the best level that suits you trading style. By using a Guaranteed stop Loss (GSL) it is possible to effectively increase leverage levels by capping the margin requirement held against you.

Control of Risk.

If you have ever traded, you know how important it is to use stop losses for capital preservation, especially when using a leveraged product.

• CFDs allow you to cut your losses quickly and leave your profits to run. This ability to quickly exit at the prevailing market price allows for greater risk control.
• CFDs reflect the price of the underlying equity, therefore, you will always know what the market price is of your shares and know what you can sell out for, provided you choose a CFD Provider who uses “at market” prices. Some CFD providers (market makers) may only give spreads, which have the potential to force you in at higher prices and out and lower prices.
• Placing automated Stop Loss orders can exit you out of suggestions that go against you while you are busy in your day-to-day activities.

Other things you may want to consider about CFDs

Hedging

Another application of CFDs, as an alternative to using Exchange Traded Options (ETO’s), is to use CFDs to hedge positions in your equity portfolio.

As with all hedging there is a cost. i.e. the commission you pay to open the CFD position, however, you will receive a net interest payment from the CFD provider as you are shorting the stock. Additionally, there is the indirect cost of depositing a margin payment with your provider to cover the CFD.

Duncan Hickman is an Analyst with Share Select http://www.shareselect.com.au who offer advice on Stock investment and trading, including derivatives such as CFDs

1. Use stop losses – A successful forex trader always limits their losses. No matter how good you are at timing the market, regardless of the strategy being used, every forex trader will lose from time to time. The key is to minimize the losses through properly placed stop losses and learn to maximize your gains.

2. Develop good trading strategies – I do not recommend using a demo account to test your strategy but do suggest starting with a really low amount of capital in a good forex trading platform. The reason I do not suggest testing your forex software trading strategy in a demo account is because of the difference between actual and fake trading. I have seen traders rely on what they learned form a demo account only to lose consistently through an actual account. I strongly believe that a small $50 start up account can be much more helpful and a great test of a forex software trading strategy. To find a proven set of forex trading strategies click on the link at the bottom of the page.

3. Learn how to interpret the news – This is a learned skill and to do so successfully you must take your time and become comfortable with these patterns. Once you learn to interpret the news you will be glad that you did, great profits can be made learning to interpret the news.

4. Start trading small – As mentioned previously, the successful forex traders learn from mistakes made when they trade small. Do as they do and you will learn to trade successfully.

5. Never allow a gain to turn into a loss – One of my personally big rules never to be violated. If you have entered into a trade and are on the upside make sure you have a stop in place to preserve your gain. Nothing brings down a trader faster than a gain turned into a loss.

6. Learn from your mistakes – The old saying is very true as it applies to the world of forex software trading, “If you do not learn from your mistakes you are bound to repeat them.” Enough said!

7. Learn to walk away from trading for a time if not doing well – I have personally made the mistake of falling into the “I’ll make the money back” mentality. This is a loser’s mental state not a successful trader’s psyche. If things are just not going well do not allow greed or fear to keep you in the forex market. There will always be tons of opportunities and you need to have your head on straight when trading so do not be afraid to walk away for a time.

8. Trade with knowledge not emotion – Do what you know you ned to do rather than what “feels right.” Stay with your strategy and do not deviate. If you trade with your emotions you will never succeed, period!

9. Trade with money you can only afford to lose – This really should be rule number one. If you violate this rule you will not be able to trade objectively or effectively.

10. Use a good trading platform – This is the one rule that is most easily pushed aside. Not choosing the best forex software trading platform is just like flushing money down the drain.

Get an Objective Review of the Most Popular Forex Trading Software Programs. Forex Trading System Review is the place to visit.

See What Forex Trading Software REALLY Works! forex-trading-system-review.com is the place to visit.

All forex robots have profitable track records yet most will wipe out your equity quickly and there is a reason for this its called curve fitting. If a track record is curve fitted then it won’t make you money and that’s why almost all forex robots give you losses. This will become clearer if you read this article…

First lets look at a warning that you will find somewhere in the small print which accompanies the track record. You will see the one below or very similar

“CFTC RULE 4.41 – Hypothetical or simulated performance results have certain limitations. Unlike an actual performance record, simulated results do not represent actual trading….. Simulated trading programs in general are also subject to the fact that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profit or losses similar to those shown”.

So the track record isn’t proven in the real world of trading. Iis simply a product of back testing and the back testing is conducted in such a way that the robot is unlikely EVER to make any money in the real world.

A track record that is done in this way gives you everything that happened and of course in any area of business or life, if we already knew what happened, we could make our life’s much better and become much richer but this is not the real world.

we have to live going forward, not knowing what happened and this makes life and of course currency trading a little more difficult.

