Forex is the short way of saying “Foreign Exchange”. This means the global market for exchanging international currencies, also known as the FX market. When someone prices or exchanges a currency against another, the exchange rate is best on the particular forex trading pair (i.e., both currencies involved in the pair).
Currency pairs are typically priced out to four decimal places, depending on the currency denomination, where one ten-thousandth of a unit of currency is known as a pip (i.e., 0.0001 unit), which is the smallest price increment (in addition to fractional-pips).
The EUUSD, which is the most widely-traded forex pair, is an example of the Euro (EUR) currency against the US dollars (USD) currency.
When trading one unit of EUUSD, you can calculate the price in USD (i.e., a price of EUUSD 1.3000 indicates $1.30 per euro). Conversely, when exchanging the USD/EUR, each unit of USD (i.e. each dollar) will have the prace of a specific number of euros (i.e., a USD/EUR price of 0.7700 indicates €0.77 per dollar).
A speculator expecting the price of the EUUSD to go up. He will buy the EUUSD pair long (buying a pair to open a trade can be a bullish or long position). Whereas, a speculator anticipating a drop in the price of the EUUSD may sell the pair. (bearish or short position: selling to open a trade).

Largest international market Globally

The forex market is decentralized across the globe. It consists of dealers such as central banks, private and public banks, non-bank intermediaries, brokerages, and large corporations such as insurance giants and other participants engaged in international finance.

The Foreign Exchange market is the largest globally, with nearly $6 trillion in average daily volume traded as of April 2019, according to the latest BIS Triennial Survey of Central Banks.

The FX market suffers the influence mainly by each government’s monetary policy, the supply, and demand of the global economy. As well as international trade agreements, and users and suppliers of currencies (hedgers), in addition to speculators.

Market integrity and progress

While there have been cases of forex market manipulation by the biggest banks and dealers in the past, the amount of influence any one entity can have on the prices of major currencies is negligible. This resistance to serious manipulation risk is due to the enormous amount of trading and resulting liquidity available.
The FX Market itself has high price integrity. Because it is an electronic market, efficient and with a certain size. Participants must still adhere to best practices.

Efforts such as the Global FX code were launched to encourage forex dealers to uphold the best-execution where the best price available is given to traders.

These efforts are why the spreads and trading commissions continued to improve over the years, as the FX market evolved. In addition, regulators have competed to increase local market integrity and efficiency by creating more strict regulations. These come from the top-tier financial centers such as the US, UK, Singapore, Japan, Australia, among other advanced economies.

Investing and trading in the forex market

As an asset class, Forex is well-established and offered by many regulated brokerages from within a margin account.

The use of leverage is what makes forex trading more risky than non-margin investing.

Margin-based trading used by investors as well as self-directed traders and fund managers, thanks to the range of risk-management tools available within forex trading platforms (mobile, web, and desktop software). Wiseinvest provides trading signals with risk-management.

Forex market research and analysis

There are two primary ways for traders to assess and identify trading opportunities in the forex market.
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• One is through the use of fundamental analysis, which looks at economic news and data released by governmental agencies, as well as market sentiment data.
• The second is through technical analysis, which pertains to the historical and current market price of the underlying currency.

Advanced forex trading strategies and algorithms

The foundation of successful trading in the forex market is having a trading strategy. It’s based on a specific methodology that best suits your trading needs. Strategies could be manual, automated, or a combination of both.

Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of automated trading strategies made available for retail traders.

And while there are many serious traders with established track records for their trading systems, there are many more low-quality trading systems falsely marketed as high-quality by overly eager affiliates, making it harder for investors to navigate the market for trading signals.

There has also been an increase in the social copy trade. Where an operator can mimic other operators’ businesses in real time.

Whether using a copy-trading platform or an automated trading system, in almost all cases, this type of investing is considered self-directed and doesn’t require a power-of-attorney or another third-party money manager to handle your account.
Unlike other copy and social trading platforms, Wiseinvet’s AI has the ability to execute a huge set of market data. It does by combining technical and fundamental analysis. This strategy can increase the accuracy of trading signals.

Self-directed forex investors

Compared to investing in a managed fund, there is greater responsibility. Traders put it on self-directed traders who use trading systems. A self-directed trader should conduct more detailed due diligence. It can avoid falling for the countless low-quality trading systems that exist on the internet.
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• Good quality trading systems will have established track records (historical results), and there will be other quantitative performance rankings, along with qualitative data about the strategy developers and any proprietary math used to operate the strategy.
• Bad quality trading systems will usually promise high returns will not equally emphasizing potential risk.

There are no guarantees that a strategy will perform well. But conducting proper due diligence can help traders assess various trading systems. They consider using them to aid their trading or investment strategy.

