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i think this company only works in some countries only not all over the world and it need a certain people to use it. this what i have heared is that right?

fxsolutions is one of the big and honest broker i know and trade with them with out any problem.....good support fast platform i mean gts ..one click open and close order.. any mt4 and you can open account with uk or australia or us.......from end they are the best.

They have a demo account. I use it all the time. but i am not deposit with them and dont know are they good broker or no ....hole come some people know that.

I have read at a lot of places, there are lots of problem while withdrawing money from there accounts, while submitting is extremely easy. Till now I have only deposited and lost a good chunk of it. Probably I hurried into it. But now when I am reading a lot before goin in for a second round, I doubt whether I should submit more money into it.

thanks man for this post and alert and i hope all friend here to not open real account with them

Great company and great professional, but to deal with difficul but thanks for post sir

this is my first time to hear about this broker, it seems this is a new broker.The minimum deposit is $10, but I still think it is a little high, now I have joined several brokers which the minimum deposit are less than $10, as a beginner, I think choosing a low minimum deposit broker is a good way to avoid risk. on the other hand, I found that this broker don't accept AP as a payment processor.I think it will be not convenient for me.

Both the minimum deposit and cash out is higher than other similar sites, but considering the idea that their program is very spontaneous and reliable..it is fine to make it a bit high.

i was doing profit with ECN account everything was alright till they show their real face, let me say honestly, you guys, BE CAREFUL of them, they are SCAM, the proof is that, today my position was open and i was sure even in profit but i waited take profit level, even it saw the point i stated they didn't give my profit, anyway, it went up, FXopen is a real artist, and scam, soon i wanna withdraw the money in my account and close my account

I think this is one of the best forums up to now, I have been kept active all time and I have been paid many times. Admin of this forum is very kind and trustable, he has more than 4 forums and all forums pay for members on time, I think it worth to have a try.

so far so good, i have withdraw 2-3 times to LR no problem. now I am waiting for my fbs mastercard, that will be great to withdraw my profit. few plus point of FBS are 1.online customer care is good 2.spread is good 3.scalping is allow 4. fbs mastercard for deposit and withdrawal

For this broker, I am already a member of this broker,but I haven't invested money in this broker, becasue I want to make money forum MT5 forum, and then deposit money I have earned from MT5 forum. I want to know anyone who tansfer money from mt5 forum to your instaforex? is it easy?

I am already a member on this broker, I have traded on this broker for about one month, but I have encountered the same situation with you. To be frank, when I just joined this broker, I was worry about the suricity of it, so when I got some profit from this broker then I tried to withdraw money from this broker, but I found that everything was ok. Yeah, I also found that most of time support are off line, I think you should continue to contact them by email.I think they will give your answer.

i have use varous brokers namely FxPro, FxOpen etc, there is just no one to be compared to liteforex. How i wish i started with them from my very first day in fx i would have been a millionia. they are the best. it is easy for one to turn $1 to a $100 in few days with their good money management strategy(0.01)lot size, no more crashing of account.they are just wonderful

a great site from cash n hint admin. i can say that this ptc is very trusted and you cannot heard any bad review regarding this PTC. in my experience, you can have an earnings in here of about $0.03per day. depends on the number of ads and their click rate. the number of ads is ranging from 35 - 40. and from time to time there is new ads that is being added. you can activate the email notification for the new ads available. as of now im working for $1 cashout in alertpay.

this site is very good to earn .but now their rented refs are not good as they ware in start .avg for standard are very good .but as soon as you upgrade to golden your click rate falls suddenly .but still good site for earning .i'm golden & earning $3 per day which is very nice to me .don't ever think about ultimate ,its bit risky

