I equate retail Forex trading to growing up in today’s world. Think about it. You’re 17 or 18 years old. You grow up on the internet. The new Internet. Not the AOL, you’ve got mail, under construction, dial-up Internet. The new, open source, 2.0 social web where you can connect with friends all over the world, sharing pictures, ideas and information from any coffee shop or handheld device. Online Forex trading has the personality of a 17-year-old, but has been stuck in the grey pinstriped suit of a middle-aged guy.
I did time at all the big banks and brokers back when there was no such thing as retail Forex trading. The big guys only cared about the institutional money. That’s where all the currency bean-counting happened. It wasn’t about how many pips a trade made – it was all about hedging, managing risk and speculating. Who’s counting individual pips when you’re trading billions of dollars each day? They had sprawling trading desks staffed with phones and Bloomberg terminals and wing-tipped shoe wearing guys in suspenders. We all know how that ended up.
Fast forward to the 21st century. There was a crash. And a burn. People were looking for a new way to make a dollar. Cynical about the stock market and eager to try their hand at something new, online Forex trading came onto the scene. Retail brokers scrambled to add it on to their “other asset classes” offering and tried to make a go of it. In the background, business types all over the world started to see the opportunity to build Forex trading systems that any ordinary trader could use. As these online brokers started to crop up, so did the social web. Now, anyone could learn about Forex. Even your average Joe.
“….Just as the advent of the internet has removed the physical barrier to Forex, social media is steadily removing the perceptual barrier, and all accompanying stigmatisms to boot. The ability to collaborate trading strategies and market predictions while tapping the overall global knowledge base, are all advantages social media is bringing to the table for online trading firms. Social media established the infrastructure necessary for a truly global online Forex community that could eventually lead to a virtual collective trading block, matching (and potentially dwarfing) the trading power and influence of those major institutions we mentioned earlier, when it comes to driving market shift.”
It’s really about the old versus the new. The old Forex market was closed, isolated and scam-infested. It was a 1-to-1 trading experience between a trader and a broker. The new Forex market is all about embracing the larger social trend to foster trust, transparency, community and knowledge-sharing between many Forex traders and many Forex businesses. Brokers, online communities, news and education websites are all here to serve the millions of Forex traders who wake up every day ready to trade.
The social dish is the Forex game-changer. Imagine the possibilities when you start as a social financial services company, rather than trying to bolt on a bunch of social features to your big old corporate infrastructure. Just try to get that approved by Compliance. The face of Forex has come a long way, baby, and feels more like “the 25 to 35 year old male with long hair, jeans, and some extra cash to burn on the side (thanks for that quote, Ayelet).” Some guys have all the fun.
=====
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.
-------
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. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
What do these three Forex experts have in common? Not much. That’s what makes it so interesting when you can corral these guys and ask them about juicy topics like the outlook for USD/JPY, the G-20 and the emotion of trading.
This week, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel with Jamie Coleman from FXLive, Shaun Downey from iTraders and Boris Schlossberg from GFT. We picked a controversial topic – Forex Sentiment & Volume – two pieces of the puzzle that keep Forex traders searching for tips and tricks to the secret sauce. It started out with an interesting poll that really highlighted the entire issue. Before the webinar, we polled our experts on their outlook for the USD/JPY – long, short or hold. We also polled the hundreds of webinar attendees with the same question. Then, we looked at what the Currensee social trading network was doing on that pair at that time. The results?
Everyone had different opinions. The experts said long, the audience said short and the Currensee network was long but those who were short were actually winning on their trades. So what’s a trader to do? The experts had a great debate on the merits of sentiment and the wisdom of the crowds. They agreed that how wise the crowd is depends a lot on which crowd you’re talking about.
We then moved on and talked about volume and asked the traders how they look at volume. We’ll post a clip from this discussion later on, but for now it should suffice to say there were some differing opinions on the value – or even the existence – of this measurement in Forex markets.
We even covered the price of gold, a question Boris hates, and the G-20, the one place where everyone pretty much agreed that the dollar will remain the world reserve currency for some period of time (phew). We had very interactive Q&A, including an interesting question on Forex collaboration. A trader asked the panelists about whether they collaborate on trades and if it works. Boris quickly jumped in and discussed his approach with trading partner, Kathy Lien. He talked about how they make all of their trade decisions together and stick by the decisions they make – good, bad or ugly. He shared the power of working together to come up with smart trading ideas and how Forex trading is changing with access to new information and tools. We couldn’t have ended the session on a higher note.
Another Currensee Expert Panel is in the works for November. If you have questions you’d like ask, topics you’d like us to consider or panelists you think would be great to add, please submit a comment here and let us know. Have a listen to the experts. I hope you learn a few new things, I certainly did.
======
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.
-------
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. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
We’re really excited that these good folks have taken the time to appear on our panel and answer not just our questions but also yours! We’re going to start off with a quick check-in on the outlook for the USD/JPY from technical, fundamental and social viewpoints, and then move into some questions about how the experts see the issues around volume and sentiment in Forex. Please join us at 2pm ET today for a chance to pose your fx trading question to Shaun, Jamie and Boris. There are just a few seats left…
======
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.
-------
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. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
Today in Currensee’s community, there’s a good discussion on the USD/JPY. Marcie wrote that she may have gotten in at the wrong time and asked the community what to do. So far over 60% say “get out now, it’s only going to get worse” but the discussion is still going. Read the whole thread and vote in the poll at Currensee.com
As of this morning, 68% of the Currensee Forex community was long in this pair and losing. I wonder if that’s the same group telling Marcie to get out now? Will made an observation about Support and Resistance points. The community volatility widget shows support points a bit below the current USD/JPY price so maybe there’s still hope for the long side. Only time will tell.
======
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.
-------
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. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
Anyone who as been following the financial crisis in the past year has noticed the market has been driven mainly by the sentiment (and panic) of investors.
Since markets are driven by people, a few analytical methods have been developed over the years to better visualize human behavior as it’s being reflected on historical price charts, methods like Elliot Waves or Fibonacci attempt to use the movement in prices to predict human behavior and by predicting the behavior try to predict future price changes.
“Because humans are themselves rhythmical, their activities and decisions could be predicted in rhythms” – Ralph Nelson Elliot
The reality is that we are all different. Each one of us has a different agenda when trading, different expectation and different analysis of the market even though we are exposed to the same information; especially in a crisis situation where human behavior is anything but predictable.
Since human behavior plays an important role in market behavior, we’re developing a unique way of looking at the market by developing our own algorithm which computes a real-time market depth that can, at any time, be sliced by the trading style, technique, holding period etc.
New Feature: Market Depth
This means I can visualize how the day traders that specialize in the EUR/USD, have an average trade duration of 4 hours, and use the Fibonacci method see the market and how their analysis is changing in real time.
======
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.
-------
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. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
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 did time at all the big banks and brokers back when there was no such thing as retail Forex trading. The big guys only cared about the institutional money. That’s where all the currency bean-counting happened. It wasn’t about how many pips a trade made – it was all about hedging, managing risk and speculating. Who’s counting individual pips when you’re trading billions of dollars each day? They had sprawling trading desks staffed with phones and Bloomberg terminals and wing-tipped shoe wearing guys in suspenders. We all know how that ended up.
Entries (RSS)