Forex Trading for Beginners and Amateurs

Forex trading for beginners and amateurs is a an exciting activity. Even though these people lack knowledge and experience. They have excessive enthusiasm.

Forex Trading for Beginners and Amateurs Later Leads to the Best Strategies

The major problem with forex trading for beginners is that they face older, often arrogant traders who tend to make a big deal out of their success. So as to discourage anyone new in the field, from attempting to make money. Arrogance is a bad thing, and usually leads to complacency. New and amateur traders should hear what others have to say, but nothing should prevent them from having their own, opposite opinion. In the world of forex, many experienced traders are selfish and arrogant, especially those who have committed years and years to a learning curve. Which cost them in heavy losses, and painful lessons. These traders might be still losers, or have achieved marginally small profitability. And that’s why in their minds, cannot accept that a beginner or totally amateur trader could possibly outperform and outsmart them. Jealousy takes control, and it finally makes these older traders perform even worse. The very idea of profitable forex trading for beginners and amateurs cannot sink-in in these people’s minds. It is said that people can’t handle the truth, and in many many cases this is true. People of the dark ages violently opposed the idea of a round earth. And many great thinkers such as Faraday and Einstein were ridiculed by their older peers. The better part of the academic establishment, which had much better education than these great thinkers could not accept the fact that these young people had made discoveries no one else had noticed before. It’s a fact, people don’t take you seriously when your are much younger than them, and attempting to impose new ideas in their fields of expertise. And also, there are people who cannot handle the truth by any means! Even to this day there are people who refuse to believe the theory of relativity is real, even though it is programmed into the GPS system, and makes these people’s GPS devices work.

Forex Trading for Beginners
New traders lack experience but are very curious and motivated to figure out more new things in the markets. Old traders have experience, but also a lot of inertia, which prevents them from changing direction of thought.

Forex Trading for Beginners and Amateurs – What these Enthusiastic People Usually Do

Some very good thinkers exist, in the world of forex trading for beginners and amateurs. These people have the drive and motivation to try out new ideas and concepts in trading. Daring to implement new ideas is very important, even if most of these ideas are proven wrong. The fact that the trader dares to do something different, and gain valuable new insights in the process, is brainstorming of more new ideas to come. The FX exchange system, and the world of commodities allow for new trading ideas, radical new thinking and analysis. There is a margin for profitable trading in the overlooked ideas, and new traders are the ones most likely to figure them out. The fact that deniers of reality exist is good for beginner and amateur traders. If these new traders see more of the truth, they can outsmart other traders, and get those profits before anyone else. The forex and commodities market offer enormous earning potential to new curious and daring traders. Especially if they know how to add CFDs to their trading and what is CFD trading in detail. CFDs can help a great deal in implementing powerful hedging and cost effective trading, which old arrogant traders do not really understand nor use.

Forex Trading Managed Account – Facts and Myths

A forex trading managed account is usually offered by a firm to VIP clients. It offers average to low annual profitability, at moderate realistic market risk.

Pros and Cons of Having a Forex Trading Managed Account

Having a forex trading managed account may be somewhat beneficial to busy people who also can afford to deposit significant amounts of funds to these accounts. The performance of these accounts is relatively low, and usually between 8% and 30% at best. Traders who undertake the task of trading these accounts have to trade at very low risk. The typical low risk forex trading managed account yields no more than 15% per year, more or less. Even if we assume a safe 15% return per year, for the long term. And after all commissions and fees have been paid, it still certainly doesn’t look impressive. Only the well-off can afford to deposit so large amounts of funds, so that 15% per year profit makes a difference to their lifestyle. By comparison, independent investors and traders, even those not trading full time, expect to make 10% to 15% a month (200% to 430% per year). And they usually come close to reaching these goals, through online CFD trading. Independent forex traders are often asked to work for these firms that offer forex managed accounts. It is not as if they have proprietary strategies and irreplaceable traders. There are many traders who can make 15% per year, at almost no risk, it really is peace of cake! The problem with many independent traders is that they have come out of long learning curves, and have lost money to learn trading. So they are trading their own accounts, which are very small ($20,000 on average). Where a 15% a year return would be very small. So these independent traders look to make more, perhaps 5% to 10% a month. It’s not about having the best forex trading platform and 7 computer screens. Independent CFD forex traders know that they have to do more with less. But the fact that many of them are offered jobs at firms who offer managed account services… Means only one thing, a shortage of competent traders in these firms. The good news is that anyone who works hard enough and has the courage to manage market risk and tricky trading. Can in fact match the skills of these independent CFD forex traders, which is remarkably good.