In order to gain an understanding of what actually moves the prices, or exchange rates in the interbank market, we must first understand that for any transaction to take place, there must be a buyer and there must be a seller – there must be a counter party for every trade. Open interest in the forex can be loosely defined as the combination of all resting (limit) orders. Many market participants set such orders either above (sell limit) or below the current price (buy limit). These orders are to be filled only when price reaches the set level. For example, say we are trading EUR/USD and the current bid price is at 1.2500. We set a sell limit order at 1.2501. When will our order get triggered? Once all the sell orders at 1.2500 have found buyers, the bid price will move up to the next available level, which is 1.2501. Once buyers enter the market at that price (they would actually be paying the ask price, and the broker would collect the difference), they become the counter party to our trade and our order is filled. One way to look at it is that there are essentially 2 types of orders: limit orders and market orders. There are other types, but they can always be classified as sub-types of these two. Limit orders are set to execute if and only if a set price level is reached, while market orders are set to execute at the current market price. Alternately, limit orders can be described as providing open interest, while market orders can be described as consuming open interest. This is a very important distinction because it is the backbone of price dynamics. It should be noted that the only relationship between bid and ask prices is that the ask price, by its definition, should never be lower than the bid price. In every other aspect, the two are unrelated, so the spread between the two varies according to where the open interest lies. During times of low liquidity there may be no one interested in buying above 1.2450 and no one interested in selling below 1.2550, making the spread 100+ pips. This is not necessarily the product of shady dealer practices (though at the retail level it may be), but is more likely caused my normal market mechanics – all open interest was either consumed by market orders, or withdrawn (limit orders can be cancelled before they are executed). This type of situation normally happens when important, unexpected information enters the market, such as an NFP reading that is way off the mark. In that case, open interest in one direction will be consumed by a barrage of market orders, and open interest in the other direction will be withdrawn by market participants cancelling their orders. This is equivalent to saying that liquidity is “drying up”, and that the bid price will gap down until it finds a buy limit order, and likewise, the ask price will jump up until it reaches a sell limit order. Note that no one has come in and “set” the spread. The spread is not a parameter that can be set, but is rather the result of market mechanics at their most basic level. It also should not be a surprise that, although today’s technology is lightning fast, there are delays between market order entry and execution, during which time the open interest at the desired level can be consumed, particularly in fast moving markets. In such circumstances, there is no longer a counterparty to take the market order at the desired level, and it can either be filled at a worse price (slippage), or it can be re-quoted. Again, this is not necessarily indicative of any malpractice by your broker, but is more often than not a natural result of market mechanics and the delays inherent in communication media. It should be noted however, that once prices have moved through several tiers and they reach the retail level, they may or may not have been “massaged” by someone along the way (a practice known as price shading). This is the reason many quote for their preference in trading through an ECN rather than a traditional retail broker. In reality, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. You can explore exactly how and why this is true in our follow-up article How Forex Brokers Work.

