Saturday, October 3, 2009

The Value of Trade Balance to Local Economy


The balance of trade also referred as trade balance, which sometimes is symbolized as NX, is the difference of the monetary value of imports and exports in one economy in a given period of time. The balance of trade is considered the biggest part of a country’s balance of payments.

Imports, domestic spending, foreign aid, and investment abroad are called debit items while credit items includes exports, foreign investments in domestic economy and foreign spending in domestic economy.

A trade surplus is a positive balance of trade which is consists of more exporting than importing. A trade deficit is the negative balance of trade or sometimes called a trade gap. The trade balance can sometimes be divided as services balance and goods balance just like in the United Kingdom which they use the terms invisible and visible balance.

The balance of trade is a part of current account which includes transactions that includes income derived from international investment and international aid. Thus, if the current account comes as a surplus then the nation’s international net asset increases also while deficit will decrease the international net asset.

A good trade surplus is achieved when a country exports products more than buying imported goods. A trade deficit is eventually experience as a result of the opposite of a trade surplus. The trade balance is alike to the difference of a country's output and the domestic demand. These factors may affect the trade balance: prices of goods manufactured, taxes and tariffs, trade agreements, business cycle (home or abroad), and exchange rates.

The trade balance is different in many business cycles. For instance, export growth like oil and industrial goods which improves when there is economic expansion.

In developed countries like; Japan, China and Germany usually run at trade surpluses in which they experience a higher savings rate. Around the world there are different natural resources which a country may have for instance, countries from the coastal regions are major producers of fish, Canada can be a major producer of lumber because of its huge forests while in the Middle East, has the most oil reserves.

International trade is important so in order to sustain the balance of trade. A country should be totally self sufficient without international trade. Through international trades, each country will have the opportunity to produce specialize goods efficiently. In relation, when a nation specializes in producing these goods, the total production increases instead of trying to be self sufficient. Nations will benefit from international trades and also meets their needs. Generally, nations will trade to other nations when they gain from the trade. But the gains are not usually equal in terms of benefits and profit.

What is Forex?


market where one currency is traded for another. It is one of the largest markets in the world.

Some of the participants in this market are simply seeking to exchange aforeign currency for their own, like multinational corporations which must pay wages and other expenses in different nations than they sell products in. However, a large part of the market is made up of currency traders, who speculate on movements in exchange rates, much like others would speculate on movements of stock prices. Currency traders try to take advantage of even small fluctuations in exchange rates.

In the foreign exchange market there is little or no 'inside information'. Exchange rate fluctuations are usually caused by actual monetary flows as well as anticipations on global macroeconomic conditions. Significant news is released publicly so, at least in theory, everyone in the world receives the same news at the same time.

Currencies are traded against one another. Each pair of currencies thus constitutes an individual product and is traditionally noted XXX/YYY, where YYY is the ISO 4217 international three-letter code of the currency into which the price of one unit of XXX currency is expressed. For instance, EUR/USD is the price of the euro expressed in US dollars, as in 1 euro = 1.2045 dollar.

Unlike stocks and futures exchange, foreign exchange is indeed an interbank, over-the-counter (OTC) market which means there is no single universal exchange for specific currency pair. The foreign exchange market operates 24 hours per day throughout the week between individuals with forex brokers, brokers with banks, and banks with banks. If the European session is ended the Asian session or US session will start, so all world currencies can be continually in trade. Traders can react to news when it breaks, rather than waiting for the market to open, as is the case with most other markets.

Average daily international foreign exchange trading volume was $1.9 trillion in April 2004 according to the BIS study.

Like any market there is a bid/offer spread (difference between buying price and selling price). On major currency crosses, the difference between the price at which a market maker will sell ("ask", or "offer") to a wholesale customer and the price at which the same market-maker will buy ("bid") from the same wholesale customer is minimal, usually only 1 or 2 pips. In the EUR/USD price of 1.4238 a pip would be the '8' at the end. So the bid/ask quote of EUR/USD might be 1.4238/1.4239.

This, of course, does not apply to retail customers. Most individual currency speculators will trade using a broker which will typically have a spread marked up to say 3-20 pips (so in our example 1.4237/1.4239 or 1.423/1.425). The broker will give their clients often huge amounts of margin, thereby facilitating clients spending more money on the bid/ask spread. The brokers are not regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (since they do not sell securities), so they are not bound by the same margin limits as stock brokerages. They do not typically charge margin interest, however since currency trades must be settled in 2 days, they will "resettle" open positions (again collecting the bid/ask spread).

