Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Forex Trading Brokers

In financial trading, it is not easy to understand the markets and make profits. It is always advisable to take assistance from experts in the field. The need for experts becomes all the more important in forex trading where there are many complications and high risks. When we talk about experts, it may not be possible to get the opinion of analysts who write articles on various forex movements but the Forex Trading Brokers who have the experience and acumen.

There are a number of Forex Trading Brokers in all the countries and each of these offers a variety of services that help the trader in making his decisions as well as money. The services start from simple carrying out of the transaction as suggested by the investor to providing online trading portals for the investor to carry on the transaction himself using various analytical software products.

Online forex trading is one of the recent developments in forex trading and most of the brokers provide this 24 hours a day on 5 days a week when the market is open. The brokers also provide real time information on the exchange rates of various currencies thus indicating the relationship between major currencies. This helps the investor to predict a fall or rise in foreign currency prices and make decisions accordingly.

Tips are given by brokers on specific forex transactions as well as in general terms to help the investor become a better-informed trader. Most brokers provide information and recommendations on a daily basis. On the other hand, whenever any important global event seems to affect the foreign currency prices at any point of time.

Forex Trading Brokers also provide analytical reports on the relationship between various currencies at regular intervals. This is prepared for traders who are interested in the top few currencies. Brokers track relative price movements worldwide such as the USD-Euro relationship, owing to the demand for these currencies.

Many brokers also provide, using various technical analysis tools, the forecasts for foreign currency price movements, on a minute-to-minute or hour to hour basis to help the trader take informed decisions.

For traders who are very new to the forex market, a number of Forex Trading Brokers offer a unique and helpful tool in demo trading accounts. These accounts can be opened online easily with a few details about the trader to register. On registration, down comes a host of information on forex developments and the online forex quotes. All this is provided in real time and only the actual trading becomes a demonstration or virtual trading to better equip the trader to the nuances of forex trading.

In the demo trading accounts, there are also certain brokers who offer online competitions with other demo traders to provide a real time trading environment. This helps the trader understand the basics of trading and the means of making more money than his rivals make. Thus, Forex Trading Brokers offer a host of services!

Thomas D. Houser http://www.bestforexcurrencyinfo.com/

What is Forex?

If you read about investing, you've seen the word forex pop up. But because forex doesn't get much publicity in the major publications and websites, many investors don't know that forex is just short for "foreign exchange." So trading the forex market is simply trading foreign currencies. As recently as ten years ago, currency trading had high barriers to entry, so only large banking and institutional firms had access to the tools and systems required to play in the forex game. Recently, however, technology has developed to the point that any individual investor can hop right in and trade with one of the many online platforms.

When buying and selling in the forex market, you'll see that there are four "currency pairs" that dominate the percentage of trades. Those four are the Euro vs U.S. Dollar, US Dollar vs Japanese Yen, US Dollar vs Swiss Franc, and US Dollar vs British Pound.

The goal when investing in currency is to be holding a currency that appreciates in value in relation to the other currencies. To use an overly simplistic example, if you bought 50 British Pounds for 100 US Dollars, held the Pounds for 1 week, and in that period the value of Pounds increased in relation to US Dollars, you could then convert those Pounds back into dollars for, say, $120.

Unlike the domestic stock markets, the forex is open for trades 24 hours a day. Much like the phrase "it's always noon somewhere," it's always business hours at some region of the globe. Since every country trades on the FX market, and it's open all day, the daily volume is roughly $1.2 trillion, which dwarfs that of the NYSE. Another comparison to make in order to truly realize the magnitude of the forex market is with the currency futures market (which has around 1% of the daily volume).

One other important distinction to make is that currency trading is not centered on an exchange like the NYSE or NASDAQ. There is no central body or organization required to act as middleman. Trading circulates between major banking centers around the world.

Until recently, there were strict financial requirements and massive minimum transaction sizes which prevented individual investors from trading. But with the advent of the internet came the FX brokers. A forex broker is similar to an online stock trading account such as etrade. Anybody can open an account and buy and sell in any quantity. Because the brokers have thousands of investors placing orders through them, they are able to meet the large minimum transaction size by purchasing in large blocks and distributing currency amongst the purchasing investors.

Although it is now easy to start trading forex, it is a complicated and complex market. While it offers fantastic opportunity for wealth, it is also very easy to lose your shirt in a hurry. Before trading forex, do your homework and read as much as you can find before investing your hard earned money.

This article is just a small piece of the free Forex Education at forexgameplan.com. Go learn about this incredible market and sign up today while the 30 day course is still free.