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Thursday, January 13, 2011
Forex: Canadian International Merchandise Trade sharks
Forex: Canadian International Merchandise Trade sharks to USD 0.08 Billion
Thursday, 13 January 2011 17:55 GMT
| By Savvas Mylonas
Canada released today its International Merchandise Trade report which came to $0.08B. The report is released by the Statistics Canada and shows the difference between imports and exports of goods. Negative International Merchandise Trade shows that imports of goods are larger than exports. When exports are larger than imports, Canada experiences a trade surplus. Trade surpluses shows that funds are coming into Canada in exchange for exported goods.
The report showed that the International Merchandise Trade deficit for November reached 0.08 billion dollars improved from the previous deficit of 1.7 billion.
Following the release of the report the Canadian dollar edged lower against its major rivals but at the time of writing this report it is trading at 0.9864 against the US dollar, 83.82 against the Japanese yen and 1.3182 against the euro.
Thursday, 13 January 2011 17:55 GMT
| By Savvas Mylonas
Canada released today its International Merchandise Trade report which came to $0.08B. The report is released by the Statistics Canada and shows the difference between imports and exports of goods. Negative International Merchandise Trade shows that imports of goods are larger than exports. When exports are larger than imports, Canada experiences a trade surplus. Trade surpluses shows that funds are coming into Canada in exchange for exported goods.
The report showed that the International Merchandise Trade deficit for November reached 0.08 billion dollars improved from the previous deficit of 1.7 billion.
Following the release of the report the Canadian dollar edged lower against its major rivals but at the time of writing this report it is trading at 0.9864 against the US dollar, 83.82 against the Japanese yen and 1.3182 against the euro.
Forex: UK’s trade deficit rises to record high
Forex: UK’s trade deficit rises to record high
Wednesday, 12 January 2011 10:26 GMT
| By Yiannis Papatheodoulou
Today numbers showed Britain's trade deficit widening to £8.736 billion pounds from October's £8.59 billion and beating expectations of £8.33 billion. This was the biggest trade deficit since records began in January 1980. The Sterling slipped some 46 pips against the US Dollar after the Total Trade Balance data came out. The British Pound slipped from its one month high against the greenback to a low of 1.5633. The GBPUSD pair now is trading at 1.5636.
National Statistics releases the Trade Balance, which is the balance between exports and imports of goods and services. A positive result indicates surplus, while a negative reading shows deficit. If steady demand in exchange for UK exports is observed it is usually turns into growth and that is positive for the Sterling.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011 10:26 GMT
| By Yiannis Papatheodoulou
Today numbers showed Britain's trade deficit widening to £8.736 billion pounds from October's £8.59 billion and beating expectations of £8.33 billion. This was the biggest trade deficit since records began in January 1980. The Sterling slipped some 46 pips against the US Dollar after the Total Trade Balance data came out. The British Pound slipped from its one month high against the greenback to a low of 1.5633. The GBPUSD pair now is trading at 1.5636.
National Statistics releases the Trade Balance, which is the balance between exports and imports of goods and services. A positive result indicates surplus, while a negative reading shows deficit. If steady demand in exchange for UK exports is observed it is usually turns into growth and that is positive for the Sterling.
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Why peopleTrade
Why Trade the News
The simple answer to that question is "To make more money!"
But in all seriousness, trading the news gives us another opportunity to trade the forex market. As we learned in the previous section, news is a very important part to the market because it's what makes it move!
When news comes out, especially important news that everyone is watching, you can expect to see some major movement. Your goal as a trader is to get on the right side of the move, but the fact that you know the market will indeed move somewhere makes it an opportunity definitely worth looking at.
Dangers of trading the news
As with any trading strategy, there are always possible dangers that you should be aware of.
Here are some of those dangers:
Because the market is very volatile during important news events, many dealers widen the spread during these times. This increases trading costs and could hurt your bottom line.
You could also get "locked out" which means that your trade could be executed at the right time but may not show up in your trading station for a few minutes. Obviously this is bad for you because you won't be able to make any adjustments if the trade moves against you!
Imagine thinking you didn't get triggered, so you try to enter at market... then you realize that your original ordered got triggered! You'd be risking twice as much now!
The simple answer to that question is "To make more money!"
