Investment is always long term whereas trading is always short term. Day trading always has got a short term perspective and requires quick reflexes. Now day trading is not possible for many investors. Many people have a long term perspective. They feel more comfortable thinking about their long term financial goals and matching them with their investment strategies over months and even years.

An investor might have to wait for a long time before realizing a return on his or her investment. Many investors can learn a few tricks from day traders that can help them make a quick profit in a matter of days orn weeks instead of months or years. Now a company’s stock may have a good long term prospects supported by strong fundamentals. But the stock may stay still for a long time before it catches the attention of the media and the investing public before it’s price get’s bid up.

Many investors when they fall in love with their investments on the long run forget this cardinal rule of trading that you have to cut your losses. Market least care who you are and how long you have been in it.There is a general problem with so many investors. They fall in love with their investment after doing so much research and committing so much time for the position to work. Now, day traders are always hit and run types. They have developed an innate sense of discipline among themselves that teaches them when to commit money to a trade and when to cut and run.

Now as a momentum investor, you need to look for securities that are going up in prices especially if accompanied by the underlying growth. What this means is that instead of buying low and selling high, what you will be doing is buying high and selling even higher.

When investing, you try to buy low and sell high. In momentum investing, you buy high and sell even higher! One of the tricks that you can learn from day traders is momentum investing. In momentum investing, you look for securities that are expected to go up in prices accompanied by the underlying momentum. Now, when the price of a stock or security increases because of strong demand, it is said to have momentum behind it.

How to you find that a security has got momentum behind it? You can use these technical indicators like the MACD ( Moving Average Convergence and Divergence), RSI (Relative Strength Index) or the Stochastic. A swing trader is also looking to ride a trend as long as it lasts. A trend lasts as long as it has got momentum behind it. Momentum investing is similar to swing trading.

Momentum investing can also lead to bubbles like that happened in the dot com bubble in the last few years of 1990s. It is always a good idea to do some fundamental research on the companies before doing momentum investing.

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There are so many Forex software products on the market that choosing one can be quite challenging. Traders aren’t programmers and it’s difficult to cut through all the jargon to find out what really works. Some of the products may be outdated and others may not be effective. Forex programs are expensive and you don’t want to waste your money.

You can check out products on scam and fraud websites and you can look at consumer complaints, but that may not give you the whole story. If a program is old, the people using it may be happy, but it may not be the best Forex software you can buy.

One website that is easy to understand is Forex Autopilot. In addition to explaining what you can expect from the robot, this site offers some tips on the Forex market that traders can use. The facts are presented without the outrageous claims made by many other sites.

Forex Autopilot is a Forex robot and it manages your investments and trades without any input from you. It works around the clock, even when you are sleeping, and it isn’t swayed by intuition or emotion. It looks for the best trades and takes advantage of them.

Even if you have no experience, Forex Autopilot will work for you. In fact, it’s designed with beginners in mind. Experienced traders will appreciate the way that Forex Autopilot takes the work out of trading. When you can’t be watching the market, it watches the market for you.

The design of the website is clean and professional without a lot of unnecessary hoopla. The developer not only understands software, he understands Forex traders and this comes through on the site.

You’ve seen sites that steer away from clear information and won’t answer your questions before you invest in their product. If a site leaves you confused about their product or makes outrageous claims, they probably just want to take your money and aren’t concerned about your satisfaction. You won’t find that on Forex Autopilot.

Since most traders aren’t computer geeks, you’ll appreciate, as I did, how easy the site is to navigate and use.

That could be one reason but the other reason could be that they do not have much time and are still working on other websites. Forex traders especially newbies should really be careful about this. You should first look for websites that are to be trusted and one of these is forexautopilot.com.

The sales talk is not only filled with facts, in the website, there are also screen caps indicating the live trade that the customer has participated in. This would give interested customers a decent idea on what they can get from these forex robots.

The site owner even shares his own experiences with bad Forex software and explains how his program is different.

