Forex Trading-what is Scalping?

Scalping is like those high action thriller movies that keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s fast paced, exciting, and mind-rattling all at once.

These types of trades are usually only held onto for a few seconds to a few minutes at the most!

Forex Scalper

The main objective for forex scalpers is to grab very small amounts of pips as many times as they can throughout the busiest times of the day.

Because scalpers basically have to be glued to the charts, it is best suited for those who can spend several hours of undivided attention to their trading.

It requires intense focus and quick thinking to be successful.Check out this post by our regular psychologist, Dr. Pipslow, on how to work on your concentration skills.

It is not for those looking to make big wins all the time, but rather for those who like raking in small profits over the long run to make an overall profit.

Scalping the Forex Market

You might be a forex scalper if:

  • You like fast trading and excitement
  • You don’t mind being focused on your charts for several hours at a time
  • You are an impatient person who doesn’t like to wait for long trades
  • You can think fast and change bias, or direction, quickly
  • You have fast fingers (put those eSport skills to work!)
  • You are a surgeon!

You might NOT be a forex scalper if:

  • You easily get stressed in fast moving environments
  • You can’t commit several hours of undivided attention to your charts
  • You’d rather make fewer trades with higher profit gains
  • You like taking your time to analyze the overall picture of the market

Some things to consider if you decide to scalp:

Trade only the most liquid pairs

Pairs such as the EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/CHF, and USD/JPY offer the tightest spreads because they tend to have the highest trading volume.

You want your spreads to be as tight as possible since you will be entering the market frequently.

Trade only during the busiest times of the day

The most liquid times of the day are during the session overlaps. This is from 2:00 am to 4:00 am and from 8:00 am to 12:00 noon Eastern Time (EST).

Make sure to account for the spread

Because you enter the market frequently, spreads will be a big factor in your overall profit.

Be sure your targets are at least double your spread so that you can account for the times the market moves against you.

Try focusing on one pair first

Scalping is very intense and if you can put all your energy in one pair, you’ll have a better chance at being successful.

Trying to scalp multiple pairs simultaneously as a noob will almost suicidal.

If you start to get accustomed to the pace of things, then you can start by adding on another pair and see how it works for you.

Make sure you follow good money management

This goes for any type of trading, but since you are making so many trades within a day it is especially important that you are sticking to risk management practices.

Major news reports can throw you off

Because of slippage and high volatility, trading around highly anticipated news reports can be very dangerous.

It sucks when you unexpectedly see price jump in the opposite direction of your trade because of a news report!

Forex Trading Times: Know Your Landscape

As traders, we need to think globally, since the currency markets are international in structure.

We also need to keep in mind that we are individuals inhabiting a single time zone. And though we need to know what’s going on at the global level, if we are trading on the lower timeframes – from scalping up to day trading – we have to juggle both the internationalcurrency moves and the local forex market news and announcements.

There is another post on this site – Daily Forex Trading Hours – that covers the difficulties encountered when trading at certain times of day. For example, when the European and Asian sessions open, and the major foreign exchange centres such as Frankfurt and London in Europe, and Sydney, Tokyo and Singapore in Asia, begin trading.

Beyond this, the forex trader needs to be keenly aware of their local market and how it moves during the hours they will be trading it.

Some of the things that you need to know with regards to your local forex times are:

  • The sentiment coming from the forex trading session just ended. You need to have a handle on what the major news announcements – scheduled and unscheduled – had on the market sentiment with respect to the currency pairs you will be trading.
  • The imminent news for the session you are about to trade. Unless you are actually trading the news announcements themselves, you only need to note the scheduled announcements that may move the market. As time goes by, you may even place less emphasis on news in general except for those obvious majors such as exchange rates, jobs reports etc.
  • Local news sources. It’s amazing just how much you can learn from a casual read of one or two of the better newspapers. Sometimes you don’t even have to go down to the financial section, such as when there is a rates announcement coming up that day and the speculation is covered in the lead news articles. Television and website news sources, as well as the usual forex news and calendar resources such as you will find on this site, should help to fill any gaps in your understanding of where the market is  currently headed.
  • The local forex market character. This can be extremely idiosyncratic, right down to the national and state level. For example, Japanese forex trading may be influenced by current cultural events on the same day that Australian forex trading is subject to the release of GDP figures. And yet both will occur during the same trading session. This can make for interesting, if not exactly tradable volatility in the currency markets.
  • Who the local big players are. The major banks, the central banks and the governments. Know what they are up to, what their current outlook and sentiment is, and the likelihood of them making surprise announcements during your trading session.

