There are a variety of trading platforms available on the market that allow for automated trading. The benefit of automation is that once your set up is intact you can step away and let the trades work out without your intervention.

There are a variety of different autotraders on the market. Allow me to introduce you a couple of them.

Zulutrade – Zulutrade is an autotrading service that allows you to select from a vast majority of signal providers they offer. The signal providers allow you to see their entire performance that is monitored by Zulutrade. Once you have a signal provider selected, your trades will automatically be made based on your signal provider’s recommendations. Don’t just seek out those with the highest success rate. Oh no. If your signal provider is an absolute loser, Zulutrade allows you the opportunity to fade their picks. You can profit off of someone else’s bad peformance! And the best part of all this – Zulutrade is free!

Expert Advisors – If you trade on a Metatrader platform, you have the availability to upload what is commonly referred to as an EA. An EA (Expert Advisor) is a C+ coded program that will automate your trading for you. Whatever system you can devise, it is possible for it to be coded. However, not everyone is a program where they can code their own program their own EA. As a result of that market demand, one can hire the services of a programmer to design an EA around your trading system. Their fees widely vary based on what needs to be coded and who’s coding it. I have seen some EA’s go for as cheap as $50 and others into the $1,000s of dollars.

Now, there is discretion to be used when autotrading. While it does assist in trading, you should not solely rely on that. I personally could not trade with a robot as the way I trade uses discretion that can only be read on a case by case basis. I’m under the belief that most trading methods require some amount of discretion.

So monitor your autotrades. Be sure they are executing, as they should. At times coding might not be perfect and you could find yourself opening and closing trades that defied your trading system. And remember autotrading only takes care of one part of a complete trading system.

You are still responsible for properly managing your money. Do not get caught up in the hype of a trading robots success. Yes, it might do well in the long run, but it very well could be possible that the wins are extremely large and few between as opposed to a constant string of small losses. If you bet too heavily, your bankroll might not be able to sustain those losses to wait for the big hit.

The FX Trading Network has recommended brokers that allow for the use of autotrading. In particular, AvaFX offers four types of autotrading programs. Two of which were highlighted in this very article. Enjoy making your money automatically.

Believe it or not there is an opportunity in Forex for one to guarantee a successful trade.  Imagine that. Being able to enter the market and have a 100% assurance that you will come out a winner. The concept is called arbitrage trading. An arbitrage opportunity exists when there are discrepancies in the market between brokers.

Allow me to create an example of an arbitrage.

Broker A has GPB/USD currently exchanging at 1.6388/1.6393, while Broker B has EUR/USD exchanging at 1.1832/1.1837, and Broker C is exchanging EUR/GBP at .7231/.7236.

There is a simple calculation to see if an arbitrage exists.

AAA/BBB * CCC/AAA = CCC/BBB

If for whatever reason this calculation does not equate each other evenly, an arbitrage exists and there is an opportunity to create a risk free profit.

If you were trading a standard lot, you would need to buy 100,000 Euros at 1.1837 while selling 100,000 Euros at .7231. Finally, you’ll need to sell the equivalent amount of the Pound that you had purchased in your EUR/GBP trade. In doing so you have essentially bought and sold the exact same amounts. In the process you guaranteed yourself $131 of risk free profit.

Does this sound too good to be true?

Well, arbitrages do in fact exist. However, they are extremely difficult to capture as price is always moving and when an arbitrage does exist you need to work extremely fast to be sure you are able to capture the arbitrage at the prices needed.

Then there is also the matter of having to spot the arbitrage itself. You would need to have a good amount of brokers that you have an account with and constantly scanning the various markets seeking out the discrepancies. Not a simple task.

And lastly, you are only guaranteeing yourself a risk free trade if the trade is placed accurately. When moving as fast as you need to, there cannot be any room for error. You will have a large amount of money in the market in exchange for a small sum of guaranteed profits.  You do not want to make the mistake of entering the market incorrectly and finding all your money is at risk. That defeats the purpose.

You would essentially need some sort of computer software to automatically scan the market for you, find the arbitrages, and place the orders for you at the price you need them to be at. With all that said… Good luck.

If it’s automation you want, you don’t need to seek out a computer to scan arbitrages. Success in the market is not simply isolated for risk free trading. The FX Trading Network has recommended Netpicks as a signal provider. Netpicks has been around since the dawn of Retail Forex and they have been providing winning signals since. Try them risk free!