Forex Autopilot is interested in satisfying their customers. They are proud of their product and they want you to be successful. After just 4 months of using the program, I can tell you that I’m a very happy customer.

Find more about forex autopilot review or check this real user forex ambush review.

The European Union consists of 15 member countries that include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Out of these 15 countries, 12 common currency countries constitute the European Monetary Union (EMU). Except Denmark, Sweden and United Kingdom, all these above countries share the common currency Euro. These 12 countries share a single monetary policy dictated by the European Central Bank (ECB).

EMU has a highly developed and efficient fixed income, equity and the futures market. The EMU is the worlds second largest economic powerhouse after the United States. This makes EMU the second most attractive investment market for domestic and international investors.

In the past, the EMU had difficulty in attracting foreign direct investment or large capital inflows. The primary reason was the United States. Historically US assets have had solid returns. As a result, United States absorbs something like 70% of the total foreign savings.

However, with the EMU beginning to incorporate even more members in Eastern Europe, Euros importance is expected to increase. Induction of new members will further increase the size of EMU. The capital flows to Europe is expected to increase as well.

Demand for Euro is expected to continue rising with foreign central banks expected to diversify their Euro reserve holdings even further. EMU is in fact a trade driven and a capital flow driven economy. Trade is very important to the national economies within EMU.

EMU has significant power in the international trade arena because of the size of the EMUs trade with the rest of the world. EU exports comprise almost 20% of the world trade. While EU accounts for only 17% of the world imports! Unlike United States, EMU does not have large trade deficit or surplus.

International clout is one of the primary reasons in the formation of EU. The formation of EU allows individual member countries to group as one entity and negotiates on an equal playing field with the United States. United States is the largest trading partner of EU.

Leading import sources for EU are United States, Japan, China, Switzerland and Russia. Leading export markets for EU are the United States, Switzerland, Japan, Poland and China.

Manufacturing, mining and utilities account for around 20% of the EU economy while services account for more than 70% of the EU economy. EU is primarily a service oriented economy. While outsourcing most of their manufacturing to Asia, large numbers of EU based companies concentrate their research, design, innovation and marketing part of the activity in EU.

It is important for most of the countries to hold large amounts of reserve currencies to reduce exchange rate risk and transaction costs. Most international trade transactions involve the British Pound, the Japanese Yen and the US Dollar.

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You need to develop or adopt a trading system. Without having a trading system, you wont be able to make a consistent level of profits in the market. Do you have a trading system that tells you when to enter the market? Lets assume that you already have got a trading system that tells you where to enter the market. Does this system also tell you where to get out before you enter the trade?

On the road to profitability, lets start by agreeing that we need stop loss exits. In other words are you taking the market conditions into account and willing to give your trade a breathing space so that you dont get whipsawed or repeatedly get stopped out.

After this agreement, we need to determine how to effectively select stop loss exits to avoid excessive stop outs. Just dont forget, the more trades you place, more commissions or spreads you will have to pay and the higher your trading cost will be.

The best way to do this is to develop a stop loss strategy that takes into account currency market conditions. So right there you can increase your profitability if you increase the number of winning trades that is your win ration thereby decreasing your trading cost.

Finding the right trading system can be a lengthy process. There need to be a connection between you and your trading system. It truly is like having a personal relationship. You must believe in your trading system and have a high degree of trust that it can produce consistent level of profits overtime.

You need to thoroughly test your trading system and try to measure and calculate its parameters accurately. If you have a trading system that isnt working for you and your win ratio and your payoff ratio dont generate a profit over time then you need to rethink your trading strategy. But you must also understand that no trading system can be perfect and no trading system can produce 100% winning trades.

When you lose a trade, it can be your trading system or it can be you yourself. Determine if it is your trading system that isnt working or is it your trading psychology that is off. Make adjustments to entry and exits. Maybe the market conditions have changed and you havent adjusted your trading system to the new market conditions.

