Hotforex

Thursday 14 August 2014

How to Handle Trading Losses

Last time we discussed how to handle trading losses. We focused on how to control your emotions when you lose money. Once you can do this, what happens next? Suppose you've made a string of trading losses. You are feeling calm and collected, and are ready to do something about it. What should you do?

There are two options here.
Option 1: You can do nothing, and carry on with the same trading strategy you already use.
Option 2: You can stop trading and come up with a new strategy before starting again.

Depending on the situation, either of the options may be suitable. When deciding what you do, you need to first analyze your losses. The key question you need to answer is this: Are my losses consistent with my trading strategy?

What do I mean by this? Suppose you have backtested your trading strategy and are implementing it live. If you analyze the backtest results, you should get a good idea of what the losses look like. For example, if you have a strategy that trades daily or less frequently, you should expect to have some months where you lose money.

From your backtest results, you should also get an idea of the magnitude of potential losses. The next step is to compare your actual losses with your backtest results. Then you can ask whether your losses are consistent with your trading strategy.

If your losses are consistent with your strategy, the best thing to do is carry on executing your trading strategy. Assuming your trading strategy is a good one, you should return to profitability soon.

What happens if the losses are not consistent with the strategy? What happens if you are losing a lot more money than you expect to? Now things change. At this point, you should consider going back to the drawing board.

It is likely that the trading strategy no longer works as well as it should. At this point, it is time to come up with a new trading strategy.

Here's a little secret about all trading strategies: At some point, every strategy stops working. Why is this? Market conditions change over time, and market patterns do as well. So at some point the strategy that you are using will become obsolete.

When you encounter trading losses, you need to evaluate whether your strategy has become obsolete. And if so, you need a new strategy.

What many traders (myself included) do is have a pipeline of different strategies. Even while I'm trading a strategy now, I'm simultaneously working on developing new strategies. That way, if my current strategy stops working, I can replace it with another one.

To be a successful trader, you need to be always researching new strategies. You never know when market conditions change, and you need to be ready for when they do.

Handling trading losses consists of the following steps:

Keep your emotions in check and ensure that you are making rational decisions.
Evaluate whether your losses are consistent with your trading strategy.
If they are consistent, then carry on implementing your strategy as normal.
If they are not consistent, then you need to change your strategy before trading again.

If you follow these 4 steps, you'll learn to handle trading losses correctly. And this will ensure that you are profitable over the long term.

Wednesday 13 August 2014

ROBOFOREX - Depositing Without Commission

USE ROBOTS - TAKE PROFIT

The goal of RoboForex is to provide quality services at the international Forex exchange market. We have a great variety of Forex trading accounts (from Micro Cent accounts for beginners to professional ECN accounts provided by Currenex), a convenient Live Account, trading terminals MetaTrader4MetaTrader5,cTraderCurrenex Viking Trader a wide range of trading instruments, Bridge functionality with fully integrated Straight Through Processing (STP) – all these factors allow our clients to implement any kind of trading strategy. Just give the orders and leave everything else to RoboForex!

Forex Advantages

  • MetaTrader4, MetaTrader5, cTrader, Currenex Viking Trader  platforms
  • NDD & STP dealing technologies
  • Deposit currency USD / EUR
  • Immediate automatic funds withdrawal from the account
  • Bonus deposit up to 50%
  • ECN accounts with level up to 1:300
  • 5 Level of the affiliate program
  • Forex Micro Pro and Fix accounts
  • Free-of-charge remote VPS-server

Forex Conditions

  • Floating spread from 0 pips
  • Leverage up to 1:500
  • Minimal lot size of 0.01
  • Instant execution / Market execution
  • 4th and 5th decimal price quotes
  • Market Depth - Level2
  • "One-Click Trading" Service
  • Expert advisors trading is enabled

LiteForex Review

LiteForex Video Review:


LiteForex is an up and coming Forex dealer that offers Forex trading in a straightforward and no-nonsense manner. The company has been around since 2005, and can offer accounts with as little as $1, making it a perfect place to learn the markets. The dealer also pays interest of 3.5% on the balance of your account that is not involved in trading as well, offering a way to increase your profits over time.
Platform
LiteForex uses the MetaTrader 4 and 5 platforms, both of which are well known throughout the world, and have placed millions upon millions of trades over the years. It also offers a web-based basic platform which is more suited to monitoring positions instead of analytics as it is much more basic than the MetaTrader platforms.
Customer Service
LiteForex offers a call center, a call back feature, and live chat and forum rooms from which to get customer service. Because of this, there is always a way to get in touch with a representative if you need one.
Reliability
LiteForex has been around for over 6 years, and is reliable. The platform, the MetaTrader 4 or 5, are both well-known and reliable as well.
Commissions and Spreads
LiteForex offers floating spreads without a commission. Most of the major pairs are within a 2-3 pip parameter.
Promotions
LiteForex is constantly offering various type of promotions, and at the time of this writing was willing to offer an extra $200 to the trader’s account for joining.
Conclusion
LiteForex is a good up and coming player in the Forex markets. The spreads are good, and the ability to deposit with so many options is a huge plus. The dealer seems to be a great place for beginners because of the ability to open an account with so little starting capital.
Pros:
  • Variable spreads. This keeps the spread tight, which is one of your biggest expenses as a trader.
  • The MetaTrader platforms are well-known and reliable. It has been being used for years, and is very stable.
  • Accounts can be started with as little as $1.
  • The deposit process is simple and quick, as you can use a bank wire, credit and debit cards, MoneyBookers, Liberty Reserve, Perfect Money, WebMoney, Liqpay, OK Pay, Alert Pay. Withdraw can be done in reverse.

Cons:
  • Limited to only Forex, so if you are looking to trade other markets, you will need another broker.
  • The variable spreads can be an issue during news events, but only if you are looking to scalp the news announcement.

RoboForex Review

ROBOFOREX LP ("RoboForex") is registered in New Zealand, registration number 2538375. Our main specialization is providing individuals and organizations with services in international financial markets. RoboForex is a partner of several leading brokerage software developers and applies the STP model with the Bridge Technology to work with its Prime Broker and execute customers’ orders in Non-Dealing Desk mode.
ROBOFOREX LP certificate of registration number is 2538375
RoboForex gives clients an option to select the terms of trading operations: fixed or floating spread, “4 digits” or “5 digits”, instant execution or market execution.
ROBOFOREX LP is in continuous development. By extending the list of trading instruments, creating new products and implementing cutting-edge technologies, RoboForex is always in contact with its customers and partners. We look forward to long term cooperation with our clients, and also to their loyalty.

