Forex markets function alongside other major financial markets, such as stocks, bonds, and commodities (e.g. gold, oil, etc.). Important fundamental and psychological relationships exist between other markets and currencies, especially the U.S. dollar, so look to developments in other financial markets to see whether they confirm or contradict price moves in the dollar pairs.

Evaluating Your Trading Results

Regardless of the outcome of any trade, you want to look back over the whole process to understand what you did right and wrong. In particular, ask yourself the following questions:

·        How did you identify the trade opportunity?

Was it based on technical analysis, a fundamental view, or some combination of the two? Looking at your trade this way helps identify your strengths and weaknesses as either a fundamental or technical trader. For example, if technical analysis generates more of your winning trades, you’ll probably want to devote more energy to that approach.

·        How well did your trade plan work out?

Was the position size sufficient to match the risk and reward scenarios, or was it too large or too small? Could you have entered at a better level? What tools might you have used to improve your entry timing? Were you patient enough, or did you rush in thinking you’d never have the chance again? Was your take profit realistic or pie in the sky? Did the market pay any respect to your choice of take-profit levels, or did prices blow right through it? Ask yourself the same questions about your stop-loss level. Use the answers to refine your position size, entry level, and order placement going forward.

·        How well did you manage the trade after it was open?

Were you able to effectively monitor the market while your trade was active? If so, how? If not, why not? The answers to those questions reveal a lot about how much time and dedication you’re able to devote to your trading. Did you modify your trade plan along the way? Did you adjust stop-loss orders to protect profits? Did you take partial profit at all? Did you close out the trade based on your trading plan, or did the market surprise you somehow? Based on your answers, you’ll learn what role your emotions may have played and how disciplined a trader you are.

There are no right and wrong answers in this review process; just be as honest with yourself as you can be. No one else willever know your answers, and you have everything to gain by identifying what you’re good at, what you’re not so good at, and how you as a currency trader should best approach the market.

Currency trading is all about getting out of it what you put into it. Evaluating your trading results on a regular basis is an essential step in improving your trading skills, refining your trading styles, maximizing your trading strengths, and minimizing your trading weaknesses.

The key is to develop an efficient daily routine of market analysis. Thanks to the Internet and online currency brokerages, independent traders can access a variety of information.

Your daily regimen of market analysis should focus on:

·        Overnight forex market developments: Who said what, which data came out, and how the currency pairs reacted.

·        Daily updates of other major market movements over the prior 24 hours and the stories behind them: If oil prices or U.S. Treasury yields rose or fell substantially, find out why.

·        Data releases and market events (for example, the retail sales report, Fed speeches, central bank rate announcements) expected for that day: Ideally, you’ll monitor data and event calendars one week in advance, so you can be anticipating the outcomes along with the rest of the market.

·        Multiple-time-frame technical analysis of major currency pairs: There is nothing like the visual image of price action to fill in the blanks of how data and news affected individual currency pairs.

·        Current events and geopolitical themes: Stay abreast on issues of major elections, political scandals, military conflicts, and policy initiatives in the major currency nations.

Orders are critical trading tools in the forex market. Think of them as trades waiting to happen, because that’s exactly what they are. If you enter an order and a subsequent price action triggers its execution, you’re in the market, so be as careful as you are thorough when placing your orders in the market. Currency traders use orders to catch market movements when they’re not in front of their screens.

Remember: The forex market is open 24 hours a day, five days a week. A market move is just as likely to happen while you’re asleep or in the shower as while you’re watching your screen. If you’re not a full-time trader, then you’ve probably got a full-time job that requires your attention when you’re at work. (At least your boss hopes he has your attention.) Orders are how you can act in the market without being there.

Experienced currency traders also routinely use orders to:

·        Implement a trade strategy from entry to exit

·        Capture sharp, short-term price fluctuations

·        Limit risk in volatile or uncertain markets

·        Preserve trading capital from unwanted losses

·        Maintain trading discipline

·        Protect profits and minimize losses

We can’t stress enough the importance of using orders in currency trading. Forex markets can be notoriously volatile and difficult to predict. Using orders helps you capitalize on shortterm market movements while limiting the impact of any adverse price moves. While there is no guarantee that the use of orders will limit your losses or protect your profits in all market conditions, a disciplined use of orders helps you to quantify the risk you’re taking and, with any luck, gives you peace of mind in your trading. Bottom line: If you don’t use orders, you probably don’t have a well-thought-out trading strategy and that’s a recipe for pain.

