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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.

Organic foods have become more and more popular over the past couple decades. Even though its usually significantly more expensive, people still fork out the money. I’ve always assumed that most people do it for the health benefits. But lately there has been a growing market for clothing made from organically grown cotton. Obviously people aren’t buying these clothes for their health, unless they misunderstood what a ‘high-fiber diet’ means.

Organic Cotton: Good for the Earth

So, obviously the implications of organically grown cotton isn’t geared towards the body as much as it is geared towards the Earth. Organically grown cotton essentially refers to the way the cotton is grown and manufactured. Eco-friendly farmers try to find ways to limit the kinds of harmful chemicals that are put into the ground. Once those chemicals mix in with the soil, it effects future vegetation and animal life for years and years to come. The chemicals also find their way down into the water table (our natural fresh water supply deep down under the soil).

Substituting Chemicals with Brains

Instead of the lazy mainstream farming model where chemicals are used to maximize on profits, organic farmers substitute chemicals with innovation. Instead of using synthetic fertilizers which over time can throw off the soil’s PH and cause other problems for animals, organic farmers are using natural composting. Instead of pesticides which can throw off the food chain and effect larger animals, organic farmers are introducing beneficial insects and predators, and also using insect traps to pin-point a very small area for insect control. Instead of using harmful herbicides, organic farmers are coming up with innovative weeding techniques.

Market Driven Activism

The old model of standing on the street with signs just isn’t enough. The smart way to help people become aware of organic cotton is the capitalistic model. Many smart companies are jumping on the coat tails of the Earth-friendly trend. The more we support these farmers by spending money on organically grown cotton, the lower the prices will get and the smaller the human foot print will be on the Earth.

Cameron Postelwait is the admin for the forum about GoYin and works at Sewell Direct: a retailer of Organic Cotton Clothing

You can of course buy one of the heavily advertised automated forex trading systems online – but this one is simple to understand, free and made savvy traders millions and all you need to know about it is enclosed…

Let’s start with the ones you can buy and most have nothing to offer apart from fancy packaging and hyped copy, to appeal to greed.

They lack the basic requirement you need and that’s having made a profit. Check the track records and there normally just paper simulations done backwards!

Well that’s not real dollars and if you want a robot you want one that’s Made real dollars and the free one we are going to look at has.

Real Profits for Over 20 Years

The system has been used since the late seventies by serious traders and was devised by Richard Donchian who is considered the grandfather of trend following.

He left some great free info for traders to use and his 4 Week Rule automated trading system, is simple – but don’t believe it doesn’t make profits it has and still does. Let’s take a look at it.

The Rule

This is a one rule trading system which holds a position in the market at all times and this is the rule to execute your trading signals to.

Buy a new 4 week calendar high and reverse this position to a short position on a new 4 week calendar low – that’s the rule and it’s very simple!

Now you may be saying that’s too simple to work but all the best forex trading systems are simple but it works on logic which is valid and here it is.

Trade Breakouts

Almost all the big trends start or continue from new market highs or lows and by getting in on them, you are getting in on the big trends.

Currencies Trend Long Term

They reflect the underlying health of the country they represent so this means long trends of months or years and this system will get you a good chunk of the profits they produce.

You then have a couple of other very important advantages:

- Its objective you don’t have to think about the signal you just do it

- Its extremely time efficient and only takes about 15 minutes a day

So is the system perfect?
Of course not all systems have a weakness and this one is no exception.

When currencies don’t trend, it will generate losing signals but you can add a filter and exit on a one or two week high or low, go flat and wait for the next signal or you can use a short term moving average. This smoothes the equity curve but whichever way you choose long term this system makes profits.

The best forex trading systems are simple and this one is and don’t believe the vendors who try and sell you software with fancy names, clever packaging and a made up track record, go for the real deal and that’s a system, that’s still used after 25 years and is at the heart of many a successful forex trading strategy.

You don’t get much for free in life but Richard Donchian has left something for free, that is valuable, easy to understand and can help any trader seek currency trading success in just 15 minutes a day.

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For free 2 x trading Pdf’s and more on the best FREE Forex Trading System and an exclusive risk free Currency trading Course visit our website.