A major landmark in your personal forex landscape is the broker(s) you deal with. Don’t don’t just open an account and start to trade. Make sure you both know and have written down somewhere that is easily accessible, the following:

  • The brokers’ open and close times. When they open for business at the start of the week and when they close at the week’s end. You also need to know what hours they are easily contacted. Good brokers will have some kind of contact facility 24 hours a day for the days they are open for business, but many will be referring you to an overseas service when their local office closes for day. Be aware of how your brokers operate in this respect so that you are able to contact them in emergencies.
  • Keep an eye on the spread variability across the forex session you are trading. This will vary across brokers, with some being better to trade at certain times than others.
  • Any scheduled down times. Some brokers will take down their servers for maintenance or other reasons at scheduled times each week. Ask your broker what these are, if any.

The last thing you need to be intimately familiar with of course is your workstation and its connections.

Whether this is an older style PC, laptop or even one of the newer options such as mobile or tablet, make sure that both the hardware and software are up to date and running at peak performance.

Especially important is your Internet connection. Make sure you have emergency phone numbers close to hand in case your connection drops out during a trading session.

Forex-Trading-Lion

Know what’s likely to be lurking in the forex landscape you hunt in

In my case, I often have a problem with my ISP (Telstra) slowing to a crawl during my evening time, which happens to coincide with the London open. As a contingency, I fire up my laptop which is running on a wireless connection, at that time.

The temptation to think of forex trading as a global pursuit can lead us to just sit and stare at our PC screens, watching charts and waiting for signals. We have to remember that we are very much influenced by our local environment.

When hunting trades we have to be intimately connected to the landscape we are hunting in, otherwise something nasty might leap out of the bushes to show how easy it is to turn from hunter into prey…

How Much Money to Trade?

Knowing how much money you need to trade allows you to get on with the business of trading itself without worrying about your trader pay cheque

How much money do you need to trade? How much can your trading system’s tap provide? It can be ‘cranked up’ to provide a greater flow, but there will always be a limit. Know your system’s limits to know the answer…

One of the first questions a beginning trader asks is “How much money do I need to survive as a trader?”

It’s often asked by someone with a very small account size who is nervous about taking the first step into trading.

If they are thinking of leaving their job to trade, the very fact that they are asking the question should raise alarm bells.

(For a short but extremely relevant discussion of this dilemma see the first of our forex myths, click the following link to go to Forex Myths)

Even though it’s asked by newbie traders, it’s a valid and important question. You should have the answer to this question before you ever contemplate relying solely on trading for an income.

There is a basic equation that gives the answer to the question. The simple maths goes like this:

Frequency * Magnitude equals = Expected Value

Where:

  • Frequency refers to the number of trades your system provides on average over a certain period. For example, if you wanted to know how much your system makes in an average year, the Frequency would be the number of times your system trades in an average year.
  • Magnitude refers to the size of the outcome – the win or the loss – of your average trade. This can be expressed in a number of ways: as pips, as percentage, as units or as a currency value, e.g. in dollar terms. For our purposes here, since we are trying to discern if your system will provide you with a living (you can’t eat pips, percentages or units :-)), we will use the dollar value.

Let’s assume the following inputs to the calculation:

  • your system trades on average one hundred and fifty times per year
  • your system makes 1% or one unit (see Forex Pip for a discussion on the use of pips, percentages and units) each time it trades
  • you have a trading account size of $100,000
  • you will risk 1% of your account each time you trade, i.e 1% of $100,000, or $1000

Professional traders only risk from 0.2% to 1.5% per trade. Beyond this risk level is reckless!CLICK TO TWEET

We now have all the elements to do the estimates:

Frequency * Magnitude equals = Expected Value

150            * $1000                    = $150,000 (yearly income from trading this system)

So that is the very simple method for working out how much money you are going to need in order to live off your trading.

If you find the yearly income is too low or too high, you can of course adjust how much you will risk per trade. Be careful of letting greed influence you here: most professional traders risk anywhere from 0.2% to 1.5% per trade. Anything above this is generally considered to be venturing into the danger zone!

Finally, the most important considerations in answering the question “how much money will I need to trade?” are:

  • Knowing how much money you have to devote to your trading account. Be careful of throwing your life savings into this effort, especially in the early years of your trading career. Start slowly and build as your successes and confidence increase.
  • Selecting the right approach to trading, i.e. your chosen strategies or systems
  • Knowing your trading systems inside out – which means knowing all the parameters such as Frequency – will be necessary in answering the question “How Much Money Do I Need to Trade?”

