Forex Mastery Program and the new M3 Forex Predictor Software will be a game changer for forex trading. M3 Forex Navigator Software is the result of Project X- a secret project that ran for more than six years. Yeah this means that M3 Forex Navigator Software took six years to develop. This is a ground breaking software that will change the game for forex trading.

Project X was started by Forex Joe, a mysterious person. Forex Joe is infact a professional Texan sports bettor for 30 years who had made many millions in the volatile world of sports betting. He developed his own mathematical sports betting system. Around 2001, he started taking interest in the forex market. He decided to apply the same sports betting mathematical formulas to the forex market. Lo and behold, something real surprising happened. His sports betting formulas worked here too in the forex market.

Now what were those secret mathematical formulas that worked liked charm both in the sport betting as well as forex trading? Over the years, Forex Joe had developed certain numbers that he called the Bias and Key Numbers or Levels. These two numbers are incredible and work very well both in sports betting as well as forex trading. Forex Joe whose actual name is Joe Atkins now works as the Chief Strategist at the OU Forex Trader Service.

Two more ground breaking developments were the development of the M3 Forex Navigator Software and the and Market Scanner. M3 Forex Navigator Software can tell turning points in the market with laser like accuracy. If you have been trading forex or stocks or whatever, you know how important it is to predict the turning points in the market. Market Scanner can scan almost all the major currency pairs and tell which one would be the most profitable to trade at the moment.

If you are really interested in becoming a master forex trader than this is your chance. Forex Mastery 2, the advanced version of the original system is being opened for enrollment from 10th May to 20th May 2010. After that it will be closed for the rest of the year. This is your chance to learn from one of the real masters of forex trading. Watch the Project X videos just now to see how powerful this system is.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Learn this powerful Fibonacci Retracement FREE that pulls 500+ pips per trade. Discover Forex Mastery 2.0 and watch these M3 Navigator Forex Software that show it predicting the DOW crumble days before it actually happened!

categories: forex, forex trading, forex trading system,forex mastery, forex mastery 2.0, forex software, forex trading software, m3 forex navigator software, trading system, trading software,forex joe

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Most online marketers have heard of forex trading or online forex trading as it is sometimes called and most are interested in how a currency trading program functions and exactly where they can look to learn forex trading.

In order to be a successful currency trader you need to understand what fx trading is and how to successfully trade forex. In order to achieve sufficient information it’s critical to learn currency trading via pros. This can be achieved as a forex trading tutorial and there are literally hundreds of forex trading enterprises selling online courses and manuals.

A web-based forex course will show you how the foreign exchange market functions and will also describe the kinds of forex orders that are available for you as a forex trader. A forex tutorial will likely explain about technical indicators and what they imply, the economic indicators you will have to have knowledge of along with the numerous possibilities and strategies that are available to you as a forex trader.

For anyone who is new to forex trading then it is important that you learn forex trading prior to parting with any of your precious funds. Many on-line currency trading companies offer no cost training and demonstrations that appear like that of realtime foreign currency trading. In addition there are forex trading classes available and these are also a valuable way to learn forex trading as you can refer to these courses again and again.

The key aspect in relation to forex trading is to learn forex trading so that you know how to trade and the way to trade with success. The more you understand forex trading the greater understanding you will have and the more success. Finding a forex guide or forex trading course is simple. All you need to do is really a brief search and you will have quite a lot of lessons and programs from which to choose. If you are serious about thriving as a forex trader, then it’s down to you, learn forex trading now and learn to succeed.

Don’t spend any money to learn forex before you take some time to learn about the many forex course out there.

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Have you been looking for a way to earn some part time income in the evening. This is not income from some sales job, driving your car delivering pizzas, or working at a job. To make this money, the only thing you need is access to the internet and a personal computer . Actually, this is income you can make while watching TV at night.

Most of us know about day trading, buying and selling equities in the same trading day. So what is Nite Trading? The Market is already closed.

Surf up nite trading on the internet and all that you find is a little information regarding a company called Knight Trading Group.

What then is nite trading?

Nite trading is about trading currencies, and recently, trading the Futures Market with the Futures of the Forex.

Trading currencies is a never ending cash market in which traders trade small fluctuations in foreign rates on world-wide currencies. Currency trading happens through a world-wide system of international brokers, corporations, banking institutions, and smaller players investing one currency vs another. Trading currencies has no physical exchange like financial equity markets(NYSE, NASDAQ). Trading takes place nearly 24 hours every day. It is very liquid with thousands of contracts traded daily. There are always traders eager to trade currencies.

Until recently, most individual investors who day trade foreign money primarily traded Forex. For bigger investors, such as institutions and hedge funds, this makes logical sense, given that the Forex has a daily volume of $1.9 trillion. But for smaller investors attempting to trade 5-10 contracts instead of 2-400, the Forex Market may not be advisable. There is a market tailored to the needs of individual traders…the Futures of the Forex.

From the time that they first began trading in 1972 inside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), currency futures have undergone important changes. At the time these contracts were created, 99% of the trades were generated by Market pros from the CME. The Futures Market was influenced by trained veterans screaming in the open outcry pits. But with the arrival of trading online, the Futures of the Forex was no longer limited to a handful of pit traders.