Trading is the exchange of goods or services between two or more parties. So if you need gasoline for your car, then you would trade your dollars for gasoline. In the old days, and still in some societies, trading was done by barter, where one commodity was swapped for another. A trade may have gone like this: Person A will fix Person B's broken window in exchange for a basket of apples from Person B's tree. This is a practical, easy to manage, day-to-day example of making a trade, with relatively easy management of risk. In order to lessen the risk, Person A might ask Person B to show his apples, to make sure they are good to eat, before fixing the window. This is how trading has been for millennia: a practical, thoughtful human process. This is Now Now enter the world wide web and all of a sudden risk can become completely out of control, in part due to the speed at which a transaction can take place. In fact, the speed of the transaction, the instant gratification and the adrenalin rush of making a profit in less than 60 seconds can often trigger a gambling instinct, to which many traders may succumb. Hence, they might turn to online trading as a form of gambling rather than approaching trading as a professional business that requires proper speculative habits. (Learn more in Are You Investing Or Gambling?) Speculating as a trader is not gambling. The difference between gambling and speculating is risk management. In other words, with speculating, you have some kind of control over your risk, whereas with gambling you don't. Even a card game such as Poker can be played with either the mindset of a gambler or with the mindset of a speculator, usually with totally different outcomes. Betting Strategies There are three basic ways to take a bet: Martingale, anti-Martingale or speculative. Speculation comes from the Latin word "speculari," meaning to spy out or look forward. In a Martingale strategy, you would double-up your bet each time you lose, and hope that eventually the losing streak will end and you will make a favorable bet, thereby recovering all your losses and even making a small profit. Using an anti-Martingale strategy, you would halve your bets each time you lost, but would double your bets each time you won. This theory assumes that you can capitalize on a winning streak and profit accordingly. Clearly, for online traders, this is the better of the two strategies to adopt. It is always less risky to take your losses quickly and add or increase your trade size when you are winning. However, no trade should be taken without first stacking the odds in your favor, and if this is not clearly possible then no trade should be taken at all. (For more on the Martingale method, read FX Trading The Martingale Way.) Know the Odds So, the first rule in risk management is to calculate the odds of your trade being successful. To do that, you need to grasp both fundamental and technical analysis. You will need to understand the dynamics of the market in which you are trading, and also know where the likely psychological price trigger points are, which a price chart can help you decide. Once a decision is made to take the trade then the next most important factor is in how you control or manage the risk. Remember, if you can measure the risk, you can, for the most part, manage it. In stacking the odds in your favor, it is important to draw a line in the sand, which will be your cut out point if the market trades to that level. The difference between this cut-out point and where you enter the market is your risk. Psychologically, you must accept this risk upfront before you even take the trade. If you can accept the potential loss, and you are OK with it, then you can consider the trade further. If the loss will be too much for you to bear, then you must not take the trade or else you will be severely stressed and unable to be objective as your trade proceeds. Since risk is the opposite side of the coin to reward, you should draw a second line in the sand, which is where, if the market trades to that point, you will move your original cut-out line to secure your position. This is known as sliding your stops. This second line is the price at which you break even if the market cuts you out at that point. Once you are protected by a break-even stop, your risk has virtually been reduced to zero, as long as the market is very liquid and you know your trade will be executed at that price. Make sure you understand the difference between stop orders, limit orders and market orders. Liquidity The next risk factor to study is liquidity. Liquidity means that there are a sufficient number of buyers and sellers at current prices to easily and efficiently take your trade. In the case of the forex markets, liquidity, at least in the major currencies, is never a problem. This liquidity is known as market liquidity, and in the spot cash forex market, it accounts for some $2 trillion per day in trading volume. However, this liquidity is not necessarily available to all brokers and is not the same in all currency pairs. It is really the broker liquidity that will affect you as a