Forex 101 Pt 2

I've been checking out some of the forex forums online and came across an awesome site for forex newbies, like myself. The site is www.babypips.com and it is full of all types of useful information. One of the things I found very interesting is their subject on what to look for in an online Forex Broker/Dealer. The following comes straight off of their site, so all of the credit is theirs.

What to look for in an online Forex broker/dealer:

1) Low Spreads. In Forex trading the "spread" is the difference between the buy and sell price of any given currency pair. Lower spreads save you money.
2) Low minimum account openings. For those that [are] new to Forex trading and for those that don't have millions of dollars in risk capital to trade, being able to open a micro trading account with only $250 (We recommend at least $1000) is a great feature for new traders.
3) Instant automatic execution of your orders. This is very important when choosing a Forex broker. Don't settle with a firm that re-quotes you when you click on a price or a firm that allows for price "slippage". This is very important when trading for small profits. [...].
4) Free charting and technical analysis. Choose a broker that gives you access to the best charting and technical analysis available to active traders. Look for a broker that provides free professional charting services and allows traders to trade directly on the charts.
5) Leverage. Leverage can either make you super rich or super broke. Most likely, it will be the later. As an inexperienced trader, you don't want too much leverage. A good rule of thumb is to not use more than 100:1 leverage for Standard (100k) accounts and 200:1 for Mini (10k) accounts.

-Babypips.com-

I have been having a hard time figuring out which brokerage sites were better, which were legit and pretty much everything else about forex accounts. If you are as confused as I am please check out their site. They have alot of information an make it easy to understand.

Tags: Forex

Doing the Nasty, Figuring Out Our Credit Card Debt

So since this was one of my New Year's Resolutions, I figured it was time to recalculate our credit card debt. Pretty depressing. We owe around $25,000 in credit card bills and around $6,000 in a home remodeling loan. Someone shoot me if we ever pick up a credit card again. Actually most of the stuff was for our wedding, and stuff for our first house, so I shouldn't feel too bad, but if I had it to do over again I sure would do it a different way. Well enough wining it's time to come up with a plan to knock out our debt. I've heard of a lot of different ideas, but I think we are going to go with paying more on our highest interest credit card and working our way down. The only thing that worries me is that having an addition to our family may make this hard, so I am going to have to look at some alternate ways of picking up some income. I already have an simple IRA through work that matches my deposits, and have a Roth IRA to work on our retirement, so I am thinking about starting a Forex account to hopefully get some extra money going to pay off some bills. I really don't want to get a part time job or anything like that, so I better get a move on learning about the Forex Market. As of right now I am reading "Forex Made Easy: 6 Ways to Trade the Dollar" by James Dicks, but I was left a comment by Jon that says I should also check out a book called Forex Evolution so I will try to search for this book also. Thanks for the info Jon. Any other books or suggestions on forex would be appreciated.

Tags: Debt Reduction, forex, Credit

The Financial Edge Part 2

So I got a ton of information at this seminar. I learned about stocks, options, foreign exchange, mortgages, and more Forex. Which is what I wanted to learn about to begin with. OK, so here is some new stuff I picked up that I did not know. In Forex the pip is the smallest unit of currency. A one cent move = 100 pips. A lot usually has 100 - 1 leverage. A standard lot is worth 1,000 dollars or $10 a pip. A mini lot is worth $100 or $1 a pip. There are also mini/mini lots, but I won't get into those. The dollar is the benchmark in the foreign exchange market and currencies are traded in pairs. Pretty basic stuff, but I didn't know about it. I've been practice trading on forex.com, but still don't have a clue to what I am doing, well maybe a little. Anyway The Financial Edge gave us a ton of info in a short period of time, but the classes were well worth it. The idea behind the short seminars is to pound you full of information, leaving you wanting to learn more and getting you to go to more seminars which cost an arm and a leg. I personally can't afford them, so I will stick to trying to learn forex on my own or from reading some books. All in all I enjoyed the seminar and can't say anything bad about it.

Tags: Seminars, forex