GMT |  Tokyo |  London |  New York

New to Forex Trading?

See our 1-page simple guide and try trading completely for free with a forex practice account, more »

learn forex

A 20-lesson guide to the basics of forex trading online, with charts and analysis, more »

Make sure you choose the right broker for you, with our comparison of online forex brokers, more »

Best Forex System in the World

Posted in Psychology by Lewis Wolfe
Friday, October 17th, 2008 13:43 PM GMT

The absolute best? Simple…

Always remember that you are using real money to invest in an essentially unregulated market.

Yes, we see ‘regulated by’ in all the fine print – this does mean may be regulated on a retroactive basis – something goes very wrong? Apologies will be made previous oversights, won’t happen again, we assure you, and the the long litigation will begin. You might see a 15cent in the dollar check after 6 years waiting.
Continue reading »

Forex candlestick charts: Marubozu

Posted in Charts by Lewis Wolfe
Friday, October 17th, 2008 12:26 PM GMT

A nice simple one for the end of the week – or would be, except that definitions of the Marubozu can vary…

The majority view seems to be that marubozu = a candlestick with no upper or lower shadows.

Some will use the term to describe a candlestick with one shadow, usually trailing the trend direction, so that an open (bullish) candle will have a lower shadow and conversely a bearish has an upper shadow.
Continue reading »

Forex Indicators: Parabolic SAR

Posted in Charts by Lewis Wolfe
Friday, October 17th, 2008 10:27 AM GMT

Parabolic SAR was developed by J. Welles Wilder. (Yet another indicator, he was nothing if not busy with a pencil and paper in the ’70’s)

Parabolic SAR is designed to indicate exit points – both long and short – such that more unpredictable fluctuations at the beginning of the movement are smoothed, but accelerates upwards (long positions) or downwards (short positions) as the trend comes towards completion.
Continue reading »

Forex Indicators: Average Directional Index – ADX

Posted in Charts by Lewis Wolfe
Thursday, October 16th, 2008 11:08 AM GMT

Measured between 0 and 100, the ADX is a measure of the strength of a prevailing trend. Values below 20 indicate a weak trend, over 40 indicates a strong trend.

ADX doesn’t give you information on the direction of any particular trend, only the strength of that trend.

A move above 20 is a signal of a new trend starting, while the ADX dropping below 40 suggests that the current trend may be ending.
Continue reading »

Stop-hunting in Forex trading

Posted in Analysis by Lewis Wolfe
Thursday, October 16th, 2008 8:26 AM GMT

forex-stop-hunting.jpgOr ‘hunting for stops‘ – it can happen in any form of market, not just forex, and as usual can be a legitimate trading tactic or not, depending on who’s doing it and with what information.

Stop-hunting = moving the market to set off competitors’ stop-loss orders to your own advantage.

As I say, it’s legitimate if carried out without inside knowledge, on an ‘open’ market – there’s a discussion of the fair deal here.

However, since an internet forex ‘broker’ can quote their own internal prices, they have the opportunity to move prices substantially from the normal interbank rates to trigger their own customers’ stops.
Continue reading »

CAD – long-term forex signals

Posted in News by Lewis Wolfe
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 14:31 PM GMT

In many ways, Canada is the odd one out at the moment – still posting good figures, banks not weakened by the sub-prime difficulties down in the hot south (or even the poor mortgage strategy of UK lenders), another federal budget surplus due this fiscal year – but CAD is still generally on the slide.
Continue reading »

Norwegian Interest Rates

Posted in News by Lewis Wolfe
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 7:21 AM GMT

norway.jpg13:00 GMT today comes the Norway interest rate statement – liable to a significant cut from 5.75%, maybe 1/2%. If you follow EUR/NOK, it may well be edge-of-your-seat stuff… USD/NOK and GBP/NOK would also be interesting to observe.
Continue reading »

Betting on a Forex Elliott Wave

Posted in Psychology by Lewis Wolfe
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 9:12 AM GMT

Here’s a 5-3 Elliott wave (maybe) in the wild – the pros would call it a subminuette, on a 1 hour chart, range of 40 pips.

forex-elliot-wave.gif

Is it an Elliott wave? Sure looks a bit like one should look.
Continue reading »

Stocks Bounce and Forex wanders

Posted in News by Lewis Wolfe
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 8:38 AM GMT

Already this morning, Japan’s Nikkei up 14%, another record apparently, although with a holiday pause in trading on Monday.
The FTSE was up 8% yesterday, the Dow up 11% – fears of global recession, yes – but perhaps the necessary readjustment from last week’s headless chicken behavior.
Which seems to signal watch and wait – react rather than predict.

This is the first serious test of EUR. While the going was good – and let’s face it was good for a relatively long time – any disagreements could be papered over and a quiet accomodation reached.
Continue reading »

Mark those stock prices down

Posted in News by Lewis Wolfe
Monday, October 13th, 2008 9:31 AM GMT

There’s little doubt that there’s another round of coordinated central bank rate cuts in the offing. It will have been discussed at the summit of G7 finance ministers at the weekend, together with other solutions to the overall market crisis. The usual question at this point being is it really enough to make any difference at all?

Last week, AUD dropped 20% against the yen to hit ¥64.50 – the largest single week fall since it floated back in 1983 – before rallying to ¥64.96. NZD got rid of 13.7% over the week to close at ¥60.01.
Continue reading »