A very uncommon topic in finance and the foreign exchange (forex) market is the notion of Swap. What does swap mean in forex?

Swap is a type of agreement typically between two foreign entities designed to obtain loans using the currency of the other party's country and then swapping the interest cost on the loan between both parties.

This process involves the buying and selling of an equal volume of two different foreign currencies simultaneously with an initial swap at an entry or spot price and then a final (exit swap) at a forward price.

Timing is a very important factor and a key strategic component in every aspect of life. The famous saying “To everything, there is a season” simply mean to do the right thing at the right time.

Everything in the world of finance including the financial market does revolve around time and price. It is common to know that the prices of things, in general, are usually affected by seasons hence the term ‘Time and Price’.

A well concise trading strategy is very important for profitability in forex trading. A trading strategy is a set of rules that determines the precise time to enter and exit a trade based on certain conditions in price movement. It is commonly believed that failure to plan means a plan to fail, of which forex trading is no exception.

There are a lot of profitable forex trading strategies that can be used inorder to get different trading results. This article details a unique 50 pips a day trading strategy.

Scalping involves trading to profit from small price changes within the 1 to 15 minutes timeframe with the aim of accumulating as many small profits as possible into a cumulatively large profit. Some traders prefer to trade forex pairs on the 1 Minutes (60 seconds) timeframe where they can capitalize and profit from relatively small price movements of the 1 Minutes chart. Every day has 1440 minutes and total trading minutes of 1170 to extract enormous amounts of pips each day from the forex market.

Forex trading (In short) simply means the exchange of one foreign currency for another currency with the aim of making profits from their relative price movement.

The understanding of how forex trading works begins with learning the basics and having solid background knowledge of forex.

Comprehensive fundamental tutoring is very crucial in the odyssey to attain a level of consistent profitability.

The potential for huge financial gains and the excitement of whooping profits have made forex trading a very popular profession. Opening a forex account today is a privilege and an opportunity for anyone with access to the internet, small-capped (retail) traders and investors willing to participate in foreign exchange transactions amongst institutional banks, hedge funds and other big players doing millions of dollars transactions daily in the financial markets

Forex is the world's largest and most liquid financial market with an average daily turnover of $6.5B. This gets really exciting and the next question to be asked is how can I get my share of this daily flux of money in the financial markets?

This is where forex trading comes in, a place at the table of institutional banks, hedge funds, commercial hedgers and so on, that provide low barrier entry to small players known as retail traders to participate and profit off financial transactions alongside the big players.

Now that your MT4 account (demo or real) is set up and connected to your MT4 trading platform. It is important to learn the different methods of opening and placing trades on the MT4 platform.

Of course, it might seem a little complicated at first for beginners but it is exceptionally easy, intuitive and fast.

This article will work you through the basics of how to place trades on MT4. The basics include

MetaTrader 4, abbreviated as MT4, is one of the most popular forex trading platforms in the world today.

MetaTrader became very common and popular among FX traders because it seems to be the easiest and simplest to use forex trading platform with a lot of remarkable advantages that it offers to FX traders.

Hardly can you find a forex trader that does not have or make use of the MetaTrader 4 trading application on his or her devices.

The financial markets have a wide variety of trading indicators that serve different purposes. These indicators are helpful for analysing, trading and profiting off the ever-changing condition of price movement.

It is very important to categorise these indicators based on the purpose they serve and the market condition in which they are most useful both for price movement analysis and trading signals.

The financial market as a whole is in a state of constant upward and downward pressure, with price movement fluctuating back and forth due to various economical, environmental and institutional factors that will be explained in great detail in this article.

Among other financial asset classes such as stocks, indexes, commodities, bonds, and cryptocurrencies. Currencies stand out as a major asset class that can be used in every aspect of the global economy as a means of exchange and payment for goods, and services, both on an international and local level.

To be a successful trader, a powerful trading platform with advanced trading functions – mathematical, technical, and analytical is required to determine better entry and exit points and achieve more precise timing.

Reading this article, as a beginner or a professional forex trader, you need the surety that you’re trading in the best trading environment. All you need to do is select a reliable, robust, and fast trading platform, like MetaTrader 5 (MT5).