Originally posted by Darkstar at Forex Factory.
Disclaimer: I did not write this. I found this post on ForexFactory written by a user called DarkStar, which I believe a lot of redditors will benefit from reading.
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There has been much discussion of late regarding borker spreads and liquidity. Many assumptions are being made about why spreads are widened during news time that are built on an incomplete knowledge of the architecture of the forex market in general. The purpose of this article is to dissect the market and hopefully shed some light on the situation so that a more rational and productive discussion can be undertaken by the Forex Factory members.
We will begin with an explanation of the purpose of the Forex market and how it is utilized by its primary participants, expand into the structure and operation of the market, and conclude with the implications of this information for speculators. With that having been said, let us begin.
Unlike the various bond and equity markets, the Forex market is not generally utilized as an investment medium. While speculation has a critical role in its proper function, the lion’s share of Forex transactions are done as a function of international business.
The guy who buys a shiny new Eclipse more then likely will pay for it with US Dollars. Unfortunately Mitsubishi’s factory workers in Japan need to get their paychecks denominated in Yen, so at some point a conversion needs to be made. When one considers that companies like Exxon, Boeing, Sony, Dell, Honda, and thousands of other international businesses move nearly every dollar, real, yen, rubble, pound, and euro they make in a foreign country through the Forex market, it isn’t hard to understand how insignificant the speculative presence is; even in a $2tril per day market.
By and large, businesses don’t much care about the intricacies of exchange rates, they just want to make and sell their products. As a central repository of a company’s money, it was only natural that the banks would be the facilitators of these transactions. In the old days it was easy enough for a bank to call a foreign bank (or a foreign branch of ones own bank) and swap the stockpiles of currency each had accumulated from their many customers.
Just as any business would, the banks bought the foreign currency at one rate and marked it up before selling it to the customer. With that the foreign exchange spread was born. This was (and still is) a reasonable cost of doing business. Mitsubishi can pay its customers and the banks make a nice little profit for the hassle and risks associated with moving around the currency.
As a byproduct of transacting all this business, bank traders developed the ability to speculate on the future of currency rates. Utilizing a better understanding of the market, a bank could quote a business a spread on the current rate but hold off hedging until a better one came along. This process allowed the banks to expand their net income dramatically. The unfortunate consequence was that liquidity was redistributed in a way that made certain transactions impossible to complete.
It was for this reason and this reason alone that the market was eventually opened up to non-bank participants. The banks wanted more orders in the market so that a) they could profit from the less experienced participants, and b) the less experienced participants could provide a better liquidity distribution for execution of international business hedge orders. Initially only megacap hedge funds (such as Soros’s and others) were permitted, but it has since grown to include the retail brokerages and ECNs.
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Market Structure:
Now that we have established why the market exists, let’s take a look at how the transactions are facilitated:
The top tier of the Forex market is transacted on what is collectively known as the Interbank. Contrary to popular belief the Interbank is not an exchange; it is a collection of communication agreements between the world’s largest money center banks.
To understand the structure of the Interbank market, it may be easier to grasp by way of analogy. Consider that in an office (or maybe even someone’s home) there are multiple computers connected via a network cable. Each computer operates independently of the others until it needs a resource that another computer possesses. At that point it will contact the other computer and request access to the necessary resource. If the computer is working properly and its owner has given the requestor authorization to do so, the resource can be accessed and the initiating computers request can be fulfilled. By substituting computers for banks and resources for currency, you can easily grasp the relationships that exist on the Interbank.
Anyone who has ever tried to find resources on a computer network without a server can appreciate how difficult it can be to keep track of who has what resources. The same issue exists on the Interbank market with regard to prices and currency inventory. A bank in Singapore may only rarely transact business with a company that needs to exchange some Brazilian Real and it can be very difficult to establish what a proper exchange rate should be. It is for this purpose that EBS and Reuters (hereafter EBS) established their services.
Layered on top (in a manner of speaking) of the Interbank communication links, the EBS service enables banks to see how much and at what prices all the Interbank members are willing to transact. Pains should be taken to express that EBS is not a market or a market maker; it is an application used to see bids and offers from the various banks.
The second tier of the market exists essential within each bank. By calling your local Bank of America branch you can exchange any foreign currency you would like. More then likely they will just move some excess currency from one branch to another. Since this is a micro-exchange with a single counterparty, you are basically at their mercy as to what exchange rate they will quote you. Your choice is to accept their offer or shop a different bank. Everyone who trades the forex market should visit their bank at least once to get a few quotes. It would be very enlightening to see how lucrative these transactions really are.
Branching off of this second tier is the third tier retail market. When brokers like Oanda, Forex.com, FXCM, etc. desire to establish a retail operation the first thing they need is a liquidity provider. Nine in ten of these brokers will sign an agreement with just one bank. This bank will agree to provide liquidity if and only if they can hedge it on EBS inclusive of their desired spread. Because the volume will be significantly higher a single bank patron will transact, the spreads will be much more competitive. By no means should it be expected these tier 3 providers will be quoted precisely what exists on the Interbank. Remember the bank is in the business of collecting spreads and no agreement is going to suspend that priority.
Retail forex is almost akin to running a casino. The majority of its participants have zero understanding how to trade effectively and as a result are consistent losers. The spread system combined with a standard probability distribution of returns gives the broker a built in house advantage of a few percentage points. As a result, they have all built internal order matching systems that play one loser off against a winner and collect the spread. On the occasions when disequilibrium exists within the internal order book, the broker hedges any exposure with their tier 2 liquidity provider.
As bad as this may sound, there are some significant advantages for speculators that deal with them. Because it is an internal order book, many features can be provided which are otherwise unavailable through other means. Non-standard contract sizes, high leverage on tiny account balances, and the ability to transact in a commission free environment are just a few of them…
An ECN operates similar to a Tier 2 bank, but still exists on the third tier. An ECN will generally establish agreements with several tier 2 banks for liquidity. However instead of matching orders internally, it will just pass through the quotes from the banks, as is, to be traded on. It’s sort of an EBS for little guys. There are many advantages to the model, but it is still not the Interbank. The banks are going to make their spread or their not go to waste their time. Depending on the bank this will take the form of price shading or widened spreads depending on market conditions. The ECN, for its trouble, collects a commission on each transaction.
