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#it cost me like. 5 usd per volume

lucifersincentivetosleep · 1 year

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3 months late on this news but apparently Seven Seas has been given license to translate the physical Obey Me! Manga which I was actually excited about.

Then I saw they're selling volume one for $15USD, which is usually what light novels sell for which this is not(manga are usually priced at $5-7 USD per volume).

Like no thank you, byeeeee 👋🏻

Though, if it's priced that way as a result of the unionizing that went on last year then actually I am fine with that, pay your translators.

I'm not excited to potentially pay what will round up to about $45 USD without shipping or tax for three volumes of manga, but if it's priced like that because manga should already be more expensive to cover the cost of paying your people a living wage then fine, whatever.

Unless they're only releasing the large trim editions; which are always more expensive, then the $15 price point actually makes sense.

Undecided on buying the physical manga rn but at least I know it's being translated by a reputable source this time and not... whatever the heck mangaplaza has going on.

#screaming into my personal void #obey me comic #we'll just have to wait and see honestly #apologies if this is all over i have trouble organizing my thoughts sometimes #also if you're curious about the union from what I understand they're formally recognised #and still in talks about finalizing agreements according to their twitter #solmares recent decisions are also making it hard to justify spending money on the game despite how much I like it

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realdatascraping · 5 months

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Google Search Result Scraper | Scrape Google SERP Result Data

Google Search Result Scraper - Scrape Google SERP Result Data

RealdataAPI / google-search-scraper

This tool allows you to extract the Google search result pages and compile all the details shown for a particular query, like organic and paid results, questions, and prices; people also asked for reviews, ads, etc. Choose your language or country, extract custom attributes, and save the data without coding. Our Google Search Result Scraper is available in the USA, UK, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Australia, Singapore, and other countries worldwide.

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The Google SERP Data Scraping Tool On Our Platform Crawls Search Results On The Largest Search Engine In The World And Extracts Data From Crawled Web Pages In Usable Formats Like CSV, JSON, Excel, Or XML. Using Google SERP Scraper, You Can Scrape The Following Data From The Google Search Engine.

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TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Etsy introduced Etsy Ads at the end of August; I covered it on my blog. Some people are seeing decent returns, but many are not. I started a forum thread here for continuing discussion.

A day later, Amazon announced it has waived their $40 a month shop fee for Handmade by Amazon shops. See the pinned post on their Facebook page.

A large study of click-through-rates (CTR) on Google reveals that the top link gets over 30% of the clicks, titles with questions get 14% more clicks than those without, and moving up one slot in the results leads to more clicks, unless you move from 10th to 9th. They cite Etsy’s study of titles & CTR (which showed that shorter titles get more clicks, something that this study also found).

Trend watch: a suggestion that Americans can avoid most of the tariff pain in the pocketbook by buying used clothing & other items. “Secondhand and vintage is no longer synonymous with a dusty pile of outdated sweaters in the corner of a church basement, or a yearly rummage sale. Online resale, including high-end designer items, is booming, thanks to start-ups like The RealReal, Depop, Poshmark, eBay, and Etsy. It’s possible to fill your entire closet this way”. Pre-owned & rented clothing also makes fans of sustainability happy.

Also, “grandmillennials” are a thing.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy US searches often now have a full first page of items that ship free or have the $35 free shipping guarantee, as of September 6 (although they were testing it earlier than that.) I was seeing the rare exception, beyond searches that have fewer than 48 items shipping free, but it wasn’t clear if these are tests or personalization. Then on September 21, we started seeing many items with shipping charges on the first page of even very large results, & most smaller results didn’t give much if any priority to free shipping at all. There has been no statement from Etsy, so your guess is as good as mine ...

In the meantime, they’ve begun promoting free shipping to buyers, which has led to some media coverage. Some note that the timing is good, since most US holiday purchases online in the past several years have included free shipping.

There is a new chapter in the Ultimate Guide To Etsy Search, involving attributes. The accompanying podcast with Etsy’s head taxonomist [transcript with links to the podcast] is quite interesting. She says that one of the reasons that some attributes haven’t shown up yet as search filters is that not enough sellers have applied them to listings. “If we have 100,000 items in the search results and a buyer uses a filter, and that filter causes the results to return just 20 items, that makes it seem broken. The buyer no longer trusts the results. If only 20% of sellers fill out an attribute, showing a filter based on that attribute to buyers isn’t going to be helpful because such a drastic reduction in results makes them lose confidence in those search results. We have to wait until a large number of sellers fill out that data to show it to buyers as a filter. When we do, sellers who have filled out that attribute show in those filtered search results. Sellers who haven’t, don’t.” Also, “[w]e know that shoppers who interact with these filters tend to buy more expensive items.” And, there aren’t separate jewellery attributes for “gold”, “gold-filled” & “gold-plated” because “[m]any jewelry buyers don’t have your experience and don’t know the huge difference between these things.”

The new commercials were launched earlier this month; you can check them all out here, and here is some media coverage. Some analysts think this is a good thing for the stock.

Vox published a review of Etsy’s latest free shipping push, in contrast with its history. [I am sure most of you have seen that, but if not, it is a good read!] “Silverman doesn’t like the words “handmade” or “craft” because they “don’t communicate anything to buyers about when to think of Etsy.” he says now. Nobody wakes up thinking, “Gosh, I need to buy something handmade today,” he tells me, which may be true but I rarely wake up thinking I need to buy anything at all, and more commonly wake up in horror because I’ve already bought way too much. “You need to furnish your apartment. You need to prepare for a party. You need to find a gift for a friend. You need a dress. Handmade is not the value proposition — unique, personalized, expresses your sense of identity, those are things that speak to buyers.” [emphasis added] Also, apparently Etsy founder Rob Kalin “didn’t know what seed funding was when he took it” 😮

The new tool for creating country-specific sales is finally out. You still can’t create the equivalent of the $35 free shipping guarantee for countries other than the US, however, which makes this pretty useless for people wanting to offer free shipping in the US and to their own country. The only way to come close is to set a 30 day free shipping sale to your own country, but it won’t show up in search (unless people filter for free shipping) or get the Canadian search boost for items that ship free, and you still need to renew it every 30 days. In short, Etsy is telling us to overcharge our customers in other countries with no way to offer them the same deals Americans are getting.

Sellers can now use Etsy Labels for USPS First Class letters & flats.

Holiday tips continue to roll out: here are some ideas for running holiday sales and promotions on Etsy.

Advanced content on machine learning: Etsy is employing its data on styles to serve up personalized recommendations, including the “Our Picks for You” section on the home page. The purchase and favouriting rates are part of what gets shown. They’ve discovered that some styles are more popular are different times of the year.

For those of you who think Etsy doesn’t spend enough on advertising, they are actually buying spots on tv shows now, including this Las Vegas morning show. [video]

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Sad to report that Keywords Everywhere is becoming a paid tool starting October 1st (although it may take longer to roll out to your account). https://keywordseverywhere.com/news.html They need to do this because they were being scraped by bots, which was affecting user experience & costing them a lot of time and money. Fortunately, it is still going to be very cheap - 10,000 keywords for $1 USD, purchased ahead of time as credits. They say that the average user will spend less than $2 a month, & I suspect that the average Etsy user will spend less. Once your account moves to a paid one, you will no longer see the search volume, cost per click & competition numbers under search terms until you buy credits, although the "related keywords" & "people also search" sections will still show up on the right side of Google search. I usually do not recommend any paid tools, but I do think this will still be worth every penny, especially if you remember to turn it off when shopping instead of researching! Every comparable paid tool costs way more than this. And despite the rush of attention since their announcement, I still received a personal reply to my email within 24 hours.

You know how I always talk about nofollow links? They still exist, but Google has expanded their link attribution codes to include “sponsored” & "ugc" (user generated content), and all might be crawled at any point after March 1, 2020. Moz did a top level explanation, and here is Google’s (shorter) summary. But it may not really matter much to the average site.

Want to rank well on Google and other search engines? Create “complete content.”

A followup on last edition’s discussion of canonical URLs - Google gets the final say. [video]

Google is now releasing monthly videos of their search news; first one is here.

Some of you will remember Moz’s Whiteboard Friday series on learning SEO in one hour. They’ve now compiled all 6 videos in one place.

And if you want to learn the basics of link building quickly, Moz has a short version of that chapter from their Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

If you are afraid you are missing some SEO rules on your top pages, check out this complete checklist for on-page SEO.

There are tons of SEO tools for Wordpress; here are 15 of the best.

Many people will find your blog through search engines, so make sure you use keywords in your blog posts.

If you have a website, check out 16 things that can harm your search engine rankings [semi-advanced in part, some points are discussing coding]

Success on YouTube involves SEO, something I find many users forget.

Mostly advanced: reminder that as of September 1, you can’t use robots.txt to tell Google not to index pages or sites.

Advanced content for website developers: you need to make sure the site is ready for SEO work.

There are always more Google updates; this one is still rolling out, and was confirmed by Google, but very few details were given. Sistrix did the first comprehensive analysis, although it is still early, and health and media sites seem to be the most dramatically affected.

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Marketing emails need to be carefully designed for success. Everything from the layout to the “preheader” matters.

If you have content on one medium that is doing well for you, it’s time to “repurpose” it for different platforms.

Infographics are very popular in content marketing; here’s how to make one, with 15 free templates.

Some Instagram posts do better than others; here’s why. Among other study findings, “smaller profiles which use more hashtags actually do see better engagement rates per post.”

If you aren’t getting much interaction on Instagram, you could be “shadowbanned.” There are ways to avoid that happening, and ways to fix it when it does.

“Content factories” are a big part of Instagram traffic. Maybe Facebook should crack down on this?

Pinterest is combining image recognition visual search with Shoppable Pins.

Facebook is considering hiding the like counts on News Feed posts, as Instagram is testing in 7 countries right now. “The idea is to prevent users from destructively comparing themselves to others and possibly feeling inadequate if their posts don’t get as many Likes. It could also stop users from deleting posts they think aren’t getting enough Likes or not sharing in the first place.”

Video app TikTok can be confusing, so here is a step-by-step guide for beginners. And here’s a podcast [with text] on the basics.

Twitter chats are a great way to attract interest in your business.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Facebook is testing new shopping ads, but they are only available to small groups at the moment: checkout from the Facebook app, and turning Instagram shopping posts into ads. Here’s more on the latter.

Snapchat now has longer ads and different formats.

I see a lot of questions on what you can advertise on various platforms; here’s a good summary of items/topics prohibited on major sites.