The number of Forex Futures traders is increasing daily, especially since the new rules proposed for the Forex Market in January 2010 by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Given the new rules, Forex brokers and traders going forward may only invest with a maximum 1:10 leverage. This means they have to keep at a minimum, 10% of the transaction as collateral (margin). Before, leverage was 1:100. Procedure changes such as these notably reduce trade size that investors can enter. Reducing leverage means fewer profits for larger investors and hedge funds. For US traders, brokerages will see their profit margins reduced as smaller trade size equals fewer commissions from spread. For example , currency trading with 1:100 leverage, $100,000 USD for 2 pips = $20 commission for the brokerage. Enter 1:10 leverage. That investment is $10,000 (1:10), and that’s only $2 for the brokerage.

The new Forex rules may also stop the Market’s shifting to ECN execution. Forex clearing firms can’t handle small trades and generally won’t process trades of fewer than 100,000 USD. This may result in US brokers most likely having to do their own clearing for individual investors, serving as their own Market Maker, making profits on bid/ask spreads. For individual investors, this would be a deal killer.

This is not the first time the CFTC has proposed significant changes to Forex trading. Each time they propose new rules, they add another stop to the US Forex Market, forcing more and more Forex business offshore. As a result, Forex trading is better done using offshore broker accounts that are not restricted by the CFTC rule rules. Foreign accounts work for larger investors. But for smaller investors who may need quick access to their money domestically,trading Forex is becoming more and more difficult.

Enter the Futures of the Forex. Then what is the benefit to investors trading Currency Futures instead of Spot Forex?

With trading Futures currencies, there are smaller spreads between the bid (what you can buy the contract for) and the ask (what you can sell it for), just 1 tick, or 1 price movement. When the new CFTC change goes through and Clearing firms refuse to clear smaller investor trades, domestic brokers will be serving as the Clearing firm and wind up being the Market Maker . The spread between the bid and ask in Forex positions may become significant, certainly more than 1 tick. Brokerages could be making money on the spread alone, at the expense of the smaller investors profit.

With Forex Futures, there are no interest charges or rollover fees daily. Transaction costs are round turn, not both in and out. In reality, brokerage commissions + exchange + regulatory + transaction charges are fewer than the Forex PIP spread.

Take a look at an example of trading 1 Forex USD/EUR contract instead of 1 Forex Futures contract, with a contract size of $100,000 worth of euros. For a round turn, futures commission and related fees are $5/contract, the average fee by many brokerage firms . A Forex trader with a 100,000 full-lot-size contract pays 2 PIPs for each transaction, or $20 per round turn trade.

There is another difference as well. To profit from a Forex trade, the currency price must move beyond the number of PIPs that your brokerage takes upfront . If the broker takes 2 PIPs upfront, then the price must move at least 3 PIPs so that the trade can be profitable to the investor. With Futures, the investor makes money even if the price only moves 1 tick (1 price movement). The profit may be smaller on the first tick as a result of commissions, but at least the investor makes something . With Forex, the initial price movements entirely belong to the broker. Forex traders always say… Forex has no commission. They ignore the fact that the broker takes the first PIPs in compensation.

It is a given that the Forex market has a lot more currency pairs to trade than Forex Futures. But the major currency pairs can still be traded in the Futures Market, including: 6A (Australian Dollar), 6B (British Pound), 6C (Canadian Dollar), 6E (Euro), 6J (Japanese Yen). Before deciding to trade Forex currencies, individual traders should check out trading currency Futures.

Currency trading is hot for nite trading no matter where in the world a traders are living. With the various time zones worldwide, when Australian (6A) and Japanese (6J) traders are day trading, Americans can be nite trading in the US (7:30-1:30 EST). At 3:00am EST, the Europeans begin trading (6E) Conversely, when Americans are day trading, Australians and Asians can enjoy nite trading the very same instruments.

Barbara Cohen has been a professional day trader for over 10 years. She has trained hundreds of day traders to trade the Futures Market with Shadowtraders trading system. As the CIO, Barbara moderates Shadowtraders daily online trading chatroom. Before you purchase any trading seminar, make sure you attend Shadowtraders Monday Night Webinar

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Automated Forex trading systems are applications that allow you to keep an eye on the forex market, permitting it to get and sell transactions in your place all while you do something at the same time. Many currency exchange traders, particularly those that consider themselves to be beginners, find automated Forex trading software to be exceedingly useful, and this sort of trading system lets them gain many opportunities in order to achieve the profits that they would like.

as the forex market is a high paced platform, using automated trading systems is terribly efficient. The forex market is open twenty-four / 7, and constant monitoring of the market is crucial. As the foreign exchange market is influenced by socioeconomic and political factors which can change at a moment’s notice this means that automated Forex trading is a useful asset in your arsenal of forex tools.

There are two differing types of automated Forex trading systems desktop and web-based. What are the differences between the two? Here they are in a nutshell detail :

Desktop-based systems

A desktop system requires you to use your PC, and a Net connection isn’t always required to keep it going. your information in the forex market and charts are stored on the drive of your computer. This makes it totally obligatory that traders who choose this sort of system have some variety of info backup program. This is the least well-liked sort of automated trading program.