Learning about how to trade forex can be very exciting and what is most fascinating, especially to new and novice traders is the leverage opportunity, the countless opportunities to catch a handful of pips and the profits that can be gained with their newly acquired knowledge and trading strategies but where most novice traders fall apart or trip off in their early days of trading the forex market is over-leveraging of their trades.

The basics of forex trading are an essential part of any forex trading education. Forex traders of all kinds must understand the basics of forex trading to ensure effective risk management of real live funds when trading. The aspect of these forex trading basics that has more to do with real live funds is the concept of equity.

It is no doubt that the Japanese have contributed tremendous impact and innovation to the financial market trading industry with the design of creative tools that make all forms of trading, investing, technical and fundamental analysis of all assets in the financial market easier and better for traders, investors and technical analysts.

As a trader who has been in the forex trading industry for a while, the dogma of supply and demand is certainly not a new concept. Of course, there are certain aspects to the price movement in the financial markets that is governed by supply and demand factors but they cannot arrive at the fundamentals of what the institutions are doing in terms of buying and selling.

Apart from the commonly used supply and demand zones, orderblocks are very specific levels of price movement that can be refined to precise price levels (not as a broad range or zone) on lower timeframes.

Among the oscillator grouped indicators that tell a lot about the momentum and condition of price movement is a special leading indicator known as the “RSI indicator”.

RSI is an acronym for Relative Strength Index. An indicator that was developed by a renowned technical analyst known as Jay Wells Wielder for the purpose of identifying temporarily overbought and oversold conditions, momentum trading and identification of value among currency pairs or a traded financial instrument.

Moving average, also known as Moving mean, is a technical analysis tool that statistically measures the average change in price movement over a certain period of time.

Moving averages are the most simple and easy to use forex trading indicator because of its visual simplicity and the insights it provide about price movement when performing technical analysis. For this reason, the moving average is arguably the most common, popular and most used indicator among forex traders.

This article is centered around a very useful indicator based trading strategy that its signals have proven over time to be very effective and highly probable. The indicator is known as the Keltner channel: A volatility based indicator that envelopes both sides of the price movement on a price chart with a lower and an upper line, forming a channel-like structure around the price movement of the currency pair.

Traders use this indicator as a major part of their technical analysis to determine the direction of price trends and trade alongside the bias.

The edge that bounce forex trading strategy has over most forex trading strategies is that it helps forex traders to precisely predict the exact tops and bottoms of price moves and then enter very early on the trade in order to capture the bulk of any price move thereby making a lot of profit. This is possible on various financial market asset classes like stock, bonds, indices, options and so on.

When looking at price chart of various forex pairs, price movement may appear random on any type of chart either line chart, bar chart or candlestick chart but when closely looked into on the candlestick chart, various repeating candlestick patterns can be clearly identified.

One of the candlestick patterns mostly used when charting and performing technical analysis of the financial markets and forex, in particular, is Fractals.

In forex trading, Fibonacci is arguably the most popular and most widely used tool in the technical analysis of the forex market. It serves forex traders and analysts in many ways such as providing a supportive framework for various trading strategies, identification of accurate and precise price levels where changes in the direction of price movement should occur and many more.

The Fibonacci tool used for technical analysis in the forex market has its building blocks from the Fibonacci sequence which was introduced to the West in the 13th century by Leonardo Pisano Bogollo, an Italian mathematician. The sequence is a string of numbers that have mathematical properties and ratios found in architecture, biology and nature.

Momentum is a very important concept in the forex market therefore incorporating momentum indicators as an integral part of technical analysis is an ideal way to build a strong trading strategy that minimizes risk and maximizes the overall return or profits of trading portfolios.

Among the other oscillator-grouped indicators used to measure the strength or speed of price movement is the ‘Momentum Indicator’.

The term ‘Bladerunner’ is very suggestive of a popular sci-fi movie known as Bladerunner. The name ‘Bladerunner’ comes with a lot of compelling curiosity to the world of forex trading, more so, to forex traders that are fans of the popular sci-fi classic.

