High Probability Forex Trading Using Engulfing Patterns

By Tim Barnby

Few things are more satisfying to me that bare chart trading. Ive seen traders with so many indicators on their screen that I could not even see the price of the currency pair. What do any of these indicators tell you anyway? Do I need a MACD or a CCI? I can see which direction the trend is moving without them. How about a stochastic? I can see where candles are closing relative to the high or low. Other than some horizontal lines at key support and resistance levels, some Fibonacci retracements, and trend lines I often have nothing on my charts at all. All of these are topics for future articles.

A bullish engulfing pattern is characterized by having a real body which completely engulfs the real body of the preceding candle. A simpler way of describing this is that the bullish engulfing candle has a higher open and a lower close than the preceding candle. A bearish engulfing candle has a lower open and a higher close than the bar immediately preceding it.

The bullish and bearish engulfing patterns are powerful indicators of a trend reversal. Engulfing patterns must appear after a significant run up or down in price to be considered valid. When the engulfing pattern presents itself at a probable price reversal zone, or a confluence of support or resistance it is even more reliable. My experience has shown these patterns to be over 75% reliable, and normally offer at least a two to one reward to risk ratio when traded on the one hour or four hour charts. They are even more reliable on the daily and weekly charts.

There are a couple of valid methods for trading engulfing patterns. The first is pretty basic. You place a market order at the close of the candle. Your stop loss order goes a few pips past the opposite side of the engulfing candle, and the target goes somewhere at least twice the distance of the stop loss. Using this method, if the engulfing candle has a 50 pip range, your stop loss would be about 55 pips and your target would be about 110 pips away from your entry. The more advanced method involves pulling a Fibonacci retracement tool on the engulfing candle. Place your entry order at the 38.2%, 50% or 61.8% Fibonacci level of the candle, and place the stop loss in the same position as the first method. This method gives you a smaller stop loss, which offers you a much high per pip value, and a bigger target. It has a lower rate of successful fills, so youll have fewer trades using this entry method.

No matter what your method of entry is, you will profit from trading these powerful reversal indicators. Youll also save yourself the stress of conflicting technical indicators and cluttered screens. Trade this pattern for a week and see if I am wrong. - 23204

About the Author:

For more information on FX Trading, please come to the Market Mover Edge and look at our mentoring programs and live trading rooms. You can join my FREE FX signals list at FX Master-Mind Newsletter

Investing With Confidence Using Trend Following Strategies

By Bob LeBrun

I'm not what anyone would call an active trader in the stock market. I generally rely on my broker's advice and invest in low risk stocks and mutual funds. This strategy worked for me until the latest recession. I lost money on some investments and my return on most of my investments was poor. I decided I would have to take a more active role in managing my money.

I had heard about trend following and how investors could make money by taking advantage of trends in the market. I started researching the strategy and I came across TrendFollowingStrategies.com. This website had a new approach to trend following and only dealt with ETFs (exchange traded funds) which are a fairly low risk investment. I was definitely interested.

I reviewed the information on the site and did a little more investigating. I liked the fact that they send members email alerts on which ETFs are good investments along with advice on when to buy and sell specific ETFs. They claimed that their members could make money regardless of the overall market trend.

I joined TrendFollowingStrategies.com about eight months ago. It has worked even better than I thought it would. I'm not constantly glued to my PC trading stocks. In fact in eight months I've only made six trades and a fair amount of money. The information TrendFollowingStrategies.com sends me lets me know when to buy, when to sell and I can decide how much to invest in any trade.

Even better, I don't have to spend a lot of time buying and selling stocks. The system works with about ten trades a year. I'm really not crazy about playing the market, but I do want my money to work for me. TrendFollowingStrategies.com allows me to make money without having to spend a lot of time setting up trades.

I really appreciate that I don't have to make high risk investments to get a good return on my money. This website doesn't recommend high risk investments, just EFTs. EFTs are similar to mutual funds and are less risky than many other investments in the market. I had some EFTs in my portfolio before I joined TrendFollowingStrategies.com, I just wasn't maximizing my return on them.

I want to make money, but without the element of risk that so many investments entail. TrendFollowingStrategies.com has strategies that work for me. I'm a bit lazy about my investments too, so making a low number trades is perfect. I love the ease of investing with this method.

If you want to make more money on the market, but you don't want to spend all your time making money, I suggest that you join TrendFollowingStrategies.com. This way someone else does the work while you reap the benefits. You can make just a few trades a year and still make a good yield on your capital. If you become a member, you won't regret it. I'm am really glad I joined. - 23204

About the Author:

Find more on ETF trend and trend following systems.

How Technical Analysis Works

By Michael Swanson

Technical analysis was derived from observing financial markets for the past decade. This method being the oldest was discovered and developed by Homma Munehisa during the early eighteenth century and progressed to the candlestick method whereby in modern day is a charting tool for technical analysis.

Others like Dow Jones, Charles Dow, William Gann and Ralph Elliott all had a major part that they played in developing the techniques for technical analysis. In the twentieth century more and more tools and theories have been either devised or enhanced as well as software for computers have been developed.

