[FOREX 101] The Top Ten Mistakes to Avoid (Lesson #1)

MISTAKE # 10

STAYING TOO LONG ON DEMO ACCOUNTS (aka PAPER TRADING)

Paper trading is hypothetical trading. If you have never traded anything before, you will probably do some paper trading. The benefit of paper trading is that it will help the new trader become acquainted with the basics of interfacing with the markets. This is often a “demo” account with a broker or clearing firm that provides real-time market data but provides a hypothetical balance.

You are allowed to buy and sell as much as you want, just like in a “live” or “real” account. Your hypothetical gains and losses are accrued against your hypothetical account balance over time. As time goes on, most traders find that they can gain quite a surprising amount of paper-profits in a very short period of time. These traders are now completely convinced that they can easily duplicate those hypothetical results in real time with real money. They open their real trading account and POW! Within about three to four weeks they are down usually more than 50% of their equity. This is not my opinion—this is actual fact. Ask any broker in the industry what happens to “paper-traders” who open a real account. The ratio of “paper-traders” to “winning traders” is about one in ninety.

Why does this happen?

Because there was never any real risk to the trader. Paper-trading is a waste of time because paper-trading will never give you the real skills you need to trade. All paper-trading can do is help you learn how to use the functions of your trading platform. In fact, that is a good thing. But once you learn the functions of your platform and your account is ready to trade, everything you learned paper-trading goes out the window because NOW IT IS DO OR DIE. There are no second chances.

Don’t make mistake #1; don’t think you know what you are doing because you pretended to trade without taking any real risk.

HOW TO MAKE THIS MISTAKE WORSE: Continue paper-trading for more than 30 days and/or go back to paper-trading if you have lost money in your first real account.

SOLUTION: Open the absolute smallest account your broker will al ow and trade for 90 days the absolute smal est size possible. If you are ahead, increase your equity size and your trade size by a factor of 20%. If you are losing, stay with the real thing; it’s the only way to learn.

[FOREX 101] Currencies come in pairs

To make matters easier, forex markets refer to trading currencies by pairs, with names that combine the two different currencies being traded, or “exchanged,” against each other.

Additionally, forex markets have given most currency pairs nicknames or abbreviations, which reference the pair and not necessarily the individual currencies involved.


Major currency pairs

The major currency pairs all involve the U.S. dollar on one side of the deal. The designations of the major currencies are expressed using International Standardization Organization (ISO) codes for each currency. Table 2-1 lists the most frequently traded currency pairs, what they’re called in conventional terms, and what nicknames the market has given them.

EUR/USD Eurozone*/U.S. Euro-dollar N/A
USD/JPY U.S./Japan Dollar-yen N/A
GBP/USD United Kingdom/U.S. Sterling-dollar Sterling or Cable
USD/CHF U.S./Switzerland Dollar-Swiss Swissy
USD/CAD U.S./Canada Dollar-Canada Loonie
AUD/USD Australia/U.S. Australian-dollar Aussie or Oz
NZD/USD New Zealand/U.S. New Zealand-dollar Kiwi

* The Eurozone is made up of all the countries in the European Union that have adopted the euro as their currency.


Major cross-currency pairs

Although the vast majority of currency trading takes place in the dollar pairs, cross-currency pairs serve as an alternative to always trading the U.S. dollar. A cross-currency pair, or cross or crosses for short, is any currency pair that does not include the U.S. dollar. Cross rates are derived from the respective USD pairs but are quoted independently.

Crosses enable traders to more directly target trades to specific individual currencies to take advantage of news or events.

For example, your analysis may suggest that the Japanese yen has the worst prospects of all the major currencies going forward, based on interest rates or the economic outlook. To take advantage of this, you’d be looking to sell JPY, but against which other currency? You consider the USD, potentially buying USD/JPY (buying USD/selling JPY) but then you conclude that the USD’s prospects are not much better than the JPY’s. Further research on your part may point to another currency that has a much better outlook (such as high or rising interest rates or signs of a strengthening economy), say the

Australian dollar (AUD). In this example, you would then be looking to buy the AUD/JPY cross (buying AUD/selling JPY) to target your view that AUD has the best prospects among major currencies and the JPY the worst.

The most actively traded crosses focus on the three major non-USD currencies (namely EUR, JPY, and GBP) and are referred to as euro crosses, yen crosses, and sterling crosses. Table 2-2 highlights the most actively traded cross currency pairs.

EUR/CHF Eurozone/Switzerland Euro-Swiss
EUR/GBP Eurozone/United Kingdom Euro-sterling
EUR/JPY Eurozone/Japan Euro-yen
GBP/JPY United Kingdom/Japan Sterling-yen
AUD/JPY Australia/Japan Aussie-yen
NZD/JPY New Zealand/Japan Kiwi-yen

[FOREX 101] I'm a n00b in Forex

What is Forex?

The Forex (Foreign Exchange) Market is the largest market in the world. It is the market where currencies are traded. Each day, more than 4 trillion dollars are exchanged.

The Forex market is open 24 hours a day, so that you can be right there trading whenever you hear a financial scoop. Take note of when markets open/close and when their peak times are.

Unlike the stock market, a smaller market with tens of thousands of stocks to choose from, the Forex market revolves around more or less eight major currencies. A narrow choice means no room for confusion, so even though the market is huge, it’s quite easy to get a clear picture of what’s happening.


The enormous volume of daily trades makes it the most liquid market in the world, which means that under normal market conditions you can buy and sell currency as you please.


The colossal size of the Forex market also makes sure that no one can corner the market. Even banks do not have enough pull to really control the market for a long period of time, which makes it a great place for the little guy to make a move.


Use technical analysis (indicators on charts) methods from other markets like equities. I'll need to learn about that and share it here.



Some useful terms to not get lost in translation:


A Pip is the "Percentage In Point" (PIP), sometimes also referred to as "Point". It is equal to the minimum price increase of a Forex trading rate. The most common Pip is 0.0001.

The ask price is the price you can buy a currency at. It is also the price at which the market is willing to sell the currency to you.

The bid price is the price you can sell a currency at. The market is willing to pay you this price for this particular currency.

Spread are the difference between bid price and ask price. You'll want to get a broker that has small spreads because say you put in a buy order at bid price, you won't break even until the price reaches the ask price. The wider the spread, the longer it takes.

A currency rate against another currency rate.