I previously warned you in a prior blog post on how to spot and avoid trading in a ranging market. Well, I know there are enough of you to take no heed to my advice and want to trade in a range market anyways. As such, I will provide my recommendations on what to do if you find yourself trading in a range market.

You will never know when you are in a ranging market until it has already begun. This is imperative to understand if you decide to trade my recommendation. While some of the principles can work in a trending market, you want to be sure you are in a ranging market to ensure profitability.

We’re going to forget all about indicators. To trade in a range, all we want to do is look for areas of support and resistance. To find such areas, simply look at the chart and spot out an area where price touched and bounced back from more than once. When the area of support/resistance has been discovered, place a horizontal line around that area. Do the same for where price has left and is now set to return to the original line you created.

Now what we want to look for is for when price re-enters that area of support and resistance. Once it starts to turn away, you’ll want to enter into the market. Be sure to place a tight stop loss. You do not want this type of trade to run away from you. It could potentially be a breakout. And if that were to happen you will lose more pips than necessary.

Once the trade is moving in your direction shoot for at least a 1:2 risk reward ratio for profit. However, if you think you can get more, go for it.

The above picture shows two horizontal lines that are showing where price is bouncing back and forth. Though a trade would have been available after the second bounce from the top, it would not have necessarily been feasible to trade. At that time it was not yet confirmed that price is range bound. However, the following candles illustrate a ranging market. Price went down came back up, and then went down once more. This time it hit the area we had drawn for support. As such, it was time to enter the market.

As you can see, this would have created a nice tight stop loss with ample opportunity for one to profit as the price shot back up to the line of resistance. This trade would have paid off nicely for those who are willing to take advantage of some alternative methods to taking profit.

When making a determination if the market is trending or ranging, a good trading platform is a must. Personally, I prefer Metatrader 4 as it is user friendly and has a vast variety of tools that are of benefit to a trader. 4XP, an FX Trading Network recommended broker offers the Metatrader 4 platform. Download a demo today and see how this trading platform can be of financial benefit to you.

Do you realize how much money you are tossing away when you scalp continuously? Scalpers tend to trade a lot more than most traders. While I have been in a single trade for over two weeks now, during that timeframe there are traders who have been in and out of the market up to a 100, if not more times.

The more you trade, the more you pay to trade. Overtrading itself is a leak in one’s system as every time you enter a trade you are paying a spread. The trade I am currently in, I have only had to pay the spread twice. First time was when I entered the trade on Sept. 16. And the second time was when I added to my position after a retracement. In all, I have not even paid 6 pips of spread. As it currently stands, my open position is up over 500 pips. The total spread is a tad over 1% of my entire position.

Now let’s examine the scalper. Lets assume the scalper has had the same amount of success, where as after two weeks, they are also up 500 pips. Scalpers shoot for a small amount of pips. A lot of times it is under 10 pips, but for this example let us just keep it at 10. Over the course of two weesk the trader would have entered on average 5 trades a day to maintain that 500 pip success. In all that would be 50 trades. If the same amount of spread were paid, the scalper would have paid out 150 pips. That amounts to nearly 30% of their profits. It boggles my mind that someone is so willing to just toss that much money away. Also consider this one factor… this is all assuming that each trade was successful. In reality, the scalper’s trading will not be 100% successful and with each loss that 30% leak only grows. It is not a far stretch to see how it is even possible that scalpers pay up to 50% of their profits in spread.

And this is under the assumption that the scalper is successful. In my years of forex trading, I have only met two successful scalpers. And in both cases, the methods that they traded were proven to be difficult to duplicate to other traders. A successful scalper tends to see the market, as opposed to relying on indicators for all their decision-making.

I view scalping almost like I view extreme sports. Anyone can learn to ride a skateboard. But not anyone can jump the Great Wall of China on a skateboard. Some people are just naturally born with talents, including the talent of scalping.

Moving back to my point of capital preservation. In my trade, I only have to periodically check out the market for a few minutes each day to ensure my trade is progressing nicely. It’s rather a stress less environment. The scalper however has to remain hunkered down at the computer constantly watching the market. Is it really worth it? I think not.

If you have a basic understanding of Forex, yet still struggle at developing a successful system, have a look at the FX Trading Network’s Boot Camp. The Advanced Course goes over indicators as well as price action to give you the tools you need to be successful. You do not have to trade a lot to be a success. You simply need to know how to successfully trade.