But in all seriousness, trading the news gives us another opportunity to trade the forex market. As we learned in the previous section, news is a very important part to the market because it's what makes it move!
When news comes out, especially important news that everyone is watching, you can expect to see some major movement. Your goal as a trader is to get on the right side of the move, but the fact that you know the market will indeed move somewhere makes it an opportunity definitely worth looking at.
Dangers of trading the news
As with any trading strategy, there are always possible dangers that you should be aware of.
Here are some of those dangers:
Because the market is very volatile during important news events, many dealers widen the spread during these times. This increases trading costs and could hurt your bottom line.
You could also get "locked out" which means that your trade could be executed at the right time but may not show up in your trading station for a few minutes. Obviously this is bad for you because you won't be able to make any adjustments if the trade moves against you!
Imagine thinking you didn't get triggered, so you try to enter at market... then you realize that your original ordered got triggered! You'd be risking twice as much now!
3 Ways to Trade Forex
3 Ways to Trade Forex News
By John Jagerson | TradingMarkets.com | February 16, 2010 08:49 AM
Tags: forex news trade, forex news trading, trade forex news, forex market news
Capital markets, in general, are unique from other markets for goods and services. While I do believe the Forex is driven by supply and demand for the respective currencies at play, often what really moves the markets is anticipation of future supply and demand rather than actual supply and demand. That realization comes to most traders at some point in their career. This concept leads to the biggest question in the Forex: where do these estimates of supply and demand come from?
Surely a comprehensive survey of every user of every currency is impossible. However, there are ways to aggregate and access some information in one place. This is the purpose of news and announcements. News comes from a variety of sources--both commercial and governmental. In the Forex, an emphasis is placed on the value of information or news from government sources. This is fine and is certainly a location on which I place a lot of my own attention, but commercial sources and general investor commentary can do a lot to improve your trading as well.
The purpose of this article is to provide some basic step-by-step methods you can employ today to take advantage of forex news in the market. I have some experiences that I will share to show how you can find some great trades and how you can identify the duds before they become real bombs in your portfolio. The examples I am using in this article are not the only possible trades available. There are a variety of events each month that can be used to time a good trade. It is useful to watch ongoing news stories that are currently dominating the headlines and minds of investors to identify trading opportunities. The significance of one piece of news over another will change over time. An easy gauge to tell what is important and what can be minimized is the news coverage itself. If one piece of information or speculation about that information is dominating the scene, then it is clearly something you need to be aware of.
As we proceed through this article, I will share some rules that I have used in the past to profit from news events. However, I think it is somewhat foolhardy to rely completely on a set of rules established in the past. Adjusting your price targets and stops to market volatility and your own risk tolerance is very important. Similarly, while I consider myself a swing trader--willing to hold a position for between 2-3 days and 2-3 weeks--there is a lot of room for good day- or shorter-term traders and long-term traders as well. I will periodically take some very short-term trades around a specific announcement, and I will share those circumstances with you in this article. Understanding the news is very important for every trader, especially those looking at the long-term play. In my book, Profiting with Forex, I spend a great deal of time illustrating the long-term effects of fundamental changes on the Forex.
Before we begin diving into specific strategies, it is important to accumulate our arsenal of trading weapons. Two of the strategies I will be discussing rely on the use of an outright long or short position. You could take this position in either the spot Forex market, which most of you are probably using, or in the exchange-listed currency futures market on the CME. The third strategy begins diving into the world of options. For those of you familiar with equity options, currency-futures and some spot Forex dealers offer similar instruments for trading. Recently exotic, single-payment and binary options have also become popular. I will refrain from going into too much detail here and instead just pick one type as an example. Check them out on your own, and see how they work for you.
Example #1
The first technique I have to share comes with a couple of tips. First, I have found that news that involves the U.S. dollar usually has the biggest impact on the market as a whole. I am sure most traders are already aware of this, but with very few exceptions they tend to be the most closely watched by the greatest number of participants. Each month there are some ï'hotï' news announcements, one of which is the unemployment report, which is released on the first Friday of each month. The trick with this, however, is that the largest moves are usually made when the numbers miss or beat expectations. But be careful. The correction usually happens very quickly. I use an easy technique to get me into the market before the move occurs with a generous stop and limit order on the other two sides of the trade.
forex market news
Source: Prophet.net
The chart above shows a graph of the EUR/USD pair during the labor announcement of August 4, 2006. The numbers released showed that a substantially lower number of new jobs had been created in the U.S. than had been anticipated. In this case, the consensus estimate was around 150,000 new jobs and the actual number came in around 113,000. That means that the U.S. economy was weaker than expected, or at least the labor side of the economy was. This is not good news for the U.S. dollar, and therefore we saw a move up in this pair. Another tip I can share from my personal experience is that I have had the best success trading U.S. economic news and announcements with the EUR/USD than any other pair. I feel that it is a good proxy for the U.S. economy in general or at least in very short time spans.