Focusing on professional participants, Roboforex creates and maintains conditions for the effective use of free cash assets. By offering liquidity with low spreads RoboForex strives towards it's main goal - to create conditions for private and corporate investors to freely access global financial markets. We keep and multiply our main asset - our reputation.

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Become a ZuluTrade Signal Provider

If you want to make some extra money as a trader then becoming a “Signal Provider” on ZuluTrade is very easy. You can send trade signal from a live “real money” broker account or from a demo account. I.e. you don’t actually need to trade with any money yourself and there’s no cost for becoming a Signal Provider. You can either use a live or demo account with ZuluTrade’s own broker (AAAfx) or with any one of their partner brokers.

All your trades are displayed in your ZuluTrade profile once you’ve sent 31 valid trades from a demo account, or straight away with a live account. The people who have chosen to follow you as Signal Provider (“Followers”) will have a of your trades automatically executed in their broker account.

As Signal Provider you can trade in all major currency pairs as well as gold, silver and main indices. However because gold, silver and indices are not supported by all brokers, hardly any ZuluTrade Signal providers trade these instruments. Each trader also has to create their own profile with a picture and strategy description, both of which are reviewed by ZuluTrade before they put this information live. You can also keep your followers updated with regular messages from your profile page.

You get paid 0.5 pips per lot traded by someone following you with a “real money” live ZuluTrade account. The value of 0.5 pip obviously varies due to currency fluctuations and the currency pairs traded. The weighted average is reported by ZuluTrade is around 4 dollars per trade per standard lot. Needless to say that when you get 100+ followers this can add up to quite a lot of commission. Please note that you will only receive commissions for months you are profitable. You’ll lose all your commissions for any losing months (which includes unrealised PnL).

You can get paid once your ZuluTrade account reaches $100. The fees are $20 for PayPal, $30 for US Wire Transfers and $45 none US Wire Transfers. Payments take about 30-45 days to reach your account.
If you like, you can also send signals from an MT4 terminal. This is a trading platform which you can install on your pc and which allows you to create and run Expert Advisors (EAs). These are automated programs which can open and close trades based on pre-set rules and the real time price feeds. I.e. when you become a Signal Provider on ZuluTrade you can run automated trading systems and strategies. Please note though that using trailing stops is not supported.

And since February 2014, ZuluTrade also introduced their own trading station and scripts:

  • ZuluTrade+ Trading Station -  is highly technical trading station user interface with technical charts (Candlesticks, OHLC, Lines, etc), a large variety of Indicators (Trend, Oscillators, Volumes, Bill Williams, Volatility, etc), custom lines/text/objects and much more.
  • ZuluScripts - allow you to create, compile and deploy your own experts (robots)and run them directly in your ZuluTrade Trader account.

ZuluTrade does also impose some restrictions though when you trade with trade as a Signal Provider with a demo account:

  • Trades/Signals to create market or pending orders should have a minimum time interval of 15 seconds between. I.e. you cannot open 2 or more trades at the same time.
  • Within a 24-hour interval, there is an upper limit of 30 market and 30 pending orders you can send, as well as a limit of 1000 update signals (e.g. changing stop levels).
  • Your maximum overall number allowed of open as Signal Provider – market and pending – is limited to 30 orders.
When you trade and send signals to ZuluTrade from a live trading account (meaning you trade with real money) these limits do not apply.

To protect your followers, each Signal Provider is also required to comply with a minimum set of ZuluTrade guidelines aimed at reducing risk. These include limiting your overall drawdown and not allowing losses of 700 pips or more on a single position. The use of stop loss values at reasonable levels is mandatory and ZuluTrade also doesn’t like winning trades ratio close to 100% as these normally mean large potential drawdowns and hence high risk.

Some Tips for when you become and are a ZuluTrade Signal Provider:

  • Use a photo of yourself as profile picture – this creates trust.
  • When describing your strategy, be clear and complete. It’s also useful to suggest how many lots a follower should invest per $1000 balance, how many open trades they should allow and which stop levels they should set.
  • Trade with a real money account (if possible) or at least follow yourself from a live ZuluTrade account. This information is displayed in your ZuluTrade profile and creates trust. You will gain many more followers and respect because you trade with your own money.
  • Because of the inevitable slippage between your trade execution prices and those of your ZuluTrade followers, scalping strategies are not recommended.
  • Trading during the news can also create massively different results between yours and your follower’s accounts because some broker widen the spread significantly during news events.
  • Communicate regularly with your followers and let them know when you change your strategy. Answer follower questions in your feed if they’re relevant. However, don’t get bogged down in replying to negative follower comments after you post some negative trades. There are always people who expect you to win 100% of your trades.
  • Open a ZuluTrade demo account yourself first so you can follow some other popular traders and look at their strategies and communications.

What is ZuluTrade?

ZuluTrade is a social trading network and platform that connects you with thousands of traders (called ‘signal providers’) around the world. Instead of studying the market and trading yourself, you select the signal providers you’d like to follow instead. The Zulutrade platform will then convert their advice and trades directly into your own account (with one of their supported brokers). At any time, you can close trades opened in your account by signal providers manually yourself. In the ZuluTrade interface you can also set limits on what trades you like to take at account level (e.g. only EUR/USD trades) or at signal provider level (e.g. no more than 5 open trades at any time).

ZuluTrade provides a wide range of information for you to evaluate and select a ‘signal provider’. This includes the provider’s strategy, past performance, maximum drawdown and follower comments. You can review every single trade made by the provider in the past if you like. The best performing signal providers are also ranked in the proprietary ZuluTrade ranking.

While it is technically possible to trade on gold and silver, hardly any signal providers trade on these instruments (mainly because some brokers don’t support it) and therefore it’s fair to call ZuluTrade a social forex trading network. The social aspect is delivered through an active forum and customer feedback and votes which can be directly left on the signal provider’s pages. In addition, you can link your ZuluTrade account to your Twitter or Facebook account, which will post a message every time a trade is closed in your account (winner or loser).