Individual currency speculators can work during the day and trade in the evenings, taking advantage of the market's 24 hours long trading day.

online forex trading tips

The faceless and trust based forum that the Intern
et facilitates is in no way a hindrance to trade in foreign currencies. Online forex trading involves currency trading that is facilitated and transacted through dedicated Internet links during the designed forex market hours…

What is forex trading?
Forex trading involves the buying and selling of foreign currencies. The term has been derived from foreign - ‘for’ and exchange - ‘ex’. It is almost like stock trading in the stock market where the foreign currencies take on the role of shares of currency institutions of the countries traded with. In forex capital markets, the stock investing follows the demands of value, economy and time. The volatility of currency exchange trading comes from the possibility to buy a currency low and subsequently sell short ‘high currency’. This online job rostrum needs the application of meticulous pursuit of the various exchange rates. Forex online currency trading demands that investors scrutinize the trajectory pair-wise, via internet marketing strategies.

The Perfect Forex Trading System


Trading the Forex market has become very popular in the last few years. But how difficult is it to achieve success in the Forex trading arena? Or let me rephrase this question, how many traders achieve consistent profitable results trading the Forex market? Unfortunately very few, only 5% of traders achieve this goal. One of the main reasons of this is because Forex traders focus in the wrong information to make their trading decisions and totally forget about the most important factor: Price behavior.

Most Forex trading systems are made off technical indicators (a moving average (MA) crossover, overbought/oversold conditions in an oscillator, etc.) But what are technical indicators? They are just a series of data points plotted in a chart; these points are derived from a mathematical formula applied to the price of any given currency pair. In other words, it is a chart of price plotted in a different way that helps us see other aspects of price.

There is an important implication on this definition of technical indicators. The fact that the readings obtained from them are based on price action. Take for instance a long MA crossover signal, the price has gone up enough to make the short period MA crossover the long period MA generating a long signal. Most traders see it as “the MA crossover made the price go up,” but it happened the other way around, the MA crossover signal occurred because the price went up. Where I’m trying to get here is that at the end, price behavior dictates how an indicator will act, and this should be taken into consideration on any trading decision made.

Trading decisions based on technical indicators without taking price action into consideration will give us less accurate results. For example, again a long signal generated by a MA crossover as the market approaches an important resistance level. If the price suddenly starts to bounce back off that important level there is no point on taking this signal, price action is telling us the market doesn’t want to go up. Most of the time, under this circumstances, the market will continue to fall down, disregarding the MA crossover.

Don’t get me wrong here, technical indicators are a very important aspect of trading. They help us see certain conditions that are otherwise difficult to see by watching pure price action. But when it comes to pull the trigger, price action incorporation into our Forex trading system will definitely put the odds in our favor, it will generate higher probability trades.


So, how to create a perfect Forex trading system?

First of all, you need to make sure your trading system fits your trading personality; otherwise you will find it hard to follow it. Every trader has different needs and goals, thus there is no system that perfectly fits all traders. You need to make your own research on various trading styles and technical indicators until you find a concept that perfectly works for you. Make sure you know the nature of whatever technical indicator used.

Secondly, incorporate price action into your system. So you only take long signals if the price behavior tells you the market wants to go up, and short signals if the market gives you indication that it will go down.

Third, and most importantly, you need to have the discipline to follow your Forex trading system rigorously. Try it first on a demo account, then move on to a small account and finally when feeling comfortably and being consistent profitable apply your system in a regular account.

FOREX TRADING ( ultimate guide)


Forex Trading – The Ultimate Guide

When new trading currencies? Do not worry, the first steps in Forex trading is simple and you can always test your skills in a demo account first before going “live” with real money. In FOREX trading, we need to know what FOREX is. For novices, FOREX trading for buying and selling of different currencies in the world.

FOREX is a treat if you buy one currency and selling another at the same time. It is always traded in pairs, EUR / USD, CHF / USD, USD / JPY … is “short” in one currency to buy, each time with another, and the benefit is when you buy low and sell high.