If we were to break this chart down into minutes or seconds following the announcement, you would see how quickly it moved. Therefore, I would have had to have lightning fingers on my buy button or a buddy on the dealing desk to have taken advantage of the announcement once it was issued. I unfortunately have neither. I did profit from this announcement, however, by anticipating the marketï's movement.
I want to emphasize, though, that I am willing to do this when the conditions of a couple of rules have been met. First, I will only trade the direction that the market has been trending on the daily charts previous to the announcement. Second, I will only enter the order if just prior to the announcement the market has been in a fairly tight range.
In the chart above you can see that the market had been trading in a fairly tight range until 30 minutes prior to the announcement. Because the volatility in that last 30 minutes was really concentrated in the last 5 minutes before the announcement I had already placed my order and was not concerned. Call me paranoid, but if I am seeing large moves the night or several hours before an announcement, I get too nervous to take the trade. I suspect that either word has leaked (unlikely) or that I will get whipsawed by wound-up traders just following the actual news. That means that there are plenty of occasions that I have spent a lot of time preparing for a trade that I cancel prior to launch. The risk that I worry about the most is when the market is too volatile and whips me out before I even have a chance to prove if I am right or not.
In the chart below, you can see the daily trend of the EUR/USD before the announcement on the 4th. Clearly, the market was discounting the dollar and already had a bullish bias on this pair before the trade. Thus my two setup rules were satisfied, qualifying this as a legitimate opportunity.
forex news trade
Source: Prophet.net
Of course, there is more detail behind how I set these trades up. This is pretty simple and is open to customization depending on the situation and your personal preferences. I have placed another chart illustrating the setup with my trade barriers in place below. There are some components of the potential trade that are already in place before the announcement. I know that I am planning to trade long based on the previous trend, and I am targeting 100 pips as upside potential based on the average movement I have seen on this pair during previous months. I like to maintain a pretty aggressive stop-loss-to-profit-target ratio in my trading so a stop 25 pips below my entry is sufficient. Entering the trade 30 minutes before the announcement gives me plenty of room before the pair breaks out of its range.
trade news
Source: Prophet.net
As you can imagine, the market does not always hit my limit just because I think it should. If momentum begins to cool off and the market falls back into a smaller channel again, I will elect to close the trade early. A few other news announcements I recommend for this strategy include inflation data, FOMC meeting announcements and trade numbers.
Example #2
International trade is another announcement that I like to trade. I like it because it has growth and economic strength implications for the U.S., and it is a very important metric for trade-centric economies, like that of Japan. In fact, I generally concentrate on the USD/JPY pair when this announcement is due since the reaction can be quite dramatic. It is possible to trade other currencies that are trade dependent for economic health, but I prefer the USD/JPY because of its liquidity.
To understand how this trade works, it is important to understand the implications of trade balance. When an economy such as that of the U.S. is importing more from exporting currencies, those goods must ultimately be paid for in the local currency. In the example I am using here, that means Japanese goods must be paid for in Japanese yen. If the U.S. is doing the importing, then U.S. dollars must be sold to purchase Japanese yen. This shifts the supply and demand balance toward a stronger Japanese yen and a weaker U.S. dollar. In this case, that means that the USD/JPY exchange rate would decline in value. Conversely, if the U.S. trade deficit narrows, that means demand for Japanese yen could be declining and its value should drop relative to the U.S. dollar. If that is the case, the USD/JPY exchange rate will rise toward a weaker Japanese yen.