The problem with this kind of system is that it is always under threats from pathogen attacks or security breaches. An occurrence of this sort would cause your computer to lose info, which is why having some sort of backup system is a unreserved necessity. All your charts and info might be extinguished from your personal computer. Not to mention, other strangers may gain access to your personal information and trading strategy.

If you select this type system, and you have additional cash to spend, it’d be sensible to have a separate PC to use simply for your Forex trading. If not, there are more things you can do to safeguard your PC.

You can set your backup file to update more regularly. You could have a different password for your personal info in in your Forex trading statistical data. By having your automated Forex trading software protected by a password, it’ll help in keeping others out of your account. You need to also have your antivirus and trading software updated more regularly to optimally protect you from pathogen attacks.

web-based systems

With an internet-based system, there is not any need to install any extra programs on your personal computer so as to make the system work to benefit. Your account is the only responsibility of your internet-based service supplier. Your server will also handle the storage of your info, and your supplier is also answerable for providing you with satisfactory security. Additionally, encryption is used to offer yet another shield of protection if anything should happen also, backup is usually automated.

This gives you a lot more flexibility, because a net-based system allows you to initiate trades in the currency market anywhere you need. There are several that say that you will need a high speed connection so as to get the maximum out of this system.

As it is with anything more, both kinds of systems have their swings and roundabouts. All you need to do is ensure that whichever one you choose will be the one which is most customizable for your personal desires in the foreign exchange market. Your capabilities in the forex trade and your speed in learning the best way to use your foreign exchange software are both factors you must consider when choosing the proper automated Forex trading software platform to use.

Before you spend money to learn forex take some time to learn about the many forex course out there.

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There are influences in the economy above and beyond the basics of traditional economic theory. These influences consist of the world of shadow banking.

The public would be wise to become very intimate to the games afoot. The alphabet soup of derivatives first must be made comprehensible to be controlled.

The warning signs were clear that nothing good would come from the development of Collateralized Debt Obligations, CDOs. I was fortunate to have been in banking and in a group which voiced serious concerns over the development of crazier and crazier esoteric instruments. They were to be peddled as “same as cash” but were in fact far from that. By July 07 the auctions for these began to fail as financial institutions backed away.

For the bankers the bigger fool theory was the rage by then. Systematically, the institutions such as Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia Securities dumped millions of dollars of these into the hands of unsuspecting companies, and even retirees to get them out of their holding before the wheels fell totally off the cart.

The instruments were created by companies such as Blackrock and Nuveen. By mid-February 08 the market for these seized up entirely. We are talking about a 300 billion dollar market freezing up.

When the CDOs froze, retirees among others found their economic lives were at a standstill. Complaints poured into the Office of Financial Regulation.

Of course, no on e in the industry had really done anything wrong. The result was that at least a number of small investors got back their principal.

The press ignored the story. It must be a coincidence that the wrong-doers were also major sponsors.

It took the total melt-down in September 2008 to get the press to cover the issue.There has been more than a little speculation that patronage by Wall Street of the major media outlets was the censoring influence on the media. The appearance of the Bernanke and Paulson in Congress on Sept 23, 2008, with the demand for 700 billion dollars to wall street finally got some attention.

It is not my ideal of accountability to have the taxpayer pay for the financial excesses of the financial institutions.

The market shook shortly after the Presidential Election. Rumors flew that the market was not pleased at the idea that bonuses could be impacted.

For example, Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers was know to be facing a cut. His bonuses in 2007 had been a cool 34 million.

Clearly Rand’s notion of enlightened self-interest did not trump raw greed for the banking industry. For more on Rand, see Objectivism and the 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged”.This all plays nicely into the capital C Conspiracy Theorists who are ready to gloat over the “I told ya so’s”.

These “Too big to fail” are not national institutions. They are international. The idea of a sovereign nation is a thing of the past.

Is this to be the new world? Wait and see.

James Horne has been a securities analyst for over 10 years. He is CEO of Pure Reason LLC, the home of Shadowtraders. His voice has been heard by hundreds of students learning to trade Futures with Shadowtraders online day trading strategies. Before you buy any trading software, make sure you attend Shadowtraders Monday Night Webinar, and hosted by Barbara Cohen

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Futures trading is all about trading Futures Contracts. Just what is a Futures Contract and how does it trade? A Futures Contract, also known as a “Forward” Contract, or even a cash forward sale, is a contract between a buyer interested in a specific product, and a seller intent on supplying the product on a future date for a specified price. Futures Contracts are formal agreements, obligating both the buyer and seller. Futures Trading is known as a zero sum game. Every dollar made by the buyer is a loss to the seller and vice versa. Prices that are too high or too low…either the buyer or the seller profits, but at the expense of the other. For example, if soy prices rise, the farmer benefits but the soy milk manufacturer suffers. If soy prices fall, the farmer suffers, but the soy milk manufacturer’s bottom line does better.

Futures trading happens in two locations. First, futures are traded on the floor of a Futures exchange, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), where trading occurs in the open outcry pit. Futures trading also can happen “electronically,” over the internet, where individual investors submit their buy/sell orders from their desktop platforms.