Since so many sellers are interested in other types of advertising right now, here are a few primers, most of which I have posted here before: Setting up Google Shopping for your website Instagram Sponsored Posts How to beat Facebook’s ad algorithm Setting up Pinterest ads

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Have Google Analytics set up on your website but don’t know how to use it? Here are some common features [text and video] you may want to take advantage of. Note that the part about setting it up doesn’t apply to most marketplaces and many website builders, which have a more simplified set up, as Etsy does.

The old Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is now almost entirely converted to the new version. Expect all of the old reports to be moved to the new version soon.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

There’s new evidence that Amazon has skewed its search algorithm to favour its own products & third-party products that make Amazon the most money. ”Executives from Amazon’s retail divisions have frequently pressured the engineers at A9 to surface their products higher in search results, people familiar with the discussions said.” In case that WSJ article goes back behind a paywall, here is some news coverage of it. “Instead of adding profitability into the algorithm itself, Amazon changed the algorithm to prioritize factors that correlate with profitability, the article said.” Amazon denies this, of course.

Despite the legal agreement in Germany, Amazon is still suspending accounts without 30 days notice.

Want to use cash to pay for online purchases? Amazon is now offering that option in the US.

eBay listings now default to 1-day handling; if you ship slower than that, make sure to remember to change the default on each new listing you make.

eBay managed payments (the equivalent of Etsy Payments) are now available in Germany.

A review of major shipping trends in ecommerce notes that “[t]he accelerated supply chain is putting small sellers at a crossroads regarding if they can afford to take a hit on margins” when discussing Etsy’s free shipping push.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Over ⅓ of US adults have bought something on social media, over 50% of 18-34 year olds are in that group. Far fewer had used visual search or virtual reality.

More people are shopping online late at night; women are more likely to do it, but men spend more when they do. [I’ve noticed this trend on my site and Etsy shop for a few years now,compared to when I first started selling in 2008.]

The majority of shoppers worldwide who are online use videos to make some purchase decisions, as shopping lists, how-to research, and to check reviews.

Gen Z (the generation after millennials) is more concerned about their health than the the previous 2 generations, and sometimes avoid the stresses of social media by shopping in brick & mortar stores. “About two-thirds (67%) of Gen Z prefer products made with ingredients they can understand, and tend to buy products in health and wellness categories more frequently than other generations. On environmental issues, 65% said they prefer simple packaging and 58% said they want eco-friendly packaging. Half of the group seeks products that are locally sourced or made, and 57% are seeking products that are environmentally sustainable, but fewer are willing to pay a premium price for them.”

For the 2019 holiday season, “65% of holiday shoppers will use a mobile device to shop, and 65% will make an online purchase via mobile.”

How do different industries get their online traffic? Google sends sites 8 times more traffic than all social media sites combined, and Facebook drives nearly ⅔ of all visits from social media. Instagram is responsible for less than 1%, while Twitter tops 10%. The author notes that “faster-growing social networks like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are designed from the ground up in a way that makes it difficult to drive traffic to external sites.”

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Google is working on letting you search your Google Photos for text; it seems to be using AI to identify & store the text in your screenshots and other images. It’s interesting technology that will likely be used in many ways, including search engines, if it works well.

If you like convo snippets on Etsy, here’s a tool that will make them possible in many more places.

Need a photo editor that works on mobile? Here’s a list of 12, most of which are free or cost only $1 USD.

This one simple trick makes everything faster and easier.

Stuff that probably shouldn’t taste like pumpkin spice. [humour]

#seo #search engine optimization #search engine marketing #etsynews #analytics #stats #social media #contentmarketing #content marketing #Ecommerce #smallbiz #CindyLouWho2NewsUpdates

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samii-ka · 5 years

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LAST MINUTE SALE BEFORE THE HOLIDAYS 3D Printers will be inaccessible after this week, until roughly mid-Janurary. 50% off the cost of 3D printing services for ALL who DM me until both 3D printers are booked to Thu, 12th Dec* (AEDT +11:00)! Pricing described further below... ⦁*[CST = Thu, 12 Dec, 6:00am]. Negotiable. ⦁Provide 3D files or DM me to discuss what you have in mind! Links below. (Custom modelling work currently unavailable until after the holidays) ⦁There is still time to guarantee Christmas delivery if extra is provided for Express shipping (Express not required within Victoria, Australia). ⦁Does not include any sanding or paint work unless print time is short. Materials such as elastic and velcro negotiable (included in the box, not assembled). 3D printers: ⦁Zortrax M200 build volume: 200mm x 200mm x 180mm ⦁Zortrax M300 build volume: 300mm x 300mm x 300mm Price varies per design and it's size. Here are some rough examples, to give a better idea (These are all the original prices, in USD according to conversion from AUD, NOT discounted)... ⦁28mm miniatures: 1-2 hours (about $5 per miniature) ⦁Small masquerade mask: roughly 7 hours (roughly $27) ⦁Full face-covering mask: ranging between 18-40 hours (depending on size): Between $62-$140 I take PayPal through DM here, or order through Etsy custom request (Preferable!). Contact me via this page or on my Etsy store here: https://etsy.me/351Gz05 (you can also see more items through this link to compare prices (check raw prints, not painted ones, for more accuracy pertaining to this sale) Examples of design options (Pick something you like and DM me the link!) : ⦁ Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/ (3D printing dedicated site) ⦁ Sketchfab: https://bit.ly/2PnITI0 (This site tends to include more interesting models, depending on your tastes. Use the search bar to find what you're looking for.) #art #artist #artwork #3D #3Dart #3Dprintedart #3Dmodel #3dprint #3dprinting #3dprintingservice #3dprinted #zortrax #zortraxm200 #zortraxm300 #Christmassale #holidays #masks #butreallyanythingyouwant (at Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/B537Q9cDvJa/?igshid=kousjm4u7nl5

#art #artist #artwork #3d #3dart #3dprintedart #3dmodel #3dprint #3dprinting #3dprintingservice #3dprinted #zortrax #zortraxm200 #zortraxm300 #christmassale #holidays #masks #butreallyanythingyouwant

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bradsuserinterface · 3 years

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My Report of Top 10 Economical Impacts of COVID-19

Top 10 Effects and Changes due to COVID-19 Impacts. 1. Collectable Trading Cards have seen significant inflation. About 5 years worth condensed over a few months. https://articles.starcitygames.com/2020/05/04/reserved-list-commander-staples-are-spiking-its-time-to-take-action/ Reasons: > US Market Dependent or Influence. Other countries base prices on US websites and ebay for fair market value. > US Government stimulus checks. People having excess weekly to spend money. Use the money to target and buyout multiple copies of a card to inflate their prices. > Overhype in the Pokemon community - Jake Paul unboxing 1st edition Pokemon Card Booster Box on a charity stream at the end of last year. Graded cards up 25%-200% depending on print, condition and rarity. Young nostalgic adults now has disposable income to re-connect with their childhood and invest in an appreciating asset. > MTG Reserve list cards, (non-reprintable cards) all it takes is one buy out of a desierable reserve list card and boom, people get FOMO. Significant influence comes from Youtubers, Streamers and Podcasts that talk about the buyouts. This advertises a potential to make money of cards, consequently making other reserve list cards a target. My Relationship. I bought reserve list cards from the start of 2020 till the end of december. I’ve even bought some as late as March after the boom. I spent and traded about $9,200-$9,600 on MTG Reserve List Cards. I estimate that I’ve spent about 7,000 in Cash and the other $2200-$2,600 as trades. Todays market value’s my collection of reserve list cards at approx $14,351 USD or $20534.87 NZD. I plan on holding at least for another 5 years to gain a 100-200% increase. 2. Steam, Xbox, PS4-5, Nintendo online co-current online player bases explodes over lockdown. Reasons: > People are self-isolating at home, nothing to do, limited education. More inclined to get distracted by playing games to pass the time. > Game Publishers and other services promoting deals and sales for people to buy new games. Opportunity to make more from accessibility and user pool. > Sheep in the crowd are more likely to hop online to play with friends since social distancing is in place. Keeps people connected and sane. Boosts optimism and friendships. My Relationship. I was playing CSGO and other games over the course of lockdown. There was no certainty about Uni. No one knew what to do as Universities and Schools prepair and co-ordinate for online learning. I noticed more people on networks, servers and streaming services that connected people from playing games to a form of communicating media. Steam database suggests a large increase to co-current players playing CSGO, Dota and PUBG. 3. In home entertainment sales for consoles, desktop PC’s and TV systems increase in demand and price Reasons: > Again, people in lockdown, to busy themselves and pass the time, consumers will opt to a form of rewarding entertainment. > Prices for parts went out of stock. > Families with younger people are constantly bored and will bother parents as they work. > Limited supply of consoles released, as a result, high volume for buy orders. > Shares for streaming services like Netflix, Disney, Amazone Prime, HBO, Lightbox and Quickflix My Relationship. Parent’s used Netflix religiously, best way to kill a TV series was in Lockdown with all the free time on our hands. I personally sought to buy a custom pc, however there was no stock for the parts and second hand markets for parts was over valued. Bad time to buy unless you were a month out from the first lockdown. 4. Small and Large Buisnesses transition online for a click and collect or deliver service. Reasons: > Keep people with retail jobs busy and earning > Better making something than nothing, It effects the way buisnesses calculate their quarterly budgets. > Essential for small buisnesses to make ends meet. > Great for people who are stuck at home and need products to help with their day to day lives. People can have that accessibility. My Relationship. Working part-time for a retail store. In the first lock down, we were not working but the leadership team were apllying for the government buisness subsidy. We did not get it, so bunnings cut it’s losses by closing several stores that did not make much. For us, eventually all our services were online for customers to participate in click and collect. We never made the smae back on a normal day but at least it was something. 5. Essential goods become high demand and are bought out for price gouging. Reasons: > People will buy out common sanitary goods, masks, hand sanitiser, toiilet paper. > Buisnesses will start to limit purchases per person. > Smart individuals or teams will buy in bulk and then sell else where for a a 100-200% mark up. > Opportunity to try new recipes for fun or testing. My Relationship. Working in retail, the team is the highest priority to make sure we have enough essential sanitary goods. The rest we can sell at a limit. However during the first lockdown, we sold out and we caught people selling for a rediculous mark up just down the road or even outside the store. 6. Social media marketing increases sevenfold Reasons: > People are spending more time on their devices. > More exposure for online marketing and trade. > Most buisnessess can only operate online. My Relationship. Started to notice more adds on FB and Instagram with people pushing ideas or products from lockdown. Most servicess were pushing the click and collect service online so you could still recieve your goods face to face. 7. General population make large asset purchases within New Zealand instead of spending the money on travel and overseas spending. Reasons: > People are stuck inside NZ and can’t travel as freely as planned. > Funds saved will go towards other desired luxuries. > Shortage of cars and higher second hand market on trade me. My Realtionship Both parents bought new cars to replace old ones. Parents also planned trips to go down south. At the same time, prices were a premium and no sales of the sort, except for travel which was dying for people to spend money on their service to come and use. 8. Global Share Markets enter a 4-6 month depression at the height of the first and second lockdowns. Reasons: > Cashing out, flooding quanity buy orders. > No confidence in some brands and markets as COVID-19 ma > Cover living expenses, people have uncertainty if you don’t make as much as the average earner in NZ My Realtionship Following stocks and learning more about investing in them. This was a great time to invest, however, no one quite knew where the bottom was. 9. Government relief checks for Small and medium sized buisnesses. Reasons: > Keep people’s jobs alive > Keep confidence in the government. > Provide assistance for those who are suffering from hardships. My Relationship. Bunnings did apply for the stimulus relief fund over the first lockdown but was not successful to recieve the fund 10. Industries dependant on Travel, Immigration, Location based entertainment, forced to reduce workforce. Reasons: > No one can travel > No airflights, or travel into country unless you are a resident. My Relationship. I’ve met new people who have left the travel and travel entertainment industry as a consequence of covid. This has also shriveled up cost of running the buisnessess.