Like most U.S.-based economic announcements, trade is released an hour before the equity markets open at 8:30 a.m. eastern. Like the labor announcement, I need to set up my trade just prior to the announcement. I like to see the market in a tight range or channel. I have pulled a trade example from August 10, 2006. As you can see in the chart below, although the pair was declining in the hours prior to the announcement, the range was pretty tight without a lot of volatility whipping the market back and forth. This looks like a good setup and you can see the spike in the market after the announcement that the deficit was tightening occurred.
forex news trading
Source: Prophet.net
The fact that I setup my trade as a long position just prior to the announcement was determined by the trend in the daily chart. The market had basically been in an uptrend since May, and the most recent days during the week before also had a bullish bias. This is not an exact science, but it helps immensely to put the odds in your favor by using the tools you have at your disposal. You can also see from the daily chart of the USD/JPY that its daily range was fairly tight. This means that my target is a little smaller than it was on the EUR/USD in the previous example.
forex market news
Source: Prophet.net
In this case I used a 50-pip limit, or profit target, against a 15-pip stop loss. This still maintains a nice risk-to-reward ratio while allowing enough room for the market to shake out a little if needed.
As you can imagine, it is not uncommon to be wrong more times than you are right with any trading technique. It is therefore necessary to make sure that it is possible to be more right when you are right than wrong when you are wrong. I know many traders who talk about systems that are right 80 percent or more of the time, but the one time they are wrong, they wind up wiping out yearsï' worth of profits. If you ask me, I think it is healthier for my portfolio and my stress levels to take trades that have more balance between what I have at risk versus what I stand to gain if I am a winner.
Source: Prophet.net
Example #3
In this last example I have prepared, I need to introduce you to a special kind of option called a barrier option. This type of trading instrument is also known as a binary option, and is part of a group of options known as single-payment options. In order to use a barrier option, you have to decide on three things. The first is how far the currency pair is expected to go one direction or the other. The second is to know how long it will take to get there. And the third question you must answer is whether the currency will stay at or beyond your target for a certain length of time. That sounds complex, so letï's look at an example before we go on to a specific trade strategy.
I have an image of the EUR/USD exchange rate from the last half of July 2006 to the beginning of August 2006 below. If I thought that the market was likely to move a lot and I wanted to speculate to the downside, I could buy a barrier option that said that the market will close below 1.2500 at the end of seven days. If the rate does close below that level, I will be paid a certain amount. I will have to pay for the option, but I will stand to gain a lot more than I paid if I am right. If I am wrong, I will lose the total amount I invested in the option. Every time I explain this to new traders, they invariably say that it sounds like gambling. That would be true if the expected return was less than zero. But how many of us willingly trade for a negative expected return? In this real-life example, the option would cost me $1,500 for a potential payoff of $10,000.
Source: Prophet.net
One of the benefits of options is that I donï't have to use a stop loss because no matter how high this rate rises, I have already invested as much as I can lose. Another benefit is that I donï't have to worry about timing my exit. As long as the exchange rate closes below my barrier, I will be paid at the end of the contract. One final benefit is that it is possible, using options, to straddle (or strangle) the market by placing a barrier option on the upside and the downside. That means that you donï't have to be right about the direction of the market, you just have to be right about the potential for a big move. That makes this trade pretty simple and ideal for a news event. One helpful hint for new options traders is that you may have to plan a little farther in advance of this trade than you do on the others.
Recently I wrote an article about rising oil prices and its effects on Forex crosses involving oil-producing and oil-consuming countries. The example I used was the AUD/JPY. In this case, I was confident that the market would rise from support near 87.50 toward 89.00 or 90.00 within the short term. A purchase of an option on August 1, 2006 with a barrier at 89.00 and expiration at 10:00 am on August 14, 2006 cost $3,200 for a potential $10,000 payout. The benefit of not having to maintain a stop loss more than made up for the cost of the option and the lower risk-to-reward ratio.
forex news trading
Source: Prophet.net
In this example, I was speculating on an ongoing bit of news, rising oil prices, instead of a specific announcement. I used similar rules in that I traded with the trend. But because I was not pinned to a specific time and date, I could be a little more flexible with my entry timing. I liked the fact that this pair was at support and was still within a very strong uptrend.
Conclusion
Trading the news is important as an effective method for finding new trading opportunities and to become more aware of the fundamental forces at work in your portfolio. The opportunities presented are some of my favorite trades, but they are not the only reason to be aware of your surroundings. I am convinced that the Forex favors the well informed, and these methods can add a few more solid trades to your arsenal every month.
