Forex Trading Tutorial

The term “order” refers to how you will enter or exit a trade. Here we discuss the different types of orders that can be placed into the foreign exchange market. Be sure that you know which types of orders your broker accepts. Different brokers accept different types of orders.
Order Types

• Market order
A market order is an order to buy or sell at the current market price. For example, EUR/USD is currently trading at 1.2140. If you wanted to buy at this exact price, you would click buy and your trading platform would instantly execute a buy order at that exact price. If you ever shop on Amazon.com, it’s (kinda) like using their 1-Click ordering. You like the current price, you click once and it’s yours! The only difference is you are buying or selling one currency against another currency instead of buying Britney Spears CDs.
• Limit order
A limit order is an order placed to buy or sell at a certain price. The order essentially contains two variables, price and duration. For example, EUR/USD is currently trading at 1.2050. You want to go long if the price reaches 1.2070. You can either sit in front of your monitor and wait for it to hit 1.2070 (at which point you would click a buy market order), or you can set a buy limit order at 1.2070 (then you could walk away from your computer to attend your ballroom dancing class). If the price goes up to 1.2070, your trading platform will automatically execute a buy order at that exact price. You specify the price at which you wish to buy/sell a certain currency pair and also specify how long you want the order to remain active (GTC or GFD).
• Stop-loss order
A stop-loss order is a limit order linked to an open trade for the purpose of preventing additional losses if price goes against you. A stop-loss order remains in effect until the position is liquidated or you cancel the stop-loss order. For example, you went long (buy) EUR/USD at 1.2230. To limit your maximum loss, you set a stop-loss order at 1.2200. This means if you were dead wrong and EUR/USD drops to 1.2200 instead of moving up, your trading platform would automatically execute a sell order at 1.2200 and close out your position for a 30 pip loss (eww!). Stop-losses are extremely useful if you don’t want to sit in front of your monitor all day worried that you will lose all your money. You can simply set a stop-loss order on any open positions so you won’t miss your basket weaving class.

• GTC (Good ‘til canceled)
A GTC order remains active in the market until you decide to cancel it. Your broker will not cancel the order at any time. Therefore it’s your responsibility to remember that you have the order scheduled.
• GFD (Good for the day)
A GFD order remains active in the market until the end of the trading day. Because foreign exchange is a 24-hour market, this usually means 5pm EST since that that’s U.S. markets close, but I’d recommend you double check with your broker.
• OCO (Order cancels other)
An OCO order is a mixture of two limit and/or stop-loss orders. Two orders with price and duration variables are placed above and below the current price. When one of the orders is executed the other order is canceled. Example: The price of EUR/USD is 1.2040. You want to either buy at 1.2095 over the resistance level in anticipation of a breakout or initiate a selling position if the price falls below 1.1985. The understanding is that if 1.2095 is reached, you will buy order will be triggered and the 1.1985 sell order will be automatically canceled.

Always check with your broker for specific order information and to see if any rollover fees will be applied if a position is held longer than one day. Keeping your ordering rules simple is the best strategy.

I hope you enjoy this Forex tutorial, if you are interested in more information and FREE forex trading tutorial, and FREE systems, reports that I some time give out as a gift, fill your email in the form below, and I’ll keep you updated with the FREE reports, systems when they are available.

Courtesy of Baby Pips

In the previous post, we have been going through some basics about Forex Trading. In this post, I’ll introduce a few important terminology in Forex Trading, which includes currency pairs, bid/ask prices, spread, pip, and margin trading.

Currency Pairs

In forex, you are always trading currency pairs, by using one to buy/sell the other. Take it this way, every pair of currency traded in the forex market is considered as an individual product market where you can buy/sell that particular product.

A currency pair always has the form of XXX/YYY, where XXX and YYY both refer to the ISO 4217 international three-letter code of international currencies. Here are a few examples of currency pairs:

For Euro-Dollar pair, it would be EUR/USD
For Pound Sterling-Dollar pair, it would be GBP/USD
For US Dollar-Canadian Dollar, it would be USD/CAD
For Australian dollar-US dollar, it would be AUD/USD

For Dollar-Swiss Franc pair it would be USD/CHF and so on for other currency pairs according to their three-letter currency codes. 80% of all trades in the Forex market originate from these currency pairs.

The currency on the left (XXX) is called the base currency. The currency on the right (YYY) is called the quote currency. The base currency always has a value of 1 in exchange rate.

