The best expert advisors can help you to make a lot of money with forex trading, while a bad EA can simply be a drain on your cash. So how do you tell them apart? Most people do this by looking at expert advisor reviews.

However, online reviews can be a mixed blessing when it comes to something as important as an expert advisor. In case you do not know, an EA is a forex robot or automated currency trading system that runs on the popular platform known as Metatrader 4. Basically, you hook up the robot to your broker’s software platform, set it to trade for you at the position size etc that you want, and go enjoy your day.

The problem of course comes if things go against you and it starts to lose your money instead of making it. This is always a danger with forex systems and even more when they are trading on autopilot so you may not be aware of what is happening. For that reason it is very important to run the EA on a demo account first until you have absolutely everything clear.

Reviews can certainly help you to narrow down your search when you are looking for a forex robot that will save you tons of time analyzing the market and placing your trades. However, there are two possible problems with reviews. One is that some reviews that you will find online are simply copied from the sales page for the EA itself and the person might not have used the robot at all. In this case you will usually see a very positive review with no indication of the possible downside. On the other hand a review from somebody who has actually used the software themselves can be very valuable because it will often give you hints and tips about how to get the most from it.

The other thing that you may come across is a strongly negative review from somebody who could not make the EA work for them. There may be all kinds of reasons for this which are not the fault of the EA itself. Often, either the person could not figure out how to set it up and became frustrated with it, or they set their risk too high. A common recommendation for risk is 2% per trade. The laws of statistics mean that setting your risk too high will always lead to a busted bank sooner or later, but people who do not realize this will often blame the system that they were using. This can lead to some very vitriolic comments and forum posts and of course it is never recognized that it is the fault of the trader. It must be the system’s fault!

What you should be looking for when you search through expert advisor reviews is a general consensus, a balance of views. Rather than simply going by a star system or whether the person liked the EA, check for specific points such as these:

- Is it easy to set up, and how much does that matter to you?

- Is it suitable for somebody at your level? Is it aimed at beginners or experienced traders? Do you need to be taking a certain position size or using a particular broker to use this system?

- Does it suit your trading style in terms of the amount of risk (stop loss settings) and number of trades?

You may need to read between the lines a little bit to work out some of these points. For example, most EAs will claim to work for people at all levels, but a system that only makes a couple of trades a week is not going to make you much money on a micro trading account unless you take huge risks, so that’s why the number of trades can be important. However, many people who buy a new forex robot are also trading using other methods and then it does not matter so much if a robot only trades a couple of times a week.

So do check out expert advisor reviews when you are looking for the best expert advisors, but follow your own agenda when it comes to how seriously you take them.

Our top recommendation for a Metatrader EA is FAP Turbo which has been getting great results for ordinary users and in the independent tests that we have seen online.

There are so many types of FX trading system out there, that it can be hard to know where to start with actually making money. It seems that every trader has his or her own favorite system. This can be very confusing until you realize that there are a lot of different ways of making money with currency trading and there is no one perfect system that suits everybody.

In fact, making money from the forex market is often more about the trader than the forex trading systems that he uses. How you handle the various situations that can arise is key. This includes handling success and losses, stress and risk. However, there are certain tips that just about anybody can profitably follow.

First, be sure that you are following trends and not trying to second guess when there might be a reversal. Identifying an emerging trend is just about always easier than spotting when it is about to turn. We are talking here of course about real trends, not minor fluctuations where the price can bounce back and forward. For new traders especially, it is best to take seriously the well worn phrase ‘the trend is your best friend’.

Second, have clear profit goals for each trade. Before you open a trade, you should also know when you will close it. Most people are familiar with this in terms of setting a stop loss if the trade goes against you, but what if it is successful? Have you decided when to close out with a profit or are you relying on ‘seeing how it goes’?

Making a decision based on feelings does not form part of any profitable FX trading system. It is vital to stay cool, and this becomes almost impossible if you are constantly watching the market, hesitating over whether now is the exact best moment to close your trade. Most people will either wait too long and see most of their profits disappear in a reversal, or panic and close too early. So be sure that you are clear about this before you start.

The third vital strategy for successful forex traders is risk management. This is crucial to your success. So many traders start out well and then crash because they are risking too much on each trade. Usually they do it because they want to make money fast, and it is true that for a short time you can make big profits this way. But almost certainly, sooner or later you will bust your bank. This finishes many new traders.

