Sunday, October 7, 2007

Currency Trading Systems - 5 Tests to Find the Best Systems

Heres a startling fact: Over 95 percent of the currency trading systems promoted by vendors cause traders to lose their money.

So, how do you find one of the 5 percent of trading systems that make money better yet, make big consistent profits.

Here are 5 tests you should apply, in order to find the best systems to incorporate in your Forex trading strategy - thus helping you and achieve big currency trading gains.

1. The Track Record

As the old saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating - and the first place you need to start with any trading system is the track record.

Look for a system thats been used by the vendor - and made real dollars, in real trading.

The problem is, you wont find many systems that qualify.

Youll normally be given a hypothetical track record. Although these systems havent actually been traded buy the vendor, you can see if theyll work for you, by paying attention to the following points:

. Is it tracked in real time? Some ratings agencies do this and calculate profit and loss. This is almost as good as a real time track record - and well worth considering.

. If the system isnt tracked in real time, then dont buy it - move on!

Anyone can produce a track record knowing the closing prices - and most vendors do this - and hope youre naive enough to buy it. The track records are simply made up, and not worth your consideration.

In conclusion, a currency-trading system either must make real profits, or be tracked in real time - to show that the logic that provides the trading signals is soundly based.

2. The logic

Make sure you understand the logic (even if the system is successful). The reason for this is, you must have confidence in the trading systems ability to make money even when it hits a losing streak.

If you dont understand the system, then you wont have confidence in it - and youll lack the discipline to follow the system. If you dont have the discipline to follow a Forex trading system, then you dont really have a system at all!

3. Personality

Some systems require you to make subjective judgements, whilst other systems are totally objective - you must decide which suits you the best. In addition, are you a patient trader? If so, a long-term system will suit you. If youre impatient, then go for a swing trading system.

You also need to look at the worst peak to valley drawdown, using the systems track record. What is the worst loss you would have taken? - And how long did it take to recover?

Are you comfortable with it? Always assume the worst drawdown is to come - and be prepared for it.

Finally, how much work does the trading system need to operate - and do you have sufficient time to operate the system?

4. Find out about the vendor

How long have they been in business? Are they traders themselves?

Ask many questions - and carefully analyse the responses - to see if the vendors answers makes you feel comfortable.

Are they the type of people who you are comfortable working with? Do you think that youll get support when you need it? Start asking questions and youll soon find out!

5. Guarantee

Never buy a currency trading system without a guarantee of satisfaction.

Most vendors who have confidence in their system will give you a money back guarantee and sufficient time to test the system. You should also carefully check the terms and conditions of the guarantee and if you're not happy with them, pass the system by. Somebody will be offering another new trading system for sale before long!

Final Words

Successful currency trading systems are out there - you just have to find them. If you do find a good trading system, it can pay back the purchase price hundreds, maybe even thousands of times over.

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Next Auction Could Send Uranium Higher

No transactions were reported for the week ending February 9, according to Nuclear Market Review (NMR). As a result, the TradeTech spot uranium price indicator remained unchanged at US$75/pound. Market participants are focused on the upcoming auction by a U.S. uranium producer, wrote NMR editor Treva Klingbiel. She explained approximately 100 thousand pounds of U3O8 could be offered for sale by the end of February.

During this past week, several buyers submitted bids for 208 thousand pounds of U3O8 to a single seller. The U3O8, contained in an enriched uranium product, had been previously offered to the market. According to NMR, the seller is now evaluating those bids.

There is going to be upward pressure on prices, TradeTech chief executive Gene Clark told StockInterview. While uranium buyers want to lock in fixed price contracts, sellers want to be paid the going rate at the time of delivery. Because sellers expect rising prices in the months ahead, a significant gap exists between them, Clark told us.

Despite a quiet week absent any transactions or new demand, the existing demand remained firm. Klingbiel wrote, 15 utilities (are) currently evaluating offers or seeking to purchase almost 54 million pounds in the long-term uranium market. Nine buyers continue to collectively seek 4.5 million pounds U3O8 equivalent. But Klingbiel also cautioned, Approximately one-half of this demand is discretionary.

While no transactions were reported in the conversion or enrichment markets, utilities are evaluating offers and sellers are evaluating bids in both markets. For example, one U.S. utility continues to evaluate offers received in January for delivery of almost 3 million SWU; another is evaluating December offers for 1 million SWU. Long-term SWU remains at US$137.

Year-to-date (YTD) transaction volume is seasonally slow, but more quiet than usual. Over the past twelve years, YTD transaction volumes were higher, by early February, than in any other year except 1997.

TradeTech, through its predecessor NUEXCO, was the first organization to publish uranium prices, beginning in August 1968. After publishing the spot and long-term uranium price in Nuclear Market Review, TradeTech reports the weekly spot uranium indicator on the consulting services website.

Timing is everything for many of the junior uranium companies, and the timing of the next spot uranium auction may not get better than this. Many juniors hope to showcase their companys developments and future plans at the annual PDAC Convention, often issuing their strongest news before the event commences.