Take Profit Orders

Don’t you just love that name? An old market saying goes, “You can’t go broke taking profit.” Use take-profit orders to lock in gains when you have an open position in the market. If you’re short USD/JPY at 117.20, your take-profit order will be to buy back the position and be placed somewhere below that price, say at 116.80 for instance. If you’re long GBP/USD at 1.8840, your take-profit order will be to sell the position somewhere higher, maybe 1.8875.

Limit orders

A limit order is any order that triggers a trade at more favorable levels than the current market price. Think “Buy low, sell high.” If the limit order is to buy, it must be entered at a price below the current market price. If the limit order is to sell, it must be placed at a price higher than the current market price.

Stop Loss Orders

Boo! Sound’s bad doesn’t it? Actually, stop-loss orders are critical to trading survival. The traditional stop-loss order does just that: It stops losses by closing out an open position that is losing money. Use stop-loss orders to limit your losses if the market moves against your position. If you don’t, you’re leaving it up to the market, and that’s dangerous. Stop-loss orders are on the other side of the current price from take-profit orders, but in the same direction (in terms of buying or selling). If you’re long, your stop-loss order will be to sell, but at a lower price than the current market price. If you’re short, your stop-loss order will be to buy, but at a higher price than the current market.

Trailing Stop Loss Orders

You may have heard that one of the keys to successful trading is to cut losing positions quickly, and let winning positions run. A trailing stop-loss order allows you to do just that. The idea is that when you have a winning trade on, you wait for the market to stage a reversal and take you out, instead of trying to pick the right level to exit on your own. A trailing stop-loss order is a stop-loss order that you set at a fixed number of pips from your entry rate. The trailing stop adjusts the order rate as the market price moves, but only in the direction of your trade. For example, if you’re long EUR/CHF at 1.5750 and you set the trailing stop at 30 pips, the stop will initially become active at 1.5720 (1.5750–30 pips). If the EUR/CHF price moves higher to 1.5760, the stop adjusts higher, pip for pip, with the price and will then be active at 1.5730. The trailing stop continues to adjust higher as long as the market continues to move higher. When the market puts in a top, your trailing stop will be 30 pips (or whatever distance you specify) below that top, wherever it may be. If the market ever goes down by 30 pips, as in this example, your stop will be triggered and your position closed. So in this case, if you’re long at 1.5750 and you set a 30-pip trailing stop, the stop initially becomes active at 1.5720. If the market never ticks up and goes straight down, you’ll be stopped out at 1.5720. If the price first rises to 1.5775 and then declines by 60 points, your trailing stop will have risen to 1.5745 (1.5775–30 pips) and that’s where you’ll be stopped out.

Rollover rates are based on the difference in interest rates of the two currencies in the pair you’re trading. That’s because what you’re actually trading is good old-fashioned cash. When you’re long a currency, it’s like having a deposit in the bank. If you’re short a currency, it’s like having borrowed a loan. Just as you would expect to earn interest on a bank deposit or pay interest on a loan, you should expect an interest gain/expense for holding a currency position over the change in value.

Think of an open currency position as one account with a positive balance (the currency you’re long) and one with a negative balance (the currency you’re short). But because your accounts are in two different currencies, the two interest rates of the different countries apply. The difference between the interest rates in the two countries is called the interest-rate differential. The larger the interest rate differential, the larger the impact from rollovers. The narrower the interest rate differential, the smaller the effect from rollovers. You can find relevant interest-rate levels of the major currencies from any number of financial-market Web sites. Look for the base or benchmark lending rates in each country.

Rollover transactions are usually carried out automatically by your forex broker if you hold an open position past the change in value date. Rollovers are applied to your open position by two offsetting trades that result in the same open position. Some online forex brokers apply the rollover rates by adjusting the average rate of your open position. Other forex brokers apply rollover rates by applying the rollover credit or debit directly to your margin balance.

Here’s what you need to remember about rollovers:

·        Rollovers are applied to open positions after the 5 p.m. EST change in value date, or trade settlement date.

·        Rollovers are not applied if you don’t carry a position over the change in value date. So if you’re square at the close of each trading day, you’ll never have to worry about rollovers.

·        Rollovers represent the difference in interest rates between the two currencies in your open position, but they’re applied in currency-rate terms.

·        Rollovers constitute net interest earned or paid by you, depending on the direction of your position.