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xyzpocket-blog · 4 years

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Free Forex Training - The Ultimate Basics 2020

Course Prerequisite

Forex Demo Broker Account (See below if you do not already have one) Passport or Identity Document and Proof of address not older than 90 days (You will need these documents for verification purposes) Your full attention Practice, practice practice!!! Forex Broker Demo Account In order to be able to practice the exercises in this course, you will need to open a demo account. A demo account is a practice account where you are able to trade live using fake money and not your own money. Once you are comfortable with a demo account, you can then deposit real money and apply what you learned while using a demo account. Here are the steps to follow when opening a demo account: Click on this link (Non-US learners): Recommended broker. For the United States learners, follow this guide: Recommended US broker For the rest, let us continue. Click on the “Open Account” button at the top of the screen.

Fill in your details First name(s) – As per your Identity document Last Name – As per your Identity Document Country of residence – Should be chosen automatically if you are not using any proxy or VPN Mobile phone – Enter the correct number as this will be verified E-mail - Enter the correct e-mail address as this will also be verified Password – Choose a strong password with Letters, Numbers and Symbols (This will be your broker password on ForexTime.com) Click on “Send Pin” – A PIN will be sent to your cellphone and E-mail address. You may use any of the two PINs for verification. Enter the pin, accept the marketing consent and then click on “Register Now”. On the next page, enter all the necessary details to the best of your ability, Accept the agreements and click “Submit”

On the next page, select as follows: Account type – FXTM Standard Account currency – Any that you prefer Account leverage – 1:2000 Trading Account Password – Enter a strong password twice (This is different from your ForexTime portal login account that you set earlier. It will be your password to your MetaTrader account, more on this later) Click “Open Account” Next: Click on “Download platform”

Select the “Metatrader 4 Trading Terminal for PC” or “Metatrader 4 Trading Terminal for MAC” depending on your Operating system. Download and install the application. Go to your Desktop, you will see a ForexTime (FXTM) MT4 icon (Windows). Double click the icon and login. To find your login details, go to the e-mail that says “Congratulations! Your new trading account is now open”. Metatrader login (at the bottom of the e-mail) and use the Trading Account Password that you entered above. Should you need to install one for your phone, hover your mouse over the QR code, scan the QR code with your phone to download the platform. Go to your e-mail account that you used for registration. Open the e-mail that says “action required with regard to your verification” – see below! Click “upload”

Upload your Identity document as per the e-mail and your proof of address. Open a Demo account Click on “My Accounts” on the left-hand side, then select “Open New Account”

Select Demo Account. Account type – FXTM Standard Choose currency Account Leverage 1:2000 Complete the passwords fields Initial balance – any amount, I suggest 20000 USD Click “Open Account”

Your Metatrader Login details will be displayed Download the Platform just as you did above and login using the details given. You are now ready to continue with the course content.

Chapter 1

Welcome to the World of Forex Trading with Free Forex training So you have heard about Forex Trading and you are now curious to check it out, but really don't know where to start. We offer free forex training that is comprehensive and complete. Well, you have come to the right place, as this book will take you through the basics, explain Forex in a plain and simple manner and give you enough information to get started sooner rather than later, in the exciting world of Forex Trading. What is Forex? Forex is the common term used to describe Foreign Exchange. It is also called currency trading, or just FX trading, and every now and then you may see it referred to as Spot FX.

It is essentially the trading of the world's various currencies. Trading currencies is a little different from trading shares or stocks, as currencies are traded against each other. What I mean by this is that you are comparing one country's currency to another country's currency. It is not as confusing as it sounds, so bear with me. Before you embark on a forex trading journey, you need to understand what you are getting yourself into. Why would I want to trade Forex? Good question! Most people have heard about trading stocks, maybe even futures and options. They have been around for years and your grandparents may have even traded them. But I guarantee you that they wouldn't have traded Forex unless they were exceptionally wealthy individuals or worked for a major bank. It is only in the last 15 or so years that the retail Forex industry has opened up to the likes of you and me, where you can start trading with a very small deposit into a brokerage account. Obviously the popularity of the internet has helped create this boom as about 99.9% of all transactions are carried out online. Why Forex? For a start, it is by far the most liquid market in the world that runs 24hrs a day for 5 1/2 days of the week. Just to give you an idea of what I mean, in early 2014 and according to the Bank for International Settlements, Forex trading increased to an average of $5.3 trillion dollars a day. To put this in perspective, this averages out to be $220 billion per hour. In fact, it would take 30 days of trading on the New York Stock Exchange to equal one day of Forex trading. These figures are huge! There is no other way to put it. But obviously that doesn't really affect the average trader other than giving that trader very good liquidity, which means if you want to buy or sell any of the top 10 currency pairs, there is never an issue of that pair not being available to trade. Also with this much volume on a daily basis, the average trader like you and I have absolutely zero chance of influencing market direction. Advantages to Trading Forex Because the Forex market is running continuously for 24 hours during the week, there is very little gapping, which can be a common problem with stock trading. For example, you may have bought XYZ stock at $24.20 on Tuesday just before the market close with a stop loss set at $23.50 to protect you against any major losses. During the night, when the market is closed, there is a major announcement that affects the company trading as XYZ, and the market opens on Wednesday morning, with XYZ trading at $22.10. Not only has it gapped down $3.10 overnight, but it has also opened $1.40 below your stop loss giving you a much bigger loss than you ever anticipated. This rarely happens in Forex trading, but having said that it can happen, especially over the weekend as this is the only time the Forex market is closed. But it is rare! I can give you one example where I was caught out on a weekend. Late 2003 I was in open positions over the weekend where I was basically going against the US dollar, and then US troops captured Saddam Hussein. This was very positive for the US dollar, which then opened much higher on Monday inflicting some financial pain my way. I have learned my lesson and I am rarely in open positions over the weekend. As you will soon see, with regards to Forex trading, you only have a small number of currency pairs to choose from. This is a very small basket compared to the number of stock choices you have. On the US stock exchanges, there are literally thousands of stocks to choose from. Here you have the problem of finding a needle in a haystack. You will see that your Forex choices are much, much narrower, hence there is certainly a lot less searching and analyzing required. All of your efforts and concentration can be targeted in a very narrow field, so you can get on with the trading sooner than later. Once you have a look at a few different Forex charts, which I discuss later, you will see some very nice smooth trends that seem to occur quite often. Now, this is something that you may not understand if you have never traded a financial instrument before, especially if you have never looked at charts. For those stock traders out there, you would be very aware of stocks that just get stuck in a range for what seems forever, or stock charts that show plenty of gaps and a general ugly sort of look. I am not saying that Forex doesn't range. It does, trust me, but when it breaks out it is normally something very good. You will understand this once you start looking at the charts. The low cost of trading is also important. Most trading is conducted electronically over the internet on your nominated broker's online account. The cost is minimal for each trade as there is normally no commission involved, however, you do have to cover the spread. This will be explained shortly, but it can be very cheap to trade considering some pairs now have less than one pip spread. Further to the low cost, you can open an account with a broker for a very small amount, and in some cases, just a couple of hundred dollars. Granted you are not going to make millions from this, but it is a start. I will cover brokers later. Some Further Advantages of Forex Trading So we need somewhere to trade and as stated earlier, this is all done online via the internet. The good thing about this is that most brokers offer unlimited demonstration platforms where you can practice trading for as long as you like without risking any of your own money. This is brilliant if you want to try out different trading methods and ideas. Commonly referred to as 'demo trading,' there is no reason that you can't have both a 'live' and 'demo' account with the same Broker. Just ensure you don't get them confused. Demo trading is quite a useful tool where you can try out different things etc, but please be warned, trading on a 'demo' account is nothing like trading on a 'live' account as there is zero risks with a 'demo' account and therefore your emotions do not come into play at all. It is like walking across a plank of wood 6 inches above the ground, compared to walking across the exact same plank of wood ten stories up in the air. I'm sure your emotions would be different, and the same goes for trading. When there is real money on the line, you will think and act differently! Trust me on this. And to take this one step further, Forex data is live and it is free. Unlike a lot of stock data where you have to pay a monthly data subscription fee or stuck with 15 minute delayed data, your Forex data is all freely provided to you by your chosen broker's trading platform. I’ll have more on brokers and their platforms later. When is the Forex Market Open? Here I will discuss the trading times and as you will see, there is ample time to trade Forex. As stated earlier, it is a market that is open longer than it is closed. As most people would be aware if you were trading stocks then you would trade these through an exchange, whether it was the New York Stock Exchange or the Australian Stock Exchange. Forex trading does not have any central exchange as such. All trading is done through the banks or market makers, which are basically the brokers that traders like you and I would use. Forex trading follows the world's time zones and is broken down into three major time zones. The first to open in Asia, which includes New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Japan, etc. This is called the Asian session and is normally the quietest of the sessions with regards to trading volume. This is then followed by the European session. In the meantime, traders in the Middle East are kicking in, and then all the major European centers, where eventually London opens. The European session is the main session as it normally has the greatest volume traded. You have to remember also that London is the financial capital of the world, even though most people think it is Wall Street in the US. The last session to open is the US session, and this session can also be very frantic, especially early in the day where there can at times, be major news releases that have a big effect on the US dollar itself. So we have the three trading sessions, which do overlap each other. There are no set times, just when banks open for business in each major financial city and volume picks up. For me living in Australia, I know that during the day here, it is the Asian session, followed by the European session which kicks off at about 5 pm, followed by the US session at 11 pm. I am normally in bed by 2 am at the latest, which would be getting close to lunchtime in the US. In a nutshell, you can trade at any time, but if you intended on trading the London open and you lived in the US, you may have to set your alarm clock and get up very early in the morning. Every time zone has its advantages and disadvantages. There are plenty of free online time zone clocks available that relate to the different session times, so it is quite easy to find a session or sessions that suit your lifestyle. You can also find free custom indicators that clearly put the different session times on your trading charts. This is a great visual tool for some.