You can sign-up for a free Zulu Trade demo account (click here) which allows you to select any signal provider in the same way as you would with a live account and monitor the performance of your portfolio. Once you decide you want to use “real” money you need to sign-up with one of their supported brokers. AAAfx is their “preferred” broker because they’re part of the same holding company as ZuluTrade. However they’ve got a list of over 40 other brokers globally which you can sign-up with as well.
Following the signal providers and using the ZuluTrade platform from a live account is free. Your actual cost is included in the spread for each trade. E.g. if your broker spread is 2 pips, part of this will go to ZuluTrade as commission. The “signal providers” are paid direct by ZuluTrade, who share the pip commissions the “signal provider” has generated at the end of the month from their followers, but only if they made a profit in pips at the end of the month (i.e. they don’t get paid in loosing months).

ZuluTrade Review (Our Opinion)

Please note that this is the ZuluTrade review summary page with our opinion. You’ll find more detailed reviews of the various ZuluTrade interface features, broker choice, costs and performance on the next pages.

So let’s start the review with some pertinent questions. Can you make money with ZuluTrade? Yes, you can. Is it easy to make money with ZuluTrade? No, some effort and Forex trading knowledge are required. When we started trading on the platform we managed a 15% profit on our portfolio on the first month and lost 30% in the next. But, by learning from our mistakes and applying some rigorous risk management we’ve been managing positive returns since then.

More than any other social trading network and autotrading platform, ZuluTrade is “open” and accessible to everyone. For you (the investor) this is great. There’s a free fully functioning demo (click here to try ZuluTrade demo) and you can start investing with “real money” from as little as $300, £210, 250 Euro, 25,000 JPY or 300 AUD. The sign-up procedure is easy and straight-forward. However, the openness also means everyone can become a trader (also known as “signal provider”) on the network. Signal Providers do not necessarily trade with their own money (they can send signals from demo accounts) and their profiles are not formally vetted by Zulu Trade (i.e. if they say they traded professionally for 10 years, it’s their word and nothing more). I.e. it’s left to the “social network” to police the “signal providers” by leaving user comments and voting on their performance. While there is some significant value in this, the user comments are mostly negative and while many are justified, a fair amount are just from people expecting 100% wins and complaining after a provider posts a few negative trades.

The amount of “signal providers” to follow is massive (> 10,000), though ZuluTrade does provide you with an advanced search engine that allows you to slice and dice through that list against your preferences. E.g. only show me traders with over 52 weeks history, who trade their own money and have a win percentage of at least 75%. They also have a performance table in which they rank all “signal providers”. While the ranking is certainly a good start, and it does seem to improve over time, we’ve seen more than one “signal provider” make an appearance in the top 5 in one month (and significantly increase its number of “live” followers) just to make a large loss and drop out the top ZuluTrade rankings the next month.

There’s also a “follower performance list” where you can view which “signal providers” other Zulu Trade investors like you follow and how their total portfolio performs. With one click you can copy the settings of another follower if you like to follow the same “signal providers”.

For each “signal provider” you can view a good range of performance indicators and graphs to help you evaluate them. What’s important here to mention is that ZuluTrade is totally transparent. In fact, they share every single trade a trader has done in the past and you can download all the historical trades in Excel as well, allowing you to do your own proprietary analysis (in comparison, some other social trading networks only give you access to the last 50 or 100 trades). While all the information is clearly there and presented in a variety of useful ways, looking for consistent and trusted “signal providers” still requires some skill and regular fine tuning. If you’re new to Forex trading it will take quite a few months before you assemble a portfolio of ZuluTrade “signal providers” you trust and who match your own investment profile and risk/reward strategy.

The choice of brokers you can use with ZuluTrade is very good. Their preferred and directly integrated broker is AAAfx (based in Greece), which allows you to manage your account in EUR, USD, JPY, GBP, AUD, RUB and CHF. In addition though, there’re over 50 other supported brokers, including US, UK, Europe,  Russia, New Zealand and Australia based and regulated ones, which allow you to keep your account in these and other base currencies. These other brokers do charge a small commission on each trade from a ZuluTrade signal, while AAAfx doesn’t.

The performance for each broker will be slightly different (mainly because the spreads and ZuluTrade commission they charge differs), though ZuluTrade does review and report the average slippage (i.e. difference between the price the signal provider traded at and what your broker account traded at) for each broker on each “signal provider” page. From our experience with accounts at multiple brokers, these slippage reports are pretty accurate.

Slippage is an important factor with autotrading platforms and a key driver of this is how quick the system executes the trades from the traders or trade signals you follow in your own trading account. While some slippage does occur and on very few occasions some trades were missed, we’ve found this to be more a factor which relates to the broker and signal provider choice (i.e. higher slippage with scalpers because these traders look for small quick profits in volatile market conditions), rather than of the execution speed or reliability of the ZuluTrade autotrading platform.

Once you’ve selected a “signal provider” to follow, ZuluTrade lets you assign the amount you want to trade per signal as well as restrict how they can trade in your account (e.g. maximum number of open trades, fixed stop loss, fixed take profit, etc). You can use their “backtest” tool to evaluate how your settings would have performed against the historical data for the “signal providers” in your Zulu Trade account.

It does however require some skill and Forex trading knowledge to work out how much of your capital and account you’re actually risking per trade and/or provider you copy. To help you, ZuluTrade displays a “Margin Call -o- meter” meter to estimate the chance that your account will run out of money (i.e. you get a margin call) and have an “AUTO mode” that will automatically assign values based on the amount of funds in your account. While useful, these tools are merely indicators and don’t replace the basic money management knowledge and discipline you should acquire to be successful yourself on ZuluTrade. It is very easy to blow your ZuluTrade account by getting the settings wrong for one “signal provider” who may change their strategy from one day to another (and there’re many stories on Forums of people who get this wrong). However ZuluTrade did introduce some additional risk management features in December 2012 which allow you to set a maximum loss you’d take in monetary terms for each “signal provider” before your account automatically stops following them and closes any open trades they had in your account. Before this (or alternatively) you could open multiple live accounts and follow each provider from a different account to reduce your risk.