trader. Unless you trade directly with a large forex dealing bank, you most likely will need to rely on an online broker to hold your account and to execute your trades accordingly. Questions relating to broker risk are beyond the scope of this article, but large, well-known and well capitalized brokers should be fine for most retail online traders, at least in terms of having sufficient liquidity to effectively execute your trade. Risk per Trade Another aspect of risk is determined by how much trading capital you have available. Risk per trade should always be a small percentage of your total capital. A good starting percentage could be 2% of your available trading capital. So, for example, if you have $5000 in your account, the maximum loss allowable should be no more than 2%. With these parameters your maximum loss would be $100 per trade. A 2% loss per trade would mean you can be wrong 50 times in a row before you wipe out your account. This is an unlikely scenario if you have a proper system for stacking the odds in your favor. So how do we actually measure the risk? The way to measure risk per trade is by using your price chart. This is best demonstrated by looking at a chart as follows Figure 1: EUR/USD One-Hour Time Frame We have already determined that our first line in the sand (stop loss) should be drawn where we would cut out of the position if the market traded to this level. The line is set at 1.3534. To give the market a little room, I would set the stop loss to 1.3530. (Learn more about stop losses in The Art Of Selling A Losing Position.) A good place to enter the position would be at 1.3580, which, in this example, is just above the high of the hourly close after a an attempt to form a triple bottom failed. The difference between this entry point and the exit point is therefore 50 pips. If you are trading with $5,000 in your account, you would limit your loss to the 2% of your trading capital, which is $100. Let's assume you are trading mini lots. If one pip in a mini lot is equal to approximately $1 and your risk is 50 pips then, for each lot you trade, you are risking $50. You could trade one or two mini lots and keep your risk to between $50-100. You should not trade more than three mini lots in this example, if you do not wish to violate your 2% rule. Leverage The next big risk magnifier is leverage. Leverage is the use of the bank's or broker's money rather than the strict use of your own. The spot forex market is a very leveraged market, in that you could put down a deposit of just $1,000 to actually trade $100,000. This is a 100:1 leverage factor. A one pip loss in a 100:1 leveraged situation is equal to $10. So if you had 10 mini lots in the trade, and you lost 50 pips, your loss would be $500, not $50. However, one of the big benefits of trading the spot forex markets is the availability of high leverage. This high leverage is available because the market is so liquid that it is easy to cut out of a position very quickly and, therefore, easier compared with most other markets to manage leveraged positions. Leverage of course cuts two ways. If you are leveraged and you make a profit, your returns are magnified very quickly but, in the converse, losses will erode your account just as quickly too. (See Leverage's "Double-Edged Sword" Need Not Cut Deep for more.) But of all the risks inherent in a trade, the hardest risk to manage, and by far the most common risk blamed for trader loss, is the bad habit patterns of the trader himself. All traders have to take responsibility for their own decisions. In trading, losses are part of the norm, so a trader must learn to accept losses as part of the process. Losses are not failures. However, not taking a loss quickly is a failure of proper trade management. Usually a trader, when his position moves into a loss, will second guess his system and wait for the loss to turn around and for the position to become profitable. This is fine for those occasions when the market does turn around, but it can be a disaster when the loss gets worse. (Learn to overcome this big hurdle in Master Your Trading Mindtraps.) The solution to trader risk is to work on your own habits and to be honest enough to acknowledge the times when your ego gets in the way of making the right decisions or when you simply can't manage the instinctive pull of a bad habit. The best way to objectify your trading is by keeping a journal of each trade, noting the reasons for entry and exit and keeping score of how effective your system is. In other words how confident are you that your system provides a reliable method in stacking the odds in your favor and thus provide you with more profitable trade opportunities than potential losses. Conclusion Risk is inherent in every trade you take, but as long as you can measure risk you can manage it. Just don't overlook the fact that risk can be magnified by using too much leverage in respect to your trading capital as well as being magnified by a lack of liquidity in the market. With a disciplined approach and good trading habits, taking on some risk is the only way to generate good rewards.