A ‘Blade’ is generally known to be a sharp cutting object or the sharp cutting part of a tool or weapon. Therefore, we instinctively know that the term ‘Bladerunner’ conveys the idea of a cutting tool in motion. This perpetuated idea is very much synonymous with the operations of the Bladerunner trading strategy in forex.

The word “MACD” is the acronym for an oscillator-type indicator known as Moving Average Convergence Divergence. It was invented by Gerald Appel in 1979 and ever since it is one of the most potent technical indicators used by traders to identify price momentum and trend opportunities across financial markets.

One of the most acknowledged methodological tools widely used by financial traders as a component of technical analysis, primarily to inform trading decisions, control automated trading systems and various other trading related purposes is the Bollinger band.

It was designed by John Bollinger in the 1980s to predict and trade highly probable opportunities of oversold and overbought market conditions.

 The most compelling candlestick reversal pattern with the highest probable triggers in price action is the pin bar candlestick. In this article, we will go step by step through the entire theory of a pin bar.

Firstly the name “Pin bar” was coined by Martin Print from the word, Pinocchio bar, referring to Pinocchio nose because whenever Pinocchio tells a lie, his nose grows longer, hence the term “pin bar” because it told a lie about the direction of price on a candlestick.

Hedging strategy in forex is a risk management practice synonymous with insurance and the concept of diversification because it requires opening new positions on closely related, correlated pairs (either positive or negative correlation) to reduce risk exposure and also insure a profitable trade from the impact of unwanted, unpredicted market volatility such as the volatility on economic releases, market gaps and so on. This risk management method, by and large, does not require the use of stop loss.

In the forex market, price swings relative to any timeframe always extend to a point of overbought and oversold extreme regardless of the market patterns (uptrend, downtrend or consolidation) i.e. these extremes of the market or price swings is relative as well as subject to any market profile and any timeframe of the market.

Therefore, knowledge of these market profiles and how to operate the tide at overbought and oversold conditions is a major edge of a trader's skill set.

A breakout forex strategy involves capitalising on the sudden bullish or bearish price movement a currency pair makes as it breaks out from a holding-ranging trading pattern—a pattern that typically exists between support and resistance levels.

Here we’ll discuss the basics and the mechanics of a breakout strategy and the most straightforward techniques you can assemble to take advantage of the breakout phenomenon. We’ll also provide some suggestions to put the trading theory into practice.

The carry trade in forex is one of the oldest forms of currency trading and investing. It’s a straightforward, longer-term position trading strategy predating online internet trading.

The carry trade in currency trading involves using the difference in central banks’ interest rates to profit from various currency movements. You use the low-interest rate bearing currency to buy a higher interest rate carrying currency.

Trend trading is one of the most popular trading methods in the forex market for assorted reasons. In this article, we’ll explain the attraction as we take a deep dive into the subject of trend trading.

We’ll discuss the simplest methods to find trends, such as using trend lines and candlestick price action and show you how to compile robust trend trading strategies.

Conventional trading wisdom suggests that forex markets range 70-80% of the time. With that figure in mind, you must learn what range trading is and how to trade FX markets experiencing such conditions.

This article will show you how to find ranging markets and what technical analysis tools can help you pinpoint ranges.

Price action trading is the rawest form of trading financial markets. Price action traders prefer to rely on price as their key market sentiment indicator to make trading decisions.

Here we’ll discuss many aspects of price action trading, including defining it, finding it, and building credible price action strategies.

Position trading in forex involves taking long term trading positions. Compared to day trading or swing trading, you’ll stay in your currency trade for weeks or maybe months with position trading.

Just like swing traders, position traders look for trends and use a combination of fundamental and technical analysis to find their entries and exits.

Fundamental analysis looks at the forex market by analysing economic, social, and political forces affecting global currency prices.
Fundamental analysis is critical for forex traders as the factors mentioned above will significantly influence the price of any currency pair.

ECN trading gets classed as the gold standard for retail forex traders. Here we’ll describe the ECN process, which brokers offer ECN trading accounts, and how to get the best out of the opportunity.