This is the Diamond Anniversary event, being held in Toronto and starting March 4th. For 75 years, prospectors and developers have met to exchange stories, gossip and plans for the coming year. Teck Cominco (NYSE: TCK) is the diamond sponsor. Often, many of the juniors strongly rally into the first few days of the conference.

COPYRIGHT 2007 by StockInterview, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

James Finch contributes to StockInterview and other publications. His focus on the uranium mining and nuclear fuel sector resulted in the widely popular Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market, which is now available on http://www.stockinterview.com and on http://www.amazon.com TradeTech posts the weekly spot uranium price on the companys website at http://www.uranium.info

The Monster Traffic Way Of Currency Exchange

In the advent of globalization, the name of the game is not money alone. Can we include currency exchange? In historical times, the mode of exchange is by bartering a valuable object with the desired other object. Currently, this may exist informally but vaguely, an item for sale would more or less be worth a sum of money.

But as the world transactions come in complexity, where the value of an economy is determined by the amount of its reserved wealth, money is a very broad traffic in commerce and all walks of living. Currency exchange comprises the biggest transaction in the world market. Each country has adopted its own unit as home currency, but with their independence from each other, they differ in economic standing based on many factors. The worth of their currencies against the other is the EXCHANGE RATE. Foreign Exchange goes with the acronym FOREX.

To understand the value of home currency, it is always comparable with another currency foreign to it. The most common way of expressing it is by Price Currency. A very simple example figure is this:

1 US Dollar ($) = 0.69 British Pound Sterling

The fluctuation of a currency is solely based on the demand of its supply. The more transactions are made with it, the more it becomes valuable. If there is less demand for the currency, it devalues fast, thus it will have an impact on its rate value. Primarily, this is observed generally in terms of countrys economic standing. If its people have the most employment, there are more needs for commodities and supplies that businesses are revolving as well as it use of money. Once currency is valuable, the interest rate is high which can also attract other investors to take chance on buying it.

A powerful currency would mean consistent price rate that does not devalue in a long period of time. In playing the game with foreign exchange buying, sometimes it is difficult for banks themselves to control those who manipulate them into selling the reserves, which in a way have impact on the countrys financial status. Several scenarios make a great decline of currency value like political uncertainties, unemployment that leads to higher inflation, other relevant issues that can hamper commerce and business from functioning well, and other macro-economic situations.

So far, the five most traded currencies in the world are the following:

  • US Dollar
  • Euro
  • Japanese Yen
  • British Pound Sterling
  • Swiss Franc

EURO, a new currency that hit the market after its birth in 1999, is almost speculated a threat to US dollar. And yet the latter (US$) is still the highest with its 89% rate of world transaction, which dwarfed the rest to the fraction left. Still, no matter how insignificant a certain currency may be, the monetary flow is a big volatile traffic that literally flows like liquid around the world though it may seem unnoticed.

It may appear that Foreign Exchange Retailing seem to have the edge in terms of acquiring currencies, but actually, it turns out that there should be ways of marginalizing these businesses to balance the flow of currency exchange, which in a big overview, these retailers may take hidden charges for their own gain.

Without noticing, it is clear that no matter how small transactions are, negotiations play a big part on currency exchange jam, which any civilized world has embraced for centuries.

Robert Thatcher is a freelance publisher based in Cupertino, California. He publishes articles and reports in various ezines and provides currency exchange resources on http://www.aboutcurrencyexchange.info.

Learn Forex Before You Decide To Trade

If you think youd like to learn Forex trading, youre not alone. Forex trading has become the next big thing in the individual investors bag of money making tricks, and those who have been attempting to master the art of day trading stocks for years are looking at Forex trading as a much easier way to enhance their incomes.

Anyone can learn Forex trading strategies; the difficulty lies in taking what one has learned and putting it to work in the real world of instantaneous decisions required of every successful Forex trader.

The reason the Forex market exists is to ease the path of international commerce as global corporations, banks, governments, hedge funds, and financial institutions exchange huge amounts of foreign currencies with each other.

And as international commerce has grown, so has the amount of currency being exchanged each day on the Forex market. To learn Forex trading is to become part of the largest financial market in the world; the total currencies exchanged daily exceed $1.9 trillion USD. Most currency exchange transactions dollars are between one and ten million USD, but much larger amounts are not unusual.

Forex Deliveries
When you learn Forex trading you will become familiar with the differences between spot and forward deliveries. Your spot Forex trades will lead to a completed currency trade in two business days, whereas a forward Forex trade will be made based on a completion date which will not occur for a up to a year, or sometimes longer. By allowing forward Forex trades, banks can control the future flows of foreign currencies, protecting their own currency from extreme fluctuations in the exchange rates.

One of the thing you will discover when you learn Forex trading is that the currency markets have no brick-and-mortar locations like the NYSE and London Stock Exchange do. Forex trading is done entirely over the telephone or the Internet, via a network of electronic links extending into all the large urban areas of the world.

There is a trio of big players in the Forex market, and it consists of corporations, brokers, and banks. Global corporations are active in currency trading because they need to purchase foreign currency in order to do business around the world.