What normally happens is a segment of data is tested with some parameters or rules and these are bent to fit the data and show a profit. Take any portion of data you like, over weeks, months or years and you will never have prices repeat in the same manner of the test again.

The Concept of Curve Fitting

It’s a bit like getting a gun putting a blindfold on and shooting wildly at a door or wall and then afterwards, drawing a chalk circle around each one to make it look like a bulls-eye!

This is the concept of curve fitting and this why any forex robot with a back tested track record, needs to be treated with caution and discarded.

A simulation is no proof of profit at all as it’s not real. Look at it this way:

Someone comes to you and says – I will teach you to play Tennis but I have never played tennis in my life.

What would you say to him?

Well I would say no and you probably would to, as you would think what can he teach me?

It’s the same with a mechanical forex trading system – the aim is to make money that’s real money you can spend NOT paper money which you can’t.

The forex robot is one of the most popular options for novice traders and in most cases it’s a dumb choice but they buy them in there thousands.

Many vendors know that most traders won’t question or see the disclaimer and they simply use hyped up over the top advertising copy to sell the system

With forex robots it should be common sense no one is going to sell you a system for a few hundred dollars to make $100,000 income ( actually saw one saying this) its obviously not true.

Furthermore, if most of the track records were as good as the vendor claims, why do they sell it? They could make themselves millionaires and not bother with a few hundred bucks per sale.

If you want to make money in forex trading you can but you are unlikely to do it with a system that has never passed the acid test of making real dollars in a real time scenario.

So treat these mechanical forex robots with caution and remember, if it looks to good to be true it probably is and is a reflection of curve fitting data.

FREE FOREX STARTER PACK 5 X PDFS – DAILY RESEARCH AND MUCH MORE!

For free infopack and free research and more get your 5 x FREE Forex PDFS visit our website at: http://www.learncurrencytradingonline.com

This article discusses the how to to profit from commodity pyramid trading.

These key points will help you learn this technique:

1. What is Commodity Pyramid Trading?
2. Commodity Pillar Trading Comparison
3. Commodity Pyramid Trading Comparison
4. Commodity Pyramid Trading Useful Tips

1. What is Commodity Pyramid Trading?

This is a method of trading commodity futures contracts in such a way that when the profit from a single trade equals the current margin for the commodity, the profit is used to self-finance an additional futures contract. This self-financing process can take either of two methods: Pillar trading or Pyramid trading.

The Pillar trading method involves adding one futures contract to your position during each self-finance round, while Pyramid trading adds one futures contract – but from each active futures contract with each self-financing step. This results in a doubling of your position during each self-financing step.

Both pyramid trades and pillar trades (hereinafter referred to as pyramid trades) should exhibit several characteristics which make them high profit potential candidates. These characteristics include:

• The market is quiet and has exhibited low volatility for several months.
• The margin for the commodity is relatively low.
• The market is set up for a major move. This is evidenced by extreme commercial/public signal, as well as a 12-month high or 12-month low on the daily price chart with a likely 1-2-3 Top or Bottom price chart pattern in the process of unfolding.

A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: The biggest danger in any futures trade is a limit move which goes against your position. With a single futures contract, this is risky enough. With multiple futures contracts, this risk is seriously compounded. However, if you monitor the market conditions (both technical and fundamental market conditions) and the financial news on a daily basis, you will generally receive a timely warning of an impending limit move which may go against your position – giving you time to close out your position before that occurs.

The Pyramid Trading Form

The Pyramid Trading Form is at the heart of helping you to successfully implement and manage these trading strategies. It contains areas that will let you monitor and track up to three commodities using this trading strategy. Each area allows for up to 7 futures contracts to be held in the pillar trade position, and up to 64 futures contracts in the pyramid trade position.

How To Identify A Good Pyramid Trade Candidate

At any point in time, there will be several commodities with differing degrees of profit potential. However, it is important that you identify the commodity which has the best chance of being a profitable pyramid trade. This means that you must perform a current analysis of all commodities to identify the commodity that meets the following requirements.

a. You must first use the Commercial/Public selection tools to identify the commodities that appear to be ready to make a major move.

b. Of these commodities, identify those that appear to be making either a 1-2-3 Top or 1-2-3 Bottom in the daily price chart. Calculate the daily 50% retracement target for each one. Also calculate the dollar amount the move represents.

c. Where applicable, use the weekly chart to calculate the weekly 50% retracement target for each commodity. Again, calculate the dollar amount the move represents if the weekly target is attained.

d. Identify the margin requirement for each commodity. The ideal pyramid trade will be one with a relatively small margin requirement and with a dollar amount profit potential that is at least three times the margin requirement for the commodity.

e. The commodity that you select must be a quiet commodity – that is, one which does not have wild price swings.

f. The commodity you ultimately select as the best pyramid trade candidate must also have enough time to allow the move to unfold. This means you need to get into a more distant month to minimize loss from commission switch requirements (which can be expensive with 16 or more contracts in your position). Select the more distant commodity contract month that has 120-180 days available until the Last Trading Day (LTD).

g. The commodity which you have selected must have a daily volume of at least 10,000 contracts for adequate liquidity. Open interest should also be 10,000 or more.