Forex Trading Managed Account
Independent CFD traders know that you can grow your forex account more, and faster, while the account is small. Very large accounts on the other hand have to deal with reality, which requires making maybe 15% per year (20% at best). The forex market is massive, but still limited in what has to offer.

Why a Forex Trading Managed Account is Not Really a Good Deal even for Rich People

A forex trading managed account is simply a low yielding investment. Sure it helps rich people save time, but it still carries risks. There is the risk that the firm may not have good traders for years, resulting in very low profitability. If the firm is a serious one, there is no risk that the funds will ever be lost, but poor trading performance is bad. 15% per year return is by no means good. This kind of return can be achieved by the rich people themselves, dealing in the antiques market. On items such as collectible stamps and classic paintings. The antiques market is very illiquid and slow, but the rich can afford to wait for years. On the other hand the beauty of forex trading, and the whole point of financial trading, is to achieve more with less. And the forex market allows this to happen, when one has done their homework in-depth. The market allows you to profit asymmetrically in relation to the risk you take. And this allows you to make more with less indeed. This means faster profits, profits that are large enough to make a difference. And above all, the market is highly liquid, allowing you to buy and sell at any time. That’s why ambitious people will always consider becoming independent forex traders rather than considering classic investments.

The Reality Regarding Forex Trading Reviews

Forex trading reviews are found around brokers, advisory services, Expert Advisor sellers and just about anything to do with forex. So, are they really useful?

Forex Trading Reviews and How the New Trader Should Treat Them

Forex trading reviews, when written by real traders who are also clients and users of these services and products, are useful. Most honest forex trading reviews are actually realistic and the reviewer goes to the length of disclosing actual risks and benefits. This applies to brokers, signal providers and many more. The review can really inform the end user or trader as to what they should expect. This is because many traders are street smart, and hard to fool or sold on cheap promises. The most misleading category of products sold today are Expert Advisors. This is the only exception in our list, because actual risk is not fully disclosed to the customer. All traders know that online trading comes with significant risks. Forex brokers disclose these risks in full, signal providers also do, and they are also rated accordingly by their clients. The forex market is risky and not forgiving any mistakes, we all know that. Most if not all Expert Advisor developers-marketers are not so honest, they try to make it appear as if trading is very easy. Expert Advisor software is tricky itself, because it can actually beat the market for 4-5 weeks straight, and with amazing results. Some traders actually use such Expert Advisors to participate at trading competitions, and they do usually win. After all nobody can trade manually, non-stop, for 5 weeks. The problem is that these Expert Advisors begin to fail catastrophically after several weeks or months. And this risk is not disclosed on the sales page. In addition, many of the related reviews are biased, and not to be trusted by any means. There is 10% truth, and 90% misleading information in most of them. After all, if the software really could work for many years, nobody would offer it to you for $299 or $99. Even the price format is a marketing trick in itself.

Forex trading reviews
Reviews of brokers, signal providing and educational services in the forex market are usually impartial and realistic, since all risks are disclosed. Moreover it is implied that one has to put personal effort into their trading. Unfortunately there are products, mostly Expert Advisor software products, which use snake oil marketing tactics.  As if success will be handed to you on a silver platter. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Forex Trading Reviews on Brokers and Signal Providers

Forex trading reviews on brokers and signal providing services are far more objective, because the market here is very competitive (unlike the software market of EA). The FX exchange is a very competitive market itself, and this is what makes Expert Advisor software fail after few weeks. But brokers and traders providing manually-inferred trading signals, have stood the test of time. Brokers have because their job is to provide a top notch service and facilitate trading, this can go on for years and many decades, no big problem there. Signal providers work hard to come up with trading recommendations, and they do stay ahead of the markets most of the time. It has become second nature to them. And above all, brokers and signal providers are not in for a quick buck, they both want to retain their clients for many years. This is high contrasted with EA software developers. And this is why reviews on brokers, signal providers and market analysts are far more objective. And much more impartial than on any other forex related service. The bottom line is that the deceptive marketing and misleading reviews don’t last long. Whereas true and realistic products and services. Where risks are properly disclosed, without making big promises, have stood the test of time. Remember that trading success is always down to the individual trader, and never served on a silver platter.

Learning through a Forex Trading Tutorial

Learning to trade through a forex trading tutorial is a pleasant way to learn some of the basics. Because beginners get to see how other traders think and act.