Aside from the commission factor, there are some other disadvantages a speculator should consider before making the leap to an ECN. Most offer much lower leverage and only allow full lot transactions. During certain market conditions, the banks may also pull their liquidity leaving traders without an opportunity to enter or exit positions at their desired price.
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Trade Mechanics:
It is convenient to believe that in a $2tril per day market there is always enough liquidity to do what needs to be done. Unfortunately belief does not negate the reality that for every buyer there MUST be a seller or no transaction can occur. When an order is too large to transact at the current price, the price moves to the point where open interest is abundant enough to cover it. Every time you see price move a single pip, it means that an order was executed that consumed (or otherwise removed) the open interest at the current price. There is no other way that prices can move.
As we covered earlier, each bank lists on EBS how much and at what price they are willing to transact a currency. It is important to note that no Interbank participant is under any obligation to make a transaction if they do not feel it is in their best interest. There are no “market makers” on the Interbank; only speculators and hedgers.
Looking at an ECN platform or Level II data on the stock market, one can get a feel for what the orders on EBS look like. The following is a sample representation:
You’ll notice that there is open interest (Level II Vol figures) of various sizes at different price points. Each one of those units represents existing limit orders and in this example, each unit is $1mil in currency.
Using this information, if a market sell order was placed for 38.4mil, the spread would instantly widen from 2.5 pips to 4.5 pips because there would no longer be any orders between 1.56300 and 1.56345. No broker, market maker, bank, or thief in the night widened the spread; it was the natural byproduct of the order that was placed. If no additional orders entered the market, the spread would remain this large forever. Fortunately, someone somewhere will deem a price point between those 2 figures an appropriate opportunity to do something and place an order. That order will either consume more interest or add to it, depending whether it is a market or limit order respectively.
What would have happened if someone placed a market sell order for 2mil just 1 millisecond after that 38.4 mil order hit? They would have been filled at 1.5630 Why were they “slipped”? Because there was no one to take the other side of the transaction at 1.56320 any longer. Again, nobody was out screwing the trader; it was the natural byproduct of the order flow.
A more interesting question is, what would happen if all the listed orders where suddenly canceled? The spread would widen to a point at which there were existing bids and offers. That may be 5,7,9, or even 100 pips; it is going to widen to whatever the difference between a bid and an offer are. Notice that nobody came in and “set” the spread, they just refused to transact at anything between it.
Nothing can be done to force orders into existence that don’t exist. Regardless what market is being examined or what broker is facilitating transactions, it is impossible to avoid spreads and slippage. They are a fact of life in the realm of trading.
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Implications for speculators:
Trading has been characterized as a zero sum game, and rightly so. If trader A sells a security to trader B and the price goes up, trader A lost money that they otherwise could have made. If it goes down, Trader A made money from trader B’s mistake. Even in a huge market like the Forex, each transaction must have a buyer and a seller to make a trade and one of them is going to lose. In the general realm of trading, this is materially irrelevant to each participant. But there are certain situations where it becomes of significant importance. One of those situations is a news event.
Much has been made of late about how it is immoral, illegal, or downright evil for a broker, bank, or other liquidity provider to withdraw their order (increasing the spread) and slip orders (as though it was a conscious decision on their part to do so) more then normal during these events. These things occur for very specific reasons which have nothing to do with screwing anyone. Let us examine why:
Leading up to an economic report for example, certain traders will enter into positions expecting the news to go a certain way. As the event becomes immanent, the banks on the Interbank will remove their speculative orders for fear of taking unnecessary losses. Technical traders will pull their orders as well since it is common practice for them to avoid the news. Hedge funds and other macro traders are either already positioned or waiting until after the news hits to make decisions dependent on the result.
Knowing what we now know, where is the liquidity necessary to maintain a tight spread coming from?
Moving down the food chain to Tier 2; a bank will only provide liquidity to an ECN or retail broker if they can instantly hedge (plus their requisite spread) the positions on Interbank. If the Interbank spreads are widening due to lower liquidity, the bank is going to have to widen the spreads on the downstream players as well.
At tier 3 the ECN’s are simply passing the banks offers on, so spreads widen up to their customers. The retailers that guarantee spreads of 2 to 5 pips have just opened a gaping hole in their risk profile since they can no longer hedge their net exposure (ever wonder why they always seem to shut down or requote until its over?). The variable spread retailers in turn open up their spreads to match what is happening at the bank or they run into the same problems fixed spreads broker are dealing with.
Now think about this situation for a second. What is going to happen when a number misses expectations? How many traders going into the event with positions chose wrong and need to get out ASAP? How many hedge funds are going to instantly drop their macro orders? How many retail traders’ straddle orders just executed? How many of them were waiting to hear a miss and executed market orders?
With the technical traders on the sidelines, who is going to be stupid enough to take the other side of all these orders?
The answer is no one. Between 1 and 5 seconds after the news hits it is a purely a 1 way market. That big long pin bar that occurs is a grand total of 2 prices; the one before the news hit and the one after. The 10, 20, or 30 pips between them is called a gap.
Is it any wonder that slippage is in evidence at this time?
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Conclusions:
Each tier of the Forex market has its own inherent advantages and disadvantages. Depending on your priorities you have to make a choice between what restrictions you can live with and those you cant. Unfortunately, you can’t always get what you want.
By focusing on slippage and spreads, which are the natural byproduct of order flow, one is not only pursuing a futile ideal, they are passing up an enormous opportunity to capitalize on true inefficiencies. News events are one of the few times where a large number of players are positioned inappropriately and it is fairly easy to profit from their foolishness. If a trader truly wants to make the leap to the next level of profitability they should be spending their time figuring out how identify these positions and trading with the goal of capturing the price movement they inevitably will cause.
Nobody is going to make the argument that a broker is a trader’s best friend, but they still provide a valuable service and should be compensated for their efforts. By accepting a broker for what it is and learning how to work within the limitations of the relationship, traders have access to a world of opportunity that they otherwise could never dream of capturing. Let us all remember that simple truth.