Chapter 2

What Do We Trade in the Forex Market? Let's get into it! Our free forex training will give you a very broad idea to get you started. There are several currency pairs that can be traded, but the majority of traders just stick with a group of about 8 to 10 pairs. That is more than enough choice. First up, we have what they call the 'majors'. These are by far the most heavily traded currency pairs, and a lot of traders are just happy trading one or two of these. The majors include: EUR/USD Euro against the US dollar USD/JPY Japanese yen against the US dollar GBP/USD Great Britain pound against the US dollar USD/CHF US dollar against the Swiss franc Notice how they are all against the US dollar, therefore when traders discuss these pairs, they simply just refer to them as the Euro, Yen, Pound (or Cable) and the Swissy. Then we have what we call the '2nd tier pairs' and these include the following: AUD/USD Australian dollar against the US dollar USD/CAD US dollar against the Canadian dollar NZD/USD New Zealand dollar against the US dollar Again, these pairs are all against the US dollar, so they are simply referred to as the Aussie, Loonie, and Kiwi. The term Loonie actually comes from the first Canadian dollar coin. Then there are currency pairs that are simply called the 'crosses', and these involve non-US dollar pairs. Some of the more popular crosses include: EUR/JPY Euro against the Japanese yen GBP/JPY Great Britain pound against the Japanese yen EUR/GBP Euro against the Great Britain pound There are quite a few others, but these three are probably the most popular traded. A lot of traders prefer to trade their home currency as they feel they have a better understanding of it. Personally, I'm Australian, but I rarely trade the Aussie as I am very comfortable trading the majors for the majority of my trades. So what do all the numbers mean when the currency pairs are traded together?

The first currency mentioned is what they call the ‘base currency' and it is being compared to the 2nd currency, which is called either the 'quote currency' or the 'counter currency'. If I watch my local news, and near the end, they have a very brief financial report where the newsreader may say something like: "The Aussie dollar was down today against the greenback, reaching a low of 71 cents" Basically what they are saying is that the Australian dollar has dropped in value compared to the US dollar and that one Australian dollar is equivalent to $0.71 US. As the US dollar is the major currency of the world, you will find most financial reports will compare your local currency to it, and even some of the other majors such as the Euro or the Great Britain pound. Using this same example of the Aussie at 71 cents if I were to travel overseas, say to the US where I would need US dollars, then I would be hoping for as high a rate as possible so I get more for my Australian dollar. So if the exchange rate moved up to 75 cents, then one Australian dollar would be worth $0.75 US. You may see the quote for the AUD/USD similar to this: 0.7125 / 0.7128 I’ll explain shortly why there are two sets of numbers. But just looking at 0.7125, this shows how many units of the quote/counter currency are needed to buy one dollar of the base currency. In this case, the US dollar is the quote/counter currency and the Australian dollar is the base currency, so US$0.7125 is equal to AU$1.00. So if I traveled to the US, then each Aussie dollar I have is worth about 71c US. Forex Pairs - What do the Numbers Mean? Let’s consider a paired example: If the AUD / USD were quoted at 0.7125 / 0.7128, what exactly does this mean? The first figure of 0.7125 is called the 'bid' price The 2nd figure of 0.7128 is the 'ask' price The difference between these two figures is called the 'spread' If I wished to buy the Aussie, thinking that the Australian dollar is going to go up in value compared to the US dollar, I would be required to pay the ASK price, which in this case is 0.7128. On the other hand, if I thought the Aussie was becoming weaker against the US dollar and I wished to sell it, then I would sell it at the BID price of 0.7125. Now if I was to buy the Aussie at 0.7128 and then immediately close my position before the price had a chance to move, I would have to close the position by selling the Aussie at 0.7125. Now there is a difference of 0.0003, which is called the spread, and that would be the amount I lost on this trade. In the case of the Aussie, each 0.0001 move is called a pip (or sometimes referred to as a point). So on this trade, I would have lost 3 pips (or 3 points). All the pairs I mentioned above, except the JPY pairs, normally have four decimal places, and their pip value is calculated the same as the above Aussie example. The JPY pairs usually only have the two decimal places. An example of the USD/JPY could be quoted as follows: 97.81 / 97.83. This tells me that one US dollar is equal to approximately 97.8 Japanese yen. The bid price is 97.81 and the ask price is 97.83, and that there is a 2 pip spread. In this case each 0.01 move is called a pip. Important: Most brokers these days have an extra decimal place on their quoted prices. This has come about as the result of spreads becoming tighter over the years. When I first started trading, a small spread on the EUR/USD was 3 pips, whereas nowadays it is common to see the spread on this pair at 0.8 of a pip or even less. Hence the addition of this extra decimal point on the quoted prices. If you see three or five decimal places and depending on how precise your trading is, I would suggest you just ignore the very last digit. That is the simplest way. For example if you saw a quote for the EUR/USD as 1.38641 / 1.38663, you would simply read it as 1.3864 / 1.3866 by dropping the last digits. Then you can see that you have a spread of 2 pips. This is just to keep it simple. If you wanted to be precise, then in this example you would simply take 4.1 away from 6.3 to give you an exact spread of 2.2 pips. These are just the last two digits on the quote where the 2nd last digit is an actual whole number of pips, with the last digit representing a fraction of a pip. It can be very confusing at first. Me, I just round it up or down depending on which side of 0.5 I am on, just to keep it very simple. Next, I'll discuss the different brokers and platforms available. This is a minefield in itself! Where Do We Trade Forex? You will have to open an online brokerage account to enable you access that broker's trading platform. As I mentioned earlier, most brokers offer demo trading where you can practice trading without risking real money – it’s a little like playing monopoly. You do not need to deposit any funds with a broker to gain access to their demo platforms, as most are quite willing to let you try them without any obligation. This also gives you the chance to try various platforms and see what you feel comfortable with. What About Choosing a Broker? This is a good question and you will get a variety of answers if you were to ask around in the trading community. Firstly, I would strongly suggest that you choose one of the bigger well-known brokers. Trust me on this! The retail forex industry is still relatively young and it does not have the same regulations and rules to follow as a lot of other traded financial instruments. This is mainly due to the fact that there are no central exchanges involved. But having said this, a lot of governments are beginning to formulate rules and regulations that do give forex traders better protection. But be warned, there are still bucket shops (dodgy brokers) out there who will rip you off in a heartbeat. It was only recently I heard of one Swiss-based broker disappearing with all their clients’ funds. I certainly don't want to scare anyone off, but please be warned and choose wisely. There are plenty of good brokers around, so there is no need to panic and get stressed about this. Another suggestion is that you do not place all of your funds into one broker, especially if you have a substantial amount. What I am talking about here, is if you had say $100,000 to trade (which you don't need!), I wouldn't be depositing all of this with the one broker. Instead, I would either spread it amongst two or more brokers, or keep funds in reserve and only deposit them with my broker if they were required - you will sleep better at night! Important: In January 2015 there was a huge move by the Swiss National Bank where the Swiss franc was depegged from the Euro catching the financial markets by surprise. This caused an insane, huge, untradeable price spike in Swiss franc related pairs, which basically wiped out trading accounts or made some traders extremely profitable. This spike also sent some very reputable major brokers to the wall financially, causing some to go broke or go into liquidation. Alpari UK was one of the major players affected and is no longer in existence. FXCM also struggled but recovered. So be careful where you put your funds and only deposit what is required. Many traders also like to keep their hard earned cash in their own country and I can understand this, and again it is just a perceived safety measure. Me personally, I haven't got a problem with dealing with overseas brokers. My past experiences have produced no problems at all transferring funds either way, so I am quite happy to use overseas based brokers. I didn't have a choice really as up to a couple of years ago, there weren’t any Australian based brokers that I felt comfortable with, but that has since changed. Not all broker trading platforms are the same and this is where it gets interesting. Every platform appears to have its advantages and disadvantages. You have to find something you are comfortable with. One of the most popular forex trading platform is Metatrader, or more commonly referred to as MT4. This platform is then used by a variety of brokers. How this works, is that you would go to your chosen broker's website, sign up with them, and then download the MT4 software from their site. Here you can either select demo or live trading or both. Obviously they will provide further instructions on how to deposit funds into your brokerage account. You can find out more about MT4 by doing a Google search on 'Metatrader'. I personally find the MT4 platform one of the best, especially for the charts. It is quite incredible what you can do with this platform. Even though the charts and other features are excellent on the MT4 platform, I am not particularly happy with the way you place orders. It is not as easy as it should be and can be a little frustrating at times. But the charts are excellent, or did I already say that? Being an Aussie, I use GoTrader or Pepperstone for my MT4 platform and I am quite happy with both of them. The beauty of the MT4 platform is its popularity and the ability to write your own computer code to design your own custom indicators or expert advisors. There are even dedicated forums and groups that just discuss this platform. Most trading platforms come with a variety of standard charting indicators. Things like Moving Averages, MACD, RSI, Bollinger Bands etc. Now with MT4, you can design your own custom indicators and download them direct to your trading platform, and then onto your charts. Don't worry if this sounds a little confusing at the moment as it does become clearer as you become more familiar with the platform. You don't need these custom indicators to trade, and if you are interested in trying them out, there are plenty of smart traders out there who have already done all the hard work and made them freely available online. There are thousands of them. I also mentioned expert advisors, commonly known as 'EAs' or 'Trading Robots'. This is a software program that is loaded onto your platform and then onto selected charts. A fully automated EA, once activated, will go to work to identify trades that fit its trading criteria, open a trade without human involvement, manage the trade without human involvement and eventually close the trade without human involvement. It all sounds too easy, doesn't it! Again you can design your own or let someone else do it for you. They are not as freely available as custom indicators, but they certainly are becoming more popular. Again, be warned! There are plenty of scammers out there selling trading robots based on outrageous promises of untold wealth. Do your due diligence and choose wisely if you decide to go down that path. The good ones are few and far between. MT4 is not the only platform you can customize indicators and trading systems, but it is by far the most popular. I have used CMS and their VT Platform in the past, and they too have an excellent charting package. There are plenty of other good brokers around. One of my favourites is FXTM. It does have a web based platform available as well as their MT4 platform. The web based platform doesn’t require any software to be downloaded, which means you can access this platform from any computer that is Java equipped. FXTM is a very popular and reliable platform which offers very low spreads and is very simple to use. There is also one other big advantage using FXTM with regards to trade position size and it is one of the reasons I like them so much. They have also been around for a few years now and there are rarely any negative comments about them. FXTM is certainly a great beginner's broker and platform/s. As stated earlier, there is no central exchange for Forex trading, therefore pricing on different currency pairs can vary at times between the different brokers. Normally all the good brokers will be within one or two pips of each other, which really isn't an issue. However every now and then, there will be a price spike on one broker’s charts but not on other broker’s charts. Too bad if you had an order set around where the price spiked, whether it be a buy/sell order or a stop loss. These types of fluctuations normally happen on the not so well known broker platforms. If you stick with a decent broker, you will avoid these types of problems. I normally run two platforms together and can see the differing prices, but as they are two reputable brokers, there is rarely an issue with price differentials. I mentioned the term the 'spread' earlier, which is the difference between the bid and the ask prices. It was only a few years ago that the spread on the EUR and JPY were 3 pips, and the other major pairs ranged from 4-5 pips, and this was happily accepted by all. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to get spreads on the EUR and JPY for 1 pip or less, and the other majors, for less than 3 pips, as are a few of the 2nd tier pairs and crosses. The spread is your cost of doing business. For you to make any profit, you must first make up the spread. For example, if you bought the USD/CHF at 1.0774 and you had a 3 pip spread, then the price would have to rise to 1.0777 before you are in a break even position. Remember you buy at the ask price and sell on the bid price. So in this case, when you bought, the quote would have been 1.0771 / 1.0774. It then has to look like this before you can get out at breakeven 1.0774 / 1.0777, which is a 3 pip increase in price. Some brokers maintain the same spread, albeit a little higher during all market hours, whilst other brokers may vary the spread depending on the volatility at the time. What is volatility? It can be when the market is very quiet, like when the market opens early in the week, or after hours at the end of the US session before the Asian session has cranked up. It can also refer to when there is very high volume, normally in anticipation of a major news release. This is where some brokers can really widen their spreads. They don't stay wide for long, but it can be 5 minutes or so. Oanda does this, and the spreads can go out to 20 pips on the volatile pairs like the GBP/USD. This is not good if you are scalping or have a really tight stop or other orders close to the current price. Something you have to be aware of. You will find that if the spreads stay constant, then there is normally a trade off somewhere else. In the case of CMS, their spreads remained constant but during the very volatile times, you would have difficulty placing orders or stops close to the current market price. A few years ago, just before any major news release, traders would place a buy order and a sell order close on either side of the current price just a few seconds before, hoping to cash in on a big price spike one way or the other. One order would be filled and they would cancel the other, looking for a decent run in the original direction. Brokers didn't like this and put practices in place like I have discussed to prevent this - a bit like the casinos banning card counters, even though it is not technically illegal, it was giving the card counters an edge. So the casinos changed their rules to take away that edge from the punters. Brokers do the same at times. Then we have the problem of requotes and slippage. This should not really be an issue with Forex trading if you stick with the better brokers, but it can and sometimes does happen. Keep in mind, there can be times of very high volatility, where you just won’t be filled at a price you may have elected to do so. This is the same for all types of trading. This is also where Demo trading can give you a false sense of security, as demo platforms will always fill trades or orders at those specified levels as it is only a computer program working on numbers, not the real market conditions. You may end up with a perfect trade fill on a Demo account but there may have been a 10 pip slippage on the same trade in a Live account. It does happen. Generally, the better well known brokers are becoming much more reliable (and honest) these days. It wasn't that long ago, that they were a little inconsistent and traders did have problems that were plastered all over forums, therefore affecting certain broker’s reputations. This doesn't seem to be such an issue nowadays though. But once again, I would suggest you do your own due diligence by getting out there into Google-land and checking things out.