You can review your account performance online at any time and ZuluTrade also sends daily and weekly summary report e-mails which are useful to keep track of your trading results. They’ll also send you an e-mail when the behaviour of one of the “signal providers” you follow changes. E.g. they change their usual stop levels or are opening many more trades than the usually do. It is however up to you to act on this information since ZuluTrade will not intervene in signal provider accounts. You can however use the ZuluGuard feature to automatically close, disable or replace a “signal provider” if certain behavior patterns which you define are detected (e.g. opens more than x amount of concurrent trades or reaches a certain drawdown level).

The online ZuluTrade trading user interface that lets you close any trades opened by the “signal providers” you follow in your account manually or open/close trades yourself is basic, though it does the job and is fairly intuitive and easy to use. You can review your historical Zulu Trade performance by provider and per time frame, which is very useful to evaluate who’s been generating the profits and losses in your account.
If you have an iPad, iPhone or Android mobile phone or tablet you can also download the ZuluTrading app which allows you to view your performance, review new traders to copy, close trades manually and manage your risk settings on the go “real-time”. The functionality of these apps has improved significantly since their first releases, and they are a very nice and convenient addition.

The integration with Twitter and Facebook is fairly unique too, reporting every closed trade in your account. However, why you would want your friends and family to know about every trade you make in your account is another question. We’re guessing this is more a way of ZuluTrade to get their brand across the social networks and a nice marketing ploy.

ZuluTrade provides both telephone and e-mail support in multiple languages. We’ve found them to be polite, prompt and responsive (telephone always got through straight away and e-mail replies normally take less than 24 hours). More complex and technical queries are better asked by e-mail than over the phone.
The Zulu Trade user guides are very basic and just focussed on explaining the functionality of the system. The user Forum is very loosely moderated but very active and you’ll get other ZuluTraders helping each other.

Overall, ZuluTrade is an easy to use social trading platform and network with no entry costs and low ongoing costs (only small pip charge per trade). The fact that anyone can become a signal provider may take the open social concept to its heart, but makes it difficult to find the few ‘professional’ providers on the trading network who deliver consistent results over time. Basic money management knowledge is also required if you want ZuluTrade to become a long term investment platform for you instead of a short term casino game.

ZuluTade review Pros:

  • free fully functioning demo account (can easily try without committing money)
  • wide choice of traders (‘signal providers’) to follow and copy
  • good choice of brokers in different countries (also means choice of account currencies)
  • data is fully transparent (all historical traders are shared)
  • customer comments directly on signal provider profile pages
  • low ongoing cost (spread only)
  • no entry cost and low minimum deposit requirements (trade from $300)
  • advanced risk and money management features
  • good mobile apps

ZuluTrade review Cons:

  • for every successful consistent trader (‘signal provider’) there many more poor and inconsistent ones (bit of a wild west because anyone can become a provider)
  • ‘signal providers’ are not required to trade using their own money
  • money management can be complex for non Forex traders or beginners
  • requires regular monitoring until the right mix of ‘signal provider’ is selected

                                                      Click Here to visit ZuluTrade

Friday 8 August 2014

Get Comfortable with Taking Risk

When my Dada was younger, he was an avid Rummy and Bridge player. He would play each week, sometimes making money and sometimes losing money. What I admired about him was that he was extremely comfortable with taking risk. Even when he lost money, he'd eagerly await the next chance to make it back.

When we trade or invest in the markets, we sometimes get nervous. Many of us are not comfortable with taking risk. I started that way, and over time I've become more comfortable with risk. Last time, we started on the topic of how to ensure that Markets don't keep you up at night.

And now we'll extend this and talk about risk in general. How do we get comfortable with taking risk? If you're the kind of person who gets stressed out whenever your trades lose money, then you're not comfortable with taking risk. The good news is that you can get comfortable with taking risk. What you need is a change in mindset.

From observing my Dada win and lose money playing cards, I learned the two ingredients needed to become comfortable with taking risk. He would apply these two principles himself, and now I do the same.

The first principle is to only risk what you can easily afford to lose. This means that if you lose that money, your standard of living doesn't change. It means that the amount you are risking is small enough that it makes little difference to you whether you win or lose. This is extremely important. If your risk is small, you won't be stressed out if you lose your money.

The primary benefit of risking a small amount is that you don't have any emotional reaction to losses. This ensures that you remain rational and continue to make smart trading decisions. When you are stressed out, you are likely to make bad trading decisions, and end up losing even more money. So don't get to this point.

The second principle is to understand that there is no reward without risk. Another way to put this is that risk is beneficial to you. Without risk, you get no reward. Rather than view risk as something to avoid, you should view risk as an opportunity. Risk is an opportunity to make potentially big rewards.

This applies when it comes to trading, but also other decisions in your life. When you decide to marry someone, or decide to take a new job, you are a taking a risk. But this is a good thing. If you don't take these risks, you will miss out on significant life events.

Getting comfortable with taking risk is all about having the right mindset. And if you want to get comfortable with taking risk, you need to apply these two things. First, only risk small amounts. Second, view risk as an opportunity for reward, rather than something to avoid.

Once you adopt this mindset, something amazing happens over time. As you continue to take risk, you start accumulating rewards. All of a sudden, you look forward to taking risks. You look forward to the prospect of rewards. You realize the biggest negative risk is that of inaction. And finally, you get comfortable with taking risk.



It's not all about the Money


The first thought that comes to our minds when think of trading is making money. We buy and sell assets or derivatives with the purpose of making a profit in the process.

Over the years, I have met many traders. And some of them have been successful while others have not.

Recently I've spent a lot of time thinking about what made some of them successful and the others unsuccessful.

Here is one question that I always asked each of them: Why do you trade? Think about how you would answer this. Many of the responses I got were related to making money. In fact, most of the traders said they were primarily interested in making money.

But a few said something very different. Their responses were about their passion for financial markets. They were interested in understanding how markets work. It was like their goal was to solve this puzzle of predicting market movements. Rather than be focused on money, they were focused on becoming good traders. And they were deeply interested in markets.

Any guess as to which group of traders were more successful?

The first group that were focused primarily on making money were generally unsuccessful, while the second group did much better. Initially this seemed strange. After all, if your goal was to make money, then surely you would be good at doing that.

But then I thought about it more. And now it makes perfect sense.

If your sole interest is to make money, you probably won't do very well.

Let's imagine why this might be the case.

Think about your own profession. I'm sure you will find that the most successful people in your profession or industry are the ones who are passionate about the work they do.