Feel free to talk about technical analysis here (not argue against it), but before you ask any question make sure you see the following information:
Technical analysis (TA) uses historical price movements, real time data, indicators based on math and/or statistics, and charts; all of which help measure the trajectory of a security. TA can also be used to interpret the actions of other market participants and predict their actions:
Measure: Is the security's price trending, has it dipped or is it a falling knife? Interpret: Does the current price mean investors think it's undervalued or overvalued; when did they buy/sell more and why? Predict: If price reaches a certain point, will there be a rally or get rejected?
The main benefit to TA is that everything shows up in the price (commonly known as priced in): All news, investor sentiment, and changes to fundamentals are reflected in a security's price.
TA is best used for short term trading, but can also be used for long term.
Intro to technical analysis by Stockcharts chartschool and their article on candlesticks
Terminology

• Indicator - a calculation based on price and/or volume, it can be displayed as a line/number on a chart or watch list; some indicators use statistics like standard deviation such as the Bollinger Bands indicator
• trade signals - when an indicator tells you that a buy or sell (short) entry is available (also called buy signal or sell signal)
• lagging indicator - based on past prices, for example the Moving Average indicator
• leading indicator - typically oscillators which fluctuate from 0 to 100 and back, and these typically measure the rate of change; they also generate overbought, oversold, and divergence, all of which help create trade signals
• oversold - a trade signal for when to buy, for example RSI below 30, however it's best to wait when the RSI line points upwards past 30 before buying
• overbought - the opposite of oversold; for RSI it's above 70
• divergence - when an indicator and stock price move inversely which foreshadows a coming change in the price
• whipsaw - when trade signals & price suddenly reverse either stopping you out or making you exit your trade
• resistance - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go higher. The main reason is that no one is willing to buy above that price or there's more sellers than buyers.
• support - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go lower. The main reason is no one is willing to sell below that price or there's more buyers than sellers.
• breakout/breakdown - when price breaks support or resistance
• alerts - a notification for when price hits your desired target, some software allows you to place the alert direction on a chart
• level ii - This shows all bid & ask orders from market makers, usually your broker charges a fee for this, and is only really usual for day trading
• trend line - can be a moving average, previous day's high, an indicator, you can even draw a line connecting all the highs or lows for example
• Market participants - also includes market makers, institutions, and retail & institutional investors. Different markets have different participants such as futures (hedgers & speculators) and forex (banks & speculators).

Useful indicators

• Moving average (MA) - lagging indicator that averages previous prices, for example MA 20 will average the previous 20 days; MAs do not predict price movements, they smooth out price changes. Common averages are 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200. Typically you use 2 to 3 per chart.
• RSI - relative strength index, takes the average gain of the stock price divided by the average loss over a number of periods, default 14; starts to reverse when it points down from 70 (sell signal) and reverses agian when it points up from 30 (buy signal)
• VWAP - intraday indicator, takes the average price and weighs it by volume, basically you want to be short below VWAP and go long above VWAP; near the VWAP line (or price) there can be lots of whipsaw
• MACD - combines momentum & trend indicators; gives off many trade signals including ovebought/sold and divergence, see link here note that the histogram in the center shows how wide the MACD & Signal line are from each other
• ATR - Average true range gives a number that tells you how wide price movements are, great for helping set stops. ATR on a daily chart of 5 means average price movement of 5 points, typically you would have a stop loss 2x ATR so in this case it would be 10 point wide stop. If a stop loss of 2x ATR is too high for you, then trade a different stock.
• Bollinger Bands (BB) - takes the standard deviation of price times 2 (default); in statistics, 95% of all values are within 2 standard deviations. BB is typically used for resistance and support, more info here.
• Ichimoku clouds - Combines even more indicators, good for beginners, see here

