Forex Blog

David Thorpe - a Forex author which already has been publishing on this site before introduces his new article. In this article David discusses trader-broker relationship model in Forex trading and gives some valuable advices for the traders who have problems with their current broker or haven’t yet decided which one to choose for a variety of Forex brokers available:

Are Forex Brokers The Antichrist or is Broker-Bashing one Gigantic Witch Hunt? - by David Thorpe

EUR/USD, showing three days of straight growth with new monthly maximums every day, slightly lowered its rally today. Almost touching 1.3800 this currency pair stopped at 1.3797 and then rolled back for around 20 pips. Meanwhile, initial jobless claims for the previous week came out better than expected - 308,000 against 320,000 claims. U.S. trade balance came out at the expected level - $60.0 billions. If tomorrow Friday will be bullish and the 1.3800 level be broken a larger scale uptrend for EUR/USD will begin.

Using Metatrader expert advisors is simple, but sometimes people get confused with it and after downloading a file with the expert advisor a user might get stuck with it without knowing what to do next. This a simple tutorial on how to attach an expert advisor to Metatrader 4 char and activate it.

1. Download your MT4 expert advisor or copy it and save it to your Metatrader’s ‘experts’ folder:

2. Double click it with your mouse and it will be opened in MQL editor (this editor comes with MT4). There will be a button ‘Compile’ at the center top of the window. Click it and your expert advisor will be compiled and ready to use. There might be some errors or warnings during the compilation, but in most cases there shouldn’t be any. You can try and fix those errors, but it takes time and some programming skills, usually.

3. Now, all you need to do is add your expert advisor to the preferred chart and activate it. You can also change some input parameters for the advisor in the Inputs tab:

That’s it! Now you can enjoy your expert advisor - its signals or its trading (if it is designed to perform trading). Good luck with them!

Today EUR/USD hit 1.3738 mark renewing its maximum since 1995. So we are at the almost twelve years maximum now and the possibilities for going even farther are getting higher and higher. Not many reasons for such a strong Euro rally for today. The only good ones I can think of - oil prices rising and some Eurozone financial leaders speaking of support for an expensive Euro. Other than that - only some really powerful bullish speculators could EUR/USD in such a dramatical way. Anyway, it’s a good time to be in the market and get some more pips on falling dollar when EUR/USD breaks the 1.3800 level.

Revising my recent trades which were made during the last month I still find myself making the same mistakes I’ve been doing as a newbie trader. The amount of these mistakes lowered, but sometimes emotions overcome the mind and the strategy and as a result - pips are lost. Here is the list of most devastating and stupid things you can make in Forex trading:

1. Don’t place stop-loss - sometimes I just forget to place, sometimes I hope for the price to eventually go in the right way and think that stop-loss will be an obstacle. This is wrong! Always place a stop loss - it’s good to have it significantly lower than your targeted profit.
2. Trade in lots too big - even if you are100% sure that this position will be profitable, don’t make it too large - 1%-5% is more than enough. Losing 20% of your deposit will require much more risk to recover.
3. Overtrade - everyone says that it is bad to overtrade, but for a trader it is always hard to stay away from market when there is “so many opportunities”. Just try to set a limit of daily/weekly trades for yourself. Overtrading is a result of the mindless emotions, not your mind, so avoid it.
4. Closing the winning positions too early - it seems OK to get some guaranteed profit against risking to wait even more. But trading experience proves that early closing for winning positions and waiting for losing positions to go green - is completely wrong. Let your winning positions run and cut your losing ones early!
5. Following forecasts and signals - for some traders it’s hard to avoid this, especially when there is some Forex guru they respect. Trading with your own strategy and full responsibility is the only way that can make you a professional and successful Forex trader.

I am quite sure that you’ve already read such advices a dozen of times, but they are always good to remember, so consider it just as a helpful memo.

General trend: bearish.

Some important macroeconomic data was released in U.S. today - employment situation in June from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As it was expected by the financial analysts, the overall unemployment rate in June remained on 4.5% level - which is quite low and is a good indicator for the U.S. economy. Non-farm payrolls in June reached 132,000 which is 7,00 higher than the experts’ estimations. May non-farm payrolls were also revised towards the better side - 190,000 from 157,000. Average hourly earnings came out at 0.3% level (as expected), but May data was revised from 0.3% to 0.4%. Overall, this is a good news for the U.S. economics and dollar as well. The Forex market isn’t playing this data yet (or it won’t) - EUR/USD returned to its 1.3600-1.3650 range, and no serious movement can be seen.

Another free Forex e-book is now available for download from this site. It deals with trader’s personality and emotions which are inevitable in such an activity as a financial trading of any kind. Various examples and stories are presented in this book to help a trader to better understand what he must to prevent losing money and gain them instead:

Your Personality and Successful Trading - by Windsor Advisory Services

With an impressively high ISM Services index today’s macroeconomic data from United States was a very optimistic news for USD bulls. June ISM non-manufacturing index came out at 60.7% - 1% higher than May number, and a lot better than expected, since the negative change in ISM index was expected. Crude oil inventories for the previous week came out at a very good level too. They rose 3.1 million barrels - which will probably mean that there will be no problems for the U.S. holidays period. Initial jobless claims were a bit worse than expected (318,000 against 315,000) - but it’s not a big deal really, especially if overall unemployment data which will come tomorrow will be OK.
As for the Eurozone - European Central Bank decided to leave the interest rates at 4% - no surprise here. But they also didn’t mention any dangers of inflation, like they did before, so it might be a first sign for the end of ECB rate hike.
Bank of England increased the interest rates to 5.75% as expected. The main concern for them is still an inflationary pressure, but the biggest locomotive of the consumer prices in United Kingdom - real estate market is showing a slowdown.

Today EUR/USD was still as it was yesterday. As I said - this week will probably be flat until Friday at least (they tend to be quite unsettled, those Fridays). Independence Day in the United States of America is keeping the big U.S. Forex players out of the market, causing a lower volatility, especially on EUR/USD (while there some minor fluctuations on GBP/USD). It is quite clear that big holidays keep flat market even more flat, so I’d avoid expecting a high volatility Forex trading opportunities tomorrow. If you are for EUR/USD, just wait for 1.3600 or 1.3650 breakout and then jump in.