How much you risk depends on your strategy and what you have in terms of backup funds, but a good guideline is around 2% of your balance. You could make it a little higher at first if you are willing to take a bigger risk for the sake of kick starting your trading, but be aware that this may backfire on you, and in any case, never risk more than 5% per trade.

Make the most of your profits by good management of your funds. For example, as soon as your fund has doubled you could withdraw half and set it aside. Now you are trading with your profits only, and you have your original balance as a backup if you need it.

Any FX trading system will go through good and bad patches. You must be prepared for both if you plan to survive as a forex trader.

Free expert advisor programs are out there on the internet if you know where to look. However, before you go ahead and grab one, take a moment to think about what you should be looking for.

Expert advisors or EAs are automated forex trading systems or robots that work on the Metatrader 4 software platform. MT4 itself is free, and as with most software, there are some people who have developed free applications that you can download. They may hope for donations, they may hope for some kind of paid work to come from becoming known for this, or they may just do it for fun. But the question that you must always ask is: what is the system that they have automated?

If you think about it, it is pretty clear that anyone with a profitable forex trading system is not very likely to spend hours of his time creating robot software to run it automatically and then give it away as a free expert advisor. Nor is he going to pay a programmer to create the software and then give it away for free. No, either he will keep his robot for himself or he will hope to make a lot of money by selling it.

This means that the free expert advisors that are available on the internet are not necessarily the best automated forex systems. You might be lucky and find one that is great, but you could spend a lot of time trying out free expert advisors that never make money or do not even work.

Then you have a problem because support is likely to be minimal. How could somebody spend hours of their time helping you to fix any problems that you have, if they are never being paid anything for it? Most people have to earn a living. Maybe they had a few spare hours or days to create the robot in the first place, but that does not mean they have spare time to devote to you and your problems when you try to use it, which could be months or years after they developed it.

Besides this, there may not be much in the way of instructions for setting up. This may not sound like a problem until you try it. Forex robots are notoriously difficult for the non technically minded among us, and if you do not even have much of a manual and nobody to answer your emails, the outlook is bleak.

In fact, free forex robots could end up costing you a lot of time and perhaps also a lot of money, if you are unwise enough to let them loose on your real money account before you have fully tested them. A free expert advisor is not necessarily an unmixed blessing.

So why not consider a paid EA with a money back guarantee? Our top recommendation is FAP Turbo which has been getting great results for ordinary users and in the independent tests that we have seen online.

Looking for currency trading information? You need to know about the currency market, which is usually called the forex, FX or foreign exchange market. Unlike stock markets, the currency market is not limited to one place. Trading in all currencies goes on all over the world. For example, you do not have to be located in the USA to trade in the US dollar. You can do that anywhere.

In order to buy or sell money you have to use another kind of money, that is, a different currency. This means that all forex trading involves two currencies. One is exchanged for another, because in order to buy one, you have to sell another. So everything revolves around currency pairs. In fact, it could be said that each currency pair has its own market.

You will often hear statements on the news about the dollar rising or falling. The value of a country’s currency is closely linked to how well its economy is doing. Generally speaking, the value of the dollar will fall if the USA is going through an economic crisis, and rise during good times. However, because all forex transactions involve an exchange, the values are relative. Even if the dollar was falling against most currencies, there could be another country that was doing even worse and so the dollar could be rising against that particular currency.

The main players in the forex market are banks and other large financial powers who employ professional traders to make money in foreign exchange for them. These forex professionals could be involved in currency trade worth millions of dollars.

However, there is still room for the little guy or girl. All you need is a computer with broadband, and a small amount of capital. These days it is easy for just about anybody to get involved in the forex market, although actually making money may not prove to be quite so simple!

You cannot access the market directly yourself. Like all traders, you will use a broker. After opening an account with a forex broker you can see real time forex price quotes displayed on their site and you can buy and sell as you wish. Most brokers offer a demo account so that you can try out trading without risking any real funds. This is essential because forex trading can be very risky.

Forex trading has a huge profit potential because of the amount of leverage that you can get. Leverage is your ability to control large amounts of money in a trade, while only putting up a small amount of it yourself. Many brokers will offer 100 times leverage which means that you can control a currency trade of $1,000 with just $10.

