Be prepared!

Trading in the forex market sounds exciting. It is. It is also a risky business, if the risk is not managed. Luckily for traders, the risk in trading the forex markets can be managed quite efficiently due to the vast liquidity in the major currencies. However, today, given the high levels of technology and the ease in which it is possible to open a trading account, a new trader can easily fall prey to his or her own enthusiasm to get started in trading due in part to the strong lure of the forex brokers who offer cheap access and a promise of easy success.

Readers of this site know that trading forex is a real business, one in which one has to have knowledge, understanding and wisdom to be profitable. Therefore, whether you follow any of the methods offered here or anywhere else, I wish to remind you to come to this business with proper preparation. It is imperative to be able to detach emotionally from being right, and therefore hold on to a wrong position because you invested time and energy and money in taking it. If you are wrong, let it go quickly. Learn to love small losses. They are much more palatable than large losses. By building a foundation in which you design a blueprint for trading, you stand the best chance of developing the appropriate and necessary confidence. For this type of blueprint, please refer to the Fusion Trading method, I offer in my course "Trading the Forex Markets - A Foundation Guide to Online Trading."

However, the point is not to pitch my course, (which I am shamelessly doing in this blog) but to persuade you to only trade once you have taken the steps to prepare yourself properly, no matter where you find your inspiration.

INPUT/Output: Top 20 Federal Opportunities for FY 2010

At the beginning of each fiscal year, INPUT identifies and assesses major upcoming federal contract opportunities and presents the findings in a report, the Top 20 Federal Business Opportunities of FY2010. This report analyzes the impact first year decisions of the Obama administration have made on acquisition and government contracting at civilian and defense agencies, and forecasts the paths to the top opportunities in the coming year and beyond. These opportunities reach across the broad spectrum of federal agencies: the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, National Institute of Health, General Services Administration, Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense. Altogether, the Top 20 Opportunities represent $180 billion worth of viable programs for prime contractors and smaller businesses alike.

Key Points:

• Most of the work going through these contracts is ongoing work, or continuing work; there are very few new programs up for bid this year. Many of the recompetes are in the areas of information technology services, engineering services and professional services for the administration.
• There is a pronounced shift away from large system integrator contracts towards task/delivery order based vehicles and consolidation efforts. Government-Wide Acquisition Vehicles (GWACs) will continue to present a greater range of opportunities with entrance into multiple agencies.
• Civilian agencies, that have historically played a minority role in the Top 20, have soared to the forefront accounting for over 60 percent of the total contract value. Similarly, the overall contract value of $180 billion far exceeds last year's list valued at $120 billion.

How to Trade the Forex Market Using Binary Options

It is no secret that the Forex market can be a very profitable place to be if you want to make money by trading currencies.

However, it is also no secret that achieving consistency within the Forex market requires a lot of preparation (you need education and reliable trading tools) because not only you need to have a good idea of where the price is about to move, but also how far it is going to go.

For instance if you are trading the EUR/USD pair and you decide it is a good idea to go long, you would place a "buy" order, because you are expecting the price of the Euro against the dollar to go up.

If you placed your trade using 1 mini lot (this equals $1 profit for every pip), and your target for that trade is 30 pips, you would need to have at least $1,000 in your account to meet margin requirements and allow some room for drawdown, and if the trade is successful you will make $30 in profits.

However, in order for this to happen the price of the Euro has to move 30 pips against the dollar, otherwise you will not reach the intended target and realize the profits. As you can see, if you trade the Forex market using the traditional approach you will have not only to predict where the price is going, but also how far it is going, which simply makes it twice as difficult.

Now, if you have $1,000 in a binary options trading account, what would you need in order to place a successful trade, and moreover, what kind of profits a successful trade would deliver for you?

In order to answer this question, let us assume that the price of the EUR/USD is at 1.47849 and based a given analysis of the market (e.g. swing trading pattern recognition) you think that the Euro is trending up against the Dollar.

In this case you would go long as well, but instead of placing a "buy" order for currency, you would simply buy a $100 call option for the EUR/USD pair with a 1 hour expiration. If you are right and the price goes up, even if it is only 0.001 pip above the price you purchased your call option (which is the strike price), and it remains there or above until expiration, you would get as much as 75% return on your $100 investment.

In other words, a single $100 trade could easily deliver $75 in profits and you could repeat this process several times during the day.

But the remarkable thing here is that you did not need the price to go up 30 pips in 1 hour to get a 75% return on your investment, you only needed 0.001 points of variation to achieve this.

In this scenario you certainly had to determine in what direction the price was going to move (this is usually an ingredient of the trading process) BUT your forecast did not have to take you all the way to a 30 pips increase in the price in order for you to make get the expected return, because you got it with just 0.001 points of variation, and you made $75 instead of $30.

Also, you can open a binary options account with only $100 and you can trade with as little as $30 with no commissions charges.

So as you can see, the potential of Forex trading through binary options is huge and the process is far simpler thus increasing your chances for profitable trades, however, you do need to have a sense of where the market is going. Provided that you have this, you are likely to make take far more winning trades than losing ones and a lot more money as well.

Forex Megadroid - Some Tips in Using This Forex Trading Software!

Are you having a hard time coping up with the dynamics and complexities of the foreign exchange trading market? Do you need help with keeping up with the fast paced and ever changing conditions and trends of the forex trading market industry? Did you just got started with and you joined the foreign exchange market just recently? Are you a novice trader and you need some help and guidance in knowing the system of the market, finding your way around it and then learning the ropes? If that is the case then you are very blessed and this must be one of your luckiest days.

