Foreign exchange trading is the trading of currencies. Most currencies can be traded. Huge amounts of currencies are traded 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. On average $1.9 trillion is traded a day. The most traded are United States Dollar, Japanese Yen, Euro, Canadian Dollar, British Pound Sterling, Australian Dollar and Swiss Franc. Many brokers will let you...

Forex Trading: Introduction to Foreign Exchange Trading

George Polizogopoulos

The foreign exchange markets are always in a constant state of flux, and for the budding trader, it can be a rather daunting place to invest and trade your money. We bring you into the world of foreign exchange trading. As you look into the prospect of forex trading you will begin to understand the width and breadth of the forex market. It is a worldwide market trading currencies 24 hours a day 7 days a week (Well actually, markets are actually open for about 5.5days a week actively trading). As a consequence of this huge market, the market is highly liquid and high volume takes place daily. As the market in constant flux there are plenty of opportunities for forex trading.

Forex trading takes advantage of the constant flux of the market, buying and selling into and out of the ebbs and flows of the foreign exchange trading charts. Many profitable trades await the trader in these markets. So as you examine your charts as a forex trader you will find that the market display's repetitive behaviour as well as trends. Trends can go in three ways; an up trend, down trend and a sideways trend. As a trader you take advantage of price differences so you ought to stay away from sideways trending forex markets while jumping at every chance at up trending (long) markets or down trending (short) markets.

The important catchphrase in forex trading or any other trading for that matter is that "the trend is your friend." An uptrend is simply defined as a set of prices on a chart that display a pattern of higher highs and higher lows: or put simply a graph going up from left to right. A downtrend is the opposite to an uptrend with a pattern of lower lows and lower highs: or simply put a graph going down from left to right. Then you have your sideways charts which really doesn't display any clear uptrend or downtrend and shows up as either an erratic pattern of highs and lows or a pattern where the price doesn't really change much between the highs and lows.

Foreign exchange trading takes advantage of trends and the price differences at which the traders buy and sell the foreign currencies. It is a highly valuable skill to master the ability to read charts and to be able to see the uptrends and downtrends as well as the sideways trends in any chart or market you examine. Remember, the trend is your friend, ride the trend and you shall have your profits. As profits are the main objective of any forex trading venture.

This article "Forex Trading: Introduction to Foreign Exchange Trading" can be found in our Foreign Exchange (FX) Markets category.

About the author:

George Polizogopoulos is a staff writer for MyShareTrading.com, an information hub for traders: forex, shares, derivatives, CFD's. MyShareTrading.com also provides free blogs for traders who wish to share their market experiences.

You may publish this article on the condition that it is not edited and all html links to our website is kept intact. MyShareTrading.com © 2006 All Rights Reserved.

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