“Bid” and “Ask” prices

All currency pair are quoted in two prices: bid and ask price. The bid price is always lower than the ask price. Simply put, you can understand the bid price as the “selling” price, which is the price in quote currency that you can sell 1 unit of the base currency. On the other hand, the ask price is the “buying” price, which indicates how much quote currency you need to buy 1 unit of the base currency.

For example the currency quote for EUR/USD would appear as EUR/USD 1.4888/1.4890. Which means that you can sell 1 EUR at the bid price for 1.4888 USD, and need 1.4890 to buy a EURO.

Spread

As we have seen from example cited above, every currency pair has a “bid” and “ask” price, and further the “bid” price is always lower than the “ask” price. The difference between the “bid” and “ask” price is called the “spread”.

In the currency example EURUSD 1.4888/1.4890 you will notice that there is a difference between the “bid” and the “ask” price. This difference is called as the spread. In other words, the “spread” is the difference between the highest price the buyer is willing to buy the currency and the lowest price the seller is willing to set it. For instance if you assume the “bid” price is $1 and the “ask” price is $1.3 then the spread would be $0.3.

Lots

Lot is the unit of currency traded, which can be put as the minimum amount of currency in a transaction. When you go to the grocery store and want to buy eggs, nobody sells you 1 egg, but they come in a pack, or “lots” of 10 or 12. Similarly,  nobody is going to buy or sell 1 or 2 Euros, so they usually come in “lots”. There are 3 different lot sizes of 1,000 (Micro) 10,000 (Mini) or 100,000 (Standard) depending on the type of account you have.

Margin Trading

Note that, not too many traders have enough capital to trade the large volume of currency in lots. But don’t worry, Forex has been made possible for normal guys like us by margin trading,  which means you only need to deposit a small portion of the amount you need to transact in the market.

For example, if the margin requirement is 1%, you will only need to deposit 1,000 to transact the currency volume worth $100,000.

What is a pip?

Pip, is an abbreviation of Price Interest Point, and represents the smallest digit in the price of a currency. Pip is also the method by which profit is calculated in a currency deal, and its value depends on the base currency of the pair. Consider this example. A move in the EUR/USD from 1.4877 to 1.4897 equals 20 pips. And a move in the USD/JPY from 89.70 to 89.90 equals 20 pips.

When your trading account is in US Dollars and the U.S. dollar is the base currency, then one pip equals one dollar in a mini account or ten dollars in a standard account. So if you place a trade with one of these currencies and earn 20 pips it would translate to a profit of $20 in a mini account or $200 in a standard one.

If the base currency is not the U.S. dollar, then the value of one pip is equal to one unit of the base currency. For example in the GBP/USD, the pound sterling is the base currency, so one pip is equal to one pound; So if you make 20 pip profits in GBP/USD it would mean a profit of 20 pounds Sterling in a mini account. When you make profits in these currencies, you’re making them in the base currency, which then may be exchanged into the U.S. dollar at the current exchange rate, since your trading account may not be denominated in the base currency.

I hope you enjoy this Forex tutorial, if you are interested in more information and FREE forex trading tutorial, and FREE systems, reports that I some time give out as a gift, fill your email in the form below, and I’ll keep you updated with the FREE reports, systems when they are available.

What is FOREX?

The Foreign Exchange market, also referred to as the “FOREX” or “Forex” or “Retail forex” or “FX” or “Spot FX” or just “Spot” is the single largest financial market in the world, with a volume of a few trillion a day. Considering that New York Stock Exchange Market has “only” $25 billion a trading day, you can easily see how enormous the Foreign Exchange really is. It actually equates to more than three times the total amount of the stocks and futures markets combined!

And of course, there’s the golden opportunity for normal guys like us to make money. But beware, whenever there’s a great chance, there’s also HUGE danger.

Forex Trading Tutorial was created to provide novice or beginner traders with all the essential aspects of forex trading, so that they are better equipped with knowledge and confidence to survive and thrive in a wonder land full of opportunities as well as danger.

Our goal is to make sure that we provide everything you need to trade Forex. All you need to get started is a computer, a high-speed Internet connection, and the information contained within this site.

What is traded on the Foreign Exchange market?

Money. Period. Simply put, Forex trading is buying or selling of one currency using another. And you make profits (or suffer loss) on the volatility of the exchange rate. Currencies are always traded in pairs; for example the euro and the US dollar (EUR/USD) or the British pound and the Canadian dollars (GBP/CAD).

Because you’re not buying anything physical, this kind of trading can be confusing. Think of buying a currency as buying a share in a particular country. When you buy, say, Japanese Yen, you are in effect buying a share in the Japanese economy, as the price of the currency is a direct reflection of what the market thinks about the current and future health of the Japanese economy.