Methods or Systems

• Trend Following - Basically you're buying shares as a stock is going up or shorting as it's going down. Investopedia's intro to trend trading.
• Fading - shorting as price falls from resistance, or buying as price rises from support
• Channels - very much like fading except you find 2 parallel trend lines that price has been bouncing between, see here
• Patterns - Double tops, head & shoulders, and cup & handle are the most watched for, see here for more, don't get too caught up in patterns.
• Breakouts/Breakdowns - while patterns can be attractive, breakouts/breakdowns happen all the time; here's one way to take advantage of them
• Pivots - these used to be for pit traders in the exchange, just 5 numbers they needed to navigate the day's price movements, but are still used online and stock prices tend to breakout or reverse off these pivot lines

Strategies: See the TA wiki here as this will be a work in progress, feel free to reply with your own strategy.
See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

Some time back, Commitment of Traders (COT) in Forex futures was suggested here as a helpful indicator of market sentiment, and its usefulness in spot FX trading.
There is a babypips chapter on it. It is also mentioned in John Murphy's Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets. The two seem to diverge in *how to use information on Open Interest.
According to Babypips, we should focus on Non-commerical (speculators): when they take the net short positions in one direction, the market is ready to move in the other direction, usually.
From John Murphy's book:

The guiding principle in analyzing the Commitments Report is the belief that the large commercial hedgers [blue curve in babypips chart] are usually right, while the traders are usually wrong. That being the case, the idea is to place yourself in the same positions as the hedgers and in the opposite positions of the two categories of traders.

Now, both are basically saying the same thing, but they use different categories contributing to open interest. It might happen, that they both are not always strongly correlated? That is, it is not necessary that when Commercial trader (hedgers) take one extreme of positions, the Non-commercial traders (speculators) take the other extreme.
For those who follow COT reports, which trader do you focus on? Or are they always anti-correlated, so it doesn't matter which you follow?

Feel free to talk about technical analysis here (not argue against it), but before you ask any question make sure you see the following information:
Technical analysis (TA) uses historical price movements, real time data, indicators based on math and/or statistics, and charts; all of which help measure the trajectory of a security. TA can also be used to interpret the actions of other market participants and predict their actions:
Measure: Is the security's price trending, has it dipped or is it a falling knife? Interpret: Does the current price mean investors think it's undervalued or overvalued; when did they buy/sell more and why? Predict: If price reaches a certain point, will there be a rally or get rejected?
The main benefit to TA is that everything shows up in the price (commonly known as priced in): All news, investor sentiment, and changes to fundamentals are reflected in a security's price.
TA is best used for short term trading, but can also be used for long term.
Intro to technical analysis by Stockcharts chartschool and their article on candlesticks
Terminology

• Indicator - a calculation based on price and/or volume, it can be displayed as a line/number on a chart or watch list; some indicators use statistics like standard deviation such as the Bollinger Bands indicator
• trade signals - when an indicator tells you that a buy or sell (short) entry is available (also called buy signal or sell signal)
• lagging indicator - based on past prices, for example the Moving Average indicator
• leading indicator - typically oscillators which fluctuate from 0 to 100 and back, and these typically measure the rate of change; they also generate overbought, oversold, and divergence, all of which help create trade signals
• oversold - a trade signal for when to buy, for example RSI below 30, however it's best to wait when the RSI line points upwards past 30 before buying
• overbought - the opposite of oversold; for RSI it's above 70
• divergence - when an indicator and stock price move inversely which foreshadows a coming change in the price
• whipsaw - when trade signals & price suddenly reverse either stopping you out or making you exit your trade
• resistance - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go higher. The main reason is that no one is willing to buy above that price or there's more sellers than buyers.
• support - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go lower. The main reason is no one is willing to sell below that price or there's more buyers than sellers.
• breakout/breakdown - when price breaks support or resistance
• alerts - a notification for when price hits your desired target, some software allows you to place the alert direction on a chart
• level ii - This shows all bid & ask orders from market makers, usually your broker charges a fee for this, and is only really usual for day trading
• trend line - can be a moving average, previous day's high, an indicator, you can even draw a line connecting all the highs or lows for example
• Market participants - also includes market makers, institutions, and retail & institutional investors. Different markets have different participants such as futures (hedgers & speculators) and forex (banks & speculators).

