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A Review of Automated Forex Brokers
"Several companies offer automated forex broker services. In the following articles, you'll find brief reviews of each.
What forex brokers offer automated services?
GFT Forex is an automated forex broker, whose DealBook FX 2 software...
Pivot Point Analysis
Pivot point calculations are used by financial traders to predict support and resistance levels for currency pairs so that future price movements can be anticipated for profit opportunities...
Trend Analysis
The earlier you can recognize a trend, the higher the profits you can attain...
Forex Trading Systems
Trading systems can use technical indicators such as stochastics, Bollinger Bands, Moving Averages, and candlestick charting patterns to formulate buy and sell signals...
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A Short History of the FOREX Market
Ever since countries developed their own currencies, money exchange has been a necessary business to enable the exchange of goods or promote financial transactions between nations. This dates back thousands of years.
Many currencies were originally backed by gold, not only providing credibility and stability, but also facilitating exchange of those currencies, like dollars and sterling pounds. However, in 1971, countries abandoned the gold standard and issued currency at their own discretion. The Foreign Exchange Market (Forex) grew out of necessity in 1973, so that central banks could exchange their national currency for the currency of other countries. Currencies became valued at floating rates determined by supply and demand.
This Foreign Exchange Market is an over-the-counter (OTC) market. There is not a central exchange and clearing house where orders are matched. Instead, it is made up of about 5000 trading institutions such as international banks, central government banks (like the US Federal Reserve), and commercial companies and brokers for all types of foreign currency exchange. It has no centralized location like a stock exchange; instead, there are major trading centers located in New York, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, and Frankfurt. Trading can be executed by telephone, fax or through the Internet. Up until the 90's, this market was only used by major players such as bankers and multinational corporations, with large accounts, due to the large deposits required. In 1995 it was opened to small investors and speculators,
which made a huge change in the volume of transactions, enabling it to become the largest market of any kind in the world, far surpassing stock, bond, and commodity markets. It trades more than 1.5 trillion dollars per day. Businesses use the market to buy and sell products in other countries, but the majority of transactions that occur now are with small traders who speculate on the relative worth of the currency of countries, for profit. The Forex Market is now open to small investors who can open an account with as little as $250.
The current market share of the major trading centers are:
- London: 30%
- New York: 20%
- Tokyo: 12%,
- Zurich: 7%,
- Frankfurt: 7%
- Hong Kong: 7%
- Singapore: 7%
- Paris: 3%
- Sydney: 3%
Since these centers are located around the world, foreign exchange traders can execute transactions 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.
When you are analyzing potential option positions, it
helps to have a computer program like Option-Aid that
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