When you enjoy your work, you do a better job. And the same goes for trading. If you enjoy trading and you want to learn about markets, you'll do better than someone who's only it in for the money. Of course this doesn't mean you don't care about money at all. But what is important is that you have a strong desire to better understand how markets work.

You see, trading is not an easy profession to be in. It is sometime quite stressful. In fact, it is one of the few professions where you can work hard and end up losing money. And if you're someone who's motivated only by money, it will be a problem.

You'll get upset whenever you lose money. This is was the biggest difference between the unsuccessful and the successful traders. The ones only motivated by money naturally got very upset whenever they lost money. But the successful traders didn't get upset. The losses actually motivated them to learn more. It motivated them to understand why they made losses, and how to improve their future performance.

If you want to become a successful trader, then you need to adopt this mindset. You need to care less about the money, and more about understanding the markets.

I know this is not easy to do. It is very difficult to become detached from trading losses, especially when you've lost your hard earned money.

But then I never said trading was easy. So do try this out. It is in your best interest anyway. Why is that? If you don't worry about the money, then you'll end up making more of it in the long run. Then you'll end up as one of the successful traders.




How to Take Advantage of Volatile Markets ?

Volatility is your friend. We talked about why this is case in the previous article. The short answer is that high volatility provides more trading opportunities. High volatility means that markets move up and down a lot. As a result, the more volatile markets are, the more money we can make. 

It turns out there is another more subtle reason why volatility works in your favor. To understand what I'm talking about, let's examine a simple example. Imagine you are playing your favorite card game (bridge, rummy, poker, etc.) You bet money on the game and are playing against others who understand the game well. 

If you and the others are playing, you may be equally likely to win or lose. But suppose all of a sudden, the others start playing irrationally. They abandon their strategies and just play without any logic. What will happen then? 

What happens is that you'll win the game. If the other players play poorly, you can take advantage and win against them. 

How does this relate to market volatility? Think about what happens when markets get very volatile. People start to panic. They may sell their investments at any cost just to get out. In fact, the main reason volatility occurs is that investors try to get out as quickly as possible. 

Do you see the parallel here with the card game? When markets are volatile, investors are behaving less rationally. They are thinking more with their emotions. They want to get out because they do not like the higher risk. Risk aversion goes up when volatility goes up, and many investors get out of the market when it gets too risky. 

When some investors are not behaving rationally, this works to your advantage as a trader. Just like you can beat card players that play irrationally, you can beat other traders and investors that behave irrationally. 

There is one simple rule you need to follow to take advantage of other irrational players. Stay calm and play rationally. That is it. When everyone else is in panic mode due to some crisis, you need to stay calm. When everyone else is euphoric due to a positive news event, you need to stay calm. 

Doing this is easier said than done. It is generally easy to stay calm if you are making profits. But what happens when you make losses? This is where your mental strength gets tested. The reason other investors behave irrationally is typically because they have incurred large losses. This makes them want to get out of the market at any cost. 

To avoid this problem, you need to stay calm when you lose money. And you will lose money on some trades. I sometimes lose money, and so do all other traders. Even if you incur large losses, you must stay calm and carry on. 

You need to think of gains and losses as just numbers on a screen. When markets move up or down, think of them as just numbers on a screen. Don't attach any emotional value to these numbers. Nothing good will come of it.

Tuesday 5 August 2014

6 Reasons Why You Should Trade Binary Options

                Here are some simple reasons why you want to look into trading binary options:

1. They are easy to understand

They have easy “yes” and “no” propositions. Their pricing is intuitive. No matter what point, the binary price is just the perception of the market’s likely percentage that the contract settles with a “yes.” You can work this out based on how the pricing of these options, which will be thoroughly clarified in this article.

2. They have small contract sizes

When they get ready to expire, every lot can settle at $0 for “no” and $100 for “yes.” You need an amount below $100 for maximum collateral. Usually, it is much less. You cannot ever lose more than the collateral.

3. There is also a strict limited risk

You cannot at any point price contracts outside of that $0-$100 range, no matter what the underlying market’s volatility is. You must always be aware of the absolute worst-case amount you can risk for the positions you choose no matter if the contract is short or long.

4. Binary options also have multiple markets

This lets you surmise on a variety of asset classes and markets online and with a small minimum deposit. You may also use these binary options for determining numerous economic data released outcomes that would usually be tough for retail traders to figure without using binary options.

5. They also have interesting price behaviors near expiration

Because these options are binary, their behavior when nearing their expiration date differs greatly from other trading options. If this is used wisely, you could exploit some intriguing trading methods.

6. The markets for binary options stay open until they expire

You can place your orders to get in and out at any binary position numerous times as you watch the market fluctuate. While there are “everything or nothing” payouts, you are not limited to strategies like that since you have the option to trade in or out of a contract any time before they expire.

6 Top Reasons Why Forex Traders Fail

Apparently, the forex market is the biggest and most accessible financial market in the world. There are quite a number of forex traders, but only a few are truly successful. Traders, like in other asset classes, fail for many obvious reasons. In addition, trading forex usually requires high leverage – usually to increase the potential return on investments, makes it a high risk investment.

Other factors specific to the trading currencies may also result to higher expectations for returns than the market can actually offer. At times, even, traders may be prompted to take more risks that they would not take when undertaking other investments. That said here are some of the top reasons why forex traders fail.

1. Lack of trading discipline

The biggest mistake a forex trader can make is to let his/her emotions get in their way. In this trade being successful means achieving some few big wins while still suffering many smaller losses. When experiencing consecutive losses, it`s important to keep your cool, trying to beat the market only leads to more losses which eventually drain you out.

2. Failure to plan

Planning is important in order to achieve success not only in forex trading but also in every other trade. That is why unsuccessful forex investor are oftenly those who fail to work within a documented plan. The plan should above all include some risk management guidelines as well as the specific return on investment expected. Failing to stick to the laid out plan leads to massive continuous losses.

3. Greed

Yes, I said it. Some investors feel that they have to squeeze every last pip out of a move. There are huge chucks of money in the forex markets every day. And trying to clutch every last pip before a currency pair turns usually sets many traders to lose the profitable trade that they are sitting on.