John Jagerson is a Forex writer and active trader. His book, Profiting With Forex, published by McGraw Hill, is available nationwide. This author also develops Forex education courses for INVESTools.com.
You can find more how-to and educational articles to improve your investing and trading each day on TradingMarkets.com.
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Original publication: June 09, 2008
>> See more articles by John Jagerson
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By John Jagerson | TradingMarkets.com | February 16, 2010 08:49 AM
Tags: forex news trade, forex news trading, trade forex news, forex market news
Capital markets, in general, are unique from other markets for goods and services. While I do believe the Forex is driven by supply and demand for the respective currencies at play, often what really moves the markets is anticipation of future supply and demand rather than actual supply and demand. That realization comes to most traders at some point in their career. This concept leads to the biggest question in the Forex: where do these estimates of supply and demand come from?
Surely a comprehensive survey of every user of every currency is impossible. However, there are ways to aggregate and access some information in one place. This is the purpose of news and announcements. News comes from a variety of sources--both commercial and governmental. In the Forex, an emphasis is placed on the value of information or news from government sources. This is fine and is certainly a location on which I place a lot of my own attention, but commercial sources and general investor commentary can do a lot to improve your trading as well.
The purpose of this article is to provide some basic step-by-step methods you can employ today to take advantage of forex news in the market. I have some experiences that I will share to show how you can find some great trades and how you can identify the duds before they become real bombs in your portfolio. The examples I am using in this article are not the only possible trades available. There are a variety of events each month that can be used to time a good trade. It is useful to watch ongoing news stories that are currently dominating the headlines and minds of investors to identify trading opportunities. The significance of one piece of news over another will change over time. An easy gauge to tell what is important and what can be minimized is the news coverage itself. If one piece of information or speculation about that information is dominating the scene, then it is clearly something you need to be aware of.
As we proceed through this article, I will share some rules that I have used in the past to profit from news events. However, I think it is somewhat foolhardy to rely completely on a set of rules established in the past. Adjusting your price targets and stops to market volatility and your own risk tolerance is very important. Similarly, while I consider myself a swing trader--willing to hold a position for between 2-3 days and 2-3 weeks--there is a lot of room for good day- or shorter-term traders and long-term traders as well. I will periodically take some very short-term trades around a specific announcement, and I will share those circumstances with you in this article. Understanding the news is very important for every trader, especially those looking at the long-term play. In my book, Profiting with Forex, I spend a great deal of time illustrating the long-term effects of fundamental changes on the Forex.
Before we begin diving into specific strategies, it is important to accumulate our arsenal of trading weapons. Two of the strategies I will be discussing rely on the use of an outright long or short position. You could take this position in either the spot Forex market, which most of you are probably using, or in the exchange-listed currency futures market on the CME. The third strategy begins diving into the world of options. For those of you familiar with equity options, currency-futures and some spot Forex dealers offer similar instruments for trading. Recently exotic, single-payment and binary options have also become popular. I will refrain from going into too much detail here and instead just pick one type as an example. Check them out on your own, and see how they work for you.
Example #1
The first technique I have to share comes with a couple of tips. First, I have found that news that involves the U.S. dollar usually has the biggest impact on the market as a whole. I am sure most traders are already aware of this, but with very few exceptions they tend to be the most closely watched by the greatest number of participants. Each month there are some ï'hotï' news announcements, one of which is the unemployment report, which is released on the first Friday of each month. The trick with this, however, is that the largest moves are usually made when the numbers miss or beat expectations. But be careful. The correction usually happens very quickly. I use an easy technique to get me into the market before the move occurs with a generous stop and limit order on the other two sides of the trade.
forex market news
Source: Prophet.net
The chart above shows a graph of the EUR/USD pair during the labor announcement of August 4, 2006. The numbers released showed that a substantially lower number of new jobs had been created in the U.S. than had been anticipated. In this case, the consensus estimate was around 150,000 new jobs and the actual number came in around 113,000. That means that the U.S. economy was weaker than expected, or at least the labor side of the economy was. This is not good news for the U.S. dollar, and therefore we saw a move up in this pair. Another tip I can share from my personal experience is that I have had the best success trading U.S. economic news and announcements with the EUR/USD than any other pair. I feel that it is a good proxy for the U.S. economy in general or at least in very short time spans.