We’ll also discuss the specific features and benefits of an ECN account, the differences between versions of ECN and standard trading accounts, and how to search for reputable ECN brokers.

Using leverage is popular in forex trading. Traders leverage their buying power by borrowing money from a broker to trade more significant positions in a currency.

So long as you have enough margin in your account, your broker will allow you to access leverage, but there are limits to the amount you can use depending on where you’re based and what currency pairs you want to trade.

When we hear or read the words “forex indicator”, we at once think of technical indicators. These are the mathematical, graphical tools we place on our charts to make better-informed forex trading decisions.

Here we’ll discuss the diverse types of technical forex indicators available to you, and we’ll break them down into the four key groups and provide examples of how they work.

Elliott Wave Theory was developed by Ralph Nelson Elliott back in the 1930s. He challenged the accepted belief at the time that financial markets behaved in random and chaotic movements.

Elliott believed sentiment and psychology were the most prominent drivers and influences on market behaviour. Therefore, in his opinion, it was possible to find structure and patterns in the market.

Risk management is one of the most overlooked and misunderstood concepts of forex trading.

If you fail to develop strict risk management strategies in your forex trading, you’ll set yourself up to lose more funds than you need to.

You’ll become frustrated, make impulsive decisions, violate your plan and make the whole FX trading process more difficult than it should be.

To make money in forex trading, you open an account with a broker, trade currency pairs successfully, bank the profits, and then toast your rapid success from the deck of your luxurious motor yacht with your (newly discovered) beautiful friends. Sigh, if only it were that simple.

The boulevard of broken forex dreams is long and winding, with many auto wrecks abandoned at the side of the road. The low success rate in forex trading is unfortunate because any failure is easy to avoid.

Cutting errors from your forex trading is essential if you’re to make progress, but first, you need to identify potential mistakes and either eradicate or prevent them.

Here we’ll discuss the most obvious mistakes traders make. Some of which, if left unchallenged, can have a devastating and adverse effect on your results.

Successful forex traders are made, not born. The good news is we can all become successful FX traders.

The best forex traders don’t have any unique DNA or genetic advantage. There is no such thing as a trading sage who sees patterns and trends on charts that others can’t.

You become a better and successful FX trader through dedication and disciplined practice while sticking to a highly detailed trading plan, including the critical aspects of strategy and money management.

Here we’ll discuss seven fundamental building blocks you need to put in place to build the right foundations for trading success.

On a regular basis, the forex market witnesses a diverse collection of trading strategies. Each has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, but some tactics have a stronger track record than others when it comes to achieving performance.

Swing trading has gained a large popularity among forex traders for its ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some consider it to be a fundamental form of forex trading.

But what is swing trading, and why are we talking about it?

What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word "Equity"?

"Seems like an Einstein's equation to me".

Well, wrong answer!

Equity is much simpler than any complex equation.

Let's try to find what exactly is equity in forex.

One of the common questions new traders look for is how much trading capital they need to start trading forex.

Is it millions of dollars, or you can start with $100?

We are going to answer this question in this guide.

So, if you are someone looking to start your trading journey, make sure to stick till the end.

Making pips, keeping them, and repeating the process is the key to being reliably profitable in forex trading.

Unfortunately, it isn't as simple as it looks.

You must develop a trading strategy that gives you a competitive advantage in the markets, solid risk management, and a firm grasp of your trading psychology.

But what in God's name is a forex trading strategy, and why are we talking about it?

Well, let's find out!

The most important aspect for a trader is to accumulate and preserve trading profits.

In case you lose all of your funds, there is no way to recoup your losses; you are out of the game.

If you make some pips, you must retain them rather than give them back to the market.

Still, let's be honest. The market always does what it wants and shifts in the direction it wants.

Perhaps you've heard of the word "free margin" in forex trading before, or maybe it's a completely new term to you. Either way, it’s an important topic that you must understand to become a good forex trader.

In this guide, we are going to break down what free margin is in forex, how it can be calculated, how it relates to leverage, and much more.

So make sure to stick till the end!