Thursday, January 23, 2014

An Alternative To Futures & Forex Trading - E-Currency Trading

By Frank Miller


Currency trading is the buying and selling of currencies from around the world. It is the largest and most active trade happening, making trillions of dollars daily. Unlike other trade like stock exchange, currency trading has no specific time of trading. It happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If you're familiar with the stock market, then you already know how much research it takes to keep up with the thousands of companies in the market. You could spend hours per day trying to find stocks with the most profit potential and the least amount of risk. With Forex currency trading, this element of trading is almost non-existent. Why? Because Forex currency trading focuses on one type of stock - foreign currency exchange rates.

With Forex currency trading, you are actually buying or selling a "pair" of foreign currencies online, by phone or other methods. "Pair" means two currencies that are being compared by pip, or a common denominator between the two currency values. Bids are placed for the pair based on what buyers are willing to pay. An asking price is what sellers are willing to take at any given time. For example, you might buy Euro dollars with your US dollars, so you are actually buying the EUR/USD pair. The pair will either increase or decrease, depending on what buyers are willing to bid, giving you a gain or loss for your investment. The rise and fall of pips in Forex currency trading will depend on each country's foreign exchange rate. The exchange rates can be affected by interest rates, unemployment rates, inflation, national events or disasters. If you have ever traveled to a foreign land, then you understand that your own currency could either be worth more or less than the currency of that nation.

Leverage, that double-edged sword that Futures Traders are so familiar with is also present in e-Currency Trading. You can borrow against your portfolio to buy more e-currency. The compounding affect is almost outrageous. Some would argue that you never have to pay back the leverage. I contend that it is paid back if you closed your e-Currency account, because your final balance would be less the amount leveraged. The point here is the leverage in futures trading is often times the demise of a well intended trader versus the leverage afforded an e-currency trader combined with the daily compounding affect creates portfolio growth at a phenomenal rate. It is not uncommon to see portfolio growth of 20 - 40% per month.

Futures Trading and e-Currency Trading have a common downside. The learning curve is huge and can be frustrating and costly. Each has unique terminology, which is impossible to work around until you have a good understanding of the meaning. Thankfully in this world of information, we are able to find resources online and offline that shorten that curve. How much it is shortened is dependent on how much time you want to dedicate.

Industry experts have debated for years the optimum amount one should fund their futures trading account with. The obvious moving target is enough capital to withstand the drawdown periods. Many factors go into this but Ive seen numbers range anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 and up. If this is the case then there is little doubt why most futures traders lose as most are willing to fund only the amount required to cover Margin or the Brokers account minimum usually a few thousand dollars. One of the biggest reasons for small business failure is being under capitalized, the same holds true in futures trading.




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