The forex market has a huge worldwide daily turnover, with transactions valued at around $4 trillion a day. This high liquidity means that prices change fast. It is a very risky way to handle your money but it also has the potential for making big profits in a relatively short time. This is what attracts so many people to the exciting world of currency trading.

Beginners often prefer to use a forex robot to manage their trading. Our top recommendation for a forex robot is FAP Turbo which has been getting great results for ordinary users and in the independent tests that we have seen online.

Good foreign exchange training is essential for beginners. Despite the advertisements, you cannot expect to set out with no experience or training and start making money right away. If you have some knowledge of stock trading or other similar speculative markets you will have a much shorter learning curve but there are still a few things specific to currency trading that you will need to know.

However, do not lose heart. There are plenty of good forex trading training courses out there and with a little investigation you can find the right one for you. There are just a few things that you need to keep in mind when you are looking.

1. Cost

While a lot of foreign exchange training is available for free simply by reading websites or downloading free ebooks, you are not necessarily going to find the best trading information that way. Most traders do not give away their secrets for free.

So although you may be able to cover the basics from free information, you must expect to pay something if you want to learn from the pros. The cost then can range for a few dollars for an ebook describing a successful trading system, to thousands of dollars to sign up with a mentor for private coaching or attend a series of seminars.

All we will say here is that if you are a complete beginner, it could be a waste of money to pay for top level training even if it is good, because you are probably not ready for it. Cover the basics more cheaply first.

2. Type of forex tutorial

Many people start with books and ebooks. This can be a great way to educate yourself. There are some differences between the two that you should be aware of. Printed books tend to be more general and more informative about the background and history of currency trading, while ebooks are usually shorter and often cover one particular trading system. You need both background knowledge and a profitable if you are actually going to trade.

Of course, ebooks also have the advantage of being instantly downloadable. Sometimes they will come with a video forex tutorial which can be very valuable indeed. Instead of just reading about the author’s trading system you can actually watch as he implements it on his computer. You see exactly where to click and everything is much easier to follow. So if you are considering buying a forex ebook, check to see whether videos are included.

When you buy an ebook you will also usually have a method of getting support from the author or his team. This does not come with a printed book and it is essential if there is something that you do not understand. This can also, occasionally, lead on to a mentoring or other relationship that could be very valuable to you in the future.

So do not be surprised that ebooks are usually more expensive than printed books. They contain a lot of hidden value. What you need when you are starting out with foreign exchange training is a practical forex tutorial, and you are much more likely to get this from a forex ebook with videos than any printed book.

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Anybody involved in forex trading cannot avoid dealing with a forex trading broker. As an individual trader you cannot set up your own dealing desk, so brokers are your way in to the forex market.

As trading from home becomes more and more popular with private individuals who often have relatively low startup capital, new types of brokerage firms are springing up to cater for them. Most of these companies are completely legitimate but you do need to do your due diligence before committing your funds to them. Check which country they are registered in and whether they are regulated there.

What would happen to your funds if the company went out of business? In some cases you are protected by regulatory bodies but in other cases you are not. So this is a good question to ask before you invest.

Most forex traders work with 100 or 200 times leverage. This means that to control a position size of $10,000 you would have to commit only $100 or $50 of your own money. This gives you a lot of power because you can make a lot of money in a short time when things go your way. On the other hand of course it is also possible to lose a lot, if you do not have stops in place to prevent you. For this reason, when you are beginning it could be a good idea to sign up with a broker who will automatically close out your trades when the limit of your account is reached. This protects you from margin calls which can otherwise mean that you could end up owing the broker more than you have in your account.

A forex trading broker provides many services to their clients these days. You will probably have access to a demo account where you can test out the brokerage software that allows to you trade in the market in real time. You can also use the demo account to test your trading systems before going live with real money.

They will also usually provide some kind of technical analysis in the form of charts and indicators. You can expect candlestick, bar and line charts, and indicators including the Stochastic, MACD and Bollinger bands. Try to look at the charting services provided by several different brokers through their demo accounts and consider ease of use and whether they give you the information that your trading system requires. Of course, many traders sign up with dedicated charting services once they become more successful, but when you start out, getting good technical analysis from your broker can save you that cost.

