Keeping Your Shirt While Trading on Margin (money market news)

March 9th, 2010 admin Posted in finance |

By Bruce Shaw

The key to the FOREX market for the average investor is the margin. Without margin trading currency trading would be beyond most investors. I will explain what the margin is and how it works.

When you have a margin account you are able to control large amounts of currency with a relatively small cash deposit. When you have a margin account with a broker you are in effect borrowing money from the broker to control a larger lot of currency. Currency is normally sold in lots with a value of $100,000. A common term used when discussing margin accounts is leverage. Leverage is how much you can control with a certain amount of money. The leverage is usually displayed as a ration such as 1:100. That would allow you to control currency worth 100 times the amount of money you have invested.

To better explain this in a FOREX exchange with a 1% margin account you could control $100,000 worth of a currency while only investing $1000. Margin accounts can allow you to greatly increase your profit; they also allow you to increase your risk. With a margin account it is possible for a trader to lose more than their initial investment. With a little prudence though losses can be minimized. Most brokers will terminate a trade before the losses exceed the original deposit.

Benefits

As discussed before a margin account allows you to buy more with the money you have which can greatly increase your profit on successful trades. By controlling a $100,000 worth of currency for only $1000 the potential gain is greater. When dealing with large lots of currency even small changes can produce significant results.

Currency on the FOREX market is traded in far more precise units than actual cash is. As an example the American dollar is traded down to four decimal points. So when you were to quote the dollar against another currency you will see a price like $1.7834 instead of $1.78. A PIP is the smallest unit when trading currencies, when dealing with $100,000 lots then each pip is worth about $10.

If the price of the American dollar changes from $1.7834 to $1.7934, you have a net difference of 100 pips. If you have a lot of $100,000 then that 100 pips will translate to $1000 where as if you were not using the margin your original $1000 would only show a profit of $10. Hardly what most would consider a highly profitable trade?

In short the primary benefit of using a margin account is that it can greatly increase the profit margin of a trade.

Risks

Since there is such a significant increase in profit potential when using a margin account it only stands to reason that there is also an increase. In fact it is quite possible to have your entire margin account wiped out fairly quickly. When using a 1% margin account a shift in the currency of a single penny will cost you $1000.

The FOREX exchange has many safety features to help you reduce the risk of this happening. One example is a stop loss order. A stop loss order will automatically close out your position in a currency if the price crosses the point you have set. This allows you to limit your losses while still having the opportunity to realize a profit.

Another risk that many people overlook is that if the price nears the point where your losses are close to being equal to the value of your margin account your broker may close out your position. If you were trying to rid out a temporary downturn that you expect to turn around soon you could find that your broker has closed it causing you to lose your entire balance and have no option to make a profit if the price moves up again.

This is a basic introduction to margin accounts and how they work, visit the website listed below to learn more about the FOREX market.

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Day Trading in the Foreign Currency Exchange Market

By Bruce Shaw

This is a fascination. Here is a wide open field that almost anyone can take advantage of. It use to be only for the mega rich people, the big corporations and banks. They are trading foreign currency’s..

Can you imagine this is a 1.2 trillion dollar a day being traded. Thats 1.2 TRILLION a day.

Now with the Internet you you too can trade the foreign currency’s. You can set up a account with as little as $300.00 up to whatever. Regular accounts usually start with $3000.00. You are able to leverage you funds 100 to 1. SO you will be controlling 10,000.00 or one lot in currency’s for $1,000.00 and for every pip on movement you can make $100.00. With the mini account you will control 1 tenth of a lot. $1000.00 for $100.00 and your pip is worth $1.00. Just so you will understand a pip is what an increment movement in a currency is.

You buy it if you think it will go up and sell it if you think it will go lower. Of course there are charts and all kinds of ways to tell what is going to happen. It just takes learning the in’s and out’s, ups and downs.

There are a lot of different currency’s but here are the main ones that are traded.

USA/YEN USA / Japanese GBP/USA British Pound

USA/EURO USA/ Euro is European USA/CHF Swiss Franc

USA/CAD USA/ Canadian EURO/YEN

There are no commissions and no fees only narrow Dealer spreads. These spread vary depending on the trades. Major pairs are 3 to 5 pips. You will learn more about all of this when you start out. The wisest thing to do is to start out with a demo account or what we call a paper account where you do everything as if it was real money but it is only on paper. So you get to learn the in’s and out’s and learn to read the charts and how to understand the fundamentals. These are the world events that effect the currency’s.

There are many different strategies. Each have their strength’s and weaknesses. They each deal with different ways at looking at the charts and their movements. Want some ideas? There are Scalping

trades, surfing charts, sailing and many more. It fun and exciting, and sometimes a drag. Sometimes you will win 100 to 500 pips. Then there are times you will lose pips too. YOU will never win all the time. But thats where there account management comes in. You learn to control your risk taking.

Usually the biggest sin or failure comes when you let your emotions become involved. EVEN the big shots sometimes let their emotions get involved. Most the time it doesn’t work and will cost you.

So with good account management understanding the various charts you can take $300.00 and turn it into $6000.00 in 6 months or less.

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