Useful indicators

• Moving average (MA) - lagging indicator that averages previous prices, for example MA 20 will average the previous 20 days; MAs do not predict price movements, they smooth out price changes. Common averages are 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200. Typically you use 2 to 3 per chart.
• RSI - relative strength index, takes the average gain of the stock price divided by the average loss over a number of periods, default 14; starts to reverse when it points down from 70 (sell signal) and reverses agian when it points up from 30 (buy signal)
• VWAP - intraday indicator, takes the average price and weighs it by volume, basically you want to be short below VWAP and go long above VWAP; near the VWAP line (or price) there can be lots of whipsaw
• MACD - combines momentum & trend indicators; gives off many trade signals including ovebought/sold and divergence, see link here note that the histogram in the center shows how wide the MACD & Signal line are from each other
• ATR - Average true range gives a number that tells you how wide price movements are, great for helping set stops. ATR on a daily chart of 5 means average price movement of 5 points, typically you would have a stop loss 2x ATR so in this case it would be 10 point wide stop. If a stop loss of 2x ATR is too high for you, then trade a different stock.
• Bollinger Bands (BB) - takes the standard deviation of price times 2 (default); in statistics, 95% of all values are within 2 standard deviations. BB is typically used for resistance and support, more info here.
• Ichimoku clouds - Combines even more indicators, good for beginners, see here

Methods or Systems

• Trend Following - Basically you're buying shares as a stock is going up or shorting as it's going down. Investopedia's intro to trend trading.
• Fading - shorting as price falls from resistance, or buying as price rises from support
• Channels - very much like fading except you find 2 parallel trend lines that price has been bouncing between, see here
• Patterns - Double tops, head & shoulders, and cup & handle are the most watched for, see here for more, don't get too caught up in patterns.
• Breakouts/Breakdowns - while patterns can be attractive, breakouts/breakdowns happen all the time; here's one way to take advantage of them
• Pivots - these used to be for pit traders in the exchange, just 5 numbers they needed to navigate the day's price movements, but are still used online and stock prices tend to breakout or reverse off these pivot lines

Strategies: See the TA wiki here as this will be a work in progress, feel free to reply with your own strategy.
See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

Feel free to talk about technical analysis here (not argue against it), but before you ask any question make sure you see the following information:
Technical analysis (TA) uses historical price movements, real time data, indicators based on math and/or statistics, and charts; all of which help measure the trajectory of a security. TA can also be used to interpret the actions of other market participants and predict their actions:
Measure: Is the security's price trending, has it dipped or is it a falling knife? Interpret: Does the current price mean investors think it's undervalued or overvalued; when did they buy/sell more and why? Predict: If price reaches a certain point, will there be a rally or get rejected?
The main benefit to TA is that everything shows up in the price (commonly known as priced in): All news, investor sentiment, and changes to fundamentals are reflected in a security's price.
TA is best used for short term trading, but can also be used for long term.
Intro to technical analysis by Stockcharts chartschool and their article on candlesticks
Terminology

• Indicator - a calculation based on price and/or volume, it can be displayed as a line/number on a chart or watch list; some indicators use statistics like standard deviation such as the Bollinger Bands indicator
• trade signals - when an indicator tells you that a buy or sell (short) entry is available (also called buy signal or sell signal)
• lagging indicator - based on past prices, for example the Moving Average indicator
• leading indicator - typically oscillators which fluctuate from 0 to 100 and back, and these typically measure the rate of change; they also generate overbought, oversold, and divergence, all of which help create trade signals
• oversold - a trade signal for when to buy, for example RSI below 30, however it's best to wait when the RSI line points upwards past 30 before buying
• overbought - the opposite of oversold; for RSI it's above 70
• divergence - when an indicator and stock price move inversely which foreshadows a coming change in the price
• whipsaw - when trade signals & price suddenly reverse either stopping you out or making you exit your trade
• resistance - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go higher. The main reason is that no one is willing to buy above that price or there's more sellers than buyers.
• support - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go lower. The main reason is no one is willing to sell below that price or there's more buyers than sellers.
• breakout/breakdown - when price breaks support or resistance
• alerts - a notification for when price hits your desired target, some software allows you to place the alert direction on a chart
• level ii - This shows all bid & ask orders from market makers, usually your broker charges a fee for this, and is only really usual for day trading
• trend line - can be a moving average, previous day's high, an indicator, you can even draw a line connecting all the highs or lows for example
• Market participants - also includes market makers, institutions, and retail & institutional investors. Different markets have different participants such as futures (hedgers & speculators) and forex (banks & speculators).

Useful indicators

• Moving average (MA) - lagging indicator that averages previous prices, for example MA 20 will average the previous 20 days; MAs do not predict price movements, they smooth out price changes. Common averages are 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200. Typically you use 2 to 3 per chart.
• RSI - relative strength index, takes the average gain of the stock price divided by the average loss over a number of periods, default 14; starts to reverse when it points down from 70 (sell signal) and reverses agian when it points up from 30 (buy signal)
• VWAP - intraday indicator, takes the average price and weighs it by volume, basically you want to be short below VWAP and go long above VWAP; near the VWAP line (or price) there can be lots of whipsaw
• MACD - combines momentum & trend indicators; gives off many trade signals including ovebought/sold and divergence, see link here note that the histogram in the center shows how wide the MACD & Signal line are from each other
• ATR - Average true range gives a number that tells you how wide price movements are, great for helping set stops. ATR on a daily chart of 5 means average price movement of 5 points, typically you would have a stop loss 2x ATR so in this case it would be 10 point wide stop. If a stop loss of 2x ATR is too high for you, then trade a different stock.
• Bollinger Bands (BB) - takes the standard deviation of price times 2 (default); in statistics, 95% of all values are within 2 standard deviations. BB is typically used for resistance and support, more info here.
• Ichimoku clouds - Combines even more indicators, good for beginners, see here