Not only can Futures be traded in 2 places, the traders themselves can be broken into 2 groups, hedgers and speculators. A farmer is a hedger, as is a manufacturer, exporter or importer. The goal of a hedger is to be in futures positions that reduce the risk that the price of the commodity they are selling/manufacturing may fall. For example, an oats farmer believes that his oats will be harvested in August. He sells an oats futures contract in June at the current price to be delivered in September. In June, the price of oats is high because of short supply. Even if the price of oats drops by September (the contract expiration date), the farmers’ price has already been secured. The farmer assumes a risk with this trade. What if there is a drought and many bushels of oats are lost before September. The price of oats would rise higher, but the farmer is still obligated to deliver oats at the May price negotiated. The farmer would lose even more money. On the other hand, September might produce a bumper oats crop and the price ends up being far lower than his May price. In this case he wins the trade.

Speculators want to be trading Futures to earn a profit, not to protect the price of their commodity. Speculators actually embody the majority of traders in almost all markets. Speculators are able to assume risk. They hope that if they buy low, they can sell high by going long. Oppositely, speculators can sell high and later buy back low, going short. As an example, say the pork belly speculator knows that there has been a virus and pork bellies will be limited in September. The speculator is happy to buy the pork bellies Futures contracts in May at the current price. He is betting that the price of pork bellies will skyrocket and he will make a fortune in September after the small roundup. Speculators give the Futures Market liquidity that is needed. Without speculators, no one would accept the other half of the hedger’s contracts. As in the example above, the farmer sells the pork bellies to the speculator in May for the current price. The speculator assumes risk, hoping that by September, the delivery date, the price of pork bellies has risen back up and he can make a profit at the farmer’s expense. What he really doesn’t want to happen is that in September, the price of pork bellies goes down, meaning that he paid far too much, and he is the loser.

When there were no organized Futures exchanges, like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) for example, Futures trading was a far more risky situation. Contracts were drawn up between one farmer and one speculator. The contracts were signed wherever the farmer happened to be selling his produce, like farmers markets. There were major problems with these individual contracts. First, either the farmer or the speculator was capable of defaulting on the contract. Who would make sure that the buyer made payment or the seller delivered the commodity? If the speculator knew he was going to lose, he would not pay for his side of the contract. If the farmer realized that the price of oats had risen significantly, he would not bring the commodity to the pre-arranged delivery location. Instead he would sell the oats in the open market. Moreover, since these contracts were created between 2 parties, the speculator was not permitted to sell his contract to another speculator. Here’s yet another problem…there was no one who was able to certify the quality of the commodity delivered. Farmers would fulfill their end of the contract with lower grade oats, and the speculator had no recourse.

Since the coming of organized exchanges, it became the responsibility of the exchange to certify delivery, quality, and payment. Exchanges now require good-faith money with a third party to ensure contract performance,thereby reducing the number of contract defaults. Exchanges were also able to standardize contracts, stipulating terms, such as commodity delivery dates and product grades.

With the coming of organized exchanges, Futures trading has now gone far beyond just buying and selling of commodity contracts like wheat, rice, corn, and soy. Today, there are futures contracts available for many asset classes, including treasuries, energies, equities, and currencies. Futures are an asset class called “derivatives.” A derivative is a security whose price is derived from one or more underlying assets. For example, the S&P 500 Futures Contract has as its underlying asset — the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) S&P 500 Index. The S&P 500 Index is one of the most actively monitored equity indexes worldwide. The index is comprised of the top 500 well recognized stocks traded on the NYSE. Here’s the problem with the S&P index, however…you cannot trade the Index. The CME created the S&P 500 Futures Contract that you can trade. And in the case of the S&P 500 Futures Contract, when the value of the S&P 500 Index appreciates, the S&P 500 Futures Contract appreciates with it and vice versa.

The CME also created futures contracts whose underlying asset is a currency index. For smaller investors, the Currency Futures Market exists for the smaller number of contracts that individual investors are able to trade. With currency trading, individual investors can buy/sell the exact same dollars/euros that are being traded in the Forex market, but trade on the CME with a centralized and organized exchange.

Shadowtraders specializes in training individual investors in Trading Futures. Most other Futures education companies are limited to training only the S&P 500 Futures Contract, and specifically the Emini, earmarked to individual traders. Shadowtraders is far more interested in introducing its clients to a variety of different Futures, including energies, currencies, treasuries, etc. We trade assets with liquidity and volatility. We know the days of the week that a particular Futures contract trades, the times of day it trades best, how many contracts are traded for that, whether or not you can it at all, etc. That is Shadowtraders specialty.

If you are tired of just trading the S&P 500 Emini, or you are new at the Futures trading game and want to find out more, attend a Shadowtraders Webinar on Monday nights.

Barbara Cohen has been a professional day trader for over 10 years and is the CIO of Shadowtraders. She has trained hundreds of students to trade the Futures Market with Shadowtraders trading seminar. Before you purchase any trading course, make sure you attend Shadowtraders Monday Night Webinar, and hosted by Barbara Cohen

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To understand the relevance of trading with pivots, first understand, the market is controlled. It could even be said that the Market is completely controlled. If it were not controlled, millions of shares and millions contracts could not change hands every day so efficiently.

If you don’t believe that the market is controlled, then examine this example of how control might work. Towards the end of May 2009, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner traveled to China and met with Chinese economic officials. The Chinese admonished Geithner, the conversation went, probably, like this…the Chinese telling Geithner that they have thoroughly invested in the U.S. stock market and in the U.S.Treasury bonds. Yet they are willing to withdraw from the US. Market if the stock market does not go up soon.