It’s important to remember that once you are in a trade, you must religiously perform an analysis on a daily basis so as to identify any changes in the original analysis that may adversely impact your trade. In addition, you should always monitor fundamental “news” which will affect the price of the commodity. For example, if you’re short Orange Juice – and Florida has a freeze warning – close your position fast!

2. Commodity Pillar Trading Comparison

The commodity pillar trading strategy is the least risky of the two strategies because you only acquire one contract with each applicable price (profit) increase.

An example pillar trade resulted in $12,650 profit (before commissions). During the trade, your total risk was confined to $400 or less. If you had traded only one futures contract (with a 93.79 entry price, and a 94.92 exit price), your gross profit would have been $2,825. The pillar trading strategy produced the additional profit.

3. Commodity Pyramid Trading Comparison

The commodity pyramid trading strategy is the most risky of the two strategies because you acquire two contracts with each applicable price (profit) increase. This results in a risky “inverted pyramid” position which, if not intelligently managed can produce significant losses.

An example Pyramid Trade resulted in $72,200 profit (before commissions). During the trade your total risk was confined to $4,600 or less. Again, if you had traded only one futures contract, your gross profit would have been $2,825. The pyramid trading strategy produced the additional profit.

4. Commodity Pyramid Trading Useful Tips

There are several things which you must do when using the commodity pyramid trading technique described in this course. Failure to do so will likely invite grief into your life.

* You must perform an analysis of the markets to identify an ideal pyramid trading opportunity. Having done that, you need patience and commitment to wait for the inevitable move in price. Your previous efforts at paper trading have given you the confidence and skills to identify major moves. Trust your skills.

* Get into the more distant futures contract to avoid the need to “switch” contracts. The commission on 64 contracts at $40 per contract will cost you an extra $2,560 in commissions each time you switch.

* You must monitor your position daily. This involves being aware of what the analysis “tools” (described in my complete Commodity FUTURES Trading Course) are telling you about the current state of the market.

* Be aware of any “news” items which would have an impact (positive or negative) on the commodity you are trading. For example, if you are short in Orange Juice, a “freeze” warning in Florida will cause price to move against you, and can likely result in a limit move – a catastrophe you should immediately take steps to avoid!

* A price move generally results in a series of minor retracements; leaving a support point during an increase in price, and a resistance point during a decrease in price. It is a sensible strategy to place the stop-loss a little below the support point for the uptrend and above the resistance point for the downtrend.

* Timing of the order entry is critical. You need to predefine what your entry strategy will be during each phase of pyramid trading.

Closing Advice

You must do your homework and try different strategies using various price charts. By covering the price chart with a sheet of paper so you can’t see price action beyond the entry point, you can slowly move the sheet of paper rightward exposing subsequent price action. This technique lets you retroactively “simulate” various strategies and react to market changes. Of course, you should also be entering the applicable data into your Pyramid Trading Form to track your “simulated” trade. This will give you skills and confidence to use this pyramid trading technique.

Special Note: There is substantial risk in trading commodity futures and options.

(C) 2008 Thomas Wnorowski

Thomas Wnorowski’s flagship site Learn Futures contains contains 15 years of insight and techniques. His Commodity Futures Trading Course and Bullseye Commodity Trader Newsletter are tools you can use to educate yourself on Commodities and Options Trading.

Forex trading can be a very risky business, so I want to show you how I reduce currency trading risk by only doing a few simple things. This market is quite exciting for most people since there is a huge potential for profit. But with anything that has great rewards, you’ll find that it also has very high risk. A lot of people come and go in this market, most (if not all) lose their money. Rarely does someone get rich and leave. People just throw their money into the market and hope it will come out as a huge pile of money. Probably not going to happen. The key is to learn to protect your money from loss, while you learn the process of growing it. I’ve been trading in this market for sometime now, so I’ll share what I’ve learned.

The number one way to reduce risk is cutting your losses. You’re going to have bad trades, just like I have bad trades and the richest banks in the market have bad trades. The difference between good trades and bad trades doesn’t really come down to the amount of bad trades, it comes down to how bad trades are dealt with. The sooner you cut your losses, the sooner you get some money back that you can reinvest in another profitable trade.

Another important step on reducing currency trading risk is having automated software. They make the most profitable trading decisions on their own, but they also have risk analysis built into the system. They look to make sure that the risk is worth the reward and make a decision based on that.

The Forex Breakout System is an excellent trading tool that encompasses proper risk analysis before making trades.

Learn more at the Forex Breakout System Review.