Learning to Handle Price Action through a Forex Trading Tutorial

Learning to trade profitably through a forex trading tutorial is not really easy at all. And most beginners actually fail to become profitable. If it was that easy, everyone would have become rich shortly after attending a forex trading tutorial. What the tutorial does is simply encourage young and beginner traders to take initiatives in the market. It’s more of a psychological boost rather than a source of effective knowledge. They all want to learn how to trade forex but they are not willing to accept some parts of the methods that their mentors use. Forex training is usually presented through a series of rigorously defined steps and rules. And young traders don’t like to be disciplined to such an extreme level. And rightly so, since too much discipline kills creativity and imagination. If one wants to be inventive, in any field, they will have to bend or break many rules. There’s no such thing as unbreakable rules. Beginners will find a lot of inspiring ideas in a forex trading course, but each person will deviate from the material taught. Real life has showed time and again, that the most inventive and creative students are the ones who are not disciplined. They are however hard working and curious to explore new things. The forex market is a very competitive place, and even the mentors teaching these courses will have to answer difficult questions. Questions such as how much money they have made. Why they are not working for an investment bank. And the predictive power of their indicators. And mentors tend to answer using trading examples, where risk and rewards are presented in a realistic way. The bottom line is that many of these course do have something to offer, mostly in term of building confidence. The knowledge itself is not proprietary or super effective in anyway.

Forex Trading Tutorial
Tutorials are good, but only as a way for learning basic things. The profitability of trading systems taught at tutorials is rather poor and doesn’t allow trading for a living. They cover maybe 1/5 of the total skills required to become a ‘supercharged’ forex trader.

The Best out of a Forex Trading Tutorial

The best you can gain out of a forex trading tutorial is a confidence boost, and learning how other traders think. The average forex trading course does help beginners see how other traders think and act. Generally, those who are very disciplined and lack courage, will tend to become momentum traders. Traders who simply follow price up and down, lacking the courage to sell into a rally or buy into a plummeting market. Bold traders on the other hand will break a series of rules. They will buy into a plummeting market, if the believe the conditions are good. And they will even add to a losing trade. Bold traders believe that there is a massive inertia among 1000s of disciplined traders in the world. And this inertia keeps them on the losing side of the market, every time a sudden reversal takes place (contrarian indicators confirm this very well during surprise market reversals). Inertia is a bad thing in the forex market, and is all down to the refusal of traders to accept they are wrong. All because they cannot accept that their in-depth analysis, which took many hours, is wrong and useless. Well, any analysis methods relying on extreme discipline are not analysis methods at all. Many times, opposite market forces are massive in magnitude, and exactly equal. The market could tip one way or the other as result. Momentum traders and over-disciplined fundamental analysts cannot see this risk.

Learn how to trade forex

By now it should be clear that to learn how to trade forex, a newbie must acquire a variety of skill sets, elements of self-discipline and basic knowledge of international finance.  Of all these components, the least intuitive and most critical is the mindset of a trader, best illustrated in the aphorism of the great economist John Maynard Keynes who in 1936 likened the (stock) market to a beauty pageant, where judges must choose not the prettiest contestant, but the female most popular with the set of those who could vote. The way to profit in the short term is to anticipate whether the mass of traders will be buying or selling, directing the market upwards or downwards, not only the fundamentals behind the underlying reasons. In short, understanding the Freudian death wish is no less important than mastering Milton Friedman’s theory of monetarism.

So, by now you are ready to practice with a demo account, a key step as you learn how to trade forex.  You will find that no two trading situations are exactly alike. Furthermore, you will never be 100% certain of the correctness of your judgement (All that matters is the market-determined price). And finally, even though your last, for example, five out of six trades were profitable, your ability to infer statistically about the profitability of your next six trades is limited.

Other veteran advice to absorb as you learn how to trade forex relates to herds and mass behavior:

  • Be wary of proferred advice.Expert accepted wisdom is just that, “accepted.” Anyone agreeing with the stated opinion/analysis has likely already acted upon it and few remain to further move the currency pair in the purported direction
  • The trend is your friend.The focus-obsession on 50- and 200-day moving averages has a statistical basis. The laws of physics do prevail in markets. Motions and direction ten to continue.
  • Relatedly,it is better to be late to a party than early. Scalping (wherein you benefit from price movements over short-time (intra-day) periods) or even day-trading are for professionals with greater knowledge, concentration and resources than what stands at your disposal.

Forex Trading Training Videos for All Traders

Forex trading training videos cover a very wide range of methods and skills. So much, that traders of all levels will learn something new out of watching them.

