Forex Blog

Upon receiving quite a lot of feedback and suggestions on further improvement of the Market Profile indicator, I have finally managed to prepare the new version — 1.08. The latest build is now more robust than ever:

Smart color calculation prevents “overflows”, making the color of the profile’s blocks change smoothly and gradually.

The newest version (2.14) the Position Size Calculator indicator, which is released today, introduces a new way to set stop-loss and take-profit for your potential trade setups. You can set the new input parameters UseFixedSLDistance and UseFixedTPDistance to true to turn this new mode on:

The example …

Two years ago, I have added the capability for a Market Profile indicator to work with weekly and monthly trading sessions. One of the members of our Forum suggested adding customizable intraday sessions to Market Profile. Considering the fact that quite a few Forex traders use Market Profile for analysis, …

Today’s update to the Position Size Calculator indicator is not as big and significant as the last one, but I am sure the version 2.08 will be interesting to many traders.

Platform profile change will no long disrupt your panel location, minimization status, and settings:

Pip value…

It is time to roll out a new version of the Position Size Calculator indicator. Although the new release does not implement any breakthrough changes it introduces some useful features and fixes one annoying bug.

Take-profit button multiplier (set via input parameter) can be …

I remember myself during my early Forex years, sitting on a bunch of positions across five or six currency pairs and thinking — how do I make them all close at once when their total profit reaches my target? Now, I have developed a tool that does exactly that. I am pleased to announce the launch …

MetaQuotes has spurred my development process, forcing me to release the next version of the Position Size Calculator indicator much faster than I had intended to. Their latest changes to both MT4 and MT5 platforms prevented compilation of the PSC source code due to new way the string variables must be …

It is time to release another version of Position Size Calculator indicator. It has some important bugs fixed and also adds new exciting features, including two new tabs. The complete list of changes is provided below.

The Balance button on the Main tab now has a third

I have uploaded a new version of Position Size Calculator indicator for MetaTrader today. It addresses several issues mentioned in the forums and in support messages and provides better usability. Here is the list of changes:

Calculated symbol Leverage is now visible in the Margin tab of the panel. Fixed a bug that

In February 2008, I have launched a simple online position size calculator — a tool that helped thousands of traders to open trades based on their risk preference. In March 2012, I have published the first version of position size calculator (PSC) indicator for MetaTrader. Now, 4 …

Locked-in Range Analysis: Why most traders must lose money in the futures market (Forex) is the name of the e-book by Tom Leksey. It teaches the Locked-in Range Analysis (LRA) method developed by the author. The book is available for free download in two languages — English and Russian.

The e-book was first published in 2017. …

Lehman Brothers was a titan of financial trading before going bankrupt in September 2008. In March 2010, Anton R. Valukas and his law firm Jenner & Block produced a 2200-page report on the company. It was used in the bankruptcy court hearings. Consequently, the report has been made public. Yesterday, …

Today, I would like to present a review of a research paper called Crowds, Crashes, and the Carry Trade. It was published by Valeri Sokolovski, a finance scholar at the Stockholm School of Economics. It was presented by Mr. Sokolovski at the conference called Exchange Rate Models for a New Era: Major …

This book was recommended to me by a fellow redditor from /r/Forex. Trade Mindfully: Achieve Your Optimum Trading Performance with Mindfulness and Cutting Edge Psychology is one of the books on trading psychology that provide valuable advice and actionable techniques. Another trading book of such a high quality level …

Although the field of trading psychology looks oversaturated at this stage, considering that we have such a jewel of the genre as Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas, I would still like to share an e-book that offers an interesting approach to dealing with the psychological problems in trading. Enough to Be Dangerous is a very …

Japanese candlestick charts have become a staple trading tool since a long time ago. An Introduction to Japanese Candlestick Charting had been written by Erik Gebhard of Altavest quite some time before that (in the year 2000). Nevertheless, this e-book can still serve as a primer for newbie …

A necessary disclaimer: I have received a complimentary copy of the book from its author, so my review may be biased due to that.

Momo Traders: Tips, Tricks, and Strategies from Ten Top Traders is a book about successful day traders in stock markets. It was written by Brady Dahl and co-authored …

Reviewing an economics study paper that is 8 years old but is still relevant today is an odd experience. The Impact of Economic News on Financial Markets published by John C. Parker in April 2007 is a good example of such a document. John is an econometrician with nearly 40 years …

Elliott Wave theory is a popular topic in Forex trading — almost 20% of this blog readers use EW in their analysis. Last year, I have uploaded a book, which offers a new approach to achieve a definitive wave count in Elliott Wave analysis. Today, I bring to your attention another …

I have recently found an interesting research paper. It is almost twenty years old, but it provides a really great proof of candlestick patterns working as a predictive tool. The Predictive Power of Price Patterns was written by G. Caginal and H. Laurent from the Mathematics Department of the University of Pittsburgh…

I have last traded an ascending channel pattern back in June of 2017 and it was a major success. The formation on the AUD/NZD daily chart looks solid enough to warrant a new trade setup.

