Are you looking to earn a quick buck? No need to trip over small children or fellow pip chasers, because all Currensee members are getting an extra 10 Bonus Bucks to spend in the Currensee Marketplace as part of our Bucksapalooza extravaganza. The Pips of Currensee are fans of free Bucks and tacky names, and thought there was no better way to kick off this [sticky] summer than to give back to the traders that give us a reason to come to work every day.
To the skeptics and party poopers, here’s the not-so-fine print you’re all waiting for:
You get 10 Bonus Bucks. Really, they’re free. You don’t owe us your firstborn, but we do enjoy homemade soufflés.
Spend your Bonus Bucks and other Bucks you’ve earned by participating on Currensee.com towards purchases in the Currensee Marketplace.
Your 10 Bonus Bucks and this offer will self-destruct on Wednesday, June 30, 2010. On Thursday you will wake up a refreshed individual minus those 10 Bonus Bucks if you haven’t spent them.
Why are we doing this? Well, the obvious answer is because we’re awesome. But the real reason is because we’re always riding our high-horse about real traders, real trades, real time, and it’s time to give back with real rewards. We’ve really pulled out all the stops so you can get your Buck’s worth. Choose from live trade planning webinars, daily newsletters from our Chief Market Analyst, a Thomson Reuters trading widget, and more. In fact, if you’re reading this your Currensee Bonus Bucks are waiting. Quit reading about it and go spend your free money!
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
The pips of Currensee Towers are excited to welcome back Lara Iriarte of ForexInfoUSA for another Elliott Wave webinar on Thursday, May 27 at 8:00am New York time. It’s free to attend with the code “blog” (that’s creative, isn’t it?) We hope you’ll join us. This webinar is for your if you’re curious about how to apply Elliott Wave analysis to your Forex trading setups, even if you don’t know (yet) what Elliott Wave is all about.
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
This guest post comes from Joel Arnold of Forextraders.com. Joel became a financial and forex analyst firsthand through years of self-taught investment. His interest in economics has been a lifelong hobby, fulfilled through various books, magazines, and courses. Joel has added to his knowledge of international economics through business trips around the world including Europe, Asia, and Africa. Currently, he is writing an academic book while continuing his exploration of economics.
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For a currency trader to be successful, three essential qualities must be present: knowledge about what you are doing, experience gained from both good and bad decisions, and most important of all, control of one’s emotions. Preparation is key to starting out, but a new and aspiring student to the world of trading in any market is immediately faced with information overload. Websites, articles, charts, tutorials, demo accounts, and training classes of all types and sizes are but a few items demanding your precious attention when you are starting your process. Where do you begin?
There are many excellent forex training courses available on the Internet. You must invest the time to familiarize yourself with the process, the lingo, technical analysis and chart indicators, brokers, and demo accounts. From these humble beginnings, you will begin to build the knowledge base necessary to satisfy your first “quality” requirement.
There are also many sites that offer reviews of forex brokers. Your broker will provide access to the market, a forex demo account for you to gain risk-free trading experience (“quality” number two), and charts to guide you through the process and help you develop your own profitable trading strategies. Forex charts come in a variety of styles and types, some two-dimensional, some even three. Let’s keep it simple and use the figure below as our guide, taken from one of many free educational papers on the web.
This chart tracks the daily price activity for the British Pound (GBP) versus the U.S. Dollar (USD). Notice the nice wave pattern of the red and blue “candlesticks”. The candlestick symbol presents the high, low, open and close for the trading period. The little box represents the open and close value range, and in this case, it is Blue if the closing price was higher than the opening. The price figures on the right of the chart represent the conversion from Pounds to Dollar. Every currency pair has an “accepted” way of being communicated. Be sure to learn these conventions. One example above is “1.8825”, which translates to one Pound equals 1.8825 Dollars. If you ever hear the term “Pips”, that refers to the furthest figure to the right, or 5 pips in this case.
The chart also illustrates how to use indicators to determine when it may be the best time to buy or sell a position. Did you notice the “RSI” chart on the bottom? This stands for “Relative Strength Index”, one of a variety of “momentum” indicators. A momentum indicator attempts to calculate when the market is overbought, a “sell” signal, or oversold, a “buy” signal, by analyzing the magnitude of recent gains and losses. In this case, the chart uses an 8-day prior period RSI, the blue line, and also inserts an 8-day Moving Average curve, the red line, in the chart. When these lines cross, a signal is given that it may be advantageous to buy or sell as represented by the purple and green shaded areas.
The market strategy presented above is one of the most basic ever conceived, i.e., buy on the lows and sell on the highs. In forex, you can also use “leverage” to magnify your gains, and unfortunately, also your losses. With leverage, you borrow from your broker in order to purchase a larger lot of currency, which generally comes in $100,000 lot sizes. If you have $10,000 in your account, your broker may allow you to borrow $100,000, thus giving you the opportunity to increase your profits ten-fold. These decisions are highly dependent on risk and volatility issues that must line up correctly before engaging in the practice.