If we were to break this chart down into minutes or seconds following the announcement, you would see how quickly it moved. Therefore, I would have had to have lightning fingers on my buy button or a buddy on the dealing desk to have taken advantage of the announcement once it was issued. I unfortunately have neither. I did profit from this announcement, however, by anticipating the marketï's movement.
I want to emphasize, though, that I am willing to do this when the conditions of a couple of rules have been met. First, I will only trade the direction that the market has been trending on the daily charts previous to the announcement. Second, I will only enter the order if just prior to the announcement the market has been in a fairly tight range.
In the chart above you can see that the market had been trading in a fairly tight range until 30 minutes prior to the announcement. Because the volatility in that last 30 minutes was really concentrated in the last 5 minutes before the announcement I had already placed my order and was not concerned. Call me paranoid, but if I am seeing large moves the night or several hours before an announcement, I get too nervous to take the trade. I suspect that either word has leaked (unlikely) or that I will get whipsawed by wound-up traders just following the actual news. That means that there are plenty of occasions that I have spent a lot of time preparing for a trade that I cancel prior to launch. The risk that I worry about the most is when the market is too volatile and whips me out before I even have a chance to prove if I am right or not.
In the chart below, you can see the daily trend of the EUR/USD before the announcement on the 4th. Clearly, the market was discounting the dollar and already had a bullish bias on this pair before the trade. Thus my two setup rules were satisfied, qualifying this as a legitimate opportunity.
forex news trade
Source: Prophet.net
Of course, there is more detail behind how I set these trades up. This is pretty simple and is open to customization depending on the situation and your personal preferences. I have placed another chart illustrating the setup with my trade barriers in place below. There are some components of the potential trade that are already in place before the announcement. I know that I am planning to trade long based on the previous trend, and I am targeting 100 pips as upside potential based on the average movement I have seen on this pair during previous months. I like to maintain a pretty aggressive stop-loss-to-profit-target ratio in my trading so a stop 25 pips below my entry is sufficient. Entering the trade 30 minutes before the announcement gives me plenty of room before the pair breaks out of its range.
trade news
Source: Prophet.net
As you can imagine, the market does not always hit my limit just because I think it should. If momentum begins to cool off and the market falls back into a smaller channel again, I will elect to close the trade early. A few other news announcements I recommend for this strategy include inflation data, FOMC meeting announcements and trade numbers.
Example #2
International trade is another announcement that I like to trade. I like it because it has growth and economic strength implications for the U.S., and it is a very important metric for trade-centric economies, like that of Japan. In fact, I generally concentrate on the USD/JPY pair when this announcement is due since the reaction can be quite dramatic. It is possible to trade other currencies that are trade dependent for economic health, but I prefer the USD/JPY because of its liquidity.
To understand how this trade works, it is important to understand the implications of trade balance. When an economy such as that of the U.S. is importing more from exporting currencies, those goods must ultimately be paid for in the local currency. In the example I am using here, that means Japanese goods must be paid for in Japanese yen. If the U.S. is doing the importing, then U.S. dollars must be sold to purchase Japanese yen. This shifts the supply and demand balance toward a stronger Japanese yen and a weaker U.S. dollar. In this case, that means that the USD/JPY exchange rate would decline in value. Conversely, if the U.S. trade deficit narrows, that means demand for Japanese yen could be declining and its value should drop relative to the U.S. dollar. If that is the case, the USD/JPY exchange rate will rise toward a weaker Japanese yen.
Like most U.S.-based economic announcements, trade is released an hour before the equity markets open at 8:30 a.m. eastern. Like the labor announcement, I need to set up my trade just prior to the announcement. I like to see the market in a tight range or channel. I have pulled a trade example from August 10, 2006. As you can see in the chart below, although the pair was declining in the hours prior to the announcement, the range was pretty tight without a lot of volatility whipping the market back and forth. This looks like a good setup and you can see the spike in the market after the announcement that the deficit was tightening occurred.
forex news trading
Source: Prophet.net
The fact that I setup my trade as a long position just prior to the announcement was determined by the trend in the daily chart. The market had basically been in an uptrend since May, and the most recent days during the week before also had a bullish bias. This is not an exact science, but it helps immensely to put the odds in your favor by using the tools you have at your disposal. You can also see from the daily chart of the USD/JPY that its daily range was fairly tight. This means that my target is a little smaller than it was on the EUR/USD in the previous example.
forex market news
Source: Prophet.net
In this case I used a 50-pip limit, or profit target, against a 15-pip stop loss. This still maintains a nice risk-to-reward ratio while allowing enough room for the market to shake out a little if needed.