4. Failure to adapt to the market

Again this trickles down to planning. Creating a plan for every trade like carrying out scenario analysis or planning your moves and counter moves for all potential market situations is important. It is the only sure way to reduce the risks of large and unexpected losses. Knowing the market well also helps a trader to be in a better position to modify their strategies with market changes. It also helps to be more flexible in establishing new and creative ways to profit from the evolving market.

5. Having unrealistic expectations

Many people enter into forex trading thinking that it is a get-rich-quickly scheme. Quite far from the truth, accumulating profit comes not as a sprint but a marathon. A lot of effort and mastery of a number of strategies is required. Most of the traders who have failed are unable to manage their capital. Risking more than it is warranted and fore going trade discipline for gambling only leads to much more losses.

6. Not learning from past experiences

Unsuccessful traders almost all the time ignore the important cues presented by the market. Failure to learn from own past success and failures as well as those of other successful traders has put many of investments on the line.

Remember, there is no such thing as free lunch in the forex market. So work your way up slowly but sure of you steps. Build your own capacity to make more informed decisions and more importantly, work diligently to learn with every trade.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<Choose Here The Right Option !!>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Saturday 2 August 2014

AvaTrade Review By Richard Broomstick

Regulation: Central Bank of Ireland (No: C53877).
Broker Type: Market Maker (DD).
Financial Assets: 70+ Currency Pairs, Spot Metals, BitCoin, Energies, Indices and Stocks.
Trading Info: Leverage up to 1:400, Micro lots, No Commissions, Fixed Spreads from 3 pips.
Trading Platforms: Metatrader 4, AvaTrader, Sirix WebTrader, AvaOptions & MirrorTrader.
Account Types: Silver ($100), Gold ($1000), Platinum ($10,000) & AvaSelect ($100K)
Account Currencies: USD, EUR, GBP & JPY.
Minimum Deposit: $100 USD or equivalent.
Deposit Methods: Bank Wire, Credit Card, Paypal, Skrill, WebMoney & Other.
Forex Tools: EA support on MT4, Trading Central, Direct Dealing Room Support.
Forex Education: Webinars, Daily News, Videos, Guides, Demo & Technical Analysis.
Client Support: Personal Account Manager & Customer Service 24/5.

AvaTrade.com is an award winning, multi-regulated, and highly innovative forex broker focusing on currencies, indices, CFDs, stocks, commodities and bonds, but they also offer specialized options trading through their AvaOptions trading platform. The minimum balance to open an account is $100, with leverage up 1:400, low spreads and a full range of educational tools. Moreover AvaTrade provides a wide range of trading platforms, which are bound to satisfy the needs of even the most demanding trader.

AvaTrade is owned by Ava Capital Markets Ltd (“AvaTrade EU”) which licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Clients’ funds are kept in separate accounts and are safe even in the unlikely event of company insolvency. AvaTrade meets all the regulatory requirements required within the EU, including the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). The broker is also regulated in Australia, BVI and Japan.

AvaTrade offers a variety of fixed and floating spread accounts, each with its own unique characteristics and perks. They are classified as Silver ($100 min), Gold ($1000 min), Platinum ($10,000 min) and the exclusive AvaSelect which has minimum deposit of $100,000. All accounts feature mobile trading , free access to market news, leverage up 1:400 and competitive spreads (typical EUR/USD spread: 1.8 pip floating, 3 pips fixed).


Live trading accounts can be registered in USD, EUR, GBP or JPY as base currency and for compliance with international anti-money laundering laws, all AvaTrade clients are required to verify their identity and address. Documents such as passports, national ids and utility bills can be send to the broker via email or by uploading them in AvaTrade client portal. Each client will also be assigned a personal account manager who will be available for support 24/5.



Accounts can be funded with a variety of payment options such as major credit /debit cards, bank wire transfer and for non-EU clients the broker accepts several online methods such as Paypal, MoneyBookers and Neteller. Wire transfers have a minimum amount of €500 (or equivalent) and can take up to several days depending on the bank. Withdraws are can be initiated easily through the client portal and are processed by the company within 2 business day. Keep in mind that fees may apply depending on the payment provider.
All funds are kept in Ring-Fenced ‘Custodial’ Client Asset accounts with Danske Bank, an ‘A’ rated European bank. They remain protected even in the event of company insolvency and under no circumstances can the broker access any client funds.


In the Avatrade client portal you can set SMS and email alerts.

AvaTrade Trading Platforms

AvaTrade boosts a wide range of platforms that can meet the trading requirements of any type of potential investor. Their flagship platform is the “Ava Trader” terminal that has been developed and maintained in-house. It features advanced technical analysis capabilities, a range of build-in indicators and operates on PCs, Macs, tablet and Smartphone devices. AvaTrader is available on fixed spread accounts with $100 USD minimum deposit and leverage up to 400:1 on Forex, gold up to 200:1 and equities up to 20:1.


AvaTrade MetaTrader 4

The AvaTrade Metatrader 4 platform is available for clients that wish to access liquidity from some of the world’s biggest banks and floating spreads from as low as 0.9 pips. It’s one of the most advanced Forex platforms with more than 50 build-in indicators, one-click trading and excellent support for expert advisors. Clients can analyse the market using advanced charting features and detailed historical data which can also be used for back-testing trading strategies. The AvaTrade Metatrader 4 is available for floating, demo and fixed spread accounts with maximum leverage up to 1:400.


AvaTrade Sirix WebTrader

AvaTrade’s Sirix web-based platform is powered by Leverate and operates on most browsers with no installation or download required. It features numerous charting options, one-click trading, pending orders, build-in technical indicators and real-time technical analysis from Trading Central. The platform is available in more than 15 languages and AvaTrade offers free demo accounts.


AvaOptions Platform

Lastly, Ava offers OTC Vanilla Calls and Puts on the AvaOptions trading terminal. It’s a highly advanced and user-friendly platform that has 30 currency pairs available for trading, historical charts, strategy optimizer, risk management options and expirations that range from as short as one day to as long as one year. The broker provides a 21-day AvaOptions Demo Account and 24/5 multilingual support.


AvaTrade Automated Trading

AvaTrade’s main strength is the wide range of services it offers to investors which include support for automated strategies and social trading. For example API trading provides to EA developers the opportunity to test their automated systems via API links in .NET and Java programming languages ($1000 minimum account balance required). Moreover with ZuluTrade and MirrorTrader accounts, AvaTrade clients can find and copy the strategies of successful forex traders according to their own budget and risk appetite.