Like any other business in the history of business, your broker’s raison d’etre, is to make as big a profit as possible. There are about as many ways to go about this as there are brokers. For those who are in it for the long haul, however, it is generally best to adopt a set of practices which are deemed fair by their clients: certain boundaries are set, and operating beyond them can cost a brokerage its reputation, and along with it its clients. Straying outside these boundaries, therefore, is not considered as being in line with the long term goals of the business. How strictly these boundaries are enforced, especially when there is little chance of clients ever even becoming aware of any transgression, again varies from business to business. For the sake of simplicity, in this article we assume that everyone in the business is squeaky clean, as if every client could peek into the broker’s back office at any time and dissect every trade. This is obviously not the case, and many brokers do take advantage of this opaqueness, but the details of that are best left for another discussion. So without further ado, let’s get into the details of how forex brokers function. Somewhat removed from the top-tier interbank market, retail forex brokers are there to provide a service that would otherwise not be available, that is, giving an investor with a $10,000 bankroll the chance to speculate in the up-until-recently very exclusive forex market. There are generally considered to be 2 types of brokers providing access at the retail level: Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs) and Market Makers. ECNs are generally somewhat more exclusive, requiring larger deposits to get started, but are seen as providing more direct access to the interbank market. As we will see, there are certainly advantages to this, but some disadvantages as well. Market makers, on the other hand are more often than not, the counter party to their clients’ trades, creating somewhat of a conflict of interest, whereas ECNs profit from commission fees charged directly to the clients, regardless of the result of any trade, they are seen as being completely impartial – an ECN has no incentive for a client to lose money. In fact, one could argue that an ECN stands to profit more if a client is successful, meaning that s/he will stay around longer and they will be able to collect more commission fees from them. A market maker, on the other hand, being the counterparty to a client’s trade, makes money if the client loses money, providing an incentive for some shady practices, particularly in an unregulated market. The extent to which this happens varies among individual brokers. There are also some benefits to trading with a market maker (see our ECNs vs. Market Makers article) Some brokers also provide a service that doesn’t quite fit into either category – they route different orders differently, depending on complex algorithms, or on a dealing desk, that analyze each order and attempt to fill it in the way that will be most beneficial to the broker’s bottom line. They can offset some client orders against one another, effectively creating an in-house market, they can choose to be the counterparty to a client’s trade (trade “against” the client), or they can offset their position with a hedge through a higher-tier counterparty. Note that the market maker is mainly concerned with managing its net exposure, and NOT with any single individual’s trades. They are NOT gunning for your stop losses specifically, but may be gunning for clusters of stops. If you have already read the first article in the series, Structure of the Forex Market, you will recall that market mechanics are responsible for the variation in bid/ask spreads, and also for slippage. So it seems the two biggest novice traders’ pet peeves are not so much a function of who their broker is, but rather their lack of understanding of the way the forex market operates. A broker that offers a fixed spread tends not to fill orders during periods of low liquidity because this would expose them to undue risk, and as much as their job is to cater to their clients, remember they are in business primarily to make money for themselves. Some brokers also offer guaranteed order fills, such as “guaranteed stop losses”. Again, if there is no counter party to take the trade, they have to expose themselves to risk in order to fulfill this guarantee, so don’t be surprised if you see such a broker quoting different/delayed prices around important trend lines or support/resistance levels. Be especially aware of brokers who offer both guaranteed fills AND fixed spreads. When a broker offers something that seems too good to be true, you would be wise to question how exactly their business model is able to support such a risky practice. As a general rule, a broker will help you only when your interests are aligned with theirs. On the other hand, brokers provide a very valuable service, without which you wouldn’t have the opportunity to profit from the forex market, so please think about how it all comes together before blaming your broker for everything.