Geithner immediately identifies that Chinese withdrawal could devastate the U.S. economy, an economy barely being held together with bobby pins.

Geithner returns to US. Can he and his Treasury friends do anything to fix the problem? Geithner’s meeting with the Chinese happened at the END of May. After his return, the Dow appreciates to 8,800 from 8,200 in 2 weeks, a 600-point rise. Strange…this market that had not moved for over two months, hanging around 8,000. How could the DOW move up 600 points in two weeks when it hadn’t moved in over 2 months? July and August, the market rose almost 1,000 points. Examine an old Dow chart for the past five years. You’ll understand that May through August are generally thought to be what is known as summer doldrums. How could the DOW go up 1,300 points in just over one month?

The point of the story? How does that help you to become a 12-minute trader? Simple. The point is the market is controlled. The market’s “insiders” know where the market is going and how fast it will get there. They follow specific trading rules, one of which is pivots. Here’s a trick to help you become a 12-minute trader: Just learn the insider rules. Buy when they buy and sell when they sell. Be the market’s shadow. Follow the markets’ rules.

What are the pivots used by movers and shakers in a controlled market? Pivots are support and resistance price levels that allow the movers and shakers to control daily highs and lows during the trading day. There are a total of 17 Futures trading pivots — eight intraday (occurring during 1 trading day) and nine inter-day (occurring over more than 1 trading day). Futures Market movers and shakers use Futures Pivots and stock market movers and shakers use Stock Market pivots. To be a dependable 12-minute trader, pivots need to appear on your technical analysis charts. Without pivots it is difficult to trade because you won’t know where the market may reach for highs and lows.

Want to uncover more about being a 12-minute trader? Want to learn more about Futures Market pivots and technical analysis? Attend a Monday night webinar on trading the Futures marker put on by http://www.shadowtrader.com. You’ll see for yourself the 17 pivots in action on the current day’s technical chart. Shadowtraders always demonstrates the current day’s chart, not some chart from several weeks or months earlier.

Before you buy another trading seminar, make sure you attend one of Barbara Cohen’s excellent free Monday night Webinars

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My name is Barbara Cohen and I am a Futures Trader – more specifically a Futures daytrader. I am the CIO of Shadowtraders.com. I first made my living off of trading 10 years ago from the viewpoint of a computer programmer, writing software for automated black boxes. Along the way, I learned about trading Futures, and why so many professional traders, especially daytraders, don’t trade the stock market any longer. Now I only trade the Futures Market. I write Futures Market software that has real time Futures Market strategies and alerts. Shadowtraders delivers an online Futures trading course that the client can do at their own pace 24/7. We also deliver Futures Market Seminars and have delivered the seminars on electronic trading inside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) where they trade Futures.

Since we don’t know who will be reading this article, we will assume that you are not trading Futures now. That way, we can start right at the beginning. If you are a Futures daytrader, keep reading … you might learn something you never knew. To begin, then just, “What is the Futures Market and why how would I go about learning to trade it?”

Well, here’s the Wikipedia response: “A Futures Market is a financial exchange where people can trade Futures Contracts.” OK, great. But what is a Futures Contract? A Futures Contract is “a legally binding agreement to buy specified quantities of commodities or financial instruments at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future.”

Let’s look at the word “Contract”. That is the most critical differentiation between the Stock Market and the Futures. The Stock Market trades shares but the Futures Market trades contracts. When trading Futures, you are not actually purchasing a “small part of a company”. A Futures Contract is an agreement between a buyer and seller to trade a commodity, a currency, or an equity financial instrument, such as bushels of wheat or corn.

It is easy to understand how commodities Futures Contracts work. An airline, for example, contracts for 100,000 gallons of fuel for their planes at a certain price today, but does not take delivery until sometime next year.

That was how Southwest Airlines did so well when the price of fuel was $140/barrel and other airlines were in trouble. They had bought Futures Contracts with several oil companies years earlier when the price of oil was cheap, but waited for delivery until 2007-2008. Now that the price of oil is cheap again in 2009, they’ll be buying Futures Contracts for delivery in 2010-2011.

Making Futures Contracts for crude oil is not trading, so you say.

In every Futures Contract transaction, there is a degree of risk. Futures Contracts are all about leveraging risk against the value of the underlying asset you want to buy.

Southwest took on some risk. The price of crude could fall well below the current price they paid (so they would have paid more than they would have needed to). Yet simultaneously, Southwest reduced their risk because they figured that oil would go higher than their contract price. In the case of Southwest, the leverage worked.

While Southwest acquired risk, so did the oil companies. They determined that they had reduced risk, because they believed that crude oil prices would fall below the contract price they made with Southwest. Yet they acquired risk because they knew that the price of oil could potentially rise higher than their contract price, resulting in loss of additional revenue they might have had). For the oil companies, the leverage was not so good.

But “I’m not Southwest Airlines, I am an individual investor. I don’t want to buy 100,000 gallons of oil. How do I trade Futures?”

