What You Need to Know About Swing Trading

There are many types of investment styles that certain investors tend to follow. For instance, some investors have come up with unique trading strategies that allow them to capture gains on a high. Other investors tend to follow a more aggressive approach, often making trades with high risks in order to generate higher profits. However, over the past few years, swing trading has also become a very popular style of trading. In essence, swing trading is a style of trading in which an investor tries to capture the gains in a currency pair in less than 4 days. Traders generally use detailed stock analyses in order to find out the momentum of currency pairs with short term price values.

There are certain situations in which currency pairs often reach extraordinary potential in a very short period of time. This means that the trader has no choice but to act as quickly as possible. Therefore, many traders try to “catch the trend” and ride it in the other direction. Thus, the name “swing trading.” However, the most important thing that you should know about swing trading is that you must have a concrete method that you can use in order to find direction changes. Here are a few important things that you should know about forex trading:

Identify Sources of Resistance and Support

The first step is to identify the areas that are likely to influence the price of currency pairs.  You won’t be able to swing trade any currency pair unless you have an idea about where the price is going to react from. When studying charts, it is important to draw some horizontal lines in order to draw parallels. Create connections between the highs and lows and look for areas where the price has reversed before. This will form the blueprint for your swing trading. With the passage of time, you will end up drawing more and more lines, and it won’t be long before you will have a solid idea about the areas that form the basis of price resistance or support.

Testing

Now that you have identified the sources of support and resistance, the next step is to formulate a strategy that allows you to test these areas. The best way to do that is to overlay some charts with a time difference in order to see whether the areas are worth considering or not. Of course, there’s no sound strategy involved in testing particular figures. The only thing that you can do is to make a few calls and hope that they work out. If your investments pay off, you will then have a pretty clear idea about when to swing trade and the trends that you should look out.

Implementation

Swing trading is a lot of hits and misses, so it will be slightly difficult for you to get it right the first time. However if you persist with this style of trading, it won’t be long before you will become a pro trader!

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How to Properly Leverage a Demo Account

The forex market is one of the most complex markets in the world. Unlike traditional markets that only remain open during certain times of the day, the forex market runs round the clock. The foreign exchange market focuses on the trading of different currencies. If you own a pair of currencies, you can make a profit if the trading values increase or decrease between the two. Needless to say, forex trading is a great way to make some extra cash on the side. However, before you can start trading with actual money, it is important to learn the ropes first. That’s why most people use demo accounts, which are realistic accounts, except the money used is virtual.

The only reason why demo accounts exist is to give users an idea about how the forex market works. You can easily open a demo account on plenty of different websites. However, there are many complex terms and strategies that you will need to learn if you want to make a profit in the forex market. The first and most important term that you should learn is “leveraging.”

Leveraging is a common term that basically means borrowing money to invest in something. In the forex market, most people generally borrow money from their brokers and use it to leverage their accounts. The reason why so many people are attracted to the forex market is because it offers very high leverage. For instance, for an initial margin requirement, a trader has the option of building up and controlling a sizable amount of wealth. Investors generally use leverage in order to maximize their returns on any investment.

Now, if you have a demo account, you will need to learn how to leverage it properly in order to generate more money. If you are confident that a particular pair is going to hit it off, you should consider putting your full backing behind it. Here’s how to properly leverage a demo account:

How Can I Change the Leverage?

One important thing that you should know is that not all trading accounts have the option to change the leverage. Many demo accounts are fixed on one position when it comes to leveraging. However, on some demo accounts, the leverage is set at 1:50 on the majors, while it stands on 1:20 on the exotics. In some demo accounts, the leverage is set at 1:200. Margin based leverage is generally used by most traders in the market.

For instance, if you have to deposit 1% of the total value of the transaction as margin, the margin would generally be $1,000. Therefore, the margin based leverage would be around 1:100. It is important that you learn how to properly leverage a demo account before you start trading with actual cash. Leveraging your investments is crucial if you want to maximize your profits on the forex market. It is important for you to make the right decisions when trading in the forex market, as even small mistakes can have a major impact on your trading profile.
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What time should you trade Forex?

Traders and investors are often surprised when they realise how many variables forex trading is compiled by. An outsider and very often an actual trader believes that in order to trade in the online forex industry all you need is an account and a trading platform. Some of you may find this as a slightly ridiculous thought to miss whilst others might be asking themselves ‘Well, what else could you possibly need?’. Successful forex trading is only achieved when the trader comes to terms and works with the different variables involved in the game and one of these variables is time.

Everyone is familiar with the phrase ‘time is money’ and in forex trading this couldn’t be any more true. Knowing that different markets are open at hours is basic, knowing what time these markets are mostly affected is what distinguishes professional traders from the average.

To begin with, each trader regardless of whether they are interested in the certain market or not, he is compelled to know the forex trading hours of each, especially because some markets often overlap each other’s and these small windows often open the biggest trading opportunities:

New York 8am to 5pm EST (1pm to 10pm GMT, 3pm to 12am EET)

Tokyo 7pm to 4am EST ( 12am to 9am GMT, 2am to 11am EET)

Sydney 5pm to 2am EST ( 10pm to 7am GMT, 12am to 9am EET)

London 3am to 12pm EST( 8am to 5pm GMT, 10am to 7pm EET)

Proper time management can be the key to your success as a trader because as a trader you must never miss out a chance of trading or investing even by a second. Which brings us to our next point which is when two markets overlap. These hours are proven to hold the highest volume of trades and therefore increasing each trade’s chance substantially if, of course, all the other variables of your trade have also been put together in the same detailed way as choosing the right hour.

New York and London: between 8am to 12pm EST

Sydney and Tokyo: between 7pm to 2am EST

London and Tokyo: between 3am to 4am EST

If we take for example the New York and London overlap, this would be an ideal time to trade EUR/USD or GBP/USD currency pairs simply because both home markets of these currencies are awake at the same time.

When it comes to trading, we said this before, it’s all about what you know and everything else in your arson are just additional tools. Knowing which time works best for your trades can transform your outcomes instantly, and here we like to trade in the fast lane there’s no reason for you to lose even a minute because of market time glitches.

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