Your stock charts will show you resistance and support levels. Relevant information will determine the market prices, so internals are taken above the external indicator. The fluctuation of prices tends to repeat them as investors use the same patterns collectively so technical analysis would rather focus on solid trends and conditions.

Technical analysis is a vast topic. It is based on three assumptions - whereby history repeats itself and prices move in trends, as well as the market will discount everything. Analysts are not perturbed if stocks are undervalued; what matters is the security of past trading stats and what information the past stats can provide as to where the security will move in the future.

Technical analysis is often referred to as market technicians or technical market analysis and now and then you will hear the term chartist used. Patterns are exploited when technical analysis uses price patterns to identify trend in the financial market.

The discipline of security analysis forecasts future directions of prices by studying past market movements such as price and volume and only considers this. You have got to know when to buy and when to sell when it comes to investing or trading on the market. You can find the answers by looking at the technical analysis.

Technical analysis is by far the most reliable source for trading the markets. You would define this by looking at the chart patterns. A trader would use technical analysis and see in which direction the price for financial security and movement lies.

If the price has gone up then the trend is up, and vice versa if the price is down the trend will be down as well. When a trader finds that he cannot make a decision if the price is up or down he will declare this to be unclear. But when the prices are going back and forth across a range it is termed as sideways. - 23204

About the Author:

If you want to learn more about technical analysis go to www.wallstreetwindow.com.

Commodities and the Global Macro Trader

By Dwight Tourajdi

Commodity traders are not a bunch of overpaid taxi drivers. Instead they are a very sophisticated group of investors looking to gauge the supply and demand characteristics of both global demand and the specific demand for each and every commodity that they trade, and some that they don't. In addition there are more then one type of trader.

The largest group of traders are definitely the upstairs trader, or traders that are not on the floor of the exchange. Some have floor experience while others do not. The largest group of these are systematic long term trend followers while there are smaller subsets that do purely fundamental and others a hybrid model.

Next up are the global macro traders. They are probably the second largest group of commodity traders as they look to trade disparate and uncorrelated asset classes, as well as get a better picture of global imbalances.

One of the easiest to comprehend examples is that of the oil markets. When oil is climbing Mt Everest like Carl Lewis in the Olympics then you know that there will be some huge dislocations in the economy. Oil and oil service companies will be climbing like no ones business but other companies like airlines and trucking companies will be getting whacked like a rat in a mafia movie.

Another heavily monitored sector is that of precious metals. Gold and silver are great historic gauges of inflation and these days also act as alternative currencies since the Fiat currencies are all in shambles. If you aren't following gold then good luck trading bonds and the US Dollar. Yes, this stuff is that important.

After the shiny stuff we have the industrial metals. Things like copper, nickel, tin, iron, aluminum, zinc, and lead are all in this group. Cars, trucks, phones, computers, etc all have large amounts of industrial metals and are vital to the worlds economy. If you are not tracking industrial metals then you are missing out on one of the largest parts of the commodity complex and a vital part of the economy.

While many investors gloss over the agricultural commodities they shouldn't. In the future agricultural commodities will only be increasing in importance as the worlds water supplies continue to diminish. If you are already monitoring demographic trends and overall supply demand you should also be following agricultural commodities.

As you can see commodities can be a very useful and profitable asset class. With several sub sectors as well as the fact that most commodities are so universal that they only trade in one currency and it should be obvious that you need to track if not trade commodities. - 23204

About the Author:

If you need actionable trading ideas then check out The Macro Trader It is a weekly global macro investing advisory publication with frequent intra-week updates for time-critical analysis and actionable trading ideas.

Forex Ivybot

By Frank Guest

I have been into the world of trading since 15 years and have used many forex robots during this period. The main disadvantage which I found in all these products was that they became ineffective after a certain period of time. Forex world keeps on changing and if the software cannot update itself according to these fluctuations they become of no use.

When using Ivybot you can trade EUR/USD, USD/CHF, EUR/JPY and USD/JPY. The decision to run Ivybot on four currency pairs was based on two reason; firstly, you can encounter margin requirement issues if you run the robot on more than four. However if you were to trade on less than four you would miss profitable trades, resulting in less overall profit.

The Ivy League guys are not implementing this software just for their benefit. Even after the launch of this robot they will keep on updating this product as and when the forex world tends to change. They give you a lifetime guarantee which no other product has ensured.

You can use it in your trading as long as you want as it will automatically be upgraded according to the happenings in the forex world. The people behind this project are keen to take their forex robot a step ahead in the foreign exchange market.

Do not waste your time and money on forex robots which will not prove to be beneficial after a certain period of time. Ivybot is there at your help whenever you want and will help to improve your business. This product is hype among the crowd.

The developers claim that updating Ivybot so that it can continue to trade effectively in changing market conditions will make it one of the most profitable Forex trading systems ever made. - 23204

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Download the world's most revolutionary Forex robot right now with the Forex Ivybot.