Chapter 3

How Do You Actually Trade Forex? It may seem a little confusing at first but really, it is quite simple. Forex is a leveraged financial instrument, as is Options, Futures, CFDs, Warrants etc. So this is nothing new. You trade Forex in 'lots'. That is basically the industry standard, but there are brokers out there that do things slightly different. For example, Oanda trades in 'units', but they can be easily converted to a lot size equivalent. Lots are known by different names, depending on how much currency they represent. There is a standard lot, a mini lot and a micro lot: One standard lot 100,000 units of the base currency and is normally expressed as 1.0 lot One mini lot 10,000 units of the base currency and is normally expressed as 0.1 lot One micro lot 1,000 units of the base currency and is normally expressed as 0.01 lot How many lots you can buy or sell depends on a few things: your account balance your nominated trading leverage, and how much you are willing to risk on the trade This is when I mention the words 'margin', 'leverage' and 'risk'. All words that are important, but there is no need to get stressed about them as they can all be controlled and I'll show you an easy way to stay out of trouble. Margin refers to the money you have in your account that is available to trade with. As stated earlier, Forex is a leveraged instrument, so if your broker offers you 100:1 leverage, then for every 1 unit you have in your trading account, you can control 100 units in a trade. Some brokers offer up to 1000:1 leverage. If you are over leveraged and a trade goes against you, and you decide not to take any action, your broker will close the trade on your behalf to protect their interests, even though you may have blown your account out. The higher the leverage, the more currencies you can control (buy or sell more). It is not something that concerns me as my risk is controlled on all trades. Risk refers to what you are willing to risk on any particular trade, in terms of dollars. Important Information for US based Traders Most US Traders are restricted by their government's regulations whereby they do not allow US based brokers to offer more than 50:1 leverage on their trading accounts. It is “Big Brother’s” way of telling you what’s best for you. There are ways around this is you are a US based trader. It will take a little research on your part. Another US only regulation is not allowing traders to hedge, which means that you cannot have a buy and a sell trade open at the same time on the same pair. A lot of traders hedge trades that are going against them so it gives them time to reassess their overall position. Some actual trading systems call for trades to be taken in both directions at the same time also. There are ways around this also. Another US based rule is called FIFO, which means ‘first in, first out’. Basically if you are trading multiple trades on one pair, and these would be all in the same direction as you are not allowed to hedge, you have to exit the trades in the same order that you entered. It also depends on the position size of each trade. Refer to your Broker for exact information on this. This is probably one of the most frustrating rules for US traders as sometimes you don’t necessarily want to exit in that particular order. I’ve heard more complaints about this rule than the others. Most other countries do not have these restrictions. Lot Size and Equivalent Pip Value Just to refresh your memory, if the EUR/USD moved from 1.3924 to 1.3928, it has moved a total of 4 pips, and if the USD/JPY moved from 95.23 to 95.19, it also moved 4 pips. Straightforward, so far. If I was trading 1 standard lot ($100,000), then each pip is worth US$10. So in the above EUR/USD example of the 4 pip move and you were trading 1 standard lot, 4 pips is equal to US$40. The same US$10 per pip also applies to the GBP/USD, AUD/USD and NZD/USD. That is the easy part. Now all the other forex pairs aren't quite as simple due to the fact that the USD is not the quoteor counter currency. So what you have to consider here, is the currency conversion between the two pairs and the math can be a little confusing. Me, I keep it simple, and consider all pairs to have a 1 pip value of US$10. Just about all of the forex pairs, except the EUR/GBP have a pip value of less than US$10, and most of these are just under that level, but they do fluctuate with currency variations. If you do need to know the exact pip value, there are plenty of free websites with a built in calculator to do the math for you. The majority of traders either trade standard lots or mini lots. As stated earlier, Oanda is slightly different here as they trade in units, which can be very useful for precise money management. So, if 1 pip is equal to US$10 on a standard lot (1.0 lot / $100,000), then 1 pip on a mini lot (0.1 lot / $10,000) must be equal to US$1, and 1 pip on a micro lot (0.01 lot $1,000) is worth $0.10. Simple! And to keep it very easy and simplified, just consider every Forex pair the same. I know a USD/JPY pip on a standard lot isn't US$10, but it is close enough for me not to worry about its exact value. If your style of trading is affected by the exact price of pips on the Forex pair you are trading, then you will have to use something like a dedicated forex calculator to work out the exact values. They are freely available by just doing a Google search. Let's get into a Trade Example: I have $2,235 in my trading account, and I am happy to risk 2% on each trade. I'm in my broker’s account looking at their charts and I see a nice set up on the EUR/USD where I am looking at buying at 1.3928. I am going to place my stop (stop loss) 30 pips below at 1.3898. So my risk on this trade is 30 pips. Now I need to know what my position size will be, where I am risking no more than 2% of my overall account balance of $2,235. This actually equates to $44.70. The easy way to work this out is by using the following: Account Balance multiplied by risk percentage, divided by risk (stop size in pips), equals position size. In this trade, the math would look something like this: $2,235 x 2% = $44.70 $44.70 / 30 pips = 1.49 Therefore my position size on this trade would be 1.49 mini lots (0.149 lots). You would have to round this down to either 1 mini lot (0.1 lot), or 1.4 mini lots (0.14 lots) if your platform allows this trading size. If you are unsure of the position size, whether it is in standard or mini lots, just do the math backwards to confirm. You know the maximum risk is $44.70 on this trade. If you went into the trade with 1 mini lot, you know each pip is worth $1, so if you were stopped out, then you would have lost $30, which is under your max risk of $44.70, due to the fact you had rounded your position size down. Here is another example with a much larger account balance and a different risk percentage and stop placement. Account balance is $37,840, your trade risk is 3%, and you are placing an order to sell the GBP/USD at 1.4562 with a stop at 1.4607, which is 45 pips away.