Forex Trading Training Videos and their Insights

Forex trading training videos are put together by experienced, or at least ambitious new traders. They are passionate about the subjects discussed in those videos. So it is likely that the viewer will gain something useful out of them. Of course they also contain various analysis techniques and information which tend to be misleading, and wrong. Forex trading training videos are used in many premium courses, but are also found online for free. People who have embarked on forex trading, want to find out more and more about the market. So as to to gain some edge. It’s all part of their effort to master trading online, and figure out as many false trades as possible. Good trading, first and foremost, arises from eliminating the false entries and dealing with losing trades. Much more so than just trying to pick perfect entry points right away. Because jumping into a market right away, doesn’t allow for such quick and profitable trading. In fact, good traders prefer to track the price action of the last few days. And to figure out which indicators are relevant today, and which ones are not. Failing to track and analyze this pattern and sequence of events, usually leads to losing trades. This is because indicators are only working for maybe 50% of the time. In high quality analysis videos, such concepts are presented before you, and are implemented on recent and present currency charts. Traders making good videos, will admit their mistakes and losing trades. While at the same time still dig deeper into the winning trades. Because failure to really understand why they won that trade, leads to false assumptions. And assumption is the mother of all failures in life.

Forex Trading Training Videos
Video tutorials help put theory to the test. All forex charts are difficult to deal with, and if the instructor is not a good trader, they will have a hard time explaining market action. All such videos contain both delusional and effective analysis techniques. Viewers need to be careful as to what to believe and what not to believe.

Forex Trading Training Videos for Advanced Traders

There are forex trading training videos out there, aimed at advanced traders. Concepts such as intermarket analysis, trading volume analysis and more, are explained. Different videos give different methods on the same principles. But this is good, because the advanced trader will be free to pick the parts that they find most useful, while ignoring other parts. Forex training in those videos tends to include price analysis and projection methods, such as Fibonacci and Elliott wave theory. These are only two examples of theories which do not really work. This means that even successful traders are delusional about these theories. They are successful because they use various different indicators, and common sense. This broad-based analysis they do, does make up for the deficiencies of the delusional theories. The truth is that nobody knows everything, and false theories will carry through forex education for years to come. But theories such as the aforementioned ones are simply misleading, and you are better off skipping watching those altogether. So the conclusion is that even in the same instructional video, some parts may not be worth watching at all, while other parts will be very insightful.

Using a Forex Trading Training Software

Forex trading training software has been available for years now. Either as a stand alone product, or through various premium training courses. So is it good?

Forex Trading Training Software for Serious, Ambitious Traders

Forex trading training software may or may not be for you, depending on what your objectives are. Training software of this kind simply helps identify your biggest trading mistakes. And put you on a strictly defined set of rules. Forex trading training software or courses that utilize it, will be good for you. But only if you want to become a low risk, low profit, conservative trader. Because of the fact that there are a lot of rules and discipline involved. The kind of trading that this software is about, is very conservative and possibly boring. Yet many traders who either have a lot of money, or want to trade conservatively for a firm, may prefer this low risk, low profit approach. Independent traders on the other hand, who want to take more risk, and dig much deeper, will find such software boring and limiting. Independent traders who want to learn forex trading in an exciting way, don’t like being told what to do. Nor what rules they should or should not break. And use of a forex training software will limit their creativity and imagination. This kind of disciplined forex education fits the profile of risk averse, conservative investors and traders. But the forex market is risky anyway, no matter how conservative the strategy is. That’s why bold traders, thinking outside the box, have no patience or ambition to use such software. After all, it is not possible to make serious money in the market, just by following in the footsteps of other traders. Success of large magnitude can only come from within. So use of training tools, while showing religious respect, cannot lead to very successful trading.

 Forex Trading Training Software
Training software can only address very basic mistakes and bad habits. And even that requires a set of rigorous trading rules, which kills creativity. Nonetheless conservative traders will find it useful.

Who Forex Trading Training Software is for

Forex trading training software is for those lacking confidence. And for those who have been socially conditioned to think that they have to belong to an established group of ideas. This includes traders who may want to trade large accounts on behalf of trading firms and private clients. This is okay for them to believe, and they will benefit from using such training software. It’s like having mentor over their heads, stopping them from deviating away from the rules, while trading. This is perfectly acceptable. Training software does not offer anything proprietary on trading. It simply offers stability, and if one dedicates a lot of time to trading, they will achieve some kind of success. Online trading to conservative traders, is all about using classic techniques and having the odds on their side. Some trading firms actually require their employees to trade this way. They might be happy making just 10% a year. But they require an ultra low drawdown and consistent profits. And because the accounts used are very large, even that 10% profit per year is a lot of money.