Methods or Systems

• Trend Following - Basically you're buying shares as a stock is going up or shorting as it's going down. Investopedia's intro to trend trading.
• Fading - shorting as price falls from resistance, or buying as price rises from support
• Channels - very much like fading except you find 2 parallel trend lines that price has been bouncing between, see here
• Patterns - Double tops, head & shoulders, and cup & handle are the most watched for, see here for more, don't get too caught up in patterns.
• Breakouts/Breakdowns - while patterns can be attractive, breakouts/breakdowns happen all the time; here's one way to take advantage of them
• Pivots - these used to be for pit traders in the exchange, just 5 numbers they needed to navigate the day's price movements, but are still used online and stock prices tend to breakout or reverse off these pivot lines

Strategies: See the TA wiki here as this will be a work in progress, feel free to reply with your own strategy.
See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

Feel free to talk about technical analysis here (not argue against it), but before you ask any question make sure you see the following information:
Technical analysis (TA) uses historical price movements, real time data, indicators based on math and/or statistics, and charts; all of which help measure the trajectory of a security. TA can also be used to interpret the actions of other market participants and predict their actions:
Measure: Is the security's price trending, has it dipped or is it a falling knife? Interpret: Does the current price mean investors think it's undervalued or overvalued; when did they buy/sell more and why? Predict: If price reaches a certain point, will there be a rally or get rejected?
The main benefit to TA is that everything shows up in the price (commonly known as priced in): All news, investor sentiment, and changes to fundamentals are reflected in a security's price.
TA is best used for short term trading, but can also be used for long term.
Intro to technical analysis by Stockcharts chartschool and their article on candlesticks
Terminology

• Indicator - a calculation based on price and/or volume, it can be displayed as a line/number on a chart or watch list; some indicators use statistics like standard deviation such as the Bollinger Bands indicator
• trade signals - when an indicator tells you that a buy or sell (short) entry is available (also called buy signal or sell signal)
• lagging indicator - based on past prices, for example the Moving Average indicator
• leading indicator - typically oscillators which fluctuate from 0 to 100 and back, and these typically measure the rate of change; they also generate overbought, oversold, and divergence, all of which help create trade signals
• oversold - a trade signal for when to buy, for example RSI below 30, however it's best to wait when the RSI line points upwards past 30 before buying
• overbought - the opposite of oversold; for RSI it's above 70
• divergence - when an indicator and stock price move inversely which foreshadows a coming change in the price
• whipsaw - when trade signals & price suddenly reverse either stopping you out or making you exit your trade
• resistance - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go higher. The main reason is that no one is willing to buy above that price or there's more sellers than buyers.
• support - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go lower. The main reason is no one is willing to sell below that price or there's more buyers than sellers.
• breakout/breakdown - when price breaks support or resistance
• alerts - a notification for when price hits your desired target, some software allows you to place the alert direction on a chart
• level ii - This shows all bid & ask orders from market makers, usually your broker charges a fee for this, and is only really usual for day trading
• trend line - can be a moving average, previous day's high, an indicator, you can even draw a line connecting all the highs or lows for example
• Market participants - also includes market makers, institutions, and retail & institutional investors. Different markets have different participants such as futures (hedgers & speculators) and forex (banks & speculators).

Useful indicators

• Moving average (MA) - lagging indicator that averages previous prices, for example MA 20 will average the previous 20 days; MAs do not predict price movements, they smooth out price changes. Common averages are 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200. Typically you use 2 to 3 per chart.
• RSI - relative strength index, takes the average gain of the stock price divided by the average loss over a number of periods, default 14; starts to reverse when it points down from 70 (sell signal) and reverses agian when it points up from 30 (buy signal)
• VWAP - intraday indicator, takes the average price and weighs it by volume, basically you want to be short below VWAP and go long above VWAP; near the VWAP line (or price) there can be lots of whipsaw
• MACD - combines momentum & trend indicators; gives off many trade signals including ovebought/sold and divergence, see link here note that the histogram in the center shows how wide the MACD & Signal line are from each other
• ATR - Average true range gives a number that tells you how wide price movements are, great for helping set stops. ATR on a daily chart of 5 means average price movement of 5 points, typically you would have a stop loss 2x ATR so in this case it would be 10 point wide stop. If a stop loss of 2x ATR is too high for you, then trade a different stock.
• Bollinger Bands (BB) - takes the standard deviation of price times 2 (default); in statistics, 95% of all values are within 2 standard deviations. BB is typically used for resistance and support, more info here.
• Ichimoku clouds - Combines even more indicators, good for beginners, see here

Methods or Systems

• Trend Following - Basically you're buying shares as a stock is going up or shorting as it's going down. Investopedia's intro to trend trading.
• Fading - shorting as price falls from resistance, or buying as price rises from support
• Channels - very much like fading except you find 2 parallel trend lines that price has been bouncing between, see here
• Patterns - Double tops, head & shoulders, and cup & handle are the most watched for, see here for more, don't get too caught up in patterns.
• Breakouts/Breakdowns - while patterns can be attractive, breakouts/breakdowns happen all the time; here's one way to take advantage of them
• Pivots - these used to be for pit traders in the exchange, just 5 numbers they needed to navigate the day's price movements, but are still used online and stock prices tend to breakout or reverse off these pivot lines

Strategies: See the TA wiki here as this will be a work in progress, feel free to reply with your own strategy.
See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.