Other Lessons In Forex Trading
Those who wish to learn Forex trading should go into the process understanding that just as global political and economic conditions have a great effect on the currencies market, the volatility of the currencies market has a similar effect on global political and economic conditions.

As a countrys currency value rises or falls, so rises or falls its ability to compete on the global commercial scene. If a currency is devalued, its citizens will experience inflation because items imported in to e country would have cost more to purchase. And because the local currency has been devalued, the amount of more expensive foreign currency for which it can be exchanged will decrease.

But a domestic currency rapidly escalating in value will mean that imported goods are cheaper, so inflation will drop and the local currency will purchase more of a foreign currency because of its better exchange rate.

You can also find more info on Trading Forex and e-Forex Trading. e-forextradingsystem.com is a comprehensive resource to know about e-Forex Trading System.

Real Estate Investing By the Numbers:Part 2

As we now recover from the long holiday and consuming way too much turkey and stuffing, real estate investor minds come back to the plans that they will be making for 2007. Having talked to many investors during our recent appearance in NYC, I have discovered that many people have been in active in 2006 but are really planning on gearing up in 2007. Why? It seems to be a combination of a strong believe among experts and novices alike that 2008 will be the return of solid real estate market conditions and thus 2007 is a great year to pick up good values. Quite frankly, we concur.

In addition to the normal New Year's resolutions that you make, I highly encourage you to add one more to your list that you will actually keep.. LEARN TO BECOME A GOOD INVESTOR. During the time that our web site has been in existence, I have met many clients and investors who are all very bright and I know that they do some complicated things in their day job like surgery, education, law, etc., etc. What surprises me however is that many people feel that investing is rocket science. Having been a scientist and actually worked on a rocket, trust me when I tell you that investing is far, far from rocket science on the complexity scale. Most of real estate investing is just good old common sense that once you see it, you feel kind of silly for thinking that it was so complicated.

One of the common themes among many professional people I meet is that they are just too busy to learn what is needed. They go on to tell us that all they want to do is find somebody they trust and then take their advice.. Kind of like I don't want to learn medicine if I have a threatening ailment. While I agree with that for many things in life, for important issues like your health, your family's financial future, your children's education, etc., I believe a much healthier approach is to find a provider that you trust but learn enough to get comfortable with what they tell you. That way you have a much stronger conviction when you make a decision other than "gee, this doctor recommends this approach" or "wow, I will buy this property because Dr. Anderson sounded really excited". I hate to be the bearer of bad news but for both those decisions, you will wake up one morning a few months down the road going "did I make the right choice?" If you understand why you made that choice, then that thought will rapidly disappear and not be a hurdle. On the other hand, if you don't understand why you made that choice, you are in for some mental roller coasters.

As part of our push in 2007 to create a small, but extremely well educated investor community, let me now get off my soapbox and describe the next piece of investing by the numbers.

What You Need To Know

In our last article, we described the four key parameters that any real estate investor needs to know to evaluate a project. Just as a reminder, they are

1. Purchase Equity.

2. Annual Appreciation (%)

3. Annual Cashflow

4. Special Tax Situations

In our live workshop in NYC, we recently covered how you can sit at your desktop and get this information. For our projects, we provide this information to you but I believe it is really good to see one time how to actually do that and that it makes sense. Then, when you are looking at a property where information has been provided to you, then you can always go back and double check any piece that may not make sense. In late January early February, we will be conducting multi-city tours where you can come out and meet us live and we will teach this content. Please go to this page to tell us the large city that you live next to and give us a contact email if you would like to attend.

Calculating Cash On Cash Returns And Yearly Returns

One of the standard measures of many investments is what is called cash-on-cash returns. This is just a fancy word that says what % gain do I get for holding an investment. For example, let's say that you plunk down $20,000 in down payment and closing costs on a real estate investment and let's say in 2 years, you get back $65,000 after reselling with all expenses included; i.e., you have a $45,000 net profit.

The cash on cash return for this is simply:

COC(%) = 100%* 45000/20000 = 225%

One problem of this measure is that it does not take into account the time-value of money; that is, if I made that in 2 years versus 20 years, it makes a huge difference. So suppose in this example we plunked down $20K, got a simple interest return the first year, and then reinvested that gain with the same interest. Now what interest rate would accomplish this? A little more complicated to calculate but the annual rate of return to produce this is just a little of 80%. To see this, you can do the following:

Year 0: $20,000

Year 1: $20000*(1+80.2%) = $36,055

Year 2: $36055*(1+80.2%) = $65,000

If you are still in the mindset of 2004/2005 that you can plunk down $5,000 on something and make $75,000 in 6 months by flipping, then I wish you the best of luck. This is just not realistic except for a few needles in the haystack. On the other hand, if you are comfortable with making 30-40% per year on your money over a 2-5 year time frame, then that is very realistic and can be done with low risk.

So when we evaluate potential opportunities, one of the first parameters that we are looking at is this yearly return and we like to see 30%+. As we will discuss next week, this is not the only factor to consider but it is certainly one of the top 3.

Dr. Chris Anderson is the founder of one of the largest preconstruction groups on the internet today and is referenced in many venues including the New York Times and USA Today. Get access to wholesale property investments today