·        Rollovers can earn you money if you’re long the currency with the higher interest rate and short the currency with the lower interest rate.

·        Rollovers cost you money if you’re short the currency with the higher interest rate and long the currency with the lower interest rates.

Most online forex brokers provide real-time mark-to-market calculations showing your margin balance. Mark-to-market is the calculation that shows your unrealized P&L based on where you could close your open positions in the market at that instant. Depending on your broker’s trading platform, if you’re long, the calculation will typically be based on where you could sell at that moment. If you’re short, the price used will be where you can buy at that moment. Your margin balance is the sum of your initial margin deposit, your unrealized P&L, and your realized P&L. Realized P&L is what you get when you close out a trade position, or a portion of a trade position. If you close out the full position and go flat, whatever you made or lost leaves the unrealized P&L calculation and goes into your margin balance. If you only close a portion of your open positions, only that part of the trade’s P&L is realized and goes into the margin balance. Your unrealized P&L continues to fluctuate based on the remaining open positions, as does your total margin balance. If you’ve got a winning position open, your unrealized P&L is positive and your margin balance increases. If the market is moving against your positions, your unrealized P&L is negative and your margin balance is reduced. Forex prices change constantly, so your mark-to-market unrealized P&L and total margin balance also change constantly.

profit and loss with pips

Profit-and-loss calculations are pretty straightforward in terms of math they’re all based on position size and the number of pips you make or lose. A pip is the smallest increment of price fluctuation in currency prices. Pips can also be referred to as points; we use the two terms interchangeably. Looking at a few currency pairs helps you get an idea what a pip is. Most currency pairs are quoted using five digits. The placement of the decimal point depends on whether it’s a JPY currency pair, in which case there are two digits behind the decimal point. All others currency pairs have four digits behind the decimal point. In all cases, that last itty-bitty digit is the pip. Here are some major currency pairs and crosses, with the pip:

EUR/USD: 1.2853

USD/CHF: 1.2267

USD/JPY: 117.23

EUR/JPY: 150.65

Focus on the EUR/USD price first. Looking at EUR/USD, if the price moves from 1.2853 to 1.2873, it’s just gone up by 20 pips. If it goes from 1.2853 down to 1.2792, it’s just gone down by 61 pips. Pips provide an easy way to calculate the P&L. To turn that pip movement into a P&L calculation, all you need to know is the size of the position. For a 100,000 EUR/USD position, the 20-pip move equates to $200 (EUR 100,000 0.0020 = $200). For a 50,000 EUR/USD position, the 61-point move translates into $305 (EUR 50,000 0.0061 = $305). Whether the amounts are positive or negative depends on whether you were long or short for each move. If you were short for the move higher, that’s a – in front of the $200, if you were long, it’s a +. EUR/USD is easy to calculate, especially for USD-based traders, because the P&L accrues in dollars. If you take USD/CHF, you’ve got another calculation to make before you can make sense of it. That’s because the P&L is going to be denominated in Swiss francs (CHF) because CHF is the counter currency. If USD/CHF drops from 1.2267 to 1.2233 and you’re short USD 100,000 for the move lower, you’ve just caught a 34-pip decline. That’s a profit worth CHF 340 (USD 100,000 0.0034 = CHF 340). Yeah but how much is that in real money? To convert it into USD, you need to divide the CHF 340 by the USD/CHF rate. Use the closing rate of the trade (1.2233), because that’s where the market was last, and you get USD 277.94.

Even the venerable pip is in the process of being updated as electronic trading continues to advance. Just a couple paragraphs earlier, we tell you that the pip is the smallest increment of currency price fluctuations. Not so fast. The online market is rapidly advancing to decimalizing pips (trading in 1⁄10 pips) and half-pip prices have been the norm in certain currency pairs in the interbank market for many years.

Profit and loss (P&L) is how traders measure success and failure. A clear understanding of how P&L works is especially critical to online margin trading, where your P&L directly affects the amount of margin you have to work with. Changes in your margin balance determine how much you can trade and for how long you can trade if prices move against you.

