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A Beginner’s Guide to FOREX
FOREX is the abbreviation for the Foreign Exchange market. FOREX is basically an international exchange market where currencies from all over the world are bought and sold for profit. The market today began in the 1970’s. FOREX is a very unique...
Forex basics: make money with money, part 1
FOREX or The Foreign Exchange market refers to an international exchange market where simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another is done. Currencies are traded in pairs, for example Euro/US Dollar (EUR/USD) or US Dollar/Japanese Yen...
Forex Versus Stocks
Stocks have been a popular investment for hundreds of years. Companies issue stocks to raise capital for expansion and new projects, and each share of the stock represents a partial ownership in the company. When the company does well and makes a...
Getting a Forex Trading Education
Many Americans are interested in getting involved in forex trading. Before doing this, you should get a forex trading education. You should never get into forex trading without forex trading education. With the proper forex trading education, you...
On the Soundness of Our Banks
Banks are institutions where miracles happen regularly. We rarely entrust our money to anyone but ourselves – and our banks. Despite a very chequered history of mismanagement, corruption, false promises and representations, delusions and...
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Forex Trading: Margin Usage and Introduction to Hedging
A good rule of thumb for either a mini-account or standard forex
account, is to limit your margin usage for each trade to 5% -
10% of your usable margin.
As an example, if your usable margin is $5000, to trade safely,
limit your margin usage for each trade to a maximum of $250.
This means trading only 1 full lot for each trade. This is
assuming that you are trading in a CMS Universal account with
400:1 margin. Your use of margin is increased with a smaller
ratio, as most other brokerages only offer a smaller ratio,
normally 200:1 or even 100:1.
As your account grows and your usable margin grows, you can
increase your margin usage and trade bigger mini or full lot
sizes. If you lose money and your account shrinks, drop your
margin usage back down to smaller sizes. You need to learn to
keep your eye on your usable margin, especially if you've
suffered some losses.
Protect your usable Margin by not having more than 2 open hedged
or unhedged position at any one time. Your usable margin &
equity will get eaten up by un-hedged open positions that go bad
in the wrong direction...this is a really good reason why you
want to use stops, and if you hedge, hedge tightly.
IMPORTANT: Don't just keep putting on positions because you
think it's a good opportunity. First sell a position and book
some usable margin before you put on another position.
NOTE: Hedging does not use up more margin! Use it to protect
your equity & usable margin, esp. in an emergency situation!
If you break the hedging rules, and your positions go
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against
you and you aren't properly hedged with stop losses, you'll
quickly see your usable margin degrade. If it degrades enough so
that your usable margin goes into the negative, you'll get a
margin call. This means that the operators will automatically
start selling some of your lots in your oldest losing positions
in order to beef up your usable margin. This makes your
unrealized loss become a realized loss...and the money is gone
from your account.
If you lose too much useable margin, they won't even let you
trade in your account, the message they'll give you when you try
to put on a new trade is, 'Account in Untradeable Condition'.
If this happens, you might have an open position that needs to
be hedged immediately or you might need to sell an old position.
Or you might need to deposit more money into your account. Then
you can start trading smaller lots to win back some usable
margin.
You can lose your entire account balance if you're not careful.
One other good thing about forex trading is that you will never
lose more money than is in your account, you won't have to sell
your house if you get a margin call! Stick to the rules above
and this won't happen to you. You'll make more money than you
thought possible and without the stress of loss.
About the author:
Cynthia Macy is co-author of 'The Day Trade Forex System: The
Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide To Online Currency Trading'.
http://www.daytrade-forex.com http://www.successtrading2000.com
http://www.professionalforextradingonline.info
http://www.shorterminvestingsite.com
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