Commodity Trading 4U: Article

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Forex Trading for the Little Guy

The foreign exchange market is the generic term for the worldwide institutions that exist to exchange or trade currencies. Foreign exchange is often referred to as "forex" or "FX." The foreign exchange market is an 'over the counter' (OTC) market, that means that there is no central exchange and clearing house where orders are matched. FX dealers and market makers around the world are linked to each other around-the-clock via telephone, computer, and fax, creating one cohesive market.

Since there is no centralized exchange, competition between market makers prohibits monopolistic pricing strategies. If one market maker attempts to drastically skew the price, then traders simply have the option to find another market maker. Moreover, spreads are closely watched to ensure market makers are not whimsically altering the cost of the trade. Many equity markets, on the other hand, operate in a completely different fashion; the New York Stock Exchange, for instance, is the sole place where companies listed on the NYSE can have their stocks traded.

Centralized markets are operated by what are referred to as specialists; market makers, on the other hand, is the term used in reference to decentralized marketplaces. Since the NYSE is a centralized market, a stock traded on the NYSE can only have 1 bid-ask quote at all times. Decentralized markets, such as foreign exchange, can have multiple market makers - all of whom have the right to quote different prices.ld.

Centralized Markets
By their very nature, centralized markets tend to be monopolistic: with a single specialist controlling the market, prices can easily be skewed to accommodate the interests of the specialist, not those of the traders. If, for example, the market is filled with sellers from whom the specialists must buy from but no prospective buyers on the other side, the specialist will be forced to buy from the sellers in be in a situation where they cannot sell a commodity that is being sold off and hence falling in value. In such a situation, the specialist may simply widen the spread, thereby increasing the cost of the trade and preventing additional participants from entering the market. Or, specialists can simply drastically alter the quotes they are offering, thus manipulating the price to accommodate their own needs.

Hierarchy of Participants: While the foreign exchange market is decentralized, and hence employs multiple market makers rather than a single specialist, participants in the FX market are organized into a hierarchy; those with superior credit access, volume transacted, and sophistication receives priority in the market. At the top of the hierarchy is the interbank market, which trades the highest volume per day in relatively few, mostly G7 currencies. In the interbank market, the largest banks can deal with each other directly, via interbank brokers or through electronic brokering systems like EBS or Reuters. The interbank market is a credit-approved system where banks trade based solely on the credit relationships they have established with one another. All the banks can see the rates everyone is dealing at, however, each bank must have a specific credit relationship with that bank in order to trade at the rates being offered. Other institutions such as online FX market makers, hedge funds and corporations must trade FX through commercial banks. Many banks (small community banks, banks in emerging markets), corporations, and institutional investors do not have access to these rates because they have no established credit lines with big banks. This forces small participants to deal through just one bank for their foreign exchange needs, and often times this means much less competitive rates for the participants further down the participant hierarchy. Those receiving the least competitive rates are customers by banks and exchange agencies. Recently technology has broken down the barriers that used to stand between the end-users of foreign exchange services and the Interbank market. The online trading revolution opened its doors to retail clientele by connecting market makers and market participants in an efficient low cost manner. In essence online trading platform serve as gateway to the liquid FX market. Average traders can now trade alongside the biggest banks in the world, with virtually similar pricing and execution. What used to be a game dominated and controlled by the "big boys" is slowly becoming a level playing field where individuals can profit and take advantage of the same opportunities as big banks. FX is no longer an old boys club, which means opportunity is abound for aspiring online currency traders.
Our Basic Rules for High Yield Investment Programs (We have Been Asked ALOT about this)

1. If you can't afford to lose it, do not invest it. This is undoubtedly the Golden Rule, as no matter how much "due diligence" and research you perform on a program, some will always just disappear, for whatever reason, and when they disappear your money disappears with them.

2. Get your initial investment back out of the program as soon as you can. This way the money invested is pure profit, so it will hurt far less if it disappears. This also frees up your original investment capital to invest in a new program. If a program is going well it will be very tempting to break this rule. We know, and we have and lost because of it. Stick to this rule and you will not regret it.

3. Diversify. Ideally you want only 5-10% of your overall investment fund in any one program, obviously this does take a while to achieve, but is the safest strategy. The tough part is finding enough long standing, stable, paying programs to invest in.

4. If you get scammed just move on and learn from the experience. Notifying the authorities is certainly an option that is open to you and is your choice. The important thing is to work out if you broke one of the basic rules and exposed your capital unnecessarily, i.e. learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them.

We hope you find these "rules" or tips useful. They are the guidelines that We follow and we have found that We have greatly reduced the number of occasions where we lose money. In fact our greatest losses in HYIP were when we first started and did not understand these rules. We now make a profit.

About the Author
An elite team of regular "Joes's" fighting back & making huge cash online one day at a time.
dDawg as a team has been able to create a profit on the internet.
http://www.str8junk.com

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Forex Trading for the Little Guy