Many forex traders spend their time looking for that perfect moment to enter the markets or a telltale sign that screams "buy" or "sell". And while the search can be fascinating, the result is always the same. The truth is, there is no one way to trade the forex markets. As a result, successful traders must learn that there are a variety of indicators that can help to determine the best time to buy or sell a forex cross rate. Here are four different market indicators that most successful forex traders rely upon. Indicator No.1: A Trend-Following Tool It is possible to make money using a countertrend approach to trading. However, for most traders the easier approach is to recognize the direction of the major trend and attempt to profit by trading in the trend’s direction. This is where trend-following tools come into play. Many people misunderstand the purpose of trend-following tools and try to use them as separate trading systems. While this is possible, the real purpose of a trend-following tool is to suggest whether you should be looking to enter a long position or a short position. So let’s consider one of the simplest trend-following methods – the moving average crossover. A simple moving average represents the average closing price over the number of days in question. To elaborate, let’s look at two simple examples – one longer term, one shorter term. (For related information on moving averages Figure 1 displays the 50-day/200-day moving average crossover for the euro/yen cross. The theory here is that the trend is favorable when the 50-day moving average is above the 200-day average and unfavorable when the 50-day is below the 200-day. As the chart shows, this combination does a good job of identifying the major trend of the market - at least most of the time. However, no matter what moving average combination you choose to use, there will be whipsaws. Figure 2 shows a different combination – the 10-day/30-day crossover. The advantage of this combination is that it will react more quickly to changes in price trends than the previous pair. The disadvantage is that it will also be more susceptible to whipsaws than the longer term 50-day/200-day crossover. Many investors will proclaim a particular combination to be the best, but the reality is, there is no “best” moving average combination. In the end, forex traders will benefit most by deciding what combination (or combinations) fits best with their time frames. From there, the trend - as shown by these indicators - should be used to tell traders if they should trade long or trade short; it should not be relied on to time entries and exits. (For additional information, check out Forex: Should You Be Trading Trend Or Range?) Indicator No.2: A Trend-Confirmation Tool Now we have a trend-following tool to tell us whether the major trend of a given currency pair is up or down. But how reliable is that indicator? As mentioned earlier, trend-following tools are prone to being whipsawed. So it would be nice to have a way to gauge whether the current trend-following indicator is correct or not. For this, we will employ a trend-confirmation tool. Much like a trend-following tool, a trend-confirmation tool may or may not be intended to generate specific buy and sell signals. Instead, we are looking to see if the trend-following tool and the trend-confirmation tool agree. In essence, if both the trend-following tool and the trend-confirmation tool are bullish, then a trader can more confidently consider taking a long trade in the currency pair in question. Likewise, if both are bearish, then the trader can focus on finding an opportunity to sell short the pair in question. One of the most popular – and useful – trend confirmation tools is known as the moving average convergence divergence (MACD). This indicator first measures the difference between two exponentially smoothed moving averages. This difference is then smoothed and compared to a moving average of its own. When the current smoothed average is above its own moving average, then the histogram at the bottom of Figure 3 is positive and an uptrend is confirmed. On the flip side, when the current smoothed average is below its moving average, then the histogram at the bottom of Figure 3 is negative and a downtrend is confirmed. In essence, when the trend-following moving average combination is bearish (short-term average below long-term average) and the MACD histogram is negative, then we have a confirmed downtrend. When both are positive, then we have a confirmed uptrend. At the bottom of Figure 4 we see another trend-confirmation tool that might be considered in addition to (or in place of) MACD. It is the rate of change indicator (ROC). As displayed in Figure 4, the red line measures today’s closing price divided by the closing price 28 trading days ago. Readings above 1.00 indicate that the price is higher today than it was 28 days ago and vice versa. The blue line represents a 28-day moving average of the daily ROC readings. Here, if the red line is above the blue line, then the ROC is confirming an uptrend. If the red line is below the blue line, then we have a confirmed downtrend. (For more on the ROC indicator, refer to Measure Momentum Change With ROC.) Note in Figure 4 that the sharp price declines experienced by the euro/yen cross from mid-January to mid-February, late April through May and during the second half of August were each accompanied by: The 50-day moving average below the 200-day moving average A negative MACD histogram A bearish configuration for the ROC indicator (red line below blue) Indicator No.3: An Overbought/Oversold Tool While traders are typically well advised to trade in the direction of the major trend, one must still decide whether he or she is more comfortable jumping in as soon as a clear trend is established or after a pullback occurs. In other words, if the trend is determined to be bullish, the choice becomes whether to buy into strength or buy into weakness. If you decide to get in as quickly as possible, you can consider entering a trade as soon as an uptrend or downtrend is confirmed. On the other hand, you could wait for a pullback within the larger overall primary trend in the hope that this offers a lower risk opportunity. For this, a trader will rely on an overbought/oversold indicator. There are many indicators that can fit this bill. However, one that is useful from a trading standpoint is the three-day relative strength index, or three-day RSI for short. This indicator calculates the cumulative sum of up days and down days over the window period and calculates a value that can range from zero to 100. If all of the price action is to the upside, the indicator will approach 100; if all of the price action is to the downside, then the indicator will approach zero. A reading of 50 is considered neutral. (More on the RSI can be found in Relative Strength Index Helps Make The Right Decisions.) Figure 5 displays the three-day RSI for the euro/yen cross. Generally speaking, a trader looking to enter on pullbacks would consider going long if the 50-day moving average is above the 200-day and the three-day RSI drops below a certain trigger level, such as 20, which would indicate an oversold position. Conversely, the trader might consider entering a short position if the 50-day is below the 200-day and the three-day RSI rises above a certain level, such as 80, which would indicate an overbought position. Different traders may prefer using different trigger levels. Indicator No.4: A Profit-Taking Tool The last type of indicator that a forex trader needs is something to help determine when to take a profit on a winning trade. Here too, there are many choices available. In fact, the three-day RSI can also fit into this category. In other words, a trader holding a long position might consider taking some profits if the three-day RSI rises to a high level of 80 or more. Conversely, a trader holding a short position might consider taking some profit if the three-day RSI declines to a low level, such as 20 or less. Another useful profit-taking tool is a popular indicator known as Bollinger bands. This tool adds and subtracts the standard deviation of price data changes over a period from the average closing price over that same time frame to create trading “bands”. While many traders attempt to use Bollinger bands to time the entry of trades, they may be even more useful as a profit-taking tool. Figure 6 displays the euro/yen cross with 20-day Bollinger Bands overlaying the daily price data. A trader holding a long position might consider taking some profits if the price reaches the upper band, and a trader holding a short position might consider taking some profits if the price reaches the lower band A final profit-taking tool would be a “trailing stop.” Trailing stops are typically used as a method to give a trade the potential to let profits run, while also attempting to avoid losing any accumulated profit. There are many ways to arrive at a trailing stop. Figure 7 illustrates just one of these ways. The trade shown in Figure 7 assumes that a short trade was entered in the forex market for the euro/yen on January 1, 2010. Each day the average true range over the past three trading days is multiplied by five and used to calculate a trailing stop price that can only move sideways or lower (for a short trade, or sideways or higher for a long trade). The Bottom Line If you are hesitant to get into the forex market and are waiting for an obvious entry point, you may find yourself sitting on the sidelines for a long while. By learning a variety of forex indicators, you can determine suitable strategies for choosing profitable times to back a given currency pair. Also, continued monitoring of these indicators will give strong signals that can point you toward a buy or sell signal. As with any investment, strong analysis will minimize potential risks.