AvaTrade Additional Features

It certainly doesn’t hurt to mention that this broker also offers a generous welcome bonus on first time deposits up to $10,000. The amount can be used for extra margin and only be withdrawn after a minimum volume of 10,000 base instruments for every $1 bonus is traded within 12 months. It cannot be applied for automated trading and eligible only to traders that verify their identity.


AvaTrade offers competitive commissions to interested affiliates through a sophisticated partnership program. It provides a full range of advanced marketing tools, web content, tracking and reporting technologies. Moreover, this program offers a flexible payment structure which is attractive and enticing enough for affiliate marketers of any level. For more information read our review of AvaTrade affiliate programs.

AvaTrade really wins out in terms of flexibility and range of choice, as it offers all the trading tools, instruments and assets one will ever ask for. They also have the choice of using specialized platforms for trading limited risk options, where they could hedge their spot market trades. The bottom line is that all these impressive features come from a well established, regulated and serious brokerage firm which has more than 20,000 clients, and has been rated well through the years.

AvaTrade Review

With AvaTrade, investors can enjoy peace of mind knowing that they are in professional hands.

AvaTrade Main address:
Dublin Exchange Facility IFSC
Dublin, Ireland

AvaTrade Japan:
Minatoku Akasaka, 2-18-1
Tokyo, Japan

AvaTrade Australia
Level 13 2 park street, NSW 2000
Sydney, Australia

AvaTrade China
HongYi Plaza, Room 1801 288 JiuJiang Road, 200001
Shanghai, China

AvaTrade Mongolia
Gazar Business Center #205 Bayangol District
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

AvaTrade France
29 rue de Bassano, 75 008
Paris, France

AvaTrade Italy
Torino 2, 20123
Milano, Italy


Fax: +1-646-335-0333
Telephone: +1-212-941-9609
E-mail: customer@avatrade.com
5 out of 5 stars.
Richard Broomstick
                                                           Visit Here!

Finding The Best Trading System For Your Needs

Before you consider trading you need to take some considerations into account. Firstly, you need to determine what your trading personality is and how this will affect the system you work with. To avoid negative trading it is important to utilize a system that is compatible to your emotions.

Finding an appropriate trading system is similar to finding a compatible spouse. If your partner has completely alternative interests and aspirations to you then the relationship is doomed from the start irrespective of how intriguing the person is.

Without undergoing too much analysis and completing too many personality profile tests, you just need to ask yourself one question: what will make me react more aggressively – many small and frequent losses or irregular substantial losses? This will assist in defining which trading system is most suited to your personality and for your needs.

There are two types of trading systems available. The first is a system featuring more frequent losses than gains; however the gains will be greater than the losses. The second type of trading system presents consistent, yet small gains with few losses; however, these losses are substantial and will eliminate many gains. Of course, you will find that the profits and losses will be of different sizes; but it must be remembered that no system will be in the middle of this gray scale – it will always be skewed to one or the other side.

The practical question to determine which trading system is best for your needs looks at which extreme causes more anxiety: a large amount of wins, but with large losses; or large losses with greater amounts of wins. It has been noted that the majority of other features in a trader’s profile do not apply to these practical situations.

One of the most critical components to consider when finding the most appropriate trading system is that of system trade expectancy. The majority of traders feel that having a high risk/reward ratio leads to successful trading, however this is not so. In order to be successful you must have positive expectancy and expect a positive gain from each trade you complete using your trading system.

System trading expectancy is calculated using historical data of all trades completed. This is done by multiplying the average historical loss by the losing percentage, then subtracting that number from the average historical profit multiplied by the profit percentage.

To clarify, the system trading expectancy formula is as follows:

Expectancy = Average Gain (% of winning trades) – Average Loss (% losing trades)

The primary purpose of this system trading expectancy formula is to identify how much can be made on a trade using a particular sample size of trades. To encourage future trading, the result should be (ideally) positive and of a large amount. It should also be noted that this formula can be applied to binary trading options.

Visit Here ! The Best Trading System For Your Needs!

Bitcoin Trading – Tips & Information At a Glance

Bitcoins and crypto currency are all the rage these days, and you may be wondering why. These terms are used to identify currency units that are not backed by any material counterpart.

The bitcoin travels from virtual wallet to virtual wallet, and every transaction is encoded within the bitcoin so that its history is traceable. More than 10,000,000 bitcoins exist now, and this number is expected to double within the next three decades.

Unlike some other forms of virtual currency, attaining bitcoins is open to anyone who wants to invest some time and work into getting them. Bitcoins are mined. Mining is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin’s public ledger of past transactions

They are awarded in lots of twenty five, and an algorithm continues to increase the difficulty of the puzzles to be sure that bitcoin stock declines progressively to drop by 50% every four years. This helps prevent a glut of bitcoin mining. Because they are designed to be hard to get and scarce, bitcoins are much sought after and very popular.

An interesting side effect of the extreme challenge of attaining bitcoins is that people who seek to mine them have learned that working cooperatively yields better results than working competitively.

Bitcoins are better than regular money in a lot of ways because they are indestructible and with just a little computer know-how, they can easily be stored online and protected from theft. Using them to perform a number of regular online transactions is free or costs very little.

Additionally, bitcoins can be traded against traditional money, and people holding bitcoins can become bitcoin dealers free of charge. Another perk of transacting and trading in bitcoins is that it can be anonymous. This makes online payments safer, and is very attractive to people wishing to buy and sell exotic services online.

Because bitcoins are very like actual money, it should only be a matter of time before they become a competitive form of currency for trading in the real world. After all, it is easy to divide them into lesser denominations; they are easy to store safely and affordably; they are easily recognized but can’t be counterfeited; they never degrade or decay.

As more and more people around the world become computer savvy, and online trading and purchasing becomes more common, the use of bitcoins is inevitable. At the moment, using them in actual trading in the real world is not possible because vendors’ point of sale systems have no way to recognize or acknowledge them. With more and more point of sale systems becoming linked to the virtual world; however, it would seem that using bitcoins and cash interchangeably is a reasonably foreseeable change in the near future.

Even though bitcoins may very well become a mainstream form of currency, they will probably not replace actual cash. Let’s see the development in the new few years. It will be crucial.

Enter The Bitcoin Trading Here!