Margin balances and liquidations

When you open an online currency trading account, you’ll need to pony up cash as collateral to support the margin requirements established by your broker. That initial margin deposit becomes your opening margin balance and is the basis on which all your subsequent trades are collateralized. Unlike futures markets or margin-based equity trading, online forex brokerages do not issue margin calls (requests for more collateral to support open positions). Instead, they establish ratios of margin balances to open positions that must be maintained at all times. Here’s an example to help you understand how required margin ratios work. Say you have an account with a leverage ratio of 100:1 (so $1 of margin in your account can control a $100 position size), but your broker requires a 100% margin ratio, meaning you need to maintain 100% of the required margin at all times. The ratio varies with account size, but a 100% margin requirement is typical for small accounts. That means to have a position size of $10,000, you’d need $100 in your account, because $10,000 divided by the leverage ratio of 100 is $100. If your account’s margin balance falls below the required ratio, your broker probably has the right to close out your positions without any notice to you. If your broker liquidates your position, that usually means your losses are locked in and your margin balance just got smaller. Be sure you completely understand your broker’s margin requirements and liquidation policies. Requirements may differ depending on account size and whether you’re trading standard lot sizes (100,000 currency units) or mini lot sizes (10,000 currency units). Some brokers’ liquidation policies allow for all positions to be liquidated if you fall below margin requirements. Others close out the biggest losing positions or portions of losing positions until the required ratio is satisfied again. You can find the details in the fine print of the account opening contract that you sign. Always read the fine print to be sure you understand your broker’s margin and trading policies.

To make matters easier, forex markets refer to trading currencies by pairs, with names that combine the two different currencies being traded, or “exchanged,” against each other.

Major currency pairs

The major currency pairs all involve the U.S. dollar on one side of the deal. The designations of the major currencies are expressed using International Standardization Organization (ISO) codes for each currency. your analysis may suggest that the Japanese yenhas the worst prospects of all the major currencies going forward, based on interest rates or the economic outlook.

To take advantage of this, you’d be looking to sell JPY, but against which other currency? You consider the USD, potentially buying USD/JPY (buying USD/selling JPY) but then you conclude that the USD’s prospects are not much better than the JPY’s. Further research on your part may point to another currency that has a much better outlook (such as high or rising interest rates or signs of a strengthening economy), say the Australian dollar (AUD). In this example, you would then be looking to buy the AUD/JPY cross (buying AUD/selling JPY) to target your view that AUD has the best prospects among major currencies and the JPY the worst.

The base currency is what you’re buying or selling when you buy or sell the pair. It’s also the notional, or face, amount of the trade. So if you buy 100,000 EUR/JPY, you’ve just bought 100,000 euros and sold the equivalent amount in Japanese yen. If you sell 100,000 GBP/CHF, you just sold 100,000 British pounds and bought the equivalent amount of Swiss francs.

The biggest mental hurdle facing newcomers to currencies, especially traders familiar with other markets, is getting their head around the idea that each currency trade consists of a simultaneous purchase and sale. In the stock market, for instance, if you buy 100 shares of Google, you own 100 shares and hope to see the price go up. When you want to exit that position, you simply sell what you bought earlier. Easy, right? But in currencies, the purchase of one currency involves the simultaneous sale of another currency. This is the exchange in foreign exchange. To put it another way, if you’re looking for the dollar to go higher, the question is

“Higher against what?”

The answer is another currency. In relative terms, if the dollar goes up against another currency, that other currency also has gone down against the dollar. To think of it in stockmarket terms, when you buy a stock, you’re selling cash, and when you sell a stock, you’re buying cash.

Getting long

A long position, or simply a long, refers to a market position in which you’ve bought a security. In FX it refers to having bought a currency pair. When you are long, you are looking for prices to move higher, so you can sell at a higher price than where you bought. When you want to close a long position, you have to sell what you bought. If you are buying a multiple price levels, you are adding to longs and getting longer.

Getting short

A short position, or simply a short, refers to a market position in which you’ve sold a security that you never owned. In the stock market, selling a stock short requires borrowing the stock (and paying a fee to the lending brokerage) so you can sell it. In forex markets, it means you’ve sold a currency pair, meaning you’ve sold the base currency and bought the counter currency. So you’re still making an exchange, just in the opposite order and according to currency-pair quoting terms. When you’ve sold a currency pair, it’s called going short or getting short and it means you’re looking for the pair’s price to move lower so you can buy it back at a profit. If you sell at various price levels, you’re adding to shorts and getting shorter.

As much as we like to think of the forex market as the be all and end all of financial trading markets, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You may even have heard of some these other markets: gold, oil and stocks.

