How to start Spot Currency trading

OK. How do I start?

Real secret of successful financial trading is pretty much buried under lots of unnecessary information and a lot of it intentionally because retail brokers do want your money.

The "free" information is available in abundance. You can easily be overwhelmed by it. But it will have some sales pitch hidden somewhere which is not easy to locate.

You are lured with paper (dummy) capital from $10,000 to $1 million deposited in your demo account and you make thousands with over leveraged account and think you can duplicate same with real money. Your psychology does not come into play as real money is not at stake.

As long as you treat paper trading as a training and practising tool, it's fine.

The All-in-one free Paper Trading (demo) Account

You can download Metatrader 4, a free simulation platform to trade fx. After opening a trading account with a broker, an email with the login data will be received and with instructions how to download the platform. Some brokers provide login and password on registering with them. In several cases, you don't need to open an account with them. The platform can register your details and provide login and password instantly when the demo is installed. We will provide you the demo account link for a broker we consider has a consistent record of maintaining narrow spreads and lower slippage based on our criteria of a fair broker. But you are free to use any broker for demo trading purpose.

The metatrader is a simple trading platform. Trading can be done on the desktop, smartphones and tablets as well. The desktop platform, with its better computing resources, can be used to make analysis, deploy indicators for studying price patterns , test auto traders or black boxes as well. Actual trading can be made on the smartphone after the charts have been studied on the desktop.

The versatile platform additionally offers the possibility to code your own trading algorithm, or expert advisor, test it and then run it. A trader can either code its own expert advisor or use freelancers to do it and after that, the Strategy Tester option can be used in order to see the results back in time.

The MT4 platform allows trading to be executed at the market prices. A trader can also use pending orders. If the trader intends to buy from higher levels, a pending buy stop order can be set, and if the selling is supposed to take place from lower levels, a pending sell stop order can be placed instead. Placing such orders is easy and straightforward. One is not limited to the indicators offered by default but import indicators coded in the mql4 language.

What is essential for me to understand before installing Metatrader 4 (also known as MT4)?

Before getting your feet (rather the fingers) wet in simulated trading, it is essential to have an understanding of the ‘basics’ of the forex market like the types of currency pairs traded on the market, trading hours and time zones, market size and market players, forex structure, and lingo such as pip, lot, open, high, low, close, bid-ask spread, margin and leverage. Finally, with a bit of sense and sensibility of the stop loss and profit taking application, you can well be on your way to simulated trading.

If you want to avoid turning the MT4 platform into a video game arena, just stick to what is being taught here.

Many of aspiring traders have been led to believe that trading is a simple task of pressing buy or sell based on indicators; like a job, do the things and you get paid. Unscrupulous brokers, educators and signal providers have been promoting this kind of approach ever since online fx trading has started in 2002.

What is a naked chart?

Metatrader is packed with various multi-coloured software tools, most of whom are considered lagging indicators, mostly based on moving averages of different varieties. We would advise you to delete all them of from your platform so that you can concentrate on using the price chart without getting distracted.

We encourage you to spend time on learning to read the market using a naked chart : mainly the elements of time, price and exhaustion points. For practising this you will be required to use Vertical Lines (for plotting timelines) , Horizontal Lines to mark price action exhaustion points (also called support and Resistance or demand and supply lines). Live price quotes will be provided by MT4 broker through their platform.

Start practising frequently and spend some time on observing how the market is driven by imbalances in supply and demand and sentiment as well.

We treat Fx trading as a Business, and you are expected to put in effort, time and money to pick up various skills that will be required to run this business. As a self-directed trader, it's a challenge to handle various tasks. You should try not to over-complicate the process while doing a little of bit of everything. Keep it as simple as possible.

"WHY I do, WHAT I do, the WAY I do it." Let's understand this endeavour in these terms.

Why I do : A rationale should be there for developing trading ideas based on understanding of the market structure and forces active in it.

What I do : We put our faith in simple setups, strategies and systems.

The Way I do: We believe in

• Trading small lots

• Using lower leverage

• Putting wider stops

FX trading is a business which largely involves guessing and exploring probabilities since you are exposed to only the tip of the market iceberg.