How does technical analysis work?

Technical analysis of currency movements is now, more than ever, part of the Forex market. As time has passed, different ways of collecting and displaying data have arisen. These differing ways can be taken in isolation to either create or back up a strategy, or can be combined in order to read how the market has arrived at its present point, and how it is likely to move forward. This enables more confident predictions and sounder investments. As time goes on, more data is collected and trends are reinforced. The awareness of a trend allows a more realistic understanding of the market. For someone just starting as a Forex trader, this kind of data is all-important.

One method of technical analysis is looking at diagrams and graphs. Taken over a period of time, this allows us to define and explain a pattern. One of the most popular styles of graph is the “Candlestick pattern”, which tells at a glance for any given day where the price was at the start of a period, at the end of the same period, and its highs and lows in the intervening time. Thus you can see at a glance if a currency is genuinely rising fast or slow, or falling at the same rate. The use of Fibonacci figures is another popular analytical tool. It looks at certain points in the rise or fall of a market and – with incredible regularity – predicts when it will stabilise or “retrace” (this means reversing its trend).

Technical Analysis of the Forex Market

Along with fundamental analysis, technical analysis is one of the two main methods of informing oneself and building a stronger position to profit from the Forex market. While fundamental analysis allows you to predict the movement of a currency by looking at the political and economic position of a country, technical analysis has more to do with looking at collected market data and using it to predict future movement. This is an approach that is very commonly used on the stock market, for example, where historic data is the single most important part of predicting future performance.

While a fundamental analysis will look at the reasons for market movement – allowing us to know why something happened – the technical analysis of the same market will tell us exactly what happened. That is to say that it will give us the raw data. Fundamental analysis requires an extremely broad view and, for those who are disinterested in politics, can be overly time-consuming. If these people are strong technical analysts, they can usually learn enough from the movements themselves. Whatever the reason for a movement, the fact is that currency prices follow trends.

Regardless of anything else, people know that patterns have emerged in how foreign currencies behave, patterns which have held true for more than a century. These patterns mirror human behavior – one of the few constant things in the world – and therefore are an excellent way of predicting the future. You may not know who the President of a certain country is, but if you know how its currency performs over a period of time you are well within your rights to not care.

Fundamental Analysis of the Forex Market

It is broadly accepted that there are two ways to analyze the Forex market. These are described as “fundamental” and “technical” analysis. Which of these methods works at which time? To help understand how and why, this article will look at fundamental analysis. This is a style of analysis that looks at political and economic conditions which affect exchange rates. Most commonly, these factors include employment rates and economic policies of a governing party. It therefore stands to reason that a general election in a country will have some bearing on the Forex rate for that country’s currency.

Fundamental analysis, as the name suggests, gives a broad overview of the way currencies move, and enables an understanding of where a certain currency is going. The role of fundamental analysis is to strengthen your strategy by giving it an underpinning of sound, concrete factors which have been proven, time and again, to govern how a currency will perform.

To understand the present behavior and confidently predict the future behavior of a currency, it is worth knowing things like interest rates (considered to be an indicator of continuing strength in a currency) and economic factors such as GDP and foreign investment. If a company invests in factories, offices and labor in a foreign country, it brings wealth and potential to that country, and is likely to give its currency a boost. Knowing that a country has foreign investment in the pipeline can enable confident prediction of its currency strengthening and remaining strong.

Analyzing the market to your advantage

It has been said by many experienced traders that Forex is a more volatile market than any of the available options. The theory goes that it is difficult enough to judge a single company’s value at a given time and in the future, just imagine how hard it is to do the same thing with a whole country. This philosophy takes the point of view that analyzing the Forex market relies on careful reading over a period of time. Some knowledge of world affairs is also advantageous, as it allows you to be aware in advance of the timing of important announcements which can cause market volatility.

Others will treat the Forex market exactly like they would treat any other stock market, and take a more technical approach to analyzing their next step. This is not as simple a process in Forex as it is in the stock market, as the Forex is a 24-hour market, and the data-gathering systems require some modification to work effectively on Forex. Nonetheless, where these methods of technical analysis have been correctly applied, they have proved to be an effective way of making a profit on the Forex market just as their original forms proved on other markets.

While the first method is more of a global, evidence-based approach and the second tends towards techniques and patterns, both have been proven to be successful if correctly applied. It is highly advisable, though, to recognise which one to apply at a given time, as confusion can easily arise around what exactly the data tells you. Pick the method that you require and use the other to supplement it. That is the only way you can confidently operate in the long term.

The Perils of Over-Reacting

Trading on the Forex market is something that can be quite thrilling, such is the potential for making real money. For many people, the thing that attracts them about the Forex market is exactly the same thing that can turn them off it – that is to say the high stakes which exist. Successful trading can make you very rich very quickly, but a bad trade can wipe your profit out in the blink of an eye. Having a negative experience early on can cause a trader to decide not to return to the trading arena. Even the fear of something going wrong can put the brakes on a promising trading career.

It is completely human to be cautious early on in your trading career, in fact, being over-cautious is better than being reckless, because as beneficial as a daring strategy can be, if you suffer a major loss early on in your trading career it can put the thought of failure in your mind on every future trade. You will, in all likelihood, lose leverage from your broker, and you may also become prone to a kind of paralysis which prevents you from trading at all. However, this does not mean that you should react hastily to any drop in the market because every market undergoes corrections from time to time. A short drop is not always the precursor to a crash, and judging the right time to stop your loss is something you will learn to do with experience.