In general, the exchange rate of a currency versus other currencies is a reflection of the condition of that country’s economy, compared to the other countries’ economies.

Unlike other financial markets like the New York Stock Exchange, the Forex spot market has neither a physical location nor a central exchange. The Forex market is considered an Over-the-Counter (OTC) or ‘Interbank’ market, due to the fact that the entire market is run electronically, within a network of banks, continuously over a 24-hour period. And all of your transactions are done electronically via a broker/dealer.

Until the late 1990’s, only the “big guys” could play this game. The initial requirement was that you could trade only if you had about ten to fifty million bucks to start with! Forex was originally intended to be used by bankers and large institutions – and not by us “little guys”. However, because of the rise of the Internet, online Forex trading firms are now able to offer trading accounts to ‘retail’ traders like us.

Which Currencies Are Traded?

The most popular currencies along with their symbols are shown below:

Why Forex Trading?

There are many benefits and advantages to trading Forex. Here are just a few reasons why so many people are choosing this market:

• No commissions.
  No clearing fees, no exchange fees, no government fees, no brokerage fees. Brokers are compensated for their services through something called the bid-ask spread.
• No middlemen. Spot currency trading eliminates the middlemen, and allows you to trade directly with the market responsible for the pricing on a particular currency pair.
• No fixed lot size.
  In the futures markets, lot or contract sizes are determined by the exchanges. A standard-size contract for silver futures is 5000 ounces. In spot Forex, you determine your own lot size. This allows traders to participate with accounts as small as $250 (although we explain later why a $250 account is a bad idea).
• Low transaction costs.
  The retail transaction cost (the bid/ask spread) is typically less than 0.1 percent under normal market conditions. At larger dealers, the spread could be as low as .07 percent. Of course this depends on your leverage and all will be explained later.
• A 24-hour market.
  There is no waiting for the opening bell – from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon EST, the Forex market never sleeps. This is awesome for those who want to trade on a part-time basis, because you can choose when you want to trade–morning, noon or night.
• No one can corner the market.
  The foreign exchange market is so huge and has so many participants that no single entity (not even a central bank) can control the market price for an extended period of time.
• Leverage.
  In Forex trading, a small margin deposit can control a much larger total contract value. Leverage gives the trader the ability to make nice profits, and at the same time keep risk capital to a minimum. For example, Forex brokers offer 200 to 1 leverage, which means that a $50 dollar margin deposit would enable a trader to buy or sell $10,000 worth of currencies. Similarly, with $500 dollars, one could trade with $100,000 dollars and so on. But leverage is a double-edged sword. Without proper risk management, this high degree of leverage can lead to large losses as well as gains.
• High Liquidity.
  Because the Forex Market is so enormous, it is also extremely liquid. This means that under normal market conditions, with a click of a mouse you can instantaneously buy and sell at will. You are never “stuck” in a trade. You can even set your online trading platform to automatically close your position at your desired profit level (a limit order), and/or close a trade if a trade is going against you (a stop loss order).
• Free “Demo” Accounts, News, Charts, and Analysis. Most online Forex brokers offer ‘demo’ accounts to practice trading, along with breaking Forex news and charting services. All free! These are very valuable resources for “poor” and SMART traders who would like to hone their trading skills with ‘play’ money before opening a live trading account and risking real money.
• “Mini” and “Micro” Trading:
  You would think that getting started as a currency trader would cost a ton of money. The fact is, compared to trading stocks, options or futures, it doesn’t. Online Forex brokers offer “mini” and “micro” trading accounts, some with a minimum account deposit of $300 or less. Now we’re not saying you should open an account with the bare minimum but it does makes Forex much more accessible to the average (poorer) individual who doesn’t have a lot of start-up trading capital.

What Tools Do I Need to Start Trading Forex?

A computer with a high-speed Internet connection and all the information on this site is all that is needed to begin trading currencies.

What Does It Cost to Trade Forex?

An online currency trading (a “micro account”) may be opened with a couple hundred bucks. Do not laugh – micro accounts and its bigger cousin, the mini account, are both good ways to get your feet wet without drowning. For a micro account, we’d recommend at least $1,000 to start. For a mini account, we’d recommend at least $10,000 to start.

That’s it for today, tomorrow I’ll elaborate some of the very basic Forex knowledge and terminology. I hope you enjoy this Forex tutorial, if you are interested in more information and FREE forex trading tutorial, and FREE systems, reports that I some time give out as a gift, fill your email in the form below, and I’ll keep you updated with the FREE reports, systems when they are available.