Let's do the math to work out my position size: $37,840 (Account balance) x 3% (risk percentage) = $1135.20 $1135.20 (max risk) divided by 45 (stop) = 25.226' Therefore my position size would be 25.226' mini lots (2.5226 lots), or rounded down to 25.2 mini lots (2.52 lots) which is basically 2.5 standard lots. Do the math in reverse if you want to double check your position size. You know your max risk is $1135.20, and your stop is 45 pips, and each pip is worth $10 on a standard lot. If you were to lose 45 pips with 2.5 lots, then 45 x 2.5 x 10 = 1125, which is under the $1135.20 risk. It may be a little confusing at first, but it is very simple once you get the hang of it. By using this formula, you should never have to worry about leverage, margin or risk. They just don't come into it. But having said that, it all depends on your risk percentage levels and your actual trading methods. You do need a successful trading method, because if you don't and you were only risking say 2% per trade, you will eventually blow out your account. It will just take a bit longer to achieve this than if you were risking 10% on each trade. There are plenty of freely available Excel type spreadsheets that can do the math for you once you plug in your own figures. These are quite handy and ensure you get the figures correct. Now we need to talk about risk! Our free forex training courses always emphasize the need to practise while learning how to trade forex. Information on Risk I consider 'risk' to be a very important issue when it comes to Forex trading. Probably not so much of an issue if you are a longer timeframe style trader, say the weekly or monthly charts, but if you are a day trader, then it certainly is an issue. TRUST ME ON THIS! Now I don't really care what your percentage risk is per trade as that is up to the individual trader. I have suggested 2-3% which is quite common amongst successful traders, even less is better according to some. This will ensure you stay in the game longer at least. If you want to risk 10% on a trade, that is up to you. But I will say that it is very much in your interest to have a physical stop loss in place. This is a point where you will be taken out of a trade if something does go wrong. What can go wrong you ask? Other than you picked the wrong direction for the trade, which will happen every now and then. You may also have internet problems or the biggie, unfavorable news comes out that completely catches you by surprise and before you know it, your trade is down a 100 pips or so. First up, there are potential internet problems. It doesn't matter where you live, you can never be guaranteed of 100% reliable internet connection. It only takes a storm within about 100kms of my place to disconnect me at times, and I'm with the biggest telco in the land. When I was trading full time back in the mid 2000s, I also had a backup with the old dial up to my cable broadband. These days, you can get the wireless modem as a backup. One other thing I would strongly suggest is that you have your broker's phone number handy, so you can ring them direct and either close trades or move stops etc. I have done this in the past to get out of trouble, and it is nice to know that you have this option if worse comes to worse. Again, this may only be available with the bigger well known brokers. It also helps to consider any possible language problems if you have to get on the phone. Potentially the biggest problem is news releases or unexpected news. Forex moves on news! And there is always plenty of news coming out. The good thing about it, is that most of the news is released at set times which is very easy to keep track of. Very easy, and I'll go into this in another chapter. So what am I saying here? MAKE SURE YOU USE STOPS ON ALL TRADES. I cannot be any clearer on this! Now the stop depends on you, but please don't make it a mental stop. These just don't work in Forex trading, especially if trading the smaller time frames. Even if you have some sort of safety stop that is some distance from your entry to prevent total wipe-out, which you can adjust later once the trade is up and running, is a much better option than having no stop at all. To give you an example of price movement in a 24hr period, I believe the average for the EUR/USD is around 100 pips and the GBP/USD is about 120 pips, give or take. That is just an average move in 24hrs. When I say move, it may start and finish at the same price, so I am referring to a possible range of movement here. If you were trading 1 standard lot and the market moved 100 pips against you, then you would be $1,000 in the red. Not good! If you are not sure what a stop is: it is an order to close out your trade automatically if the trade goes against you by a predetermined amount. An example: Bought EUR/USD at 1.3950, and obviously wanting it to increase in price to profit. You decided you did not want to risk more than 30 pips on this trade for whatever reason, so you would place your stop at 1.3920. If price fell to this level, you would be automatically closed out of the trade by your broker's platform for a maximum 30 pip loss. It wouldn't matter if you were online or at the beach as it all happens automatically. Using stops is a simple part of the whole forex trading experience, and an important one at that. They are easy to place at the start of the trade and easy to adjust once the trade is up and running. I strongly suggest that you use them at all times to avoid the unexpected. Having said all that, there are certain strategies that don’t use stops. However, they normally have some other mechanism built in to assist with trade management when price goes against you. Generally these types of trading systems are not suitable for those who are not comfortable trading this way and who do require some further expertise to be successful. For now, just place a stop on all trades and then you can look into more exotic trading methods sometime in the future. A Little More on Risk Just a couple of points that I have not spoken about. First up is 'risk' and 'correlation'. I have discussed risk per trade where I suggest no more than 2-3% per trade. Again, it is up to the individual trader how much they risk. One thing I must point out though is the problem with correlation. This simply means that two pairs may trade generally in either the same direction at most times, or in the opposite direction most times. The most obvious and highly correlated pairs are the EUR/USD and the USD/CHF as they basically move pretty well opposite each other, under normal circumstances. So if you had bought the EUR/USD on one trade and sold the USD/CHF on another trade, risking 2% on each trade, in reality you are actually risking 4% because of the high correlation. The EUR/JPY and GBP/JPY can also move pretty much in the same direction often. When you think about it, if the pairs have a common currency involved and news comes out that affects that currency in a big way, then it doesn't really matter what involvement the other currency has, as the market will move the dominant currency. This is something you will have to be aware of when it comes to total risk on your trades. The best way to check out how different pairs move in relation to each other, is to throw up the 1hr charts of all the pairs you are interested in trading on the one screen and see how they move over a few days, especially when news is released. I also spoke about planned 'news releases' that may or may not move the markets. Today for example, as I am only trading the EUR/USD and I am only concerned about possible high impact type news, I have checked the Forex Factory calendar and now know that I have to be on my toes at 7pm my time, for news out of Germany, and especially alert at 10.30pm my time for 3 major items of news out of the US. Hopefully my trading will be finished by 10.30pm, so it won't be an issue. I will discuss the Forex Factory Economic Calendar later in the book. Now sometimes there is unplanned news that may affect the Forex prices. Examples of this include terrorist attacks on US soil (Sept 11), capture of a highly sought after individual (Sadam) or even some dopey Treasury official making an out of the blue comment during what should have been a dull and predictable speech. Lots of things can move the market when you least expect it and it does happen on a regular basis! I have been sitting at my computer, quite aware of all news coming out, when suddenly a pair may just shoot up 50-100 pips in a minute or two - it gets the heart pumping as you quickly check all the news releases to see what has caused the blip. It may be something simple like a rumor of a planned attack in central London. It doesn't matter if it is false, as the market will eventually correct itself. Just be aware that news can come out unexpectedly and move the market, which leads back to my previous point of making sure you have some sort of physical stop in place at all times. Further Discussion about Risk This subject seems to be never-ending but as already stated, it is very important to fully understand risk and how it affects your trading. You don't want to blow your account in one or two stupid trades. Just going back to my example of only risking 2% on each trade. One thing that does come up, that different people have different opinions on, is how long you maintain the same position size before adjusting it to suit your account balance. Say for example, you only traded the EUR/USD and your stop was always 30 pips. You decide your position size, enter the trade and end up making a profit. This will obviously increase your account balance, and if you were to maintain your 2% risk on the next trade, then technically your position size would be slightly larger on this trade. This may not always be possible, depending on your account size and if your particular broker allows you to trade micro-lots you may be forced to round it down to the previous size anyway. Now some traders would suggest that you stay on the same position size for a session, some say the week, and others would suggest a month. No matter what happens, if you started that particular trading sequence with a 2 lot position size, you would continue to trade that same 2 lot position size until the end of the sequence, and then readjust it for the next sequence according to your new account balance. Other traders will suggest you adjust your position size after every trade. This can get a little confusing, especially if you are trading different currency pairs with various stops and it can also get a little ugly. Some say this disadvantages you if you are trying to recover from losses due to the fact you will be entering trades with a smaller position size if you had a few losses in a row. Not sure about that theory. As I have said many times, I am trying to keep it simple. Personally, I decide on a position size at the start of my week and I stick with that same position size for the entire week. Come the following week, I'll have a look at my account balance and make adjustments if necessary. This works for me and certainly makes my life easier as the position size is stored automatically in my platform for every trade. Now some traders may not make that many trades in a week, or they may rattle off 30 trades in a session, so everyone will have their own way of doing things. Some traders will scale in or scale out of trades, which then put another spin on risk etc. There is no way I can cover all types of trading scenarios, nor do I intend to do so. This information is just to give you ideas or perhaps make you think of something you have not previously considered, and then I throw my thoughts in on how I do things. There is no right or wrong way, and at the end of the day, if you make a profit and don't get too stressed or worn out doing it, then you are doing something right. Our Free Forex Training focus mostly on risk management because no matter how good you are at the technical side of forex trading, if you cannot handle risk, you could lose all of your money in a single trade.