You will want assurance that the broker’s software platform is not easily cracked by hackers. Remember this is your money and you do not want anybody to be able to access your account illegally. Ask the forex trading broker what security measures they have in place, or check on forums.

Automatic forex trading system software is built to profit from forex and other types of trading trends in order to make money. In most cases the trading itself is automated. So the software acts as a robot that will go ahead and trade for you through your brokerage account, any time that you have it connected.

However, it is possible to develop a system that would simply analyze the markets and provide you with a signal when a trend was identified so that you could trade manually, if you prefer. Some companies providing forex signals have programs that work in this way, although they are not likely to reveal the details of exactly how their forex trading software operates.

A price movement is not usually called a trend if it is very short term. Usually you would expect a trend to continued over the medium to long term, that is, at least several days. Sometimes it might continue for many weeks. In currency trading, usually there would be strong economic reasons for a downward or upward trend, especially if it was long lasting. A major financial crisis could produce a downward movement spanning several months, followed by a slow recovery that could take place over a year or longer.

‘The trend is your friend’ is one of the best known catchphrases of financial trading. Identifying an emerging trend in the early stages is one of the best ways to profit from forex or stock trading. Most beginners are advised to try to identify trends using charts and indicators.

Candlestick charts are commonly used for this purpose. The slope of an upward trend is shown by plotting the low points of the candlestick shadows, and the slope of a downtrend is shown by drawing a line through the high points of the shadows.

Some traders also talk about ‘sideways trends’ when the prices are fluctuating between two points relatively steadily. In this case lines drawn through the high and low points of the shadows will be approximately horizontal, not converging or diverging. However, others consider that this type of pattern should not strictly be called a trend.

Looking back, it is easy to see the moment when a trend began. But looking ahead into the future it is harder to be sure when you have a trend and when you have a minor fluctuation. Two candlesticks do not make a trend! We all know this, but if you are plotting trend lines yourself manually, it is very tempting to think that you have a pattern before enough evidence is there.

This is where automatic forex trading system software can help you, by taking out the human element and producing signals only when all of the conditions are in place. Our top recommendation for automated forex software is FAP Turbo which has been getting great results for ordinary users and in the independent tests that we have seen online.

Let’s get straight to the meat with three currency trading tips that can help you increase your forex trading profits.

1. Avoid over trading

Many of the most profitable systems only produce a few trading signals. It can be frustrating waiting for the conditions to be right for your system. Many people give in to the temptation to open a few trades when the market is ‘almost right’. People who enjoy financial trading are almost always comfortable with risk. However this haphazard risk taking strategy will almost certainly lead to losses in the long run.

There is a reason why the rules of your system are as they are. The aim is to make money – but you can probably only to that consistently by keeping within the set boundaries.

Remember that in forex trading, less is often more. There is no point opening ten trades a day if only one of them is going to be profitable.

If you simply cannot deal with the boredom of a system that produces a very low number of trading opportunities, then look for a second system that you can track at the same time.

2. Be realistic in your goals

The second of our currency trading tips is to keep your head out of the clouds. One of the things that can ruin an otherwise sound trader is aiming for unrealistically high profit targets, like double your money in a month or whatever. Often this is called greed, but that’s too harsh a term for most situations. What actually happens in many cases is that people see ads about how somebody made tons of money with some system, and they start daydreaming. They are constantly thinking about making a lot of money from a single trade.

Actions soon follow thoughts and they start using high risk strategies that seem to give them a chance of achieving the dream. Instead, they often end up wiping out their funds. Looking back, it was completely predictable, but they were pulled off course by persistent thoughts of riches.

So if you catch yourself daydreaming, cut off that thought right away. Focus on making a realistic profit figure – and no more. If you happen to make a lot more one time, put it aside and tell yourself that it’s there to cover the losing spell that may soon follow. Do not start expecting to make that much on every trade!

3. Take a step back

As well as checking your trading signals on daily, hourly and/or minute charts, it can be very helpful to take a broader retrospective view. Look back over the last week’s or month’s charts regularly.

This will stop you becoming blinkered so that you can more clearly see what went right or wrong for you and why. It may give you ideas that will help you tweak your system or even find a new one. Most importantly, it will help you to refine and improve your forex trading strategies for success.