Test your trading system overtime. Make a number of trades with your trading system. Just keep this in mind that if you dont give your trading system a chance to work jumping constantly from one trading system to another trading system in search of a holy grail wont help you.

Divorce is never a good idea. But if the things dont work out there is no recourse except taking a divorce. Divorce of any kind can be emotionally and financially expensive so proceed with caution when divorcing your trading system. The decision to divorce your trading system should be a carefully thought out one.

The primary purpose of your trading system is to make you feel comfortable and confident. If you feel comfortable and confident with your trading system, you ultimately will also be profitable.

You will feel confident when your trading system has proven to you and you have proven to your trading system that both can work together. Its a team work.

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Download Candlestick Guide (82 pages) free after you finish reading this article. This candlestick guide is a complementary gift for you from Options University and is comprehensive. Candlesticks have become popular in the Western trading community especially the United States in the past decade. However, candlestick charting methods had been developed by Japanese rice traders hundreds of years back.

The advent of internet has leveled the playing field for traders whether they trade stocks, futures, options, commodities, precious metals or currencies. Access to the market is now only one mouse click away.

Market information is now in most cases freely available online. Internet has made commission rates dramatically lower. The result is that a whole generation of new traders and investors want to try their luck beating the market.

Can you beat the market? It depends if you are using the right tools. I am a great fan of candlesticks charting and I have seen many traders both new and professionals becoming die hard fans of candlestick charting. Why? Because candlestick charting is the best tool available.

On your trading platform provided by most of the online brokers you will find various types of charts. There are many forms of charting techniques that have been developed over time. Why candlestick charting is superior to other forms of charting like the line charts, bar charts or point and figure charts? One of the best features of candlestick charting is its visual appeal and readability. You can glance at a candlestick chart and quickly gain an understanding of whats going on with the price action in the market.

Knowing support and resistance is very important for traders. Opening and closing price levels can be a very important area of support and resistance from day to day. You can easily spot and opening and closing price of a security or currency on a candlestick chart.

There are certain specific candlestick patterns that can help you identify when is the best time to buy, sell or wait on a trade or investment. This information can be extremely useful for short term traders like day traders and swing traders.

Learning how to spot these candlestick patterns is very important for you. In order to trade and invest effectively using candlestick charts you need to understand these candlestick patterns. These candlestick patterns can be a real boon to your trading and you can combine them with other technical indicators for even more reliable results.

Patterns appear on the candlestick charts as simple, single stick occurrences or complex multi stick formations. Many different types of candlestick patterns can tell you what may lie ahead in the market.

You may use the information provided by candlestick patterns to decide when to get into a trade, when to get out of a trade or even when to hang unto a trade you are already in. This information can be highly valuable in knowing that the prevailing trend might reverse or continue.

This is the best candlestick guide in the market and you dont need to waste your money on buying a guide because this candlestick guide is a complementary gift for you from the Options University. Download your 82 page candlestick guide here complete with strategy flash cards all free.

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When selecting a trading system, first try to paper trade it. You need to paper trade your trading system to get the bugs out. Paper trading is not a substitute for live trading but still you can assume that 75% of the results that you achieve in demo trading can be replicated in live trading.

Money management plan for your trading system is a must. A good money management plan will tell you how much you should risk on each trade with that trading system. For that to know you need two ratios. Win ratio and the payoff ration are two highly important figures to know for any trading system. Use the results of these paper trades to calculate your win ratio and payoff ratio. Determine what your personal win ratio and payoff ratio are in using that trading system over time.

Now in the case of a successful trader, it takes three to tango here. The trading system, your money management system and you yourself, all three of you have to gel together. The more profitable you will be over time, the stronger and more developed the relationship is between the three of you.

So for you to become a successful trader, a trading system is not enough. You need a good money management plan as well. Win ratio and the payoff ratio are required in developing a sound money management plan that will work hand in hand with that trading system. What can be the best parameters to selecting your trading system? When selecting your trading system, use these five parameters:

1) Trade entries in the trading system are defined by market price activity, key support and resistance levels, volume and volatility dynamics and not on random and spontaneous decisions.

