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Monday, October 26, 2009

Forex Market Trends - The Holy Grail Of Trading?

By Axel Foster

If you talk to a day trader about Forex market trends, he will shrug and tell you there is no such thing. Swing traders and long term traders know better. They will explain to you that there is a fortune to be made in "trading with the trend". What is the truth? Or are both groups wrong, or perhaps both are right?

Day traders make or lose money in a very short period of time. For them a long term trend would be a price movement that lasts from 10:00 to 12:00 in the morning. Day traders often buy and sell forex within the space of a few minutes. If you consider the fact that you have to pay commissions on trading this type of market is best left to people who know what they do. However, because day trading is quite exciting one often finds that beginners are attracted to this type of market. They very often lose a lot of money within a very short period of time.

Another type of trader is the so called swing trader. Swing traders do not trade as often as day traders. They wait for a medium term trend in the market, and then either go long or short on a particular currency. They will stay in the trade for as long as the trend lasts, and try to get out just before it reverses. This of course is more of an art than a science, since there is nobody that can actually predict when the market will turn around. External factors can cause it to turn around within a matter of hours.

The last type of trader we are going to discuss is the long term trader. Many would argue that there is no such thing as a long term trader - that it's simply another word for an investor, someone like Warren Buffet. These guys are often big players in the market. They buy and sell massive quantities of forex, but over a much longer period of time than day traders or swing traders.

The tools of choice for day traders are called technical indicators. These are a series of mathematical formulas often displayed visually in the form of charts. All of them have one thing in common: they use the historical behavior of the market to try and predict future price movements. The most basic technical indicator is probably the moving average. A moving average charts gives one a good visual impression of the direction the price of a currency has been moving in over the past five seconds, or five years, depending on the time frame you are trading in. Another popular group of technical indicators are the trending indicators. They are more refined than simple averages, but still attempt to predict future ups and downs in the price by analyzing past behavior, and then trying to project that into the future.

Another type of analysis, used more by swing traders and long term traders is called fundamental analysis. In fundamental analysis one would try to identify 'fundamental' economic factors that will have an effect on the future price movements of a particular currency. One such example is the effect interest rates have on the value of a currency. If the interest rate goes up, it will have an effect on the value of that country's currency which could not be predicted by looking at technical indicators alone.

There are a number of different chart types being used by traders. The simplest is the line chart, which basically just connects the closing prices to each other. A favorite of many traders is the so-called 'candlestick' charts. A candlestick chart shows both the opening and closing prices, and the highest and lowest prices for the day in a colorful bar type chart. Bar charts only shows the lowest and highest prices of the day.

Forex market trends is the subject of many debates, numerous studies, and a lot of conjecture. - 23222

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