For more on basic forex education click the following link to go to Forex School or continue on to more advanced topics in Forex University

rfxsignals April 14, 2019 No Comments

Forex Trading Class For Level 1 Traders

The best thing any forex school can teach: there are 1000 ways to come undone in trading, but a few surefire ways to stay on track…

Forex Trading School 1

Forex Trading School 101: Keep It Simple!

Someone once told me trading was a simple matter, but doing it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. The point is, the basics of learning to trade forex are simple, but the beginning forex trader inevitably complicates matters.

This may be due to either their own nature and/or the fact that their inexperience and resulting insecurity lead them to habits like piling one indicator on top of another in order to divine some ‘truth’ about current price behaviour.

This over complication leads to doubt, fear and inevitable mistakes. If you are wondering how to start forex trading the best piece of advice you can get and the first thing you should do is this: Keep It Simple!

Leave more complex matters until later when you are actually consistently profitable. At that stage, you can incorporate new things into your trading as an experiment to see whether or not they actually add to your bottom line.

The truth is that as a forex trader you are placing bets on which way price is going to run. And it can only run two ways: up or down. It’s that simple. After that, it all comes down to mathematics and probability.

For example, if price can only run two ways, it’s obvious that tossing a coin to choose the direction of your trade should result in roughly 50% winners and 50% losers. In this scenario, if you can win slightly more on your winners than you do on your losers, you will likely be ahead over the long term.

But even systems and strategies that only return 30% to 40% winners can be great systems, if the size of their average winner is much larger than the size of their average loser.

That’s it: simple maths, the answer to the question “is this the right system for me to trade?” The thing is you can only find this out through testing of course, which is a subject covered later. For now, let’s return to basics.

The pages in this section of AuthenticFX will give you a good grounding in how to begin trading forex. No school can cover everything of course, but the aim of this one is to get you started on the right foot, ever mindful of the risks involved in trading. The sections we will be covering are as follows:

First, if considering paying for some of your forex education, you may want to consider the Two Types of Forex School

Forex Trading School: Don't forget books

Don’t forget books, an often neglected resource

Forex 101: a brief introduction to the world of forex trading, its history, development and current status

10 First Steps in Forex: the 10 first things you should do in order to give yourself the best chance of surviving

Best Forex Books: a list of the indispensable books for every budding forex trader

Free Forex E-Books: some are rubbish, but these are worth your time

Top 10 Forex Myths: there is an awful lot of baloney floating around the Internet about how to trade forex. This will attempt to explode the 10 most prevalent and poisonous myths.

The Number One Forex Scam: Believe it or not there is one major forex scam that spawns all the others.

The Top Forex Scams: a heads up on the worst of the rip-offs out there, and more importantly an attempt to give you an idea of the sort of sales pitch that should raise alarm bells when you read it.

One last scam you need to be aware of if you use Metatrader as a trading platform: the Mt4 Virtual Dealer Plug-In software is open to abuse

For the basics on how to approach your trading day in your own time zone, see Forex Trading Times: Know Your Landscape

Last but definitely not least, we try to answer the question most new forex traders ask: How Much Money Do I Need to Trade?

The next step in choosing your approach to the market now that you have covered the fundamentals would be to consider your Trader Type

Types of Forex Trader-Your Trader Type

To trade forex successfully you need to know your personality type and match that to a trading style…

Trader Type: Scalping

There are Four Basic Trader Types:

Scalpers

Scalpers generally trade much more frequently than other traders. The object is to enter the market fast and exit just as fast, making a few pips profit each time, often at the risk of many more pips than is made.

Knowing how to trade forex markets in such a frenetic fashion does not come easily to the new trader. The section on Scalping has more details, including a discussion of this method’s advantages and drawbacks that may assist in your assessment of its suitability for your personality.

The prevailing trend is less important to a scalper that it is for other traders, as the moves are very small and therefore generally not affected by the higher timeframe trend.

One observation that is not often made about scalping is that your choice of FX trading platforms becomes critical when you are trading in such an intense manner. Your platform must be reliable, quick to respond and not subject to manipulation by the broker.

Trader Type: Day Trading

Day Traders

One step up the scale from the prolific trades of scalping is the day trader. The day trader aims to both enter and exit the market within the course of a single trading session if possible.

Day traders typically require a risk to reward of at least 1:1. The pace of day trading is nowhere near as fast as scalping, allowing the trader more flexibility in having to watch the market.

Some day traders simply walk away from their screens having set alarms that will send an SMS alerting them to the possibility of a trade entry.

Day traders may trade either with the daily trend or against it, but more generally with it.

Position Traders

Position traders are longer-term traders, typically holding a position for anything between days to months at a time.