The concept of leverage is really quite simple, but its true meaning often becomes lost in the mountain of marketing-speak most forex brokers dish out at us traders. The misconceptions always arise as a result of the interchangeable usage of the words “margin” and “leverage”. These two concepts are related, but are in fact not interchangeable except in the most extreme (and suicidal) case where a trader decides to use the maximum leverage available to him under the broker’s house rules. Margin - The amount of collateral a customer deposits with a broker when borrowing from the broker to buy securities. This is your account balance when you first open your account. Leverage* - The use of credit or borrowed funds to increase one's speculative capacity and increase the rate of return from an investment, as in buying securities on margin, although it can also increase the rate of loss by the same factor. Your leverage depends on the size of the trades you make relative to your account equity, and nothing else, as long as you don’t surpass the maximum leverage the broker allows. This value is normally displayed as a DEBT:EQUITY ratio. Margin requirement – expressed as a percentage, the margin requirement is set by your broker to protect itself against traders using too much leverage, or in other words, against traders borrowing more than their collateral would support according to the broker’s risk management parameters. * This definition applies to trading accounts. The more general definition of financial leverage is somewhat more complicated, but luckily it is unnecessary for our current purposes. So when a broker’s marketing team says their margin requirement is 1%, it means that they require 1% of your trade size in order to lend you the amount you need for the trade. For example if you are trading $100,000 position size, then the broker requires $1,000 (1%) of your margin in order to make the loan. As I stated before, this number generally does not vary unless you specifically change the deal with your broker. Furthermore, in this example we know what the margin requirement is, but we don’t yet have enough information to calculate leverage, because we don’t know what our account equity is (more about this later). Your broker would normally quote that as “100:1” leverage, which is not entirely accurate since our actual leverage also depends on our account equity. What they are actually saying is that your maximum leverage, based on their margin requirement, would be 100:1. How much of that leverage you actually use is entirely up to you, as long as you don’t surpass this maximum. To recap then, the major difference is that the margin requirement is set by your broker, which determines your maximum leverage. How much of that available leverage you use in your trades is entirely your choice. Your broker does not set your leverage. They just set the maximum that you can use. A responsible trader generally never has to worry about this, as the leverage s/he uses is far below the maximum allowed by the broker. Whether a broker’s marketing guys offer you “400:1 leverage” or “50:1 leverage” should not generally make any difference. Let’s see first how to calculate leverage, and then why responsible traders never over-use it. How to calculate “true” leverage The term “true” leverage has been in use recently to differentiate it from the “maximum” leverage that brokers use in their marketing efforts. A few years ago, the word “leverage” would have been sufficient to describe what we are calculating, but retail forex marketing lingo has changed the traditional use of the word. As we mentioned before, leverage in the financial markets is the DEBT:EQUITY ratio, so we need to calculate our debt and our equity (duh). Equity is very easy to calculate: E=B+P where E = Equity (the quantity we are trying to calculate) B = Balance P = Profit on open positions (negative if open positions are in the red) Debt is a little more complicated: * Where D = Debt (the quantity we are trying to calculate) T = Trade size (in units of the base currency) CB = Base currency CA = Account currency * Please note that the equation uses forex notation, and not true mathematical notation. In mathematical notation, EUR/USD would be displayed as USD/EUR because it denotes a ratio of “Dollars per Euro”. If you would like to use mathematical notation, currency pairs should be inverted. So leverage, L, is calculated as follows: If that looks complicated, please don’t worry, it isn’t. Let’s work through an example: Say you have a $10,000 USD-denominated account and you wish to trade 1 mini lot of EUR/USD at 1.2500: T = 10,000 (1 mini lot) EUR/USD = 1.2500 B = $10,000 P = 0 (we don’t have any trades open so the account equity is equal to the account balance) Substituting in the values: These calculations ignore the spread, which would affect P. Equations for that become more complicated because we have to include the pip value. In this example, it would be simple, but for pairs where the quote currency is not the same as the account currency, our leverage equation would be significantly more complex. This omission only becomes significant for large values of P relative to B (positive or negative) which should not generally occur in a properly managed forex account. Please note also that this formula works equally well for pairs which do not involve the account currency, but we have to be careful to make the right substitution, and we need a bit of extra information. For example, say we are trading 1 mini lot of GBP/JPY = 200.00 and GBP/USD = 2.0000 on the same $10,000 account: For trading such pairs, we need to know the current rate of the base currency against the account currency, and we don’t need the rate for the actual currency we are trading: It also needs to be noted that the actual leverage used varies during the lifetime of any open trade. As currency rates move, they affect the leverage equation by affecting P as they either move in your favor or against you, and they also affect Cb/Ca.

