All trading platforms offer platform specific tools such as charts and other analytical tools to help you with your Forex trading experience. In addition to those tools, there are charts, books and other sources of information available, often for free, all over the Internet. You should take the time to investigate these materials and to study them whether they are ebooks, real books, videos, or the occasional seminar that is available in a location that you can get to. Most of these educational tools will have at least one piece of information that you really need to make money in the Forex market.
We also recommend a book on economics as a basis for understanding exactly what it is that drives the world market. If you can, take the time to familiarize yourself with the thoughts of Freidman and Greenspan. Learn how the Fed works and what role it plays in the American and global economy.
Another tool which we recommend is that you build your own chart by reading the world news and charting the various exchange rates against such newsworthy events as floods earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc., not to forget such things as changes in government, by peaceful or violent means.
The more you know about all of the factors that may affect the economy of either a nation or a region, the greater the possibility that you might predict with a modicum of accuracy, at least a short term movement in the Forex rates of exchange so that you might profit from trading in it. In addition, many different forex tools and trading platforms are available for download nowadays to the public. This makes the forex trading market more available than ever to the average person. You don’t need to be a professional trader with specific financial expertise in order to trade forex. An example of such a platform is the eToro trading platform.
As always, there is another method. No, we don’t recommend throwing darts at the wall. The other method is based on the idea, also used in the stock market, that one can chart trends of movement, and based on the historic, (known) trends, one can predict the future with some accuracy. In fact, as stated trends of performance are historical documents and while some chartists annotate their charts with what they consider to be the significant driving events of the price trends, the trend charts stand (or fall) in the end with little or no reference to outside conditions.
(In the stock market, for example, a steady upward trendline is good to know as a predictor of future performance, with some very serious caveats. The knowledge that the founder and chief designer are about to be indicted, and that they are both going to plead guilty to massive fraud charges, is far more important than the company’s performance over the past ten years. If you find that a bit dramatic, I cite Enron and MCI in recent U.S. economic history.)
While we must constantly watch what is happening, we cannot be omniscient. In the world’s money markets, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the fall of South Africa were significant events. The Ruble and the SA Rand were two stable currencies, and it doesn’t matter why they were stable, even though we now know that they were artificially stabilized. One might have thought that the Ruble would fall, but the question in the Forex as in any market is not if, but when.
What is important and what is not? There si an adage that the truly free market discounts everything. All news influences the price of commodities, especially a commodity such as foreign exchange. If you are a newshound, you already will have heard the question, “what will the market think about Hillary’s Presidency?” this question is being asked because those who have money invested need to determine their own response to any eventuality; especially a probability. This is also true about the Forex market.
In all of this attempting to determine whether you should buy or sell, the three key factors which you are trying to pin down at the determinants of a “trend.” These three determinants of a trend are, “direction,” “level,” and “timing.” It is simple to predict that a market with a volume of three trillion dollars per day will be volatile. This is especially in an atmosphere where there is an ever increasing accessibility to the market throughout the world. Add to that the idea that there are some people who have an interest in using the market for money laundering (in which it would be conceivable that losses are acceptable as though they were “fees” for invisibility). Others at the same time might be in the market to make “killings” to finance terrorist acts, including, but not limited to the planned rapid deterioration of the value of a single currency as an economic attack on a specific government.
Add to all of the above, the idea that each nation has some vested interest in its own currency. Understand also that the nation’s interest in their currency’s “position” may change from wanting a “strong” currency to a “weak” currency, or the other way around to balance out the internal economic cycles of that specific nation with only secondary concern for the effects this might have on other nations and their economies.
Please note that the rule of trading which requires that for every seller there must be a buyer at that price, also applies in Forex. In addition, you will see charts which show that the USD has dropped almost as a mirror to the chart of the rise of the Euro EUR. While this is historically accurate, since there are other currencies trading against each, this is not necessarily a hard and fast rule into the future. The two may converge or act independently and only time and outside influences will show us.
The Forex market is an exciting place, (although it occupies no place, per se). The rules are not at all as simple, straightforward, or consistent as those of the NYSE or the NYNEX or even the CBOT. The Forex is an infant with a giant appetite, and some people are walking away from the table having eaten while others are carried from the table having been eaten.