The Japanese invented candlestick charts a few hundred years ago and they have been used extensively by traders ever since. They are basically like bar charts except they provide a lot more information. So how useful are they when used to trade the forex markets?

Well first of all I would say that it’s generally not a great idea to make trading decisions based solely on candlestick charts. Ideally you should also use other technical indicators as well in order to find high probability trading set-ups, before looking for additional confirmation from the candlestick charts. Some people do trade and make consistent profits by just trading forex candlesticks but they are definitely in the minority.

Before I discuss how you can interpret candlesticks let me first of all discuss what a candlestick actually is. In simple terms a candlestick is simply a visual display of how the price has moved during a particular time frame. It consists of a body which signifies the open and close price and two wicks which indicate the high and low point during that particular period. If it’s a green candle, the closing price was higher than the open price and if it’s red then the price moved down with the closing price ending up lower than the opening price.

This may sound fairly basic and you may well wonder how you can trade these candlesticks but there are a number of different patterns you need to learn because they can offer strong buy or sell signals.

For example, if you get several consecutive candles that all have very small bodies followed by a candle with a large body then you know that there is a strong chance of a breakout occurring either up or down depending on the colour of the bar.

Another strong candlestick pattern is the hanging man and hammer patterns. These are both strong indicators that a reversal is due to take place. They both look the same with a small body and a long hanging downside shadow. The only difference is that the hanging man is used to signify a reversal of an upwards trend and a hammer is found at the bottom of a downwards trend and indicates an upwards reversal. Used in conjunction with other indicators these are very strong signals that a reversal is imminent.

These are just a few patterns but there are many other candlestick patterns you should learn because you can gain some invaluable information from them, particularly when combined with other forms of technical analysis.

James Woolley runs a website which provides details about Forex Candlesticks Made Easy and other top selling forex products.

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!

I love it when I read forum entries from people suggesting trading strategies along the lines of:

- Enter long when the RSI(14) is above 50, the stochastic (14,5,3) has crossed positive, and the Williams %R(14) is rising from the oversold area
- Enter short when the RSI(14) is below 50, the stochastic (14,5,3) has crossed negative, and the Williams %R(14) is falling from the overbought area

(Disclaimer: I just made up that strategy, so don’t trade it without testing it first – the fact is though – I seriously doubt it works)

Look, there are many problems with calling something like this a strategy, but the one I want to discuss today is simply that each of these indicators belongs to the same class of indicator. The RSI, the stochastic and the Williams %R are all oscillators.

An oscillator is a momentum based indicator that moves above and below a horizontal axis representing a position of neutral momentum.

Now each of these three oscillators measures momentum slightly differently. RSI measures it through comparing the magnitude of higher closes to lower closes over a set period of price bars. The stochastic measures it showing where the current close fits relative to a high/low range over a set period of price bars. The Williams %R works on the same concept as the stochastic, showing the relationship between the current close and the high/low range set over a period of price bars, however it does so through a different formula.

Basically, all are measuring the same thing. Quite likely, you’ve added some extra complexity to your strategy that serves no useful purpose at all.

Is there ever a need for more than one oscillator? Possibly, yes. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. You might use one for indicating oversold or overbought price areas, and a different one for indicating increasing or decreasing momentum. You might even use one indicator twice, with different parameters, to represent momentum over both a shorter and longer time period. In this case, it’s fine.

However, I suspect many traders when developing their trading approach don’t really think about it to this degree. I suspect most just slap an indicator on their chart for no other reason than their platform provides it, and then look through the price history to see whether it shows potential for profits.

In this case, they can probably benefit from removing any redundancy.

So, what indicator classes are there? With some exceptions, the majority will fit within one of these four classes:

1. Trend indicators, such as moving averages, directional movement or trendlines.
2. Volatility indicators, such as bollinger bands, average true range or standard deviation.
3. Oscillators such as RSI, stochastics and Williams %R.
4. Volume / Market Strength indicators, such as volume, on balance volume or money flow index.

Generally you shouldn’t need more than one indicator to determine trend, one to determine volatility, one to determine momentum, and one to measure volume. In many cases, through a study of price action, you can even eliminate those single indicators and determine trend, momentum and volatility through price alone. Of course, that’s not for all people.