Feel free to talk about technical analysis here (not argue against it), but before you ask any question make sure you see the following information:
Technical analysis (TA) uses historical price movements, real time data, indicators based on math and/or statistics, and charts; all of which help measure the trajectory of a security. TA can also be used to interpret the actions of other market participants and predict their actions:
Measure: Is the security's price trending, has it dipped or is it a falling knife? Interpret: Does the current price mean investors think it's undervalued or overvalued; when did they buy/sell more and why? Predict: If price reaches a certain point, will there be a rally or get rejected?
The main benefit to TA is that everything shows up in the price (commonly known as priced in): All news, investor sentiment, and changes to fundamentals are reflected in a security's price.
TA is best used for short term trading, but can also be used for long term.
Intro to technical analysis by Stockcharts chartschool and their article on candlesticks
Terminology

• Indicator - a calculation based on price and/or volume, it can be displayed as a line/number on a chart or watch list; some indicators use statistics like standard deviation such as the Bollinger Bands indicator
• trade signals - when an indicator tells you that a buy or sell (short) entry is available (also called buy signal or sell signal)
• lagging indicator - based on past prices, for example the Moving Average indicator
• leading indicator - typically oscillators which fluctuate from 0 to 100 and back, and these typically measure the rate of change; they also generate overbought, oversold, and divergence, all of which help create trade signals
• oversold - a trade signal for when to buy, for example RSI below 30, however it's best to wait when the RSI line points upwards past 30 before buying
• overbought - the opposite of oversold; for RSI it's above 70
• divergence - when an indicator and stock price move inversely which foreshadows a coming change in the price
• whipsaw - when trade signals & price suddenly reverse either stopping you out or making you exit your trade
• resistance - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go higher. The main reason is that no one is willing to buy above that price or there's more sellers than buyers.
• support - an area on a chart where price can't seem to go lower. The main reason is no one is willing to sell below that price or there's more buyers than sellers.
• breakout/breakdown - when price breaks support or resistance
• alerts - a notification for when price hits your desired target, some software allows you to place the alert direction on a chart
• level ii - This shows all bid & ask orders from market makers, usually your broker charges a fee for this, and is only really usual for day trading
• trend line - can be a moving average, previous day's high, an indicator, you can even draw a line connecting all the highs or lows for example
• Market participants - also includes market makers, institutions, and retail & institutional investors. Different markets have different participants such as futures (hedgers & speculators) and forex (banks & speculators).

Useful indicators

• Moving average (MA) - lagging indicator that averages previous prices, for example MA 20 will average the previous 20 days; MAs do not predict price movements, they smooth out price changes. Common averages are 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200. Typically you use 2 to 3 per chart.
• RSI - relative strength index, takes the average gain of the stock price divided by the average loss over a number of periods, default 14; starts to reverse when it points down from 70 (sell signal) and reverses agian when it points up from 30 (buy signal)
• VWAP - intraday indicator, takes the average price and weighs it by volume, basically you want to be short below VWAP and go long above VWAP; near the VWAP line (or price) there can be lots of whipsaw
• MACD - combines momentum & trend indicators; gives off many trade signals including ovebought/sold and divergence, see link here note that the histogram in the center shows how wide the MACD & Signal line are from each other
• ATR - Average true range gives a number that tells you how wide price movements are, great for helping set stops. ATR on a daily chart of 5 means average price movement of 5 points, typically you would have a stop loss 2x ATR so in this case it would be 10 point wide stop. If a stop loss of 2x ATR is too high for you, then trade a different stock.
• Bollinger Bands (BB) - takes the standard deviation of price times 2 (default); in statistics, 95% of all values are within 2 standard deviations. BB is typically used for resistance and support, more info here.
• Ichimoku clouds - Combines even more indicators, good for beginners, see here

Methods or Systems

• Trend Following - Basically you're buying shares as a stock is going up or shorting as it's going down. Investopedia's intro to trend trading.
• Fading - shorting as price falls from resistance, or buying as price rises from support
• Channels - very much like fading except you find 2 parallel trend lines that price has been bouncing between, see here
• Patterns - Double tops, head & shoulders, and cup & handle are the most watched for, see here for more, don't get too caught up in patterns.
• Breakouts/Breakdowns - while patterns can be attractive, breakouts/breakdowns happen all the time; here's one way to take advantage of them
• Pivots - these used to be for pit traders in the exchange, just 5 numbers they needed to navigate the day's price movements, but are still used online and stock prices tend to breakout or reverse off these pivot lines

Strategies: See the TA wiki here as this will be a work in progress, feel free to reply with your own strategy.
See our past daily discussions here. Also links for: Technicals Tuesday, Options Trading Thursday, and Fundamentals Friday.