The CME that trades Futures instruments, recognizes that individual investors want to trade Futures, similarly to the major corporations. The CME recognizes that individual traders want to leverage risk. They recognize that individuals are not willing to risk millions on gallons of crude oil contracts or bushels of wheat. The CME provides contracts specifically designed for individual investors to trade Futures.

Remember, as an individual investor, you have so many exchanges available to you for trading. You can trade large cap stocks on the NYSE, tech stocks on the NASDAQ, ETFs on the AMEX, and options on the CBOT. So in order to entice individual traders to trade Futures, the CME had to create an exchange that made other exchanges pale in comparison.

The CME developed “E-mini Futures Contracts” specifically tailored to professional investors. The “e” in E-mini meant they could be traded electronically. The CME developed a trading platform for your desktop where your trades can go straight to the CME. The “mini” means that the contract is a smaller version of the Futures contract that the larger institutions now trade.

On of the most heavily traded CME E-mini Futures Contracts is the S&P 500. This E-mini bases itself upon the underlying S&P 500 index that represents the top 500 stocks in the NYSE. The S&P 500 index is a price-weighted index. This means that some of the stocks have more “weight” or “pull” than others. Larger companies move the value of the index higher or lower more than the smaller companies. The problem is…you cannot trade an index.

But you believed that Futures Contracts were limited to commodities like wheat, rice, crude, soy.

Say you were able to trade all the top 500 stocks on the NYSE at once. Now that’s leveraging risk If two stocks did not do so well, you would still have positions in 498 other stocks. You wouldn’t be picking any one stock. You wouldn’t be spending hours researching specific stocks. You could trade all of them simultaneously. Of course, it would cost a huge fortune to trade 500 stocks. Think of buying and selling S&P 500 E-mini Futures Contracts is as if you were trading all 500 stocks at once, for a much smaller amount.

So how did the CME entice traders to trade E-mini’s? Check out the advantages of trading E-mini Futures Contracts. You’ll quickly see why many professional day traders gave up trading anywhere but the CME …

S&P 500 E-mini contracts are heavily traded with extreme liquidity. That means lots of volume and for you…lots of action. Lots of volume means you’ll be filled quickly often in as little as 1 second. When the S&P 500 was first traded in 1997, the average trading volume was barely 7,000 contracts / day. Now, the average is more like 2 million contracts daily with upwards of 3million not unheard of.

The E-mini is a totally electronic environment. There are no Market Makers on the CME who might refuse to fill your trade like there are on the NYSE. The CME book is FIFO, first in first out. That makes trading on the CME a level playing field for all traders, whether you are trading 1 contract or 100.

Commissions for E-mini Futures is based upon “Round Trip” instead of in-and-out.

The variance between the Ask price (the lowest price that a seller is willing to sell a contract for) and the Bid price (the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay for a contract) is just one “Tick” (one price movement) on the CME. A tick is equivalent to 1 penny on the Stock Market. 1 penny is not always true when trading stocks.

(The minimum price movement between the Bid and Ask is known as a Tick. The S&P 500 trades in 25 cent increments. 1 Tick = 25 cents. 4 ticks = 1 point. If you gain 1 tick in your trade, the reward is $12.50, with 4 ticks = $50.)

Let’s look at a 1 tick — Bid / Ask spread. With Market Makers, the difference between the Bid and Ask can be more than 1 penny, especially when the Market Maker is making his living on the spread.

With trading E-mini Futures, you’ll only need to watch 1 chart, 1 instrument, the same chart, day in and day out. Could you become a truly successful trader if you monitored the same chart every day?

Stock traders watch several stock charts simultaneously, flipping the charts back and forth for in case you miss the action.

There is basically no research to do every evening. Remember, you’re trading all “500 stocks at once.” You won’t have to research this stock and that stock, worrying about pre-announcements, quarterly reporting, whisper numbers, and accounting minefields.

Option traders must be able to correctly handle 4 conditions in order to be consistently profitable: underlying price, strike price, volatility, and time decay. Option traders can be right and still lose on their trade because time was not on their side and the option expired worthless before they could profit. Futures traders are only concerned about 2 conditions: an advancing market or a declining market. Time decay is not an issue for Futures traders.

Margins are very favorable to Futures traders. You can trade 1 S&P 500 E-mini contract for as little as $400 / contract on margin. To trade stocks, at a minimum you’ll need to buy a lot of 100 shares. An average stock is $25/share, or $2500 to get in the door.

Here’s an important difference. The SEC states that a daytrade is any transaction that opened and closed during the same trading day. A “pattern daytrader” is anyone who makes 4 or more daytrades during a 5 day period. To daytrade stocks (ever since 9-11), it is required to have at least $25,000 in the brokerage account (or the account is frozen for 90 days when caught daytrading).

Day trading Futures does not have such rules. Your brokerage account requires much less capital. You can open your Futures brokerage account with just $2,500. This enables even small investors to trade Futures.

You can trade the E-mini futures long (expecting the contracts to go up) but you can also trade the futures short (expecting the contracts to go down). There have been bans placed on short selling financial stocks, bans on naked short selling including the 1,000 top stocks, bans on short selling stocks that are less than $5, etc. There are no bans on short selling Futures contracts.

