Forex Trading Strategies for Beginners: Tips to Get Started
Over the years, forex trading has been of great interest and has gained a lot of acceptance among the financially intelligent persons. However, as more people attempt to search for opportunities to gain additional income while working from home or part-time, many newbies are turning to it as a means to earn money.
Trading in Forex for new entrants into the market is becoming popular. However, few of them grasp the dynamics at play, while others get involved in very high-risk ventures expecting to reap big within a short span of time.
Here are a few forex trading tips that any person can take to begin investing without risking their shirts.
Choose a reliable forex broker
Selecting an appropriate forex broker should always be a well thought out process. Do not rush and take time to look for the best option available. In the long run, it is possible that users will have to make significant purchases through the brokerage platform.
While looking for and evaluating providers, consider critical points such as:
- Security and legitimacy: It will be unwise to provide your financial details to an unsafe broker. Before investing in a particular platform, there is a need to check if it is regulated by any authority to know if the platform is real or fake.
- Transaction costs: Some kind of commission or transaction cost is always involved and therefore it is wise to shop for the best brokerage fees. As a word of caution, do not forget that it is possible to lose some cost efficiency in favour of better protection.
- Easy deposits and withdrawals: The forex broker must ensure that it is easy for you to get your profits, as well as cash them out.
- Ease of use: Trading forex for the first time can in fact be very tricky and challenging for a beginner. Select a broker that has a simple trading platform and provides all the details that you require to begin with.
- Customer service: The product is a piece of technology and if there are some issues with it, you, as a customer, would like to have some support available. Before starting using a platform, it is crucial to read the information about the customer services offered.
- Additional Services: Some brokerages can provide some additional services like VPS hosting for the continuous trading session, lower spreads, and the negative balance feature. If you take the time to find a reputable broker, your trading journey will be a lot smoother.
Start With Demo Trades
Most of the brokers will offer you a chance to use virtual trades and money while practicing. It eliminates the risk factor while at the same time giving you all the info you need to get started and learn about the process.
When testing your demo account, pay attention to your behaviour when you are winning or losing the money. The best thing is to stick to the rules to ensure that losses are not made and it becomes very difficult to practice discipline when the going gets tough or if things appear to be going well.
Do not try to get through the demo period as quickly as possible. Rather, the time should be utilized to gain knowledge on the strategies that are available and to experiment with various methods. It also allows you to practice with various currency pairs and become familiar with the different instruments and types of transactions.
Although sometimes it is very tempting to begin trading as soon as possible, do not start trading before you are making a steady profit on the demo account. Your patience will pay off.
Use Micro Accounts
The demo account can be very beneficial for the traders as they learn many things about trading forex. But when it comes to real money, it is not the same thing as when you are using your money that you have worked for.
Once you are satisfied that you are ready to stop demo trading, open a micro account that only allows you to place small trades. If you try to go out and start risking your own money, every single loss is going to be a tangible hit to your pocket.
It will give you a lot more insight into responsible trading than you will ever get from demo accounts, books, or self-help guides. At this point, do not make too many risks as it may lead to a lot of problems. It is important to acquire more down to earth knowledge of forex trading for beginners before you decide to trade using leveraging or select highly active and therefore volatile currency pairs.
While some of these decisions could turn out to be beneficial, they would be much more and often if such decisions are founded on actual practical analysis and data.
Take Time to Learn
Beginner forex strategies are challenging and requires a lot of effort, so do not rush to trade and take time to learn about the different terms, markets, probability, and trading strategies.
Your broker may provide training materials, but there are also videos and online tutorials that you can also consider. They also offer various forex trading course where you can learn and get started as well.
Research Currency Pairs
Currency pairs are crucial to grasp before entering the trade, and here is the information you need to know. The opportunities are enormous for the traders who are in a position to differentiate between the ones that give the best ROI and the ones that do not. For instance, EUR/USD is said to be one of the most reliable currencies and it is advisable to start with this pair.
After you gain some confidence with different pairs, you can try out more risky pairings with the currencies. It is also wise to have an economic calendar close by that will help you monitor the new information and announcements which can affect the prices.
This forex trading guide is suitable for beginners and it focuses on the identification of the price breakout, which is an indication of the beginning of a new trend alerting you of an entry point.
It is important to note that some forex pairs may spend a period of time, anywhere between the floor and the ceiling. This process is known as consolidation.
Price Breakouts
- Pros of Price Breakout: They are quite simple to identify on a forex chart because they occur at the end of consolidations. Can be used in both strategic and tactical management settings.
- Cons of Price Breakout: Not all breakouts lead to a formation of a trend; if you decide to join the bandwagon too early or too late, it turns out to be a disaster.
To compensate for the weaknesses of this strategy, it is crucial to use stop-loss correctly.
Moving Average
In this strategy, we use two moving averages, the nearline moving average (such as 25-period moving average) and the far line moving average (such as 200-period moving average) and the crossing of these two moving averages is the basis of trading decisions.
Now, a moving average is also known as the arithmetic average of all the values in a given set of data taken at particular intervals. For instance, the 25-day SMA will show the average price of the forex market in the last 25 trading days while the 200-day SMA will show average price of the forex market in the last 200 trading days.
When the shorter-trend SMA is higher than the longer-trend SMA, it indicates that the newer prices are higher compared to the older ones, or a bullish trend. The opposite also applies. If the longer-trend SMA is above the shorter-trend SMA, then what it implies is that the newer prices are lower than the older ones, a bearish trend.
- Pros of Moving Average: Effective means to filter out market noise hence facilitating their ability to discern trends. It can also be used as confirmation to support trading decisions.
- Cons of Moving Average: Less sensitive to high frequency price changes, ideal for those who do not trade within the short-term time frame.
Conclusion
By now, you should have a good feel on how to start forex trading for beginners. Invest your time in selecting the right broker, understanding trading approaches, and trading on your demo account.
Do not be discouraged to look for online guides and tutorials and study various currency pairs to identify the most appropriate one. In the long run, you can achieve a steady profit, so you can switch to a real money account.
Remember, always have a risk management strategy in place, and practice discipline when trading. If you do that, you’ll soon master forex trading for beginners successfully.