Archive for October, 2009
Author: Gama Seva
From the time when brokers started providing free forex demo accounts, Fx demo trading has gathered a lot of attention. It is usually recommended without reservation both for beginners and for more experienced traders who want to test new systems. But is it appropriate for every circumstances, or does it sometimes have disadvantages? Could too much forex demo trading be unpleasant for your financial health? We will look at the pros and the cons of demo accounts so that you can make up your own mind.
Firstly let us explore at what is in it for the broker. Why do they permit you explore their system, with their resources, for free? The main motive, of course, is that they are hoping you will register for a real account. But if you are a novice, they would like to get you making money on a demo trading account so that you get really eager about putting in your own personal money. If you are currently trading, they want you to see how great their platform is so that you will contemplate moving your account.
There is nothing unsuitable with any of that. Practicing trading is a great way to learn. In fact, if you were to read a couple of books on forex and then start trading for real right away, pretty much anybody would tell you that you were crazy|. So the main advantage of a practice account is that it lets you test out a broker's services or a system without any risk.
The quandary comes if you do not understand that there is a differentiation between trading virtual money and trading for real. In your demo account, you are likely to take bigger risks than you would take in real trading. If you are lucky and do well on those trades, you could become overconfident. You could think you had mastered forex trading when really you were just starting out. So you put all your savings into a live trading account, start to try to follow the same system, and bang! The risks were too high, the stress was too great, a couple of losing trades and you are wiped out.
So forex trading demos can be very helpful, but they have to be used right. From the moment that you open a demo account, remember that it is extremely critical to stay disciplined. Employ a system, follow a trading plan, make a huge attempt to operate as if that was your money. Subsequently move to actual trading after you can see a pattern of profits and losses, with an overall gain. At that time you can open a micro account and start trading very small sums. That is the best way to use a forex mini demo account account.
With years of trading experience, I want to help the beginner trader to achieve their goals of being successful. There is no magic bullet that will make you instantly wealthy trading the stock or forex markets but with good trading practices and effective money management techniques, you can grow you to be self assured of your trading ability making trading very profitable. Discover Forex tips and trading techniques at the at the Forex Learn Exchange Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/currency-trading-articles/is-currency-demo-trading-bad-for-your-financial-health-1394322.html
Author: Gama Seva
FXOpen is one of the companies that are most responsible for Metaquotes’ (the company behind Metatrader) success simply because it introduces features that Metatrader should have but it doesn’t. Alpari is another of these companies and occasionally serves as Metaquotes’ beta-site.
FXOpen recently introduced the first ever MT4 ECN platform and also added PAMM accounts making money managers’ life much easier.
Today FXOpen announced (http://forum.fxopen.com/showthread.php?t=62155) that it completed the development and testing of another very important feature – incremental lot trading. With the exception of MB Trading small time traders could not have traded ECN style due to the very large minimal order requirements.
If opening an account with an ECN broker like Dukascopy requires a minimal deposit of $10,000 and a minimal trade size of 1 lot, with FXOpen you can start trading with 0.1 lots. For now, FXOpen’s commissions are about 30% lower than MB Trading’s.
FXOpen’s solution doesn’t mean that anyone can display any size of order inside the spread – this would obviously worsen the ECN feed with its liquidity providers. What it means is that orders less than 1.00 lot will be aggregated and processed via STP and will be filled when the market moves. These small orders have a slightly higher chance of not being filled than the large orders but it’s a small price to pay for the ability to trade ECN with as low as 0.1 lot (10,000 order size).
The minimal deposit and trade size limitations were one of the reasons why small retail traders haven’t jumped on the ECN bandwagon yet. With it being lifted it should become much easier. While it obviously doesn’t appeal to large traders, who never had problems trading at least 1 lot any way, but it does appeal to people who would like to try ECN with small amounts to see how it works and then make larger investment decisions based on their experience. It also makes the market more accessible to Martingale and Grid style traders who place large number of small sized orders in the market.
Traders can give this feature a test (I will appreciate any feedback) by using the demo or live environments which FXOpen claims to be identical.
It remains to be seen how the market will accept this new feature and FXOpen’s test would be the ability to successfully place as many orders as possible.
All in all, I think it’s an important move in the right direction for all brokers as innovation and transparency are one of the key factors driving growth in this market.
It is also interesting to see how non-US, non-NFA, brokers are giving the US industry a decent fight. With 4% of the clients already having left the US looking for a better option, some decent offshore brokers are destined to profit as they can offer more trading tools such as hedging and they also don’t have a burdensome and time consuming registration processes.
Forex Magnates - Home of the Forex Elite Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/currency-trading-articles/fxopen-introduces-incremental-ecn-lot-trading-1393293.html
http://www.forexmagnates.com