welcome members Swing Vs Intraday trading there has been a long debate about which is more effective and profitable Swing Trading Or intraday trading IMO,i think Swing Trading is the right way to trade ... big time frames , less trades , less swaps , bigger TP and the price respects the S&R levels on big time frames more often than not so what is your trading style ??

Hi I am trying to define which of the following two major strategies is better: 1. Using a system with medium winning rate (lets say for the example, something around 40%), with a high TP/SL rate (for the example, 3:1). 2. Using a system with high winning rate (lets say over 90%) with low TP/SL rate (lets say 1:8). The first is the traditional way of manual traders, and the second is familiar with robots. I would like to hear some opinions about it, which is better and why?

Are you a business man just trading forex? Do you take forex trading as business? Does it solve all your monetary problems? With forex trading can it pay all the bills? Can you make enough money in forex to concentrate only on it as your main income earner?

I would like to share with you information about the common mistakes a trader should avoid when getting started in forex trading. This is a list of common forex trading mistakes. 1. Using Too Much Leverage One of the biggest advantages of forex trading is the ability to use leverage or trading on margin. One of the most common mistakes that forex traders make is using too much leverage. Using too much leverage is when you have a small account balance, but make a big trade. If the market moves against your position by just a small amount, it can result in large losses. Commonly, the beginning forex trader will get emotional and nervous and close the trade for a sizable loss. 2. Over Trading Over Trading occurs when traders try to look for trading opportunities that are not really there. It happens to new traders very often, because they just want to trade. The result is usually a poorly executed trade that results in an eventual loss. Over trading can also result in traders making too many trades at once and using too much margin. 3. Picking Tops and Bottoms Many new traders attempt to try to pinpoint where a currency pair will turn around and start moving the opposite direction. This is something that is difficult even for professional traders.