Archives: 2009 May

Most people have heard of the futures market, and it does get mentioned on news shows such as CNBC or MSNBC. However, a lot of people dont understand what the futures market is. Learning how to utilize it properly will help with entry timing when day trading, swing trading, and even investing (after all, who wants to be down immediately after entering a position?)

It’s actually quite simple. The futures market is simply a bet on where an index will be as of a specified date in the future (hence futures market). That is not any different than having the opinion "I think GE will be 3 points higher in 3 months". Now imagine thousands or people, or even hundreds of thousands all betting on where GE will be in 3 months. Not tomorrow, the time is 3 months from now.

This aggregate valuation call would be considered a futures market. It may be higher or lower than where GE is now, but you also have to consider the people have 3 months to be right - that is a lot of time. This time has a value - the more time you have to be right, the easier the call is. So the market puts this time value into the price of the futures, and each day that goes by a bit of it decays (goes away) as it gets closer to the 3 month time. This 3 month time in this example is a fixed time, it does not scroll forward. So if the bet is the 31st of July, 2 weeks from now the GE bet would still be based on the 31st of July, but the time value associated with that bet would be a bit lower because there is less time left to be right (or wrong).

Starting a new career in Forex trading is a very bold move for anyone to make, and as such, should take the appropriate steps in gathering all pertinent data about the currency market through a Forex tutorial. Forex tutorials are excellent sources of the essential and basic trading skills and techniques that a beginner needs to know in order to help them properly operate in the currency market. Forex tutorials are extremely important and useful especially for any budding new trader who seriously wants to succeed in Forex trading.

Forex tutorials are now easily open and available for anyone to find and access ever since online trading was first introduced to the general public. With most of the trading now being done through the Internet, Forex tutorials are now also being provided by expert traders and organizations by way of online and on-location courses. With such programs, any one interested to learn about Forex trading can now do so according to their preferences.

Majority of those who take these tutorials prefer the online courses over the classroom ones. With online courses being flexible, students are able to start learning in their spare time and from wherever they want to have it while keeping their day jobs, or while already doing active trading. With Forex online tutorials, the students are not tied done to one setting and in a specific period of time. One disadvantage, though, is the lack of a proper student and teacher interaction, and vice versa, in which subjects of discussions, questions and answers done in a real-time environment.

eToro, based out of Limassol Cyprus, is a relatively new online forex broker with an interesting twist that helps new traders come up to speed fast. Beginner forex traders will be entertained as they learn via an ingenious graphical user interface. Many have difficulty at first understanding how forex works and this platform does a good job of explaining the process via a video game like interface.

There are four trading areas in the eToro lobby. Forex Marathon uses characters representing currencies that compete in a forex race. For instance, the US Dollar is a farmer, the Japanese Yen a sumo wrestler and the Euro a European businessman. The idea is you choose a currency to buy, pick the currencies to compete against, select an amount and click to open the trade. In a few clicks the marathon comes to life on your computer screen and shows how your currency/runner is doing against the rest of the field.

The Dollar Trend is next in the lobby and here you basically choose whether the US dollar will rise or fall against other currencies or your choosing. Graphically its the same as Forex Marathon where the currencies race against each other this time in the form of coins.

The Globe Trader is the next area in the lobby. After making a selection youll see a wire signal that represents your trade as well as competing countries on the trade arena map. An info box above the wire will show how your trade is doing from a profit standpoint as well as provide a detailed breakdown in the map.