The yellow lines on the chart screenshot below mark the channel itself. The cyan line shows the position of my entry order. It …

The daily chart of the GBP/CHF currency pair is showing a classic version of a well-formed bullish pennant pattern. It appears exactly at the bottom (as of now) of a major downtrend, which lasts since mid-April. Luckily, a pennant can be traded irrespective of the preceding trend.

On the image below, you can see the pattern marked with …

The British pound entered a rather long period of consolidation against the New Zealand dollar back in October-November 2017 and is trading inside a narrowing range since then. Although the formed pattern cannot be called a perfect ascending triangle (it looks like a mix of a symmetrical triangle and an ascending one), it offers …

The euro has formed an easily detectable inverted head-and-shoulders pattern after its August 9–10 rapid drop against the US dollar. The H4 chart of EUR/USD shows the extra large head compared to rather small shoulders, which might hint at the pattern’s overall weakness. However, it should still be a good …

The consolidation phase, which the EUR/USD currency pair has entered following a rapid downtrend in April, lasts for quite a long time now. Its apparent symmetrical triangle form promises an interesting opportunity for shorting EUR/USD once the downside breakout occurs.

You can see the sides of the triangle marked with the yellow lines. …

After a strong rally during June 28–29 trading session, CAD/JPY entered a minor consolidation. The formed pattern looks like a bullish pennant albeint an imperfect one (there is a slight upward slope). A bullish breakout would mean a continuation of the previous rally.

The yellow lines mark the pole and the borders of the pennant. The cyan …

If you look at the four-hour chart of EUR/AUD, you can notice that the currency pair had spent roughly a month in an uptrend. The growth stalled near the end of June and has formed a rather smooth symmetrical triangle pattern since then. Such a classic continuation setup allows us to attempt catching a bullish …

CAD/JPY was trading in a strong downtrend since the beginning on the year, but that decline turned to a minor rally in mid-March. It entered a consolidation phase just less than a month later. The currently visible double top can serve as a reversal pattern to let the currency pair return to its long-term downtrend.

On the chart …

Following a failed symmetrical triangle formation in early March, the British pound has formed a bullish flag pattern versus its Aussie counterpart. The flag part is now about one month long and follows a pronounced upswing in the currency pair.

The chart screenshot below shows the flag’s borders and the pole marked with …

A rather short-lived uptrend on the GBP/AUD daily chart that lasted from January 11 through February 8 has ended in a consolidation pattern known as a symmetrical triangle. The triangle is a continuation formation, which would prompt us to buy the currency pair should the bullish breakout occur.

The image below shows the triangle’s …

As most traders already know by now, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has enacted rather strict rules that among other things seriously limit how retail traders can trade Forex. The ESMA is a European Union regulatory authority and the rules affect not only the brokers based …

When it comes to analyzing Forex strategies, many traders have no problem understanding probabilities and employing prudent risk management. They know that there is often a trade-off between a high probability of winning and a bigger reward compared to the initial risk. Normally, the closer to your entry you …

If we look at how Forex success is depicted in commercials we see online, on TV, in magazines, and so on, we would get a picture of a filthy-rich person living in a posh house with an assortment of sports cars, and other screaming attributes of extraordinary wealth. And that person also has to spend just …

Talking about the worst streak of Forex losses can be painful, but we learn important lessons from them. Although diverting too much of your attention to the biggest winning streaks might seem unnecessary. Additionally, focusing too much on your winning streaks can impair your judgement …

When assessing your trading performance, it is useful to look not only at such parameters as the average win size, average loss size, or the ratio of winning trades to losing ones. Looking at the maximum one-time gain or, conversely, at the worst losing trade can also shed light …

When you start trading Forex, the first thing you notice is that there is no explicit fee that a broker charges you (unless you start with an ECN account). In fact, “no fees and no commission” is a phrase you can often see in Forex …

Despite what you might think of Jerome Powell’s inclination to follow Janet Yellen’s steps, the question of whether the selected path of the monetary policy tightening will remain the same remains open at least until we see the first statement released under the new governance.

Even under Yellen, …

For quite some time already, my April fool jokes about the foreign exchange market closing down or the government monopolizing it no longer seem so outlandish as they definitely looked like back in 2009 and 2011.