What I encourage you to do is to look carefully at the indicators you’re using. Do you have more than one indicator from any of the indicator classes? If so, is there a valid reason for it, or is it simply redundancy that has slipped unnoticed into your trading strategy? More often than not, I’d suggest your strategy could benefit from removal of that extra redundancy. Trading is one business where ‘simple really is best’.

Happy trading,
Lance Beggs

Would you like to learn more about how I trade the forex and equity index markets? Check out the articles, videos and trading resources on my website right now at http://www.YourTradingCoach.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!

Please read very carefully what I will share with you in the next few lines, because the quest for the best forex software can be a very disappointing one if you start looking in the wrong places.

The first and natural question you might have about this subject is whether a software can actually help you or not achieve the goal of a successful forex trading operation.

The answer to that question is, without a doubt, a big yes. However, let me warn you that very few forex softwares are reliable enough to trust them with your investment. This I had to learn the hard way, but thankfully I am still sanding and very tall I might add.

Now, which is the best forex software?

Before we get to that, you must know that there are basically two types of forex softwares, and which one is the best will be determined not only by its reliability and performance but by you personal situation.

There are forex softwares designed to provide you with trading signals (usually entry and exit points), and there are some of them that really work like a charm, but I personally don’t like the fact that you need to be very attentive of what is happening within the forex market in order to take advantage of the good entry points signaled by the software. So achieving consistency with one of these systems is possible, but you have to dedicate some good time during the day, which is fine if you have it to spare, I just don’t.

On the other hand, there are forex softwares designed not only to determine the best entry and exit points during a trading session, but also to place the trade orders and close them automatically for you. This means that you can profit all day and all night long without having to do absolutely anything, because in this case the software will do everything.

After having the chance to see first hand how both systems works, my verdict has to go in favor of the fully automated option, because it delivers the same great performance as the best forex trading signal kind of sofware (over 90% winning trades on average), only it goes completely on its own (that my friend is really sweet).

Indeed, if both softwares can deliver the goods, I will go for the one that demands less from me, so the best forex software has to definitely be the fully automated one.

Therefore, if you are thinking about starting a new forex trading operation, or simply want to enhance your current performance within the market by getting the help of the best forex software, I advise you to go for the automated option as this will save you costly mistakes and will increase your chances of catching the best entry points during the day or night, no matter how busy you are.

Find important details about fully tested forex softwares and systems at: http://www.specialonlinebusinessreviewauthority.com Make sure you read their evaluation before you make any decision, as they review two of the systems I currently use successfully.

Organic foods have become more and more popular over the past couple decades. Even though its usually significantly more expensive, people still fork out the money. I’ve always assumed that most people do it for the health benefits. But lately there has been a growing market for clothing made from organically grown cotton. Obviously people aren’t buying these clothes for their health, unless they misunderstood what a ‘high-fiber diet’ means.

Organic Cotton: Good for the Earth

So, obviously the implications of organically grown cotton isn’t geared towards the body as much as it is geared towards the Earth. Organically grown cotton essentially refers to the way the cotton is grown and manufactured. Eco-friendly farmers try to find ways to limit the kinds of harmful chemicals that are put into the ground. Once those chemicals mix in with the soil, it effects future vegetation and animal life for years and years to come. The chemicals also find their way down into the water table (our natural fresh water supply deep down under the soil).

Substituting Chemicals with Brains

Instead of the lazy mainstream farming model where chemicals are used to maximize on profits, organic farmers substitute chemicals with innovation. Instead of using synthetic fertilizers which over time can throw off the soil’s PH and cause other problems for animals, organic farmers are using natural composting. Instead of pesticides which can throw off the food chain and effect larger animals, organic farmers are introducing beneficial insects and predators, and also using insect traps to pin-point a very small area for insect control. Instead of using harmful herbicides, organic farmers are coming up with innovative weeding techniques.

Market Driven Activism

The old model of standing on the street with signs just isn’t enough. The smart way to help people become aware of organic cotton is the capitalistic model. Many smart companies are jumping on the coat tails of the Earth-friendly trend. The more we support these farmers by spending money on organically grown cotton, the lower the prices will get and the smaller the human foot print will be on the Earth.

Cameron Postelwait is the admin for the forum about GoYin and works at Sewell Direct: a retailer of Organic Cotton Clothing