Gold

Gold is commonly viewed as a hedge against inflation, an alternative to the U.S. dollar, and as a store of value in times of economic or political uncertainty. Over the long term, the relationship is mostly inverse, with a weaker USD generally accompanying a higher gold price, and a stronger USD coming with a lower gold price. However, in the short run, each market has its own dynamics and liquidity, which makes short-term trading relationships generally tenuous. Overall, the gold market is significantly smaller than the forex market, so if we were gold traders, we’d sooner keep an eye on what’s happening to the dollar, rather than the other way around. With that noted, extreme movements in gold prices tend to attract currency traders’ attention and usually influence the dollar in a mostly inverse fashion.

Oil

A lot of misinformation exists on the Internet about the supposed relationship between oil and the USD or other currencies, such as CAD or JPY. The idea is that, because some countries are oil producers, their currencies are positively (or negatively) affected by increases (or decreases) in the price of oil. If the country is an importer of oil (and which countries aren’t today?), the theory goes, its currency will be hurt (or helped) by higher (or lower) oil prices. Correlation studies show no appreciable relationships to that effect, especially in the short run, which is where most currency trading is focused. When there is a long-term relationship, it’s as evident against the USD as much as, or more than, any individual currency, whether an importer or exporter of black gold. The best way to look at oil is as an inflation input and as a limiting factor on overall economic growth. The higher the price of oil, the higher inflation is likely to be and the slower an economy is likely to grow. The lower the price of oil, the lower inflationary pressures are likely (but not necessarily) to be. We like to factor changes in the price of oil into our inflation and growth expectations, and then draw conclusions about the course of the USD from them. Above all, oil is just one input among many.

Stocks

Stocks are microeconomic securities, rising and falling in response to individual corporate results and prospects, while currencies are essentially macroeconomic securities, fluctuating in response to wider-ranging economic and political developments. As such, there is little intuitive reason that stock markets should be related to currencies. Long-term correlation studies bear this out, with correlation coefficients of essentially zero between the major USD pairs and U.S. equity markets over the last five years. The two markets occasionally intersect, though this is usually only at the extremes and for very short periods. For example, when equity market volatility reaches extraordinary levels (say, the Standard & Poor’s loses 2+ percent in a day), the USD may experience more pressure than it otherwise would, but there’s no guarantee of that. The U.S. stock market may have dropped on an unexpected hike in U.S. interest rates, while the USD may rally on the surprise move.

What is Forex ?

The foreign exchange market (currency, forex, or FX) market is where currency trading takes place. It is where banks and other official institutions facilitate the buying and selling of foreign currencies. FX transactions typically involve one party purchasing a quantity of one currency in exchange for paying a quantity of another. The foreign exchange market that we see today started evolving during the 1970s when world over countries gradually switched to floating exchange rate from their erstwhile exchange rate regime, which remained fixed as per the Breton Woods system till 1971.

Now, the FX market is one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world, and includes trading between large banks, central banks currency speculators, corporations, governments, and other institutions. The average daily volume in the global foreign exchange and related markets is continuously growing. Traditional daily turnover was reported to be over US$3.2 trillion in April 2007 by the Bank for International Settlements Since then; the market has continued to grow. According to Euro money’s annual FX Poll, volumes grew a further 41% between 2007 and 2008.

The purpose of FX market is to facilitate trade and investment. The need for a foreign exchange market arises because of the presence of multifarious international currencies such as US Dollar, Pound Sterling, etc., and the need for trading in such currencies.

The forex market is open and active 24 hours a day from the start of business hours on Monday morning in the Asia-Pacific time zone straight through to the Friday close of business hours in New York. At any given moment, depending on the time zone, dozens of global financial centers such as Sydney, Tokyo, or London are open, and currency trading desks in those financial centers are active in the market. Currency trading doesn’t even stop for holidays when other financial markets, like stocks or futures exchanges, may be closed. Even though it’s a holiday in Japan, for example, Sydney, Singapore, and Hong Kong may still be open. It might be the Fourth of July in the United States, but if it’s a business day, Tokyo, London, Toronto, and other financial centers will still be trading currencies. About the only holiday in common around the world is New Year’s Day, and even that depends on what day of the week it falls on.

The Sunday open represents the starting point where currency markets resume trading after the Friday close of trading in North America (5 p.m. Eastern time). This is the first chance for the forex market to react to news and events that may have happened over the weekend. Prices may have closed New York trading at one level, but depending on the circumstances, they may start trading at different levels at the Sunday open.