2) The initial stop loss exit is determined before entering your trade.

3) Just like the trade entries, the trading system determines the trade exits by market price activity, key support and resistance levels, volume and volatility dynamics and fundamental rules, not on any arbitrary dollar loss that you feel comfortable with.

4) You must not underestimate the importance of paper trading though it is not a substitute for live trading. Your trading system has been adequately paper traded or live traded and you have determined your personal statistical performance. You need to know your win ratio and the payoff ratio.

Do not rely on the results that the other got with that trading system. Use the actual results that you attained while using that trading system in calculating your win ratio and the payoff ratio.

You can use a computer in testing the performance of a trading system. Again do not delude yourself by thinking that computer back testing can give you your win ratio or payoff ratio. Do not try to rely on computer back tested results. Your personal performance results are the real results that matter. You cannot depend on computer results and other traders results.

5) Your trading system should be mechanical and rule based. Your trading rules should be written out step by step in sequence so that the entries and exits are consistent, clear and above all quantifiable. This makes your trading mechanical and emotions free. This is very important.

One perfect example of a rule based trading system is the Turtle Trading System. Have you ever heard of the Turtle Trading System? You must read the story of the Turtle Trading Experiment. Turtle Trading System was developed for the commodities futures market.

You must know the story of Turtle Trading Rules. The story of Turtle trading rules is very interesting. The creators of that trading system had a discussion one day. One was of the opinion that great traders are born. The other said great traders can be made.

So a number of completely new traders were selected to teach them those rules and see if they could become successful traders. Many succeeded with this trading system and became highly successful traders.

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In the past before the adoption of Euro as a single currency by EMU, it was necessary for many countries to hold large amounts of every individual European currency. As a result the currency reserves tended towards US Dollar. In 1990s, 65% of the global reserves were in US Dollar.

However, with the introduction of Euro, foreign reserve assets are shifting in favor of Euro. As EU becomes one of the major trading partners for most countries around the world, this trend is expected to continue.

The European Central Bank: The European Central Bank (ECB) is the governing body that determines the monetary policy for the EMU countries. The Executive Board of ECB comprises the president, the vice president and four other members. These individuals along with the governors of the member national banks comprise the Governing Council. The Executive Board implements the policies made by the Governing Council.

The policy meetings are biweekly. Although ECB meets biweekly and has the power to change the monetary policy in any of these meeting, it is only expected to do so where an official press conference is scheduled afterwards. New monetary policy decisions are usually taken by a majority vote. The president has the deciding vote in the event of a tie.

ECB has a strict mandate based on inflation and deficit. So, the EMUs primary objective is price stability and growth. ECB tries to keep the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) below 2% and M3 (money supply) annual growth below 4.5%.

ECB is supposed to coordinate its policy decisions with the respective central banks. You should understand that the ECB and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) are independent institutions from both national governments and other EU institutions. This operational independence is granted to them as per Article 108 of the Maastricht Treaty. Without this independence, meaningful monetary policy is out of question.

There are many factors that have to be taken into consideration while setting the targets for inflation and growth. There was EMU criteria that were used as a precondition for any EU member state joining the EMU. How ECB achieves its policy targets of price stability and growth? The primary tools the ECB uses to control monetary policy are the Open Market Operations. ECB has at is disposal four categories of open market operations that it can use to manage interest rates, control liquidity and signal monetary policy stance.

Bulk of refinancing for the financial sector is done through these main refinancing operations. These refinancing operations are conducted weekly with a maturity of two weeks. These operations are regular liquidity providing reverse transactions.

Longer term refinancing operations are liquidity providing reverse transactions with a monthly frequency and a maturity of three months. Fine tuning operations are executed on an ad hoc basis with the aim of both managing the liquidity situation in the market and steering interest rates.