With the current regulatory situation being very close to an outright ban of retail …

Happy New Year, traders! With 2017 finally over, it is time to sum up our yearly trading results. I still have one open position carried over from 2017 (symmetrical triangle in GBP/USD), but that is not a problem since I calculate profits and losses …

With just two weeks left till the New Year, it is now possible to assess which currency was the strongest in 2017 and try to perform an analysis of the potential Forex winners in 2018. My 2015 poll about the long-term best-performing currency (2015–2020) looks to be quite accurate so far — the euro …

Following our detailed infographic explaining the basics of VPS application in Forex trading, the IT specialists from Swiss Artmotion offer their own interpretation of the trading infrastructure problem. The infographic explains how the trader’s choice of server hardware (and software too) impacts the profits earned and lost. The main idea is that a meticulous …

Since my explanation of how VPS can enhance automated Forex trading was quite popular among this blog’s readers but lacked an easy-to-understand visual explanation, we have created this infographic. You can learn about hosting your MetaTrader expert advisors on a virtual private server in just …

The final piece of Forex infographics that is presented to you by EarnForex is the visualized statistics of the currency and currency pair popularity in Forex trading. Although London still hosts the largest volume of daily Forex transactions, the Great Britain pound is only 4th by popularity, the same as GBP/USD among the currency …

Despite the fact that the US dollar is the most popularly traded currency in the modern FX market, the worldwide leader for the currency trading is not the US but UK with its capital city of London. The presented infographics displays the geographical distribution of global Forex trading turnover. The data is from April, …

According to the latest reports, the Forex industry is growing rapidly. For a better picture of the current state of the foreign exchange market I’ve decided to create a set of infographics. The first one shows the global FX turnover along with the biggest participants — the financial institutions that provide liquidity to the retail Forex brokers. The data …

Many think of bitcoin as an investment and rightly so, it has grown from being worth fractions of a penny to being worth hundreds of dollars in a few short years. Price fluctuations have made it a popular commodity to trade both in the futures market and in real time. Bitcoin now easily surpasses $100 …

You might already know how to copy input parameters for a single indicator across different charts and platforms. You also might have mastered the power of copying the whole account profiles from one MetaTrader instance to another. However, sometimes, what you need is just to copy one chart — …

Many MetaTrader users are struggling to work with indicators on multiple charts. They pose a reasonable question: “Is there a way to save indicator input parameters from one chart and easily load them on another?” The answer is: “Yes, it is definitely possible!” Traders often ask me about …

If you have thought that trading based on the accurately calculated position size cannot get any better, think again. Now you can use a MetaTrader script to place orders based on the calculations of the Position Size Calculator indicator. The script will detect the position size calculated by the indicator …

There are two different ways to get price alerts in your MetaTrader Forex trading platform. The first one is to use the built-in Alerts system. The second way is to use the special Price Alert indicator. The former is much simpler and more customizable, while the latter allows setting visual …

Update 2016-05-09: This tutorial is now obsolete. Please refer to MetaTrader Indicators — User’s Tutorial for MT5 indicators installation instructions.

This tutorial covers only MetaTrader 5 indicator installation. If you need info on MetaTrader 4 indicator installation, please, refer to my previous tutorial…

Sometimes, it is necessary to copy all your MetaTrader chart settings to another PC or save them while you are reinstalling Windows on your current PC, or in cases when you are moving to a new broker and have to …

Trailing stop allows you to automatically protect the profits with your positions. It adjusts itself according to the current market rate and the amount of pips you give it to trail behind. Trailing stop is a great tool for the conservative and long term traders as it easily creates protective «airbag» for the trades. There are two basic ways …

Update 2016-05-09: The tutorial has been completely revamped to reflect the most current and easiest way to install new indicators in MetaTrader — both MT4 and MT5.

This tutorial covers indicator installation for MetaTrader 4 and 5. Since MT4 Build 600, there is no difference in the way it is done in the two …

Backtesting MetaTrader expert advisors on historical data is a good way to test a strategy. But testing on the limited data supplied with MT4 installation gives a very poor quality of testing (usually below 50%). So, how to achieve a 90% quality in backtesting of MT4 expert advisors? It’s not that hard …

With summer months approaching, it would be curious to see whether the FX market is becoming more or less suited for active trading than during the rest of the year. Summer season is usually associated with whipsawing sideways market that offers little opportunities for day trading. In stock trading, …

If you have thought that trading based on the accurately calculated position size cannot get any better, think again. Now you can use a MetaTrader script to place orders based on the calculations of the Position Size Calculator indicator. The script will detect the position size calculated by the indicator …

The new version of the ChannelPattern script can now draw Entry/TP levels as trendlines on a chosen side of the Border channel. By default, it will act as before — draw two channels (Entry and Take-Profit) around the given Border channel. If new the input parameter Sides is set to Upper or Lower…

Sometimes, I post a sort of chart pattern analysis that often consists of channel patterns — descending, ascending or horizontal. They all share some common traits:

Each one has a main pattern — a channel. On my charts, it is marked with yellow lines. Each has two entry