Online Investing Daily

Many people start trading forex without knowing the games their forex broker can play with them. Choosing a right forex broker is very important for you. Dont get stuck up with an unscrupulous forex broker. Know the tricks a forex broker has for you.

Retail forex market is new and different from forex interbank market. Forex interbank market is only open to big players like banks, corporations, hedge funds, pension funds and other institutional investors and deals with large currency transactions.

Retail forex market was developed after the advent of the internet. Retail forex brokers offer online margin accounts to retail forex traders like you and me who are small time players in a huge market. Retail forex market is loosely regulated that lets the forex brokers play games with small forex traders.

You need to know the games; a forex broker can play with you. If you dont know what games a forex broker can play with you, you will never succeed at forex trading. Understand how the broker can trick you:

Nontransparent pricing: Since, forex market is over the counter market with no clearing central exchange, the prices that your forex broker quotes to you is the price that you get. It is really difficult for you to know whether the quoted price is fair or not. You have to just accept it.

Encouraging Leverage: Your forex broker will encourage you to use a high leverage like 100-1 or 200-1. Leverage is good when you are winning but it will wipe you out in case of a loss. Most of the retail forex traders are amateurs and dont know how to handle leverage, they expose themselves and get wiped out in the market quickly. The more you lose the more your broker will make. Dont use too high leverage.

Brokers try to trade against you: Forex brokers act as an intermediary between the retail trader and the interbank forex market. Since most of the retail trades are too small in size and cannot be immediately offset in the interbank market, forex brokers get the opportunity to trade against you. If you go long, the broker will go short and if you go short, the broker will take the long position. As most of the retail traders are not good traders and lose most of the time, forex brokers make profit from this.

Non transparent Practices: Casinos and forex brokers have one mentality. They dont like you winning. If you have a winning streak, the house will get stacked against you. Your trades may not get executed due to slippage. The service may be denied to you. The forex broker may make it difficult for you to execute your trades.

Visit my Blog for finding a Forex Broker Scorecard that can help you in choosing a right broker. You also need to know what type of questions you should ask.

The ease of online trading

You can use the internet for online stock trading. You need not call up your broker for giving instructions on stock trading, and do all this while being at home or in the office. You would of course need a computer, an efficient service provider for your internet connection and a good online broker through whom you route your trades. This will allow you to make the trades through your online stock trading account as per your own judgment and with paying just a little commission.

Take care while choosing an online broker

Look for the most reputed online brokers, and get in touch with them so that you can rout your online stock trading through them. Most of them would only be happy to provide you with any information that you require as they see you as a potential customer.

You need to know the minimum investment necessary to make for starting in online trading. Make sure that there are no fees if there is no activity on their site for whatever reasons. Get their full list of commissions/fees which you would need to factor in every time you make a trade. Some online brokers also help you out with your online stock trading by offering you tips and suggestions, and their own outlook on the market and its prospects.

Open an account

Opening an account with an online broker is generally a simple affair and can even be done online. You would however have to provide all the necessary paperwork and open an account with the stock exchanges, which will allow you to get all your stock price quotes electronically. The online broker may even have his own enrollment or other fees, for you to gain access to his online network so that you can trade in shares. You would also have to provide a wire transfer link to your bank account so that funds can be transferred both in and out of your account, in order to allow you to carry on the activity of online stock trading.

Some of them may require that you deposit funds with them before you start the online stock trading. Initially you may be allowed to conduct online stock trading only in stocks, and would be unable to indulge in trading in futures and options, foreign exchange or commodities, as these may require you to register separately. Margin trading may require additional funds depending on the limits you are looking for.

Be cautious while trading

Online trading can be as risky as any other and you would have to approach it with care and caution. Now that you are on your own and the actions are instantaneous you would require to tread carefully. See that you constantly monitor your portfolio through the tools that most online stock trading brokers provide. Your portfolio will be updated constantly and this will allow you to take decisions on a real time basis. Take advantage also of their services to make in depth analysis of the stocks you are planning to buy or sell, so that you make your trades with the right information available.

Forex trading is an altogether a totally different beast as compared to stock trading. One of the major differences between the forex and stock markets is that forex markets are open 24 hour, 5 days a week while stock markets have fixed timings. For example New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is open from 9:00 AM to 4:00 Pm. You can only trade stocks at NYSE during this time.

Continuous 24 hour action at the forex markets baffles many new traders. Forex markets have no central exchange. It is an Over the Counter (OTC) market that is spread over various locations in the world.

Now, how to provide a open and close session for each day so that you dont have to sit in front of your computer all day getting yourself exhausted. An ingenious way is to divide the day into three eight hour session.

Further divide each 8 hour session into two 4 hour sessions using a 4 hour chart. This division of 24 hours is logical as there are only three major money centers in the world that have the capacity to move the forex markets.

These three money center that are central to the forex markets are: Asia, London and New York. So by dividing the 24 hours into three sessions we will call each session as the Asian, the London and the New York Session.

Asian Market Session: Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore are the main cities that participate in this session. Major players are the export corporations and the central banks. Sydney opens and with that the forex markets become alive each day. Most of the price action that takes place in this session is unsustainable and jumpy.

London Session: London is still the forex capital of the world with deep and highly liquid forex market. Paris, Geneva and Frankfurt also are players in this session. The moves that originate in this session are very important keeping in view the amount of money needed to move a market this deep. These moves give you a lot of information about the market sentiments and positions.

New York FX Market Session: New York is second biggest FX market after London. Both of these markets overlap in the morning when New York is opening and London is closing. This is the time for major action.

The following table gives important times of the day that any forex trader needs to know: 00:00 GMT-Sydney Opens. 11:00 GMT-London opens. 15:00 GMT- London becomes very active. 17:00 GMT- London is active and New York opens. 18:00 GMT- London and Europe closes. 19:00 GMT- New York and Chicago getting ready for a close!

This overlapping between London and New York is when major price action takes place and new trends are formed or old trends are reversed. London is the market trend setter in fashion as well as forex.

The exciting ups and devastating downs of today’s stock market make national news almost every night. Virtually most people know someone who’s wasted money in today’s unstable market. As a cause of this, investment beginners are very frightful of investing into stock with their precious money.

It is true that people have lost lots of money in the stock market today, but as an investment beginner, if you know some of the investing basics and investing tips for beginners you can actually use these losses to your advantage. How can you make money in investing when mostly everyone else has lost money?

It is really very simple. One of the most effective investing tips and rules of investing is to “buy low and sell high”! People that lost the most money today bought stocks and invested when the stock market at record highs.

Now that it has dropped to new lows they are forced to hold onto their positions, hoping it will rise back to past highs, or sell at a tremendous loss. Because of being an investment beginner, you are able to take advantage and buy into stocks on the market today at a low and underestimated price.

Stock have generally performed over the long run run better than most other financial assets. However, it is highly recommended that before you get involved investing in the stock market, you learn the stock market investing basics including the language, functioning, and risks associated with stock investments.

When first starting, take “baby steps” and keep your risk as low as possible. Don’t get in over your head by deciding how much you can afford to invest. By starting slowly, you can allow yourself to learn the ropes without getting burned by your mistakes.

Beginning investors who want to invest in individual stocks don’t necessarily need to understand how to carefully select individual stocks. Through professionally managed stock portfolios via mutual funds, beginner investors can get off to a good start.

This saves you the trouble of picking individual stocks yourself and your portfolio is automatically quite diversified - decreasing the risk you are taking with your money. Make sure to carefully examine other investment alternatives before deciding to invest in stocks.