Facts about the FOREX market

FOREX market is the largest trading partner in the world. There is an average turnover of $ 1.9 trillion per day and the number is almost 30 times greater than the volume of shares trading in the United States. FOREX trading is very unique, because the transactions are between two partners over electronic network or telephone connections.

There is no central place, such as stocks or futures markets to trade and the clock. Each day begins trading currencies, if the financial centers in Sydney start the day, and travel all over the world to Tokyo, London and New York. Retailers in the month of May, at any time on the market, regardless of local time.

Although forex trading with a large volume of trade today, it is not for the public until 1998. In the past, the FOREX market is not available to small speculators or individual traders on the minimum size of a large company and the strict financial requirements.

At this time, only banks, large multi-national cooperation and major currency dealers were able to take advantage of the currency exchange market, extraordinary liquidity and strong trending nature of the world the most important exchange rates.

Only until the end of anni’90, FOREX brokers should break big giant inter-bank units into smaller units and offer these units to individual traders like you and me. Today, with the rapid growth of Internet and communication technologies, currency trading has become one of the hottest make-money-at-home for companies who wish to avoid the traditional 9-5 jobs.

As a fact in forex trading, FOREX trading is mainly in large international bank. According to the Wall Street Journal Europe, 73% of trading volume is from the big ten. German Bank, topping out the table, had 17% of the total currency trading, followed by UBS in the second and third Citi Group, 12.5% and 7.5% of the market.

Other major financial cooperation in the list is HSBC, Barclays, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Coldman Sachs, ABN Amro and Morgan Stanley. By market segment, about half of the transactions between the operators strictly (eg, banking, foreign exchange dealers or large), others are primarily between merchants and financial institutions.

Why FOREX is popular?

There are several reasons why FOREX had such a popular investment among world wide speculators.

In FOREX trading, you can always for your own advantage. The FOREX market has an amazing transformation since the advent of the Internet. Technology now has the opportunity for smaller investors to play on the same level as major companies and banks.

Who with a computer and a will to succeed can trade currencies from the privacy of your home or office. Online FOREX trading is the way that investors should conduct their business. With access to your portfolio-24-hours a day, it really is very easy to get started. You can choose whether the recruitment of a professional to your business, or you can choose to do it themselves.

Forex trading also provides a relatively high leverage to traders. FOREX dealers, the company with a maximum of 200 to 1 leverage rates. With this advantage, the return on investment is increased dramatically and traders can always start with little capital with as little as $ 1,000.

Getting Started in Forex Trading

You do not need much to work with FOREX trading. A computer with Internet access, a funded FOREX account with foreign currency exchange broker, and a trading system should be sufficient to start things.

To reduce the risk of losing money, some basic knowledge of scales is also recommended before you start trading FOREX. Forex charts assist the investor by providing a visual representation of fluctuations in exchange rates. Many variables affect the rate, as interest rates, bank policies, geopolitics, and even the time of day can affect the exchange rate.

As pointed out by experts FOREX trader Peter Bain, the graphics are an important tool in forex trading. In his newsletter, he reveals that the daily charts, hourly charts, 15-minutes cards are used, while trading Forex. As stated in its newsletter – “Daily chart will help you understand the general trend from a business point of view, and the hourly rate (one hour) chart will give you an idea of the intraday trend. I 15 minutes for the chart is the entry and exit – with the help of the table for five minutes, if the price is moving quickly, and you are closer to the action. ”

As a technical method, FOREX charts based on the principle that “history repeats itself.” FOREX traders who study charts predict the market with an assessment of past, future market development. The timing for cards in May for different traders, some analyze the past one week, some prefer six months analysis, and there are also traders who analyze the market for five to ten years before in a trading FOREX.

A wide variety of FOREX are available on the market. Some mapping methods are very simple, with a little FOREX indicators to show the direction of trade, other images may be up to forty indicators and these are mainly traders in advance, more cleverly. MACD Divergence, RSI, RSI range, and prices are known to some indicators in the tables.

Choosing the right FX dealer is a way to avoid unnecessary risks. FOREX dealers are not all the same way regulated. Although foreign exchange dealers must be regulated by law, companies and individuals can solicit retail foreign exchange dealers and manage those accounts without regulated. As a dealer, you should take responsibility to find out whether your foreign exchange dealers are regulated. If not, you may be exposed to additional risks.