Chapter 4

Fundamental or Technical Analysis? News and Fundamental Analysis When it comes to trading, whether it be Forex, Stocks or Daffodils, most traders have a plan that they base their own particular trading method on. With Forex trading, the majority of small retail traders like you and I, would probably use some sort of technical analysis, which is basically trading off the charts, using whatever indicators, patterns or set ups you choose. Or you may even just wing it and trade without anything on the charts. Still a method for some I guess. Then there are traders that will ignore the charts and trade off and around major news releases, which is basically the fundamental side of trading. I have already touched on this above, but I’ll go over it again. There are traders that use this as their sole method of trading the forex market. Here we are trading based on a theory on how you think the market will react to a particular news item like an Interest Rate cut or something similar. Or you may have some long term thoughts on the Japanese economy where you may decide to buy or sell the yen against another currency. There is some sort of news released every day that will affect some currency in some way. The trick is to work out which way the news will affect the currencies you are trading. The problem with the news releases is that although they are just about all set at a certain time, if you are not aware of them, they can catch you out. For example, the biggest news release is the Non-Farm Employment Change (use to be called NFP) figure which is released at 8.30am New York time on the first Friday of every month. Depending on the numbers that come out, this baby can move the market 100+ pips in a heartbeat, and if you are on the wrong side of it, lookout! Within 2 minutes, the market may have moved 200+ pips. It does happen! Imagine how you would feel if you just left the room to go to the bathroom without a stop in place, only to return 2 minutes later to find your trade so far in the red, you feel sick. Having said that, it could have also gone in your favour, but do you want to take that chance? What is the point here? According to our free forex training, Be aware of the NEWS! Now the good news is that there are plenty of free news calendars available on the internet, but the one I use can be found at Forex Factory. It is very simple to use as you can modify it to suit your own requirements. For example if you only traded the EUR/USD and you were only concerned about news that had a medium or high impact on those currencies only, then you can set up the filter to show these news events only. Just click on the 'Filter' tab on the top right hand side above the title bar. There is plenty of information on what the news is about and how it may affect the market, if you are interested. It is also set in your local time, so that makes it easier also. At the beginning of my trading day, I will open this site first and check for news releases that may affect the pairs I am trading. I will write these down in my journal, and if it is something big, I'll normally set an alarm to warn me about 10 minutes prior. This will then put me in a position to either tighten up stops on open trades, close them or not enter a trade until the news release has past. It is crucial that you are aware of these news releases, especially if you are a short term trader, and make sure you have a plan in place if you are trading through them. Technical Analysis I've covered Fundamental Trading (news events), so now it is time to get into the other common way of trading, and that is called Technical Analysis. Most of this trading is done off the charts, hence the expression 'chartists' or 'technical analysis' etc. This is the way I trade, and it is the way a lot of others trade also. Earlier I discussed how most Forex brokers offer a charting package with their platform, and how the live data was free. This is good as it keeps costs down. Some of these platforms have excellent charts, like the MT4 platform, Ninja Trader or VT. With technical trading, you can be as simple or complex as you like. I am not going to go into all the various indicators, fibs, pivots, breakouts, trend lines etc. There are literally thousands of ways to trade and the Forex Trading forums are swamped by them. So you can do your own research here and find something that suits you. The standard MT4 platform automatically comes with a large basket of various popular indicators that can easily be loaded onto any chart with the settings you choose and this is more than enough to get started. You can also add custom indicators to the platform. This is a very simple process and there are thousands of these custom indicators freely available online. Jump in the trading forums or Google it. If you need to know how to load these indicators on to MT4, that’s where YouTube is a great help. The resources available online these days are incredible, but if you are having problems, you can always contact me. I will discuss time frames. As we already know, the Forex market runs 24hrs a day during the week, so there is plenty of opportunity to trade. Remember the previous discussion on the different sessions also, which helps with regards to identify when the action is more likely to occur. On the trading platforms, most brokers offer 1 minute, 5 minute, 15 minute, 30 minute, 60 minute, 4 hour, daily, weekly and monthly charts. That's the majority of them. Some also offer tick, 10 minute, 2 hour and 3 hour charts. Remember all this data is live and it's free. Everyone wants to be a Day Trader! Myself included. I think it is just a romantic notion that is built into the human make up. It is especially cool if someone asks you what you do for a living, and you reply "I'm a Day Trader". It sounds impressive. I wish it was that easy though. Because the charts and the data are so good, you are always tempted to keep on shortening the time frame, where eventually you will be trying to scalp off the 1 minute charts. This all sounds good in theory, but it is very difficult to do. Look, I'm not saying it can't be done as I am sure there are a few successful scalpers out there. Not many I would imagine, but enough to show that it is possible. I have tried all time frames, and even though I have probably had most success on the longer time frames like 4 hours and above, I am still a Day Trader at heart. Again, this is a decision you have to make, whether you want to be in a trade for days or minutes. Trading the longer time frames will obviously give you less trades, but more than likely larger profits, and spend more time monitoring than actually trading. Trading off the shorter time frames will give you more action, more spreads to make up and more than likely smaller profits. Then you would have considerations like stop size. Trading on a Daily chart may require you to have a stop 120 pips away from your entry price, and when you consider the 2% risk rule, you would end up with a much smaller position size. Now, if you were trading off the 5 minute chart and had a 15 pip stop, and using the same 2% risk, you can see that your position size would be much larger. The trade of being the possible potential profit as I'd expect to drag a lot more pips from a Daily chart trade than a 5 minute chart trade. Bit of a catch 22 here. Then you have to decide which pair or pairs you want to trade. If you are trading multiple pairs on the larger time frames, it is quite easy to do so. This may also help with giving you more action, if that is what you are after. But trading multiple pairs on the smaller time frames can be a little stressful and sometimes difficult to keep control of when things start moving quickly. It also plays with your mind a little, especially if you have a losing trade on one pair and try to make up for it on another pair, which may cause you to ignore your normal exit rules. I think they call this revenge trading. If you are going to trade off the smaller timeframes, may I strongly suggest you concentrate on one pair to start? This just makes life a lot easier and you can put all of your efforts and concentration into this one pair. My bread and butter set up, is the EUR/USD on the 5 minute chart, with a 60 minute chart next to it, just to give me an idea of the general trend. I have a couple of basic indicators on both charts. I chose the EUR/USD for a couple of reasons. One it has the lowest spread on Oanda, dropping down as low as 0.5 pip during normal trading times, and two, it is by far the most popular currency pair traded. I think it accounts for close to 70% of total Forex volume. Don't quote me on that though! I have a target amount of pips for the day and then I am done. I close down my charts and do other stuff. I sleep better when I have no trades on. The above is what I do, and what works for me. It may not work for you and I'm certainly not trying to convince anyone to follow my path. If you have had experience at trading anything, you will know that there are thousands of different ways to trade, and Forex is no different. If you were after a good book on Trading in general, then may I suggest a book called 'High Probability Trading' by Marcel Link. It covers all the major topics and is quite informative considering it is such a huge topic. He does a great job of covering the understanding and use of the majority of the most used technical indicators. It is a book that would be well placed in any good trading library. The other “book” I would suggest is 'Google' as it is the world's biggest library by far but please remember, you have to sort out the good from the bad.

Chapter 5

Further Information on Forex Specifics Risk-Reward Ratio The risk: reward ratio is something that you may hear a fair bit about. Some will say that you should never trade with a risk: reward ratio of less than 1:1, or 1:2, or 1:3 etc. All it is doing is comparing your risk to your reward. Here is an example to make it very easy to understand. If we had a risk: reward of 1:2, then for every one unit we are risking, we would be looking for two units in return. Or to put it in trading jargon, if we had a trade on with a 30 pip stop, we would be looking for a profit of at least 60 pips to give us our 1:2 risk: reward. If it was a risk: reward of 1:3, then we would be looking for a 90 pip profit on the same example. Now, why is risk: reward important? Well, it is and it isn't. It all depends on your trading success rate. If you had a trading system, where you had a fixed 20 pip stop and a fixed 40 pip profit target on all trades, then your risk:reward is 1:2. If you were successful in 40% of your trades, then, in the long run, you would be a profitable trader. So that is not a problem. But if your success rate dropped below 35%, then you would start to have problems long term. Where a trader may have a trading method where they use a 20 pip stop and a 10 pip target on all trades, which gives you a negative risk: reward of 2:1, which is a lot of traders' opinion would be considered a surefire way to ruin. But if that same method had a success rate of 70%, then this trader would be profitable overall. And there are plenty of successful traders that trade like this. To take this further, a trader may have a method where they have a 20 pip stop and a 100 pip target on all trades. Great risk: reward at 1:5. Here, they would only need a success rate of just under 20% to be a profitable trader. Whether you could stand the high number of losers is another issue. Don't be scared off by what others say about risk: reward. There is nothing set in stone here, but just make sure you have a fair idea of the success rate of your trading method, so you can see where you should end up over the longer term if things were to remain constant. If you are losing long term, then something has to be changed. This is where keeping good trading records helps, and this is a subject I'll be covering later. Types of Orders according to our free forex training Trading Forex and placing orders is very similar to other types of trading. Not much changes here. But I'll go over the more common order types for those that are new to trading. Market order - this is where we jump straight in or out of a trade at the current market price. This is where you may experience some slippage on some platforms if the market is moving quickly, which is something to be aware of! If you miss the price you hit the buy or sell button at, you will be asked if you want to go with the new price. It will give you a couple of seconds to decide, and if you don't do anything, the order is canceled. This is called a re-quote and it can be a little frustrating at times. Buy Stop or Sell Stop - this is where you enter the market going with the trend.That's probably the easiest way to explain it. In the case of a Buy Stop order, you are placing an order to buy above the current market price, so when the market moves up, your order is filled on the way through, where you want the market to continue to rise. The Sell Stop order is the opposite. You set an order to sell below the current price, and when the market falls, your order is filled on the way through, and you are looking for the market to continue to fall. Buy Limit or Sell Limit - this is where you are looking for a reversal and going against the current trend. With the Buy Limit order, you are placing an order to buy below the current market price, looking for the market to drop down to your entry-level, where you will be filled, and then hopefully the market would turn around and head up. A trader may use this if they are trading off Fib levels or Pivot points etc. They would have a specific reason as to why they would think the market is going to the turnaround near their entry point. Dare I say it, but a Sell Limit order is the opposite. You would be placing an order to sell above the current market price, where you would be looking for price to continue to your sell order, be filled, and then turn back down. Again, there may be some resistance level, Bollinger bands or something else that makes the trader think that price is going to reverse near their entry point. At the time you place your trade, a lot of platforms allow you to set your stop loss and profit target at the same time. This is up to you, but I would strongly suggest at least a stop loss is set as soon as possible. It doesn't have to be your desired stop, but as long as one is set, once the dust is settled and you are in the trade, you can quite easily adjust the stop to the preferred position. This is where Oanda is good as you can set defaults for entry size, stop and profit. Once these are set, and then it is quite simple and quick to place the trade, then you can just go back and adjust anything you wish, and this can be done directly off the chart also. Position size on Oanda can either be set as 'unit size', 'US dollar amount' or a 'percentage'. There is also an option of setting a trailing stop, which can also be set as a default. You would use this just to trail your stop at a certain level behind the current price to lock in profit as a trade develops. It is not something I use, so I can't really comment on the benefits of using a trailing stop but some may find it handy. Keep in mind that a lot of these different brokers or different platforms have their rules for how close you can place stops, profit targets etc. This can vary on what time of day you are trading also, and if there is major news coming out. You will find that broker A is good for something that broker B is not, however broker B may offer another item on their platform that is far superior to broker A. There is always a trade off when it comes to brokers. The trick is to find a nice balance of honesty (very important), reliability, spreads, execution, charts, support etc. Do your homework here. How Many Pips is Enough? This is something that may get your attention, as you may be surprised on what little profit is actually required to make a success of Forex trading. Previously I have spoken about the average daily move of the major pairs like the EUR/USD and the GBP/USD, which is normally around the 80 - 120 pips mark. Remember this is not necessarily from the low to the high or vice versa, as the market may start and finish on the same price in that period. So as you can see, there is normally a fair amount of movement in the day, and therefore plenty of opportunity to grab some of that action. I don't know what your lifestyle is like or what you would consider to be a decent income from trading to maintain your present lifestyle, so let’s just talk in general terms. You are an average Monday to Friday worker, and maybe work the odd Saturday. That's typical here in Australia. Your wage may be in the vicinity of AU $800 - $1000 per week. So we are looking at roughly a 40hr week plus travel time and expenses etc. In your spare time after work, you dabble in the world of Forex and you aren't too bad at it. You trade for a few hours on your $10,000 account, keeping your risk per trade at the 2% mark, keeping your stops nice and tight and lock in profits quickly. After a few hours each night, you can consistently take 20 pips out of the market and then call it quits. It doesn't sound like much and it also doesn't seem to be too hard. Yeah right! 20 pips a day. Now on the $10,000 account with 2% risk and tight stops, trading one (1) standard lot would be quite possible. Remember I generally say that one (1) pip on a standard lot is equal to US$10. If you were trading the EUR, GBP, AUD or NZD, then that would be exact. Now 20 pips x US$10 = US$200. For us Aussies, that is about AU$220 (depending on the exchange rate at the time). I know, it doesn't sound that impressive yet. Do this for 5 days however, and you end up with 100 pips or US$1,000 or AU$1,100. Already, I can see a good improvement on my average 40hr working week here in Australia. I don't know about you guys, but US$1,000 per week is a handy sum in any man's language (or woman's). Some will be used to more and may consider US$1,000 not worth getting out of bed for. If this is the case, then I'm sure you can start trading with a much larger account size or I can show you a way to increase the amount without any further risk using the power of compounding! If you can make 20 pips on a daily basis, you would be crazy not to try and improve your profit without increasing your risk. How do we do this? Using our above $10,000 account and trading one (1) standard lot for the week. We make the 100 pips for the week; therefore end up with a profit of $1,000. Now assuming we have a normal job and we don't need the $1,000 for living expenses, so we leave it in our trading account. The following week our account balance is now $11,000, and with the same 2% risk per trade, we can now trade 1.1 standard lots (or 11 mini lots). If we make the same 20 pips per day, we are then making $220 profit for the day or $1,100 for the week. Where the following week, our account balance would stand at $12,100 and our position size would be around 1.2 standard lots, and so on. As you can see, our profit is 10% per week, and that is a very good return. Now some of you may think that this is pie in the sky stuff and a little unbelievable. This is probably understandable as that is the way we have been trained to think, where we believe anything over 20% profit for the year is a good result. I can assure you that 10% per week is not that spectacular in the world of Forex trading. Mind you, most traders would kill for those results, but I know of one chap who is well known amongst traders that targets 5% per day, and he does this all by chasing 20 - 25 pips per day on 2% risk, just trading the EUR/USD. The above may be possible to achieve in a perfect world, but who lives in one of those? We all know that it isn't that easy as there is something about traders that seem to just stuff it all up. I think trading psychology has a lot to do with it, and that is another chapter in itself and coming up next. Most of the above revolves around a day trading type method. Obviously if you were trading off the 60 min, 4hr or daily charts, you would have different daily targets etc. But there is nothing to stop you from aiming for the $1,000 weekly target and adjusting your position size accordingly. The above examples are simply to give you an idea of what is possible and realise that you really only need to make a small consistent profit on a regular basis. You don't have to go for the big kill every trade. Control the losses, hit your targets and then call it quits for the day. 20 pips profit a day will do it! I told you Forex trading is easy; follow our free forex training course until the end!!

