Forex Scams

One of the reasons why many people relate forex trading to scams is because there really are many scams in this industry ready to steal all the money from unsuspected forex newbies. The other day a friend of mine pointed out a site to me where it basically stole the template from the OANDA forex trading site and made it into a forex scam site called 30 Inv.  The scammers did such a poor job that there are still links pointing to some of the OANDA pages, and the contact phone number is exactly the same as OANDA.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look and compare the two sites.

I give this site a 1/10.

Forex Brokers Are Bucket Shops?

I’m not a big fan of Twitter but occasionally I would check out what’s new in the tiny forex trading world on Twitter.  With the never ending debate and accusation of forex brokers trading against their clients, I found an interesting tweet by Neil321 that referenced a FXCM job posting on linkedin.  One of the main responsibilities of the Senior FX Trader position was to continuously track firm’s net positions against its client base:

Are you bull on gold?

Seems like the consensus out there is that gold will be going up in the near future, with China buying more gold and the US printing more paper dollar to absorb the debts.

OANDA Expands Into Asia

A friend from Singapore has recently told me about Oanda’s expansion into the Asia Pacific region with the newly launched forex site/page.

As promotion, they are giving away 30 seats to the Euromoney SEA FX Forum on February 27th where OANDA’s founder and chairman Richard Olsen is amongst many speakers in the event.

Will Cash Pulled From Stock Market Go To Forex Market?

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Personal projects, family matters, friends, stuff…

I’ve had a few interesting discussions with my friends who many of them work in the financial industry.  Many of them have commented that there has been tons of money being pulled out from the portfolios and placed into low income but more stable GIC and long term savings.  Not to mention alot of them fear for their own job security as well.

We also talked about the reason why the money is not flowing into the money market due to the complexity and risks involved in the forex trading market.  The recent spreads have been swinging wildly during the major news events such as Bushes’ proposed and eventual failed $700 billion plan to save the banks.  One of my friends also noted that he has gotten a few inquiries about currency hedging.

Volatile Interest Rates Week Ahead

The upcoming week will see no less than five central banks disclosing interest rates decision. Along with other major economic statistics released, this week is huge to the forex market. The European Central Bank (ECB) is believed to keep the interest rate unchanged at 4.25 percent this Thursday. Same expectation for the Bank of England (BoE) to leave interest rates on hold for the fifth month running this Thursday as well. In Australia, it is expected that The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will cut the interest rate for the first time in six years since 2002.

OANDA’s One click trading

Yesterday OANDA has gone live with some newly added features on its forex trading platform, which some traders experienced problems with the platform and thought was a hasty move on OANDA’s part. I agree, that OANDA should have better communication with the clients regarding updates.

Nevertheless, the new features were a great addition to the platform (when the bugs are fixed). The new features include:

• One-click trading feature added to Quote Panel. This feature can be turned on by clicking on the first button to the right of the Quote Panel tab.
• The buy/sell window can be compacted to hide some fields and trade information. Bounds and limits can also be specified in pips so they do not need to be adjusted when the quote price changes.
• New look and feel for the Quote Panel.
• Trendlines have be been regrouped into a single button.
• Colour schemes can be customized in Tools->Colour Scheme->Edit Custom Theme
• Mousewheel is supported in the Quote Panel and Tables.
• Chart Printing available from graph menu.

Source: OANDA Forex Forums
Also if you want to go back to the original FXTrade platform without the new features, use this: original fxtrade platform.

Forex Brokers Ad Spent

So I’ve hearing that the online advertising spent is shrinking as a result of the latest minor recession. yet, I’ve been seeing more and more forex ads everywhere, maybe it’s because of my browsing history got cached by the major ad networks, but the increasing number of forex ads I see is no mistake.

Driven by curiosity, I did some research on how the big names in the forex industry are doing on the marketing front, and to my surprise, somewhat, the big players, aside from OANDA as always (more on them later), are spending quite alot on search ads and banner ads.

Forex trading on news is not for newbies

Another newbie mistake that often came back to bite the trader in the ass is trading (speculating) on news. Yes, every person on this planet could pretty much guess that the news of a major financial decision or release of some economic data could fluctuate the market quite a lot, but does every single one of those smart people including your girl friend’s grandma and your 80 year old aunt knows the news ahead of time? Not really…

Quite often enough, the market has already digest the expectation of the news ahead of time, and when things don’t turn out the way it’s supposed to, many traders would get the awful margin call if they bet on the opposite swing.

So unless you are a seasoned forex trader with a few years under your belt, don’t even try to bet on news; yes, I said bet, it’s pure speculation and gambling.

And if you really want to try your luck, at least try to support your decision with some free tools and resources like FX News Effects that provides historical market movement and foreign exchange rate fluctuation after major economic and financial news releases in the past.

Participate in forex forums and message boards

Yes, like the title suggests, you should learn and communicate with other forex traders on the popular forums. Not that you would take all their advices at face value, but it’s always good to exchange information with other traders. Some higher traffic forums that I like include forexfactory, babypips, and the oanda forex forums.