The Advantages Of Trading Shares Online

People now do not need to go to a brokerage house in order to buy and sell shares of stock. There are numerous online broker where anybody can trade with probably more tools at their disposal than ever existed to the public at large in all of the history of the market.

All of the brokerages have online trading platforms, and they have great tutorials to go along with them. Even a complete novice can go to an online trading site, and learn how to trade just from going through the site’s tutorials.

If you have never bought or sold stocks, mutual funds, ETF, or traded in options, it is recommended that you go through the tutorials completely before trading.

The companies even have practice time, where you can play the real stock market, but with paper money. In other words, you invest in stocks, but it is like a computer game where you don’t really risk any of your own money, just the play money in the computer. But, in this way you learn how the system works and you see how a live market works.

Online trading gives you a variety of tools and research resources. The idea of vesting in stocks is that you are investing in a company that is hopefully going to do well and make a profit. If that happens the value of the stock will rise over time from the amount that you paid for it. This is called the buy and hold strategy, where the result takes a while for the stock to rise.

The other strategy, trading may only last for a day or two, or even and hour or two. The trading platform will have tactics and strategies all worked out for each stock, and if a person follows the directions for those programs, you can do pretty well.

The computer does quite a bit of research for you based upon your objectives, risk tolerance, and so on. It will do a certain amount of research to find out the history of the company and how its stock reacts under certain conditions. Of course stocks react in relation to how many other investors are buying or selling the stock, but there are other situations that can affect the movement of the stock as well.

Some of the factors that affect the movement of the stock can come from the political environment, the overall financial market, and any special events that might occur in that particular stock’s sector. As an example if you invest in a dog food stock, and suddenly there is a recall of several brands of dog food, your stock might take a tumble until the situation is cleared up.

The nice thing about trading your shares of stock online is the convenience. You can be online all the time and make your trade any time that you wish, but the trade won’t actually be placed until the market is open the next day.

Another nice element is that you can start out small and pace yourself until you learn more and can start trading in larger amounts.

We're showing you some of the best times to trade, different trading techniques. TRY our Free Demo !! 

Tuesday 29 July 2014

Avatrade Review

AvaTrade (previously AvaFX) is a Forex and CFD broker and was founded in 2006. You can a trade a wide varieties of markets – forex, stocks, commodities, treasury bonds, indices and even Bitcoin and Litecoins CFDs.


Official website: http://www.avatrade.com

It is an established broker and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland (Reference No.: C53877).

Information You Must Know:

  • Min Deposit: $100 (depending on your country and currency)
  • Does NOT accept US clients
  • Leverage: Up to 1:400

Trading Bitcoins (This is what I like most)

What I like about AvaTrade is that you can trade Bitcoins. It is one of the few brokers that allows you to trade Bitcoins. Please take note that you are not actually buying Bitcoin itself. You are trading (buy/sell) the CFD and profit from its price movement.

You can trade Bitcoins CFDs at up to 20:1 leverage and the spread is $6 under normal conditions (can vary). Below is screenshot of the web-based platform where I attempted to buy 1.00 Bitcoin CFD. The web platform is very neat and intuitive to use.


Trading Platforms:

  • Ava Trader
  • MT4 (MetaTrader 4)
  • Webtrader
  • Mobile
  • Automated (via Mirror Trader and ZuluTrade)

I tried my hands on their proprietary platform –  Ava Trader (screenshot below). At first, it looks daunting because I am not used to the platform. However, after a while I find that it is actually very easy to use. All the buttons and icons are self-explanatory.

They are categorised in a very orderly manner. As you can see from the screenshot below, I can see the prices, my open positions, charting and have access to the news and education all at one glance.

Ava Trader:


MT4 (MetaTrader 4)

There is no need much introduction for MT4. It’s the industry’s standard. Most Forex brokers have MT4 as their platform and Avatrade is no exception.



Avatrade Spreads:

Avatrade does not charge any commission. They are compensated through the spreads. They offer fixed and floating spreads depending on what platform you are using.

Let’s take the most traded currency pair EUR/USD to compare. It is 3 pips for fixed spread and for floating spread, the minimum is 1 pip (typical 1.8 pips).

I find that 3 pips fixed spread is absolutely “expensive”! The typical spread for EUR/USD is usually 1-2 pips in other brokers. Just go for the floating spreads if you are using the MT4 platform.

Deposit/Withdrawal Methods:

It is pretty easy to fund your account and there are several methods to do it:

  • Credit/Debit Card
  • Wire Transfer
  • e-payment such as PayPal (not for EU clients)

I suggest you go for credit card funding, as the money will be deposited into your account instantly. Wire transfer will take a few business days.

To withdraw, you will need to fill out a withdrawal form and will take 5 business days to be processed. You can also apply for Ava Debit Mastercard for an easy way to withdraw profits from your AvaTrade account. However it is currently only available for US dollar accounts.

Bonus for New Clients:

Avatrade is giving out bonus of up to $10,000 for new customers who open and fund their accounts. Of course, terms and conditions apply. How much bonus you get will depend on how much you fund your account.



Any Complaint or Dissatisfied Customers?

And so far, I have no issue with Avatrade. I am trading mainly on the major forex pairs and all my execution on my positions are fine, opening and closing my positions with no problems. So far so good.

Is the Customer Support Good?

Avatrade provides a 24/5 email, phone and live chat support. Extremely easy to get in touch with them.

I must say I like their live chat. It is fast and the support staff can handle all my questions with ease. Below is a screenshot of my conversation with the live chat support. It is up to my expectation.


Pros and Cons In a Nutshell

Pros

Regulated and established broker
Multiple trading platforms
Able to trade Bitcoins
Automated trading available
Live chat support
Low minimum deposit of $100
New client bonus
Comprehensive trading education

Cons

21-day demo account
5-day withdrawal time
Higher spread if you choose fixed spread option

My Personal Verdict:

Actually there is nothing much to fault on Avatrade. It is a very established broker and their platforms are stable (I am using MT4). Their support is also up to my expectation. If you are new to trading, its extensive educational and training materials will definitely help you to get started.

As I am an experienced trader, I am looking for a stable platform that can execute my positions seamlessly with reasonably tight spreads (I am using floating spread), and Avatrade passes with flying colours.

I highly recommend Avatrade. Go and open a demo account first, test out the platforms and then fund your account with them.