To find a seminar, search the Internet for forex brokers and browse their pages until you find one offering live seminars. Most major cities host forex seminars fairly regularly, though you may be out of luck if you don�t live near a major city. In some cases, the firms offering seminars aren�t brokerage companies at all, but are simply financial training firms that teach you how to do trading and then leave it to you to find a broker to actually do it.
At a forex seminar you�ll find a variety of people. Some will have had experience in the stock market or took business classes in college. Others will be complete novices interested in diversifying their investments. Still others might not have a lot of income but are looking for a way to use the money they do have more wisely.
One of the latest innovations in forex seminars is to hold them exclusively online. This is much cheaper for the company offering the seminar, obviously, as they don�t need to rent a hotel conference room. It also allows people from all over the world to participate. Hosting online makes the seminar more useful to more people, and since anyone can ask a question, you don�t have to worry about being lost in the crowd.
One of the latest innovations in forex seminars is to hold them exclusively online. This is much cheaper for the company offering the seminar, obviously, as they don�t need to rent a hotel conference room. It also allows people from all over the world to participate. Hosting online makes the seminar more useful to more people, and since anyone can ask a question, you don�t have to worry about being lost in the crowd.
On the other hand you may just want get your feet wet by just dabbling in yourself so getting an understanding about a Forex quote would be very handy. A forex quote is a small bit of information, yet it�s packed with numbers that may not make sense to someone unfamiliar with the forex system. Here�s a basic explanation of how it works.
A forex quote consists of a currency pair -- forex deals always involve simultaneously selling one currency and buying another -- a bid price and an ask price. For example, one quote might be this:
USD/JPY 118.71/75
The first currency is the base currency, and the other one is the quote currency. The value of the base currency is always 1 -- in this case, 1 U.S. dollar. The number tells you how many of the quote currency (the Japanese yen, in this case) you can buy with $1.
But what kind of number is 118.71/75? It�s actually forex shorthand for two numbers: 118.71 and 118.75. The lower number is the bid price, the other is the ask price. The bid price is the price that dealers will buy the base currency for. The ask price is what dealers will sell it for.
So if the above were the current quote, it would mean right now, you could SELL U.S. dollars in exchange for 118.71 yen per dollar. Or, if you preferred, you could BUY U.S. dollars at a rate of 118.75 yen per dollar.
The difference between the bid price and the ask price in a forex quote is called the �spread,� and those tiny units are called �pips.� In our example, the spread for USD/JPY was four pips. The spread is usually that small for the most commonly traded currencies, which means anything involving the U.S. dollar, Japanese yen, Great British pound, the euro, Swiss franc or Australian dollar. In fact, thanks to the great competition in the forex trading market, some quotes will have spread of as little as one pip.
Of course, for less commonly traded currencies, the spread can be much greater. And even when the quote delivers a small spread, it adds up when you�re trading hundreds of thousands of units. If you were dealing with 100 U.S. dollars, the difference between selling them for 11,871 yen and buying them for 11,875 yen wouldn�t be much at all -- just four yen. But if it were 100,000 U.S. dollars, suddenly that four-pip spread means a 4,000-yen difference. So the spread in a quote is more important than its smallness would suggest.
One other thing you might need to know is how hedge your bets against the future using the Forex option. A forex option is when you buy the right -- but not the obligation -- to buy or sell a particular currency at a particular rate any time between now and the expiration date of the option.
Let�s say you�re worried that the Japanese yen is going to drop in value sometime in the next six months. You might buy an option that basically locks in the current exchange rate for whatever period of time the option seller allows, usually anywhere from 30 days to six months. You set a number of yen, too. Say you choose 10,000 yen at a rate of 116 yen per U.S. dollar for three months. The option basically says, �I may want to sell 10,000 yen sometime in the next three months, but I�m worried the yen is going to devalue in that time. So I�ve locked in this rate of USD/JPY 116.�
Then three months pass. If your prediction was correct and the yen has weakened in that time -- say it�s now USD/JPY 122 -- then you exercise your right to sell 10,000 yen at the rate you bought three months earlier. Everyone else selling yen today (everyone who didn�t have a forex option, that is) is selling it at 122 per U.S. dollar, and you get to sell it at 116.
If, on the other hand, the yen has stayed the same or gotten stronger, you are under no obligation to actually sell that 10,000 yen your option talked about. You can simply do nothing, and all you�ve lost is the premium you originally paid for the option.
Ah yes, there is a premium. Brokers who sell forex options charge a fee for the privilege. Think of it as is insurance; calling it a �premium� certainly fits. The price of a forex option for 10,000 yen for three months might be $200, which you must pay up front. If the yen drops enough in value, you�ll hopefully turn enough of a profit to make up for the $200 you had to pay. If it increases in value, and you wind up not exercising the option, all you have lost is the $200 premium.
Forex option trading used to be done only by major banks and corporations, but now many brokers who cater to individual traders offer the service, too. If you decide you want to be a heavy-duty trader, a forex option is definitely something for consideration to guard against future setbacks in the currency you hold.
Still another way to let your money work for you is with Automated FOREX Trading. Automated FOREX trading is exactly what it sounds like. A highly sophisticated and complicated computer program uses mathematical algorithms to determine when to buy and sell currency, and it makes the trades for you. You put an initial investment into the accounts, and then let the system do all the work for you.
It may sound risky to let a computer program choose when to buy and sell currency, but automated trading can often be safer than doing it yourself. Humans are subject to error, to misreading charts, and to overlooking data. Humans can also let their emotions get in the way of making smart decisions, like the gambler who loses everything because he just can't tear himself away from the blackjack table.
An automated trading program has none of those flaws. With the software doing it for you, it's as if you were always watching every market, noticing every trend, instantly analysing all available data, and making the smartest decisions.
There is a cost for this, of course. Most brokers that offer it require a minimum investment of several thousand dollars or more, and they may charge a fee on top of that.
But the benefits of automated FOREX trading can be great. Whereas manual trading requires an investor to study the market intensely before jumping in to it, automated trading requires no training at all. Learn the very basics of how the market works so you can tell what your automated system is doing for you, and thats it. Sit back and let it make your money work for you.
Automated trading is also useful for companies and other institutions that want to diversify their assets but don't have the time or resources to devote to FOREX trading. If a computer program can do it for you, theres no need to have one of your employees handle it, right?
It goes without saying that automated trading systems rely on technical analysis rather than fundamental analysis. That is, the algorithms examine past market performance and general trends and base their trading decisions on that, not on external factors such as politics and environmental concerns, which may affect a nation�s currency. Nonetheless, automated trading has proven to be highly effective and accurate for many investors, freeing up their schedules to focus on other things.
Using the points noted above you should have a basis platform to develop your Forex Strategy and also develop a plan of how and when you begin you life as a Forex Trader, good luck.