There are no restrictions on short selling e-mini Futures Contracts because Futures are not shares of a particular company, they are contracts. For traders, it is essential to taking full advantage of the Market’s volatility. So not being able to short means that half of your trading is not available to you. If you always have to trade long, that means a long wait for the Market to swing up in order to enter a trade. If the Market is down 200 or more points……that could be a long wait.

Trading short is especially important in a Bear Market where there are sharp up and down moves in the S&P, DOW, and NASDAQ. Giving traders ample opportunities throughout the day to profit is vital to consistency.

When Futures trading with an IRA or 401k account, you won’t need to wait for the trade to settle 3 or 4 days before you can use that same money for the next trade. One second after you exit your trade, that same money is now available for another trade. When trading stocks, exit a trade and you may wait as long as 3 days for your money to settle prior to using that money to trade with again.

There are tax rules written by the IRS that were intended for commodity traders. These rules also apply to E-mini Futures traders. There is a 60/40 split on taxes: 60% of the trades are long term (15% tax bracket) and 40% of the trades are short term (28% tax bracket), even when your trade is 1 minute long. Now compare that to stock tracking. When you hold a stock for under 1 year, it is a short term trade. Only when you hold the stock for over a year does the trade qualify for long term capital gains.

Come year end, you’ll get a 1099-B from your Futures brokerage account. It will have only 1 figure, a net number of all your trading. It will not itemize each individual trade. Should you have made $50,000, the 1099-b only shows $50,000. You can claim on your taxes $30,000 as long term capital gains and $20,000 as short term, the 60/40 split.

Doing your taxes is much easier. Since your broker gives you the net entry, you will make just 1 entry on your tax return. If you trade stocks, you are required to identify every trade you made. If you are a day trader and trade multiple stocks, it can take hours to enter all those transactions. With Futures trading, you are done in a jiffy.

You’ll find that trading Futures is nearly a 24 hour a day activity, 5 1/2 days a week. Saturday is the only day “bad” trading day for Futures — you can’t trade at all. Many stocks can’t trade pre-Market, and those that do tend to be traded very lightly. Conversely, the S&P 500 E-mini is traded world-wide and depending upon the time of day, quite heavy even pre-Market. At 2:00am EST, the Japanese begin trading the S&P 500 E-mini. At 4:00am EST, the Europeans start trading. Should you have insomnia that get you up at night, E-mini trading is definitely something for you to look into.

There is only 1 exchange/1 book for E-mini Futures….the CME. That is unlike stocks that can trade on different exchanges and have different Bid/Ask prices on each exchange. For E-mini Futures contracts, there is just one price – the CME price. Large cap stocks may trade on multiple exchanges, each exchange posting a different price.

Your fills are guaranteed. If you are in a trade, for example, and the e-mini price goes through your offer, you get filled. No questions asked. This is a major problem for smaller Forex traders. You may be in a trade waiting to exit. You have an offer to sell. The Forex contract goes right by your price and does not fill you. Then you read in fine print on your Forex Brokers contract that they do not guarantee fills.

The CME Clearing House for trades acts as the guarantor to each of its clearing members, thus ensuring the integrity of all trades.

When contracts expire on the 3rd Friday of the contract month, they do not expire worthless. Your money rolls over to the new contract, unlike Options that expire worthless.

Let’s say you are an individual investor. You have been monitoring the Stock Market and now you’re bullish. You want to be part of the action because you see the Market is going up.

Unfortunately, you only have $5,000 to invest. You’ve traded stocks before and know that with just $5,000, you would have to limit your investment to just one or two stocks. That means a great deal of nightly research to determine which stock to choose.

What could you do with the $5000? You could purchase a mutual fund so at least you would be part of more than one or two stock moves. But realistically, with upfront load fees, your $5000 investment doesn’t go very far. Instead what if you traded S&P 500 E-mini Futures Contracts. With $5,000, you would be able to trade 5 contracts ($2,000 – Note — never trade all the money in your account in 1 trade). If you made just 4 ticks a day, you would earn about $170-180/day after commissions, $3,500 per month, $42,000 after 12 months. Even adjusting for your losses, you would net somewhere around $30,000….on your $2,000 investment! That equates to a 1700% profit annually. Putting the $5,000 in your bank account, if you were to earn 3% (and that’s a lot now), you’d profit $150/year. In one day’s trading you would have profited more than the amount the bank would pay you in interest for 12 months.

And once you get into trading Futures, the S&P 500 E-mini is not the only future you can trade. The CME’s trading platform is called Globex. There are dozens of Futures Contracts available on Globex today. Want to trade gold, crude oil or gasoline? You’ll find an e-mini contract for each of those. There are e-mini’s for the NASDAQ, the DOW, or the Midcaps. And as your abilities improve, you can trade the commodities (corn, wheat, sugar, etc.).

We’ve just touched upon trading Futures Contracts…there is so much more information to be covered. This is just an introduction.

Before buying any trading education online, make sure you attend Shadowtraders’ excellent free Webinar on trading the Futures Market with Futures Trading Seminar, and Futures Trading Seminar

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Foreign exchange trading, plenty of folks may already have heard all about it, but not all know what it is all about.

Currency trading is the selling and buying of currencies in pair. You can doubtless do the trade without a currency pair. A common example is the US bucks / Japanese Yen.