Foreign currency exchange rates fluctuate based on a variety of determinants, both technical and fundamental. Technical factors relate to the study of the dynamics of market trends once they are under way, rather than with the supply and demand factors, which cause them. Technical analysis searches for recurring patterns, resistance levels, and the strength of trends by using moving averages and momentum indicators. Fundamentals relate to conditions of a country, either economic, financial, political, or of a crisis nature. The recent debt crisis in Europe confirmed the important role that fundamentals play in our global markets.
After a bit of preparation, knowledge gathering and assimilation, the next step in the process is to gain experience with a broker’s forex demo account. Many offer $10,000 of “play money” to try your hand at online trading from a virtual account status. Gaining experience is the second quality you must master before putting real capital at risk in the market.
Lastly, there is a psychology of trading which must be respected. Emotions can undo even the best trader’s intentions. Document and develop a trading routine. A disciplined approach is the only way to effectively control one’s emotions, “quality” number three in our hit parade.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Some people learn by reading books, some by doing, and some by watching or listening. This Thursday, Currensee is presenting another opportunity to learn from a Forex pro by watching and listening to live trading. We’re thrilled to welcome Willie Guevara of YourTradingRoom and the 4XLosAngeles group on Thursday, May 13 at 8:30am New York time for a session called “Momentum Trading Live with Willie Guevara“ It’s $9.95 but there’s a hefty discount for blog readers on that link, and Currensee members can get in free – the link is posted in the community.
I met Willie not too long ago when I presented Currensee to his 4XLA group, and I can attest the he’s a good guy and a great presenter.. In this webinar he’ll show us his breakout strategy and illuminate ways in which the London session is different from the others. And as usual, all registrants will get an exclusive special deal on a YourTradingRoom product via the Currensee marketplace. We hope to see you there!
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
I wish I could tell you which way the dollar was going to move this week, but I can tell you two things that are certain to happen on Friday: the Fed will announce the April Non-Farm Payrolls number and Currensee will present a live trading webinar featuring trader Alex Kazmarck of SpotEuro. The Fed drops the number at 8:30 Washington time and the webinar starts half an hour before at 8:00am sharp, US Eastern time.
The consensus forecast as of this writing is for net gain of 197k jobs, the biggest gain in quite some time, but the consensus has been wide of the mark in the past. The January number, announced in early February, was forecast for a gain of 10k, announced at a loss of 20k and later revised downward to a total loss of 26k jobs. Last month the forecast called for a gain of 185k but only 162k materialized. The Good Friday holiday and a UK bank holiday muted the market’s reaction, but there are no such obstacles this month.
The EUR/USD has been on a downswing lately with the Greek kerfuffle and whatnot, and strength in the US employment picture traditionally points to weakness in the pair, but good news that’s not good enough can have the same effect as bad news. Join us Friday morning and watch a pro trader set up for the announcement and follow the trading action live.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Tomorrow afternoon we’re putting on a special free show, a Forex panel discussion webinar called Are you a Scalper, a Swinger, or a Holder? with John Forman, Shaun Downey and Mike Baghdady. Please join us as these experts help us explore the different timing approaches to Forex trading . We’ve got some basic questions for the panel, but the main event will be opening up the lines to your questions, live!
Are you a scalper looking for the rush of that immediate and fleeting opportunity? Do you look for short-term misalignments in price and grab a few pips of profit in positions that frequently last only seconds? Are you a swinger with a more patient strategy to examine patterns over days, or weeks? Or are you a holder, keeping your positions safely stowed away until the broader and more fundamental plays can be made? If you are not any of these, you are probably someone who bets on a good night’s sleep.
Mike Baghdady, SpyGlass Trading: Baghdady is the world’s foremost expert on Price Behavior and a 33-year veteran of the global financial markets, spending the tail-end of his professional career on the NYBOT trading floor until its merger with the InterContinental Exchange.
Shaun Downey, CQG and Currensee: As Chief Market Analyst at Currensee, Shaun brings his extensive knowledge of both the fundamental and technical Forex arena to provide commentary, insight and trading strategies to the Currensee trader network and the Forex industry at large.
John Forman, Thomson Reuters: Forman is a Senior Foreign Exchange Analyst for the IFR Markets group of Thomson Reuters and author of The Essentials of Trading. John is a 20+ year veteran of the financial markets. He holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and a BS from the University of Rhode Island, both concentrating in Finance.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Here at Currensee Towers we’re all about Forex education. We’re always learning and we like to help share that learning with traders in the Currensee community and beyond. So this week’s webinar – Creating your own Autotrading Strategy with Dr. Todd Hanson of LiveTradeSignals.com – is free and open to the public. Dr. Hanson will be taking your Forex Autotrading questions live. It’s at 4pm US Eastern Time on Wednesday April 21, and you can register free here.