Fortunately for you and other people like you who still feel you are in a maze every time you are about to make a market trade, there are some guides and tools that are available for your use to be able to cope up with the market. There are many robots that could be of use to you should you need one and all of those are up for grabs. There are also guides on how to use those forex robots or programs just like this one.

The very first thing that you have to do is to do a research on the particular forex robot that you want to buy. Equipping yourself with as much information pays a lot. Reviews on Megadroid will tell you how reliable this robot it.

Second is to make sure that the product you are going to acquire is original and legit. You do not want to waste your money on some crap product that will not really work. Buy from accredited dealers of Megadroid to avoid being scammed

Third is to familiarize yourself with the product that you have chosen. Learn how it works. With Megadroid, you will not have a hard time doing so because this product is so easy to operate and understand.

Investments

The world of investments is an ever-expanding field of different financial instruments and markets to choose from. Financial market innovation ensures that keeping up with the new financial products and starting research the markets on your own can be an overwhelming task.

Here, you'll find basic information on some of the major instruments and markets, all in one place, to help you on your research efforts. This way you'll save time and effort, which can be put to better use, researching the actual companies or financial products.

Sometimes investors keep their field of knowledge too narrow. By expanding your knowledge about the different markets and financial products, you may get new investment ideas, portfolio weighting strategies, or risk management tools, for example.

Keeping Up with the Market Changes

In addition to the basic information, this site has been designed to offer advice on further resources and educational tools. Most of the further resources, apart from professional market training, are completely free, providing a great return on invested time, to put it that way.

The articles put emphasis on the major financial product areas, but you'll find discussion on the on-going innavation in this field, which continuously provides links between different product areas.

For example, financial innovation has brought us credit derivatives, new commodity markets (such as emission trading), and negative coupon bonds, to name few examples. You might also be interested in forex investing.

The areas covered include:

investment go-betweens (banks, advisors)
different types of investment funds
the dark side of investing (fraud)
international aspects of investing
and much more.

Put together, you'll find a well rounded view on financial education, research resources, and financial markets, to get you to the next level on your efforts to become a better investor.

Methods of money management

Working in Forex traders should be able to distribute capital correctly, calculate the amount of money involved in a deal to get sufficient profit; and in case of losses not to lose all deposited money.

For these purposes special methods of money management exist:

• Absence of money management. Many traders who open a position don't count money used in operations, don't calculate approximate profit and possible losses. This is one of the tactics. But if the capital is not large it will disappear after several deals.
• Multilateral contracts. Opening several positions of different instruments on Forex, such as EURUSD and EURGBP in the case of prices moving in the right direction, the trader can get good profits from these contracts. Both profit and loss in such deals can be significant.
• Fixed sum of money. Depending on the amount of money in his account the trader decides how much he can put at risk when opening one or another position. The trader doesn't exceed the limit he has fixed himself.
• Fixed percentage of capital. This method is similar to the previous one with the only difference being that the trader sets the percentage of the capital and not the amount of the capital itself.
• Coordination of profits and losses. It is necessary to keep statistics of all operations (number of losses, wins and their connection). This connection shows that losses and wins take turns or several losses are followed by several successful operations. It makes sense to increase the volume of the position after a number of losses hoping for winning and, on the contrary, decrease after a positive period expecting losses again.
• Intersection of the curved moving capital average. The principle is based on the well-known method of moving average as a signal for entering the market or leaving it. Moving averages (long one and short one) are used for estimating the results of arranged deals. If the short curved is above the long one it's a signal for opening positions to gain profit; and if it's below it then better times are still to come.

Having chosen one or another method of money management for trading, you will be able to use your money rationally, and it will bring profit. Methods of money management are applied before opening of positions.

Weekly Trading Update - 23-27 November 2009

Well I'm kicking myself for not staying with the GBP/JPY breakout trade. You may recall that I highlighted a possible breakout last week and when it did break downwards I banked around 100 points. However this breakout has continued into this week and it's since fallen another 800 points, so I really missed out on some huge gains on this occasion. However the one trading position I opened this week turned out pretty well.

It was on the GBP/USD pair and I went short yesterday afternoon (when all my American friends were enjoying yet another day off, Happy Thanksgiving by the way ) after the EMAs finally crossed downwards on the 4 hour chart.

I actually traded against the trend on this occasion, but I've been bearish on this pair for a few weeks now and just felt that it was due a retracement, particularly as there was a nice bearish divergence pattern on several indicators such as the MACD, Smoothed Repulse and TRIX indicators.

After the EMAs crossed downwards on the 4 hour chart, I waited for a slight pull-back and went short at 1.6560. As I normally do, I closed half the position for 50 points and let the other half run, moving my stop loss down to break-even.

I set my target at 1.6400 and let it run overnight, and despite thinking that this may be a little ambitious, the price easily reached this target, helped by the bleak news from Dubai, and the effect this may have on British banks who have exposure in this part of the world.

So overall it was a solid profit and a decent enough week. It could have been even better if I could have managed to open a short on the EUR/USD pair as well, but unfortunately the crossover occurred overnight so I couldn't trade it. My next target is the EUR/GBP pair (providing the Supertrend indicator doesn't turn bullish on the daily chart) but I don't think this is likely to break downwards until next week now.

So that probably brings an end to my trading this week. I hope you all have a great weekend.

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