Picking the right Forex broker for you

Playing the Forex market is something which more and more people are doing today, yet for those of us who have not yet begun our adventure in the Forex world, it can be a somewhat cloudy topic. Beginning to invest in the foreign exchange market is not something that just happens. That is to say that you cannot just walk into an office and buy some money in a foreign currency and become a Forex trader by doing so. It requires a process to be put into action, and the first step towards this is to choose a Forex broker.

Picking the right broker is not something that can be done without a good deal of prior research, as the quality and practices of brokers differ greatly from those who work with large banks (and therefore themselves have greater borrowing power and leverage) to those which are more independent but may suit a prospective trader with specific needs. It is advisable to join an online forum and discuss your own aims with the forum users. Getting a consensus for which type of Forex broker will serve your needs will narrow your possible choice to a point where you can make your own decision.

Once you have chosen a broker, you will need to open an account. Opening a Forex account involves proving your competence to deal with large sums of money – you will be playing with borrowed money if you get seriously involved, and brokers are not likely to lend to just anyone. It is also advisable to play with a virtual, paper-based account initially, until you are fully confident of your abilities to make a real profit.

Learn the lessons of history – good and bad

The world in which we live is constantly changing. Physically, morally, financially, things which we held to be true ten years ago have in many instances ceased to be the case. However, this does not mean that we cannot learn from the past. After all, a wise man once said these words, or something close: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. In other words, unless you learn from your mistakes you stand an excellent chance of making the same mistakes again. In fact, one could go further and say that you should also learn from the mistakes of other people. It is true that you can learn much more from a mistake than you can from something flawless.

It is, then, an excellent idea to keep a watch for the same data cropping up time and again in the Forex market. Where before you might have been led to believe that a certain market was going a certain way, and followed what the data suggested, you may well have found that that action was ill-advised. When the conditions reoccur you should be highly cautious of reacting in the same way – the potential drawbacks for you could be just as negative, if not more so.

It is much better for you to do your research and be initially cautious when it comes to trading on the market. After a while of intelligent conduct you may well have earned yourself enough money to put by for security, and let your instincts dictate your actions for a while to see if they make you as much money as you expect.

Learn to play the market by playing a game

Forex is a complicated system which still often confounds people with years of trading experience. Knowing how a situation usually resolves itself does not mean that you will be able to correctly predict how it will resolve itself every time. The market data is an excellent way of judging what the situation is at any given time. It is also as good a way as you will find of predicting future market behavior. Nonetheless, it is not a guaranteed predictor and consequently even the most experienced traders sometimes make a mess of things.

The less experience you have – in anything – the more likely you are to have the wrong reaction to a given situation. If this is in a golf match, then all that rests on your mistake is a little personal pride. On the Forex market, it can end up costing you real money. It is therefore massively important that you have as much knowledge to back up your every decision as you possibly can. One way of accruing knowledge without making costly mistakes and potentially bankrupting yourself is to start by playing online Forex games. These are a kind of simulator which closely reflects the real-life market and tells you how good your instincts are – without ruining you if you make a mistake.

There are Forex games available on the Internet which run entirely free of charge. There is obviously some variation in quality, and you should ensure that you check out more than a couple before committing to one. The more experience you gather before playing for real, the better your chances of making real money in the future.

Drawbacks for Forex beginners

Starting fresh in anything is going to have its problems, due to the lack of experience one has to draw on. As much of a natural talent as you may have for something, you will from time to time be faced with problems that you feel you are unable to deal with. One has only to look at the world of sport to see how often brilliantly talented youths are beaten by less talented experienced professionals, who know how to use a situation to their advantage on account of having faced that situation, analysed it and developed a way to deal with it. This is mirrored in life, and in situations such as the Forex market.

One thing that separates novices from experienced traders is how they react to occasionally confusing market data. When confronted with results that one does not expect, it is easy to take an inaccurate or imperfect interpretation of that data and act based on that. When you face a situation for the first time, you are in a position where you have to rely on your own impression, with nothing concrete to base it on beyond what you hear from others. It would be naïve to expect other people to always steer you the right way in an environment that rewards you more if fewer people get it right.

For this reason it is always best to have a “dry run” at Forex or any other market – whether by a “Fantasy Forex” game or with a small initial stake. This way you learn from your mistakes without having to pay too much for them.

Who plays the Forex Market?

Of all the different trading markets available in the world, there are some which are highly specialised and only attract the real niche experts, and others which attract a broad range from occasional traders to people who do it for a living. Of these two categories, the Forex market falls very much into the latter, and there are a number of ways that you can get a good grounding in the ways of the market without risking any of your own money. There is a dizzying amount of money spent on the market in any given day – upwards of three trillion dollars – and money traded on the market makes a big difference in the world of finance.

While its seriousness as a market ensures that the more experienced traders will keep a close eye on the Forex, it is also seen as an accessible way to get involved in trading for people who have never tried, or have tried but found other markets to be way too complicated. With the Forex, everyone knows what they are trading – “Dollars” and “Euros” are not exactly obscure brand names – and this allows them to understand it more before they get deeply involved.

The truth is that anyone can play the Forex market, although it goes without saying that the more skilled and more experienced you are as a trader, the more money you can stand to make. It is certainly a trading market that is easier to understand than many, and this has its blessings and its drawbacks.

« Previous Page — Next Page »