Do you have your own currency trading tips that you want to share? Please leave a comment.

What are the best times to day trade forex? Day trading is a quick in, quick out method of currency trading that will have you making money quickly if you do it right. But it is a risky business and you need to get as many factors as possible working in your favor.

Generally the best plan for a beginner is to get into the habit of trading during some of the busiest times. Do not look for quiet periods hoping to make a big break when nobody else is around. It just does not happen that way and you could be caught out. Better to go with the crowd at a time when you can be more sure of being matched at a good price for both your opening and closing deals.

So when are the busiest forex trading times? The answer is the overlap between the London and New York forex trading hours. London is actually the busiest currency trading floor, with New York second. London business hours are good for trading on the euro, British pound and Swiss franc, since most of the major countries using these currencies are within one hour time difference from Britain. New York of course is the home of the US dollar, the most traded currency, and the time zone also covers Canada.

Expressed in British time (the same as UTC in winter), trading starts in London at 8.00 am and finishes at 4 pm, while trading in New York starts at 1 pm UTC and finishes at 9 pm. Therefore the overlap is from 1 pm to 4 pm British time. Expressed in New York time (EST), the overlap is from 8 am to 11 am. That is when the forex market is busiest on practically every day.

Of course those hours may not be ideal for everybody. If you live in one of those time zones and want to day trade forex outside of normal business hours when you may be working another job, you will certainly have the opportunity. If you live in Europe you can trade in the evening when the New York market is still open, and if you live in the EST time zone you can trade in the early market when the London floor is already very active.

Also, if you trade cross pairs that do not involve the US dollar, you may find a busy time for that pair based on the business hours of their two countries. For example the AUD/JPY pair can be reasonably busy during the Asian session when Australian and Japanese business hours overlap. However, even on these pairs there is usually more activity if you can also overlap with US or British trading times.

Long term traders who may leave a trade open for several days or weeks will be less constrained by the peak trading times. For day traders, however, it is important to be able to slip in and out of a very busy market if you want to profit from forex scapling strategies. So it makes sense to take timing into account if you plan to day trade forex for profit.

To a beginner forex currency trading may seem very complex, but there is no need to make it as complicated as many people do. Put simply, it is a way of making money from the daily changes in currency prices by trading in currency on the internet. It is often called forex or FX trading, which are just short names for ‘foreign exchange’. It is a speculative form of investment, so it is risky. At the same time, it allows many people to make money from their home computers by working just a few hours each day.

One of the benefits of forex trading over stock trading is that it is a 24 hour market so you can trade in the evenings. Currency trading can be done in any part of the world, you are not limited to your own country’s currency. So you can take advantage of the different time zones which mean that the market is constantly open from Sunday night to Friday night.

In other respects you may think of forex currency trading as being a lot like stock trading. You are dealing in rising and falling prices, submitting buy orders for currencies that you think will rise and sell orders for currencies that you think will fall in value. You can make these trading decisions on the basis of world economic events or more simply, you can look at charts which show patterns and indicators that many traders follow to make successful trades.

Currency is always traded in pairs because it has to be an exchange: in order to buy one currency you always have to sell another. A common pair for beginners to use is EUR/USD, or the euro and US dollar. These are the most heavily traded pairs so costs are usually low and a lot of information is available, making it one of the easier and cheaper pairs to trade.

When you are trading this pair you are always either buying or selling euros, with the dollar as the quote currency. If you want to buy dollars when trading this pair, you have to place a sell order for euros, and that will automatically mean that you are investing in dollars. This is called ‘going short’ on EUR/USD. If you want to buy euros, that is called ‘going long’.

The aim, of course, is to place a closing order on the trade after the price has moved the right way so that you are in profit. Of course if it goes against you, you can lose, so you need to place stop orders. A stop order cancels out your trade at a certain level of loss so that you are protected from large losses.

Many brokers will accept a very small minimum investment to attract new traders. At the same time, the use of leverage and margins means that you can control large position sizes with a small account balance. You may only have to supply 1% of your trade amount in order to open a trade. The broker guarantees the rest, protecting their position with automatic stops. All of this means that beginner forex currency trading does not necessarily require a large investment.