Trader Type: Position Trading

Some position traders use purely fundamental analysis to get their entries, but it is more common to use a combination of both fundamental and technical analysis. For example, a position trader may decide to take a bearish view on a currency based on a number of fundamental factors such as interest rate, economic performance of one of the currencies involved in the pair, global economic fundamentals, central bank policy changes etc.

The position trader will then look for a technical entry which allows them to sell the pair, generally setting a stop that is very large, hundreds of pips perhaps. They then attempt to trail the stop over the course of the ensuing weeks.

Some will have set a take profit target, whereas others will be content for market swings to eventually take them out of the trade as they trail their stop in profit behind the current price.

It can be seen that position traders mostly trade in the direction of the longer-term trend.

Trader Type: Swing Trading

Swing Traders

Swing trading is the art of picking medium term tops and bottoms in price movement within the context of a larger overall trend. The overall trend may be bullish or bearish, but the swing trader will look for opportunities within that trend.

Swing trading is generally a longer term proposition, although technically it can be traded as an approach on lower timeframes as long as the trader is focused on identifying points where price will reverse and “swing” back the other way.

The swing trader may for example be trading short on a long-term uptrend. Then, they may exit the short trade at or near the end of the run down in price, only to take a long position if the signals for such now occur.

If the trend is long-term the profit targets and stops are generally larger than for a short term trend. Swing traders use a variety of technical analysis tools including but not limited to Fibonacci retracements and extensions, support and resistance levels, old highs and lows, pivots etc.

There are a great many variations in the definitions given above, and other types of trader are also defined elsewhere. If you want to investigate your Trader Type further the following sites may be helpful:

Babypips: Which Type of Trader Are You?

Investopedia: Introduction to Types of Trading: Technical Traders

Investopedia: What Type Of Forex Trader Are You?

The Van Tharp Trader Test extends the idea into a deeper examination of personality types. It consists of 35 questions you answer to find out your “Trader Type”.

Another useful tool for those wondering about their trading style, and it’s a lot of fun!“Okay, I know what type of trader I am, what’s next?”

The strategies on this site fall into two broad categories: manual and automated. Sequentially the next step would be to go to Forex Trading Strategies.

KERALA LOTTERY RESULT-NIRMAL WEEKLY LOTTERY (NR-116)-12.04.2019

KERALA STATE LOTTERIES – RESULT

www.keralalotteries.com PHONE:- DIRECTOR OFFICE FAX www.kerala.gov.in 0471-2305230 0471-2305193 0471-2301740 NIRMAL WEEKLY LOTTERY LOTTERY NO. NR-116th DRAW held on 12/04/2019 AT GORKY BHAVAN NEAR BAKERY JUNCTION THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

1st Prize- Rs :6,000,000/- NB 497415 (KOZHIKKODE) Consolation Prize- Rs. 8,000/- NA 497415 NC 497415 ND 497415 NE 497415 NF 497415 NG 497415 NH 497415 NJ 497415 NK 497415 NL 497415 NM 497415

2nd Prize- Rs :500,000/- NM 928921 (THIRUVANANTHAPURAM)

3rd Prize- Rs :100,000/- NA 905927 (KASARGODE) NB 673606 (KOZHIKKODE) NC 498167 (WAYANAD) ND 222905 (KOLLAM) NE 398035 (ERNAKULAM) NF 331115 (KASARGODE) NG 368980 (ALAPPUZHA) NH 814789 (IDUKKI) NJ 667052 (THIRUVANANTHAPURAM) NK 234272 (THRISSUR) NL 503509 (ERNAKULAM) NM 846071 (KOLLAM) FOR THE TICKETS ENDING WITH THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS

4th Prize- Rs. 5,000/- 0811 1804 1821 2510 2814 3389 3983 5291 6096 7387 7559 9978

5th Prize- Rs. 1,000/- 0058 0943 1285 1437 1708 1809 1980 2295 2427 3345 3423 3489 3581 3594 3610 3751 4186 4494 4901 5071 5151 5752 5859 6633 6711 6884 6954 9048 9208 9413 9725

6th Prize- Rs. 500/- 0079 0100 0128 0162 0373 0628 0805 1690 1957 2187 2271 2301 2370 2722 2760 3101 3163 3173 3289 3437 3603 3639 3731 3748 3809 3849 3873 3949 3988 4096 4160 4211 4261 4420 4746 5188 5282 5301 5512 5531 5590 5681 5826 6510 6594 6612 6619 6772 7430 7459 7920 8291 8479 8815 8934 8948 9407 9668 9705 9908