Structural operations involve the issuance of debt certificates, reverse transactions and outright transactions. ECB uses these operations to adjust the structural position of the Eurosystem vis–vis the financial sector. The ECB minimum bid rate is the key policy target for the ECB. It is the level of borrowing that ECB offers to the central banks of its member states.

ECB does not usually have the exchange rate target but can factor in exchange rates in its policy deliberations as exchange rate impacts price stability. Therefore ECB is not constrained from intervening in the forex markets if it believes that inflation is of concern.

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Position trading is all about taking a directional market position and holding it as long as the trade makes sense from the trend standpoint. This means that positions are held for longer term. Now there are four style of trading: Scalping, Day Trading, Swing Trading and Position Trading.

Position trading may mean keeping a trade open from one week to a month to as long as a year or possibly more in the fast moving world of forex trading. Most individual and retail traders do not have the patience for position trading.

This is somewhat unfortunate as most retail traders dont have that patience to become successful position traders. Only those position traders who have the patience to stick with the trend and let their profits run are generally able to capitalize on these longer term price moves. Position trading can be one of the most profitable styles of trading due to the fact that many currencies tend to trend well on long term basis.

Position trading is unlike day trading or swing trading that relies almost exclusively on technical analysis and is based on short time frames. Due to its long term time frame, position trading tends to rely heavily on fundamental analysis along with longer term technical analysis.

As a forex trader, you must be aware that there are two type of analysis that is done to analyze the market forces, fundamental and technical. Fundamental analysis concerns itself with the economic forces that drive the major market movements. Fundamental analysis is geared towards longer term price forecasts rather than the swing to swing movements that are primarily the focus of technical analysis.

Technical analysis is based on the study of price action to predict the short term futures direction of the price action. Technical analysis is always short term in nature. The general direction of change in the currency value over the long run is what interests the position traders. This can be only done through the fundamental analysis. The economic forces that determine the long term trend of a currency include interest rates, inflation, GDP, unemployment. Fundamental analysis helps to determine the value of the national currency overtime.

Trading with the trend is what the trend traders do. Position trading and trend trading both follow almost similar approaches. However, position traders often rely on fundamentals along with the technicals; trend traders are almost exclusively technical in nature.

Carry trading can be considered a form of position trading as carry traders hold interest positive positions to benefit from both regular interest payments and exchange rate profits. How do position traders decide which position to take?

Forex position traders weigh strength and weaknesses in currencies by taking various fundamental and technical factors into account. They then establish positions on currency pairs according to their views.

Lets take an example. Suppose that a position trader has performed fundamental analysis on economic conditions surrounding the major currency pairs that involve the US Dollar on either side of the pair. The position trader is of the opinion keeping in view the present recession in the US economy that the US Dollar is indicating fundamental weakness going forward.

The position trader thinks that the Euro is showing significant fundamental strength at the same time that the US Dollar is showing weakness going forward. This opinion may have been based on the recent rate of economic growth, comments by the Federal Reserve Board (FED) Chairman or the President of European Central Bank (ECB), the state of ongoing recession, on the state of inflationary/deflationary pressure in the economy and so on.

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Forex market participants widely watch the comments by the members of the Governing Council of ECB. These comments frequently tend to move the Euro. ECB publishes monthly bulletin detailing analysis of economic conditions. This bulletin can give important signals to changes in the monetary policy.

Now EUR/USD cross is the most liquid currency. All major euro crosses are highly liquid. The movements of EUR/USD currency pair are used as the primary gauge to judge the health of both European and the United States health. Euro is also known as the anti-dollar since it is the dollar fundamentals that have dictated the movements in the EUR/USD pair from 2003-2008.

As they have tight spreads, make orderly moves and rarely gap, EUR/USD and EUR/GBP are great trading currencies. EUR/JPY and EUR/CHF are very liquid pairs too and are used to judge the health of the Japanese and Swiss economies. Always remember to understand and study each currency pair in detail. Each currency pair has a unique behavior that you need to understand before you plan to trade that pair.