Here’s the skinny:
Join Currensee and Dr. Todd Hanson for this informative discussion of automated trading and how to set up your own autotrading strategy. Dr. Hanson will present an overview of automated trading principles, deliver a live demo of LiveTradeSignals.com’s offerings and take your questions live. You will learn…
The definition of automated trade signals and strategies
The critical pieces needed to develop a sound automated signal or strategy
How to employ an automated trade signal or strategy to seize potential market opportunities
In addition, all webinar guests will get an offer from the Currensee Marketplace to try LiveTradeSignals.com’s service at a special price. We hope you can join us.
About LiveTradeSignals and Dr. Todd Hanson: LiveTradeSignals is the vision of Dr. Todd Hanson, PhD, who saw the opportunity to present real trading techniques to anyone serious about trading. Dr Hanson took his Doctorate in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley with a dissertation based on mathematical models for systems trading. In the years since his Doctorate, those systems and techniques have expanded, becoming more refined and effective. Dr. Hanson has become a recognized authority in the industry, with his opinion regularly sought by media outlets including CNBC, Reuters, Barron’s, Fox News, and many others.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
“CQG’s Downey said a close below C$1.0000 would target a move to C$0.9740. A move through resistance at the top of the recent range would clear a path to $1.0264, he said.
‘When it breaks, you’re looking for a reasonably big move, that’s for sure,’ Downey said.”
You may remember that we had a guest post last week by Yohay Elam discussing Kathy Lien’s post about the USD/CAD. Yohay suggested that the CAD would probably gain strength on positive news, but the WSJ called the move “little changed” even after good trade reports. Many – including Downey – are waiting for a bigger move yet to come, but which way?
Taking a quick peek at the Currensee dash and social indicators, we can see that the community is split with about 1/2 of the volume short and winning, but only 1/3 of the positions in the black. Checking out the leaderboard, we can see that seven of the top 20 traders by performance are trading the USD/CAD, a higher rate than the community at large. If you were trading friends with those top traders, you’d have an idea of which way they were leaning on this pair.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Currensee and FX Power Tactics present a free LIVE trading event with professional trader Russell Rice on Wednesday, April 7 at 8am US Eastern Time. We hope to see you there!
Please join us tomorrow to watch as Russell Rice, long-time professional Forex trader, creator of the Spike Look Fine Tuning Tool and Market Emotion Detector, presents his trading philosophies and techniques. Russell will show off his techniques and take your questions live.
In this informative and practical webinar, Russell will show you:
* how to use the Spike Look/Fine Tuning Tool
* the perils of chasing a price move after it happens
* how to find entry points with the Market Emotion Detector indicator
The Webinar is $10 for the public and free for Currensee members (Log in to Currensee or contact us if you haven’t received your invite) and with the special code “blog” (that’s original, isn’t it?) it’s also free for Currensee Exchange readers.
About Russel Rice:
Russell Rice in a former AMEX floor trader with over 25 years experience trading all asset classes. He leverages a Spike Look/Fine Tuning Tool that can help immensely to improve necessary trading skills and build objectivity for Forex traders like you.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Once again, Currensee is teaming up with Alex Kazmarck from SpotEuro for a live trading webinar on the announcement of the March non-farm payrolls number tomorrow morning at 8am Eastern time. It’s usually $10, but readers of this blog can enter the discount code “blog” for a 100% discount and attend free of charge. We hope to see you there!
The analysts are predicting a big gain in jobs this month, so the session is sure to be interesting!
- EUR/USD will be emphasized
- Learn how to trade during news events.
- See how technical analysis is applied to live market charts.
- Support and Resistance levels will be determined before the release
- Ask questions while the market is moving.
About the Non-Farm Payrolls:
The change in the number of people employed in the USA excluding the farming industry is an important leading indicator of consumer spending which in turn drives overall economic activity. It is released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the first Friday of each month. Positive news about employment is usually good for a currency.
Enter discount code “blog” for free admission:
About SpotEuro:
SpotEuro Forex Trading Signals was established to help novice Forex traders trade successfully. Throughout the first several years of trading, more than 90% of Forex traders fail. Many are not lucky to last that long and blow up their accounts within the first couple of months. Most failure is due to a lack of discipline.
About our presenter:
Alex Kazmarck brings 10 years of market analysis experience and will talk about the price action as it is occurring before, during, and after the release of the Non-Farm Payrolls data.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Currensee is the first social network for forex traders. We bring Forex traders from around the world together to make trading decisions in real time using live trading data.
I met Willie not too long ago when I presented Currensee to his 4XLA group, and I can attest the he’s a good guy and a great presenter.. In this webinar he’ll show us his breakout strategy and illuminate ways in which the London session is different from the others. And as usual, all registrants will get an exclusive special deal on a YourTradingRoom product via the Currensee marketplace. 
LiveTradeSignals is the vision of Dr. Todd Hanson, PhD, who saw the opportunity to present real trading techniques to anyone serious about trading. Dr Hanson took his Doctorate in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley with a dissertation based on mathematical models for systems trading. In the years since his Doctorate, those systems and techniques have expanded, becoming more refined and effective. Dr. Hanson has become a recognized authority in the industry, with his opinion regularly sought by media outlets including CNBC, Reuters, Barron’s, Fox News, and many others.
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