As you can imagine, it is not uncommon to be wrong more times than you are right with any trading technique. It is therefore necessary to make sure that it is possible to be more right when you are right than wrong when you are wrong. I know many traders who talk about systems that are right 80 percent or more of the time, but the one time they are wrong, they wind up wiping out yearsï' worth of profits. If you ask me, I think it is healthier for my portfolio and my stress levels to take trades that have more balance between what I have at risk versus what I stand to gain if I am a winner.
Source: Prophet.net
Example #3
In this last example I have prepared, I need to introduce you to a special kind of option called a barrier option. This type of trading instrument is also known as a binary option, and is part of a group of options known as single-payment options. In order to use a barrier option, you have to decide on three things. The first is how far the currency pair is expected to go one direction or the other. The second is to know how long it will take to get there. And the third question you must answer is whether the currency will stay at or beyond your target for a certain length of time. That sounds complex, so letï's look at an example before we go on to a specific trade strategy.
I have an image of the EUR/USD exchange rate from the last half of July 2006 to the beginning of August 2006 below. If I thought that the market was likely to move a lot and I wanted to speculate to the downside, I could buy a barrier option that said that the market will close below 1.2500 at the end of seven days. If the rate does close below that level, I will be paid a certain amount. I will have to pay for the option, but I will stand to gain a lot more than I paid if I am right. If I am wrong, I will lose the total amount I invested in the option. Every time I explain this to new traders, they invariably say that it sounds like gambling. That would be true if the expected return was less than zero. But how many of us willingly trade for a negative expected return? In this real-life example, the option would cost me $1,500 for a potential payoff of $10,000.
Source: Prophet.net
One of the benefits of options is that I donï't have to use a stop loss because no matter how high this rate rises, I have already invested as much as I can lose. Another benefit is that I donï't have to worry about timing my exit. As long as the exchange rate closes below my barrier, I will be paid at the end of the contract. One final benefit is that it is possible, using options, to straddle (or strangle) the market by placing a barrier option on the upside and the downside. That means that you donï't have to be right about the direction of the market, you just have to be right about the potential for a big move. That makes this trade pretty simple and ideal for a news event. One helpful hint for new options traders is that you may have to plan a little farther in advance of this trade than you do on the others.
Recently I wrote an article about rising oil prices and its effects on Forex crosses involving oil-producing and oil-consuming countries. The example I used was the AUD/JPY. In this case, I was confident that the market would rise from support near 87.50 toward 89.00 or 90.00 within the short term. A purchase of an option on August 1, 2006 with a barrier at 89.00 and expiration at 10:00 am on August 14, 2006 cost $3,200 for a potential $10,000 payout. The benefit of not having to maintain a stop loss more than made up for the cost of the option and the lower risk-to-reward ratio.
forex news trading
Source: Prophet.net
In this example, I was speculating on an ongoing bit of news, rising oil prices, instead of a specific announcement. I used similar rules in that I traded with the trend. But because I was not pinned to a specific time and date, I could be a little more flexible with my entry timing. I liked the fact that this pair was at support and was still within a very strong uptrend.
Conclusion
Trading the news is important as an effective method for finding new trading opportunities and to become more aware of the fundamental forces at work in your portfolio. The opportunities presented are some of my favorite trades, but they are not the only reason to be aware of your surroundings. I am convinced that the Forex favors the well informed, and these methods can add a few more solid trades to your arsenal every month.
John Jagerson is a Forex writer and active trader. His book, Profiting With Forex, published by McGraw Hill, is available nationwide. This author also develops Forex education courses for INVESTools.com.
You can find more how-to and educational articles to improve your investing and trading each day on TradingMarkets.com.
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Original publication: June 09, 2008
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How to Successfully Trade ETFs
Do you want to learn how to trade more successfully, more consistently ... and with more confidence? If so, then the TPS strategy is for you.
