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The basics of the forex market. How To read a chart

The forex chart is among the most basic tools in a forex trader’s arsenal. Simply put, it is a graph of a particular currency pair’s performance over a given period of time. Reading forex charts is essential to a trader’s business, so it’s important to know how to read them and understand what they mean.

Every forex chart will be labeled with a currency pair: EUR/USD, USD/GBP, etc. Remember, all forex trading deals with different countries’ currency in relation to each other. The EUR/USD chart, for example, tells you how the euro and the U.S. dollar compare.

Along the bottom of the chart is the timeline -- 15 minutes, an hour, a day, a week, or some other period. Going up the right-hand side are incremental amounts. For the EUR/USD chart, the amounts might be 1.2531 at the bottom, going up to 1.2561 at the top. And of course the middle of the chart shows what position the EUR/USD pair held at what time.

The forex chart is useful because it shows in graphic terms how a currency pair is doing. You can see at a glance whether a currency is getting stronger or weaker, and you can act accordingly. Choosing the time frame helps you see very minor trends (in a 15-minute period, say) or more long-term ones (over the course of several days, perhaps).

In the forex market, transactions are always handled in pairs: You buy one currency and sell another one. The idea is to make a trade when you believe the currency you’re buying is going to go up in value compared to the one you’re selling. Then, if it turns out your prediction was correct, you do another trade in the reverse direction -- selling the currency you originally bought and buying the one you sold -- in order to reap the profits.

For example, let’s say the market reports this: GBP/EUR 1.2200. That means the cost of buying one British pound is 1.22 euros. If you believed that course was going to change, and the euro was going to become more valuable than the pound, you might sell 100,000 pounds, buy 100,000 euros, and wait. Then let’s say a few weeks later, the exchange rate fluctuates to this: EUR/GBP 1.3100. Sure enough, the euro is now worth 1.31 pounds, a profit of 0.11 per unit.

The forex market is vast and daunting and mostly inhabited by giant organizations. But it can be navigated by individuals who have studied the finer points and who want to take a risk on something potential profitable. And since the whole world uses money, the trading of that money is always going to be a major force in the financial world.

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by: Admin Total views: 24 Word Count: 458 Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 Time: 1:31 PM 0 comments

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