7th Prize- Rs. 100/- 0138 0202 0489 0496 0613 0704 0768 0853 0899 0905 1297 1415 1603 1937 2031 2052 2143 2241 2339 2361 2521 2641 2684 2836 2893 2917 2977 3021 3066 3192 3290 3310 3334 3411 3420 3645 3653 3667 3680 3991 4030 4065 4148 4281 4349 4385 4575 4633 4682 4698 4825 4831 5039 5063 5216 5302 5321 5491 5587 5750 5868 5910 5976 6000 6014 6062 6079 6162 6280 6589 6648 6792 6995 7096 7107 7125 7172 7183 7237 7307 7423 7511 7558 7591 7598 7735 7740 7743 7829 8013 8023 8126 8167 8297 8372 8580 8683 8690 8850 8883 8975 9043 9191 9227 9458 9608 9628 9976 The prize winners are advised to verify the winning numbers with the results published in the Kerala Government Gazatte and surrender the winning tickets within 30 days.

Next NIRMAL WEEKLY LOTTERY Lottery Draw will be held on 19/04/2019 at GORKY BHAVAN NEAR BAKERY JUNCTION THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Sd/- NOWSHAD PM Deputy Director Directorate Of State Lotteries , Vikas Bhavan,tvm

KERALA LOTTERY RESULT-Karunya Plus (KN-260)-11.04.2019

KERALA STATE LOTTERIES – RESULT

www.keralalotteries.com PHONE:- DIRECTOR OFFICE FAX

www.kerala.gov.in

0471-2305230 0471-2305193 0471-2301740

Karunya Plus LOTTERY NO. KN-260th DRAW held on 11/04/2019 AT GORKY BHAVAN NEAR BAKERY JUNCTION THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

1st Prize- Rs :8,000,000/- PH 722394 (KOTTAYAM) Consolation Prize- Rs. 8,000/- PA 722394 PB 722394 PC 722394 PD 722394 PE 722394 PG 722394 PJ 722394 PK 722394 PL 722394

2nd Prize- Rs :500,000/- PE 844987 (THRISSUR)

3rd Prize- Rs :100,000/- PA 481891 (KOZHIKKODE) PB 179012 (THIRUVANANTHAPURAM) PC 150310 (KANNUR) PD 328573 (KASARGODE) PE 169001 (ERNAKULAM) PG 104460 (KOLLAM) PH 111800 (PALAKKAD) PJ 622984 (ERNAKULAM) PK 768621 (KOTTAYAM) PL 699286 (KASARGODE) FOR THE TICKETS ENDING WITH THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS

4th Prize- Rs. 5,000/- 0660 0828 1401 2162 2562 2683 2858 3372 4440 5222 5307 6438 6921 7947 8904 9402

5th Prize- Rs. 2,000/- 0597 1190 3035 3617 4158 5753

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7th Prize- Rs. 500/- 0072 0162 0264 0534 0609 0942 1109 1138 1216 1296 1352 1535 1871 2252 2372 2495 2496 2503 2630 2842 2935 2999 3078 3125 3373 3386 3390 3624 3877 3881 3918 3989 4185 4233 4572 4599 5212 5215 5525 5547 5562 5696 5895 6166 6201 6816 6862 6907 7003 7029 7381 7424 7644 7717 7782 7796 7834 7948 7985 8245 8286 8306 8334 8494 8595 9172 9258 9583 9740 9798 9817 9960 9998

8th Prize- Rs. 100/- 0063 0291 0493 0598 0836 0923 1007 1104 1177 1218 1849 1916 2022 2217 2221 2284 2498 2514 2539 2546 2550 2641 2657 2675 2716 2729 2747 2751 2758 2766 2775 2819 2923 3079 3098 3241 3350 3649 3803 3926 3929 3970 4047 4051 4060 4080 4100 4135 4220 4352 4469 4511 4683 4703 4757 4776 4804 4854 4951 4963 5095 5336 5377 5423 5453 5621 5702 5751 5798 5901 6022 6204 6355 6365 6521 6567 6576 6591 6685 6809 6993 7115 7154 7319 7332 7402 7486 7576 7611 7677 7815 7855 7923 8033 8086 8098 8132 8256 8257 8529 8590 8635 8730 8753 8851 8869 8968 9082 9247 9626 9652 9995

The prize winners are advised to verify the winning numbers with the results published in the Kerala Government Gazatte and surrender the winning tickets within 30 days.

Next Karunya Plus Lottery Draw will be held on 18/04/2019 at GORKY BHAVAN NEAR BAKERY JUNCTION THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Sd/- NOWSHAD PM Deputy Director Directorate Of State Lotteries , Vikas Bhavan,tvm