Hundreds, if not now thousands, of ETF traders successfully use the TPS trading strategy to find the best ETF trade set-ups each day to place winning trades.
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How to Trade Hourly Forex Binary Options
Thursday, January 13, 2011 GMT
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Forex Binary Options are a much more simplified and beneficial way of trading Forex than conventional Forex trading.
Trading Binary Options is a much more simplified process than trading conventional Forex: you simply choose the market that you want to trade, for example Currencies. Then you choose the asset, for example EUR/USD. Finally you decide whether the EUR/USD will end above or below its current price at the end of the hour. If you decide above, choose a Call Binary Option. If you decide below, choose a Put Binary Option.
There are 2 cases in which you can win your trade. You will be “In the Money” if you choose a CALL Binary Option and at expiry the closing price closes above the price that you purchased. You will also be “In the Money” if you choose a PUT binary option and at expiry the closing price closes below the price that you purchased.
Forex binary options offer several obvious advantages that attract conventional Forex traders. Binary Options only need to close within the smallest fraction of a pip over or under your strike price and you immediately win up to 81% profit in less than 1 hour. By comparison, a conventional Forex trader with a maximum leverage of 100x placing a $1000x100 leverage trade would have to gain 81 pips to create the same profit! This is an amazing difference.
Another interesting feature of Binary Options is that expiry occurs hourly, like European style options, with no possibility of exercising before expiration. This can be very advantageous because conventional Forex traders are forced to place a Stop-Loss which can be easily shaken out. Particularly in the case of a news event in which volatility is very high, it can be advantageous to use the risk management of the hourly expiring Binary Option, rather than place a Stop-Loss.
Perhaps the most interesting application of Binary Options to conventional Forex traders is as a hedging tool. Conventional Forex traders are accustomed to taking losses when their Stop Loss is hit. Lately it has become customary to transfer the risk from below the buy point to above it by using Binary Options.
For example, if you take a conventional EUR/USD long position combined with a Stop/Loss and simultaneously buy a Put Binary Option, you can cover your losses or even be profitable in the event that your long position fails. This effectively transfers the risk from below the Stop Loss to above it. This can be very advantageous if you believe that your trade will succeed if a rally continues in the right direction, as is often the case for rallies.
2Share
Forex Binary Options are a much more simplified and beneficial way of trading Forex than conventional Forex trading.
Trading Binary Options is a much more simplified process than trading conventional Forex: you simply choose the market that you want to trade, for example Currencies. Then you choose the asset, for example EUR/USD. Finally you decide whether the EUR/USD will end above or below its current price at the end of the hour. If you decide above, choose a Call Binary Option. If you decide below, choose a Put Binary Option.
There are 2 cases in which you can win your trade. You will be “In the Money” if you choose a CALL Binary Option and at expiry the closing price closes above the price that you purchased. You will also be “In the Money” if you choose a PUT binary option and at expiry the closing price closes below the price that you purchased.
Forex binary options offer several obvious advantages that attract conventional Forex traders. Binary Options only need to close within the smallest fraction of a pip over or under your strike price and you immediately win up to 81% profit in less than 1 hour. By comparison, a conventional Forex trader with a maximum leverage of 100x placing a $1000x100 leverage trade would have to gain 81 pips to create the same profit! This is an amazing difference.
Another interesting feature of Binary Options is that expiry occurs hourly, like European style options, with no possibility of exercising before expiration. This can be very advantageous because conventional Forex traders are forced to place a Stop-Loss which can be easily shaken out. Particularly in the case of a news event in which volatility is very high, it can be advantageous to use the risk management of the hourly expiring Binary Option, rather than place a Stop-Loss.
Perhaps the most interesting application of Binary Options to conventional Forex traders is as a hedging tool. Conventional Forex traders are accustomed to taking losses when their Stop Loss is hit. Lately it has become customary to transfer the risk from below the buy point to above it by using Binary Options.
For example, if you take a conventional EUR/USD long position combined with a Stop/Loss and simultaneously buy a Put Binary Option, you can cover your losses or even be profitable in the event that your long position fails. This effectively transfers the risk from below the Stop Loss to above it. This can be very advantageous if you believe that your trade will succeed if a rally continues in the right direction, as is often the case for rallies.
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