The basic of currency trading is to buy a currency at a better price and sell it at a way higher cost. But infrequently, having this information isn’t really enough. Currency trading involves a lot of different things that not all people have a correct information on. Foreign exchange trading happens 24 hours a day, so even if you are sleeping, the trade goes on. The FX market is by a large margin the biggest monetary market in the entire world.

That’s the reason why lots of setups and individuals are drawn to do the trade. Before, huge investors, banks and currency traders dominated the FX market, but that is not true nowadays.

You have to grasp the process of currency trading first. Remember the FX market has no boundaries or barriers. So before leaping into the market, you’ve got to know the right entry points. Charting and mapping are also vital aspects in foreign exchange trading. Charting software are widely available, you can secure one so you can find out about it ; as well as learning to correctly map it. Through this, you can see the way the market moves. And you can now make good calls whether to sell or buy a currency, and make profits in turn. Another critical thing to learn is foreign exchange trading psychology. You really ought to know the best way to correctly cope with all your losses, naturally you can not expect to gain at all points. If for a brief period you made a large amount of losses, maybe it’s the time to stop only for sometime. Do not be carried away in doing the trade, or you may sustain plenty of losses. New starters who right away gain plenty of profits may think that they know too much. But it helps to know that it’s not the same all throughout.

Another significant thing to learn is currency exchange trading psychology. You must understand how to correctly cope with all of your losses, naturally you cannot expect to gain at all points.

And all of your learning experiences can be of great significance after you do your precise trade.

Discipline is one characteristic that you need to practice and learn. Starters, who go through foreign exchange trading all alone, without any help, are likely not to achieve success in this sort of trade, not unless she is ‘gifted’. Though they may enjoy a certain quantity of profit, time is coming when won’t be in a position to stay abreast of the trade without awareness of foreign exchange trading and its technical aspects. As a trader , you alone can choose which option is the best for you. Learning currency exchange trading requires a level of commitment, if you can pull it off on your own, good for you. But if you suspect you need a bit of help, you are free to choose between the various currency trading classes offered ; or you may be a broker’s neophyte. Anyhow you select, you can learn so much about currency trading. And all of your learning experiences can be of great significance after you do your precise trade. There is not any substitute to correct learning. It gives you a good grip about the trade, and you may be assured that you are making good choices. These would reflect a lot from the profits that you are about to gain.

Before you spend money to learn forex take some time to learn about the many forex course out there.

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For many currencydealers, automatic currency trading systems are the perfect solution to their problems. In fact, many would testify to the fact that using automated Forex trading systems allow them to attain big profits in the currency market – more so than if they were to trade manually. Those who are successful in using automated currency trading software will tell you that not only do they earn a lot of cash, but they continue to make it constantly.

Unfortunately, good things are not always easy. There are other dealers that say that employing automatic currency trading software did not help them at all. Some will even say that they lost out on many transactions. In all actuality, any time failure is achieved using automatic currency trading software, it depends on how the system is configured for your needs, and how you take advantage of opportunities. Often times, many dealers make stupid/common mistakes which could have been avoided.

So, what are these things that you should keep in mind, and what are some of the common errors that are made when using automatic currency trading software systems?

Generally, errors occur when you are just starting out selecting your currency trading software. Naturally, you should consider the reviews of other customers, but do not just count on these, as they could be false testimonials. It is probably best to check Internet forums where there are not only views, but also facts which detail what troubles a customer had with a particular software and how they resolved them.

One big mistake that dealers make selecting automated currency trading software, is in picking a piece of software that has good ratings and good client feedback. They mistakenly trust that the software program is perfect. However, this is not the case, as many problems can occur. Always insure that the software you choose has enough customer support, whether by web or telephone.

Another big error that many currency dealers make is in believing that because they have automated currency trading software it is not possible for them to lose in a transaction. It doesn’t matter how good a program is, or how expensive it is, mistakes still happen, and you can lose a lot of your profits if you’re not careful. Achieving success in the currency market is not something that happens overnight. You could make bigger profits and fewer transactions – the amount of transactions you make does not determine how much money you make. In order for you to accumulate the most profits, it is best for you to have a number of good transactions under your belt, before expecting your higher aspirations to come true.

Some dealers mistakenly believe that they could win at least one trade per day. This is not the case all the time. It takes a lot of patience in order for you to win big in the currency market. Overtrading will not make you successful in the currency industry.

All too often, many dealers rely too much on their automatic trading software and disregard becoming more involved in the trades. If you are lackadaisical in learning the Forex market, this is a huge stumbling block for you. Just because you have automated software working in your place, this does not mean that you should not learn more about the ins and outs of the Forex market.

This cannot be stressed enough – just because you have the best mentors or talk to the best experts in the currency market does not mean that you will be assured success either. It takes a lot of knowledge to formulate the right strategy and trading system for you to apply it to your automated software.

It is also crucial to note that just because you may have used software in the past that did not work properly, this does not mean that all automatic currency trading system software is equallyas bad. Keep pressing towards the goal, and do not be discouraged – just have patience and keep looking.

Everyone is human, and everyone makes mistakes – even if you are using automated currency trading software. It is important that, whatever software you choose, you spend time configuring it in accordance with your specific trading strategy.

Before you start trading with real money, you must spend time to learn forex and move on only when you have a solid forex trading education

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