However, Euro has unique risks. Euro was launched in 1999. It is still a new currency. There are number of risks unique to the Euro. The most important is the exposure to the economic, political and social development of 15 member countries.

It could affect the stability of the entire region although more countries are expected to join EMU if a member country drops Euro and reverts back to its original national currency because it believes that ECB actions are not in its best interests.

We can say Euro is a currency without a country. ECB has the power to determine monetary policy for its 15 member countries. With that comes the political pressure of 15 governments. This political pressure frequently tests the actions of ECB.

The present global financial crisis is unlike any in the past. It is deep and may continue for some more years. It started from the sub-prime markets in the US and then spread to the rest of the world. Many big banks became the victims of this financial crisis. However, the rapid response of ECB to the present global financial crisis in the shape of deep liquidity injections has transformed its reputation. The spread between 10 year US Treasuries and 10 year bunds can indicate Euro sentiment.

Another important interest rate that you must know as a forex trader is the Euro Interbank Offer Rate (Euribor). This is the rate offered from one large bank to another on interbank term deposits. Traders and investors tend to compare the Euribor futures rate with the Eurodollars futures rate.

Higher spreads between the two rates makes the European fixed income assets more attractive. Lower spreads make the European assets less attractive. Merger and Acquisition activities between US and European multinationals have important implications for EUR/USD pair. Large deals if in cash have often significant short term impact on EUR/USD.

Important indicators for Euro are Harmonized Index of Consumer prices (HICP), M3, German Unemployment, Preliminary GDP that includes France, Germany and Netherlands, German Industrial Production, Individual country budget deficit. The largest countries in EMU are Germany, France and Italy. Study of the economic data of these three large countries is also important.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. He is interested in day trading stocks and currencies. Try Strignano’s Forex Signals free. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot Trading System!

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What matters most to a trader or an investor is how to create a positive cash flow. It all depends on your trading strategies. The first step is to identify the type of trade into which we will enter.

Is it a day trade? Is it a swing trade or is it a long term positions trade? Once we acknowledge what our goals and objective are than we can narrow our expectations.

Suppose I am a day trader. My expectations are for X amount of a given range. I will expect that if I miss 20% of the bottom and 20% of the top then I can expect to capture 60% of the average daily range. I will generally be able to identify what the average range for the day is.

So how do I start? First I will have to structure my computer and charts to a format that is conducive to day trading. How many pips you want to make in a specific time frame like eight to six bars from entry? 30 pips or 40 pips!

If you trade Euro, Yen or Pound, then for day trading, use the 15 minute time frame for the dominant trend. Use the 5 minute time frame as a shorter time frame trigger to go with the 15 minute signal. Use the 5 minute time frame to exit a position in day trading.

The key to remember is when the 15 minute time period is in sell mode, take the 5 minute sell signals. Similarly when the 15 minute time period is in the buy mode, take the 5 minute buy signals.

As a day trader you can watch the 60 minute time period, but if you are in a trade based on the 15 minute and the 5 minute time, these are the time frames you need to monitor for that specific trade.

Keeping an eye on the 60 minute time period will help you identify the current trend and a potential change in the trend if a moving average crossover occurs. Keep in mind your profit targets and where you are in range.

If the Euro is already down 50 pips when a sell signal is triggered, the odds are that your profit potential is in the range of suppose 30 pips or less if the average true range (ATR) is 80 pips based on the past 14 trading days. How do you calculate these things?

You will have to subscribe to a good forex charting service. Free forex charts do not go into very fine details that you need to look into when making your trading decisions. Using good forex charting software will help you automatically calculate all the daily, weekly, monthly pivot points as well as the daily range, support and resistance, S-1, R-1 and other stuff.

For day trading use the 60 minute time period for calculating the monthly pivot points, 15 minutes time frame for calculating the weekly pivot points and the 5 minute time frame for calculating the daily pivot points.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. He is interested in day trading stocks and currencies. Try Strignano’s Forex Signals free. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot Trading System!