Chapter 6

Trading Psychology Now here is a subject that you love to hate! Even though a lot of people will just gloss over this and think it is really not an issue in their trading, they could not be further from the truth. What is our stance in this free forex training course? Do not underestimate the importance of trading psychology, we are human-being after all. It is important, and it is important to know how it affects your trading. The majority of the human race has emotions and these emotions certainly come into play when you have some real hard-earned cash on the line. I'm sure if you have been trading for a while, you would have experienced a variety of different emotions, some good and some not so good. I know I have. I'm not sure where the figures come from, but they state that 90-95% of traders fail! I guess if it was that easy, we'd all be doing it and making a killing. No one would have to work, and if that was the case, we wouldn't have any financial markets to trade. The success rate is low. So what makes you think you can be one of the 5-10% that can make a go of this trading game? I'm not just talking about Forex here; I'm talking about all trading. Now, in my humble opinion, I believe 'Fear' and 'Greed' to be the main culprits that hold us back from achieving our dreams. The way I look at it is that you are fearful of losing out on the big move, so you stay in the trade, or you are greedy and want everything from a trade so again, you stay in the trade. Let’s have a look at a simple example. Say we are looking at the 5 minute chart on the EUR/USD. It is normally a chart that has a fair bit of action, moving up and down throughout the day. Now the market can only do one of three things. It goes up, goes down or goes sideways. Now if you had gone long and bought the EUR/USD, and it heads up, you are a winner. If it goes sideways, you don't lose anything and if it goes down, you lose. So to keep things simple here, you have a 33% chance of losing money, which means you have a 66% of not losing money. Okay I'm assuming that before you bought the EUR/USD, you thought that it was going to go up according to the rules of your trading system. It doesn't matter what method you use to trade, as there are thousands to choose from, which in your eyes will give you a higher probability of the trade moving in your preferred direction. This is way too easy as we have a 66% chance of not losing and we have a method that puts the odds well and truly in our favour to choose the correct market direction. Why is this so hard? Human emotions make it hard. It’s as simple as that! As soon as you enter, any of those three directions can happen, keeping in mind the market rarely moves in a straight line. Just because it looks like the perfect buy set up at the time, this may not be the case where you actually bought at the exact high for the day. This happens and the mind games begin. One of my favourite sayings, which I say aloud to myself several times a day, is 'Patience, courage and discipline'. This mainly refers to my trading, but I guess you could apply it to a lot of everyday events in your daily life. Patience is obvious. You wait for the correct signal to enter a trade, or exit for that matter. Don't be afraid of missing out on a trade as there will be another potential opportunity sooner than later. If you are in doubt, stay out. Sure, you may miss some nice moves every now and then, but so be it. You can't expect to catch every trade or every market move. Courage refers more to have conviction in your trading method and following it through, during both good and bad times. You know the system works as you have tested it and tested it again. You stick with the plan and see each trade through to the end. Discipline is the whole package. You have a tested trading method and you have certain rules within this method. You have to be disciplined to follow the rules to the letter. Without discipline, you will be tempted to change the rules mid-stream, which will further confuse the emotions and lead to further problems. They certainly all tie in with each other and can be looked at as a three-legged stool. Without one of the legs, the stool is useless. That's how important they all are. This is just my little saying that keeps me focused as they are words I use every day. You may wish to come up with your own way of thinking or dealing with trading psychology. Here are a few example of how the market plays with your mind. You have just gone long but as soon as you enter the trade, the market falls away, and it appears you have bought right at the top. You then get stopped out to the exact pip, where the market reverses and heads back in the first choice direction, past your original entry point and beyond. This happens all the time, and no there isn't some sort of conspiracy by your broker to clean out your stops. This sort of thing will frustrate you, but if the market dropped and came within 1 pip of your stop and then reversed back in your first choice direction, giving you a very successful trade, then you would consider yourself lucky that your stop loss held by one pip. Again, this sort of thing happens all the time. One result will have you feeling like the whole world is against you and the other result will have you feeling like the king of the world. You may be trading more than one currency pair where you have taken a bit of a hit on one of your trades. You are down 20 pips and you now have a nice trade on another pair. Your rules state that you have a profit target of 15 pips, but because you were down 20 pips on a previous trade, you ignore your rules and go for 20+ pips to make up for your loss. The trade goes well, gets up to +18 pips and then turns around and heads south quickly, stopping you out. Now you are 20 pips down from the previous trade, and also down for whatever this trade cost you. Your emotions are being tested, because if you had followed your rules, you could have taken the 15 pips profit as per your rules, and only been down 5 pips to date. This sort of revenge trading is not recommended as you more times than not, you will dig yourself into a deeper hole. There are many examples of what can go wrong like removing a stop or even moving a stop further away, adding to losses, ignoring your target, ignoring reversal or exit signals, cutting your profits too early, not concentrating, forgetting about news releases, trading while sick (or after a few drinks), letting your ego decide market direction etc etc etc. There are many reasons why things go wrong, and when they do, your state of mind will be affected in different ways. There is no simple answer to all of these potential problems, you just have to work on your own discipline and work out your own way of dealing with these sorts of issues. Get used to having losing trades and accept them as they are just a part of the bigger picture. Also get used to seeing potential trades come and go without you being on them. You cannot expect to catch every move in the market. It is also an advantage if you can control your own emotions, by treating every trade, whether a winner or loser, the same. Of course, the desired outcome is to be profitable, so it should also be taken fairly seriously. If you want to be profitable, stick with your rules, concentrate and keep your emotions in check. Remember PATIENCE, COURAGE and DISCIPLINE! A Bit More on Psychology Most traders start off in this business from, what most people would consider a normal background. By this I mean that you would have a normal job where you are required to work 38, 40, 50 or whatever hours a week. At the end of the week, you receive your pay check, knowing that for every hour you have worked, you have earned $25 (example only). So you may have this psych built into you that you have to work your 40hr week to be entitled to your $1000 pay check. I'm just talking about Mr or Ms Average here. Now with trading, things are a little different, and it does take a little getting used to. Traders trade in a variety of ways on a variety of different time frames, with different objectives in mind. So first up we'll go back to my Day Trader example, where I was chasing the 20 pips a day scenario. Say I started trading at 2pm local, and had achieved my 20 pips by 2.30pm local. This does happen quite a bit. So it has taken me 30 minutes to hit my daily target. Now what? The smart and the disciplined thing to do would be to shut down your trading platform and walk away. What do you think most traders will actually do? They think, well that only took me 30 minutes to hit my target, so imagine what I can achieve in a few hours. I have to justify my profits with some effort! Guaranteed the next trade will be a loser. Then you have the problem of chasing your tail for the next few hours just trying to get back to the 20 pip target. At least you will get your 8 hours trading, and still end up with the same result. I did this a few times in the past, as I was a bit of a slow learner but now, as soon as I hit my target, stops are brought in real tight to lock it in, and if the market continues in a favourable direction, then good luck to me, but once I'm stopped out, I won't enter another trade. Walk away. Another example I experienced, was trading with a group off the 60 minute charts where we were in the market at all times. Basically your position had to be checked at the top of every hour. We were trading 3 pairs and our overall target was +200 pips for the week. Once we achieved the 200 pips, we called it quits and then waited for the following Monday. As you can imagine, monitoring 3 pairs every hour can lead to sleep deprivation, marriage breakdowns, lack of social life etc, but the good news was, that most weeks we were finished by Tuesday evening. So we started Monday morning and done by Tuesday evening, with our 200 pips safely in the bank. It was very tempting to continue trading for the rest of the week to go for the big kill, and initially we use to do this, and like the 20 pip a day example, we would end up losing a few trades dragging us back to where we started on the Monday. There was the odd the week, where had to work right through just to get us to the target (or close as possible) and they weren't pleasant at all. On a good week, we would only enter a couple of trades and be done within a few hours. You don't realize just how hard it is to sit on your hands for the rest of the week. What I am getting at here, is just because it only took you a few minutes or hours to earn what you would normally earn in a day or a week, don't think you have to justify chasing more trades to account for your time. One of the main reasons we all get into this, are for financial rewards and time to enjoy those financial rewards. Try to avoid the greed factor and just concentrate on taking small consistent profits over time without wearing yourself out. Once you can achieve this, then it is just a matter of letting the power of compounding do its thing. It may be slow going at first and you may think it will take forever to achieve any real significant returns, but once it cranks up like the snowball example, you will be rolling in it. Looking for 20 pips on a $1,000 account is exactly the same as chasing 20 pips on a $500,000 account as long as your risk percentage remains constant. It is only the mind that plays tricks on you when you start dealing in bigger numbers. If you are not used to the big numbers, then it is sometimes a little difficult to wrap your head around them. The plan is to build up slowly but surely, and when you get to a level you are comfortable with, then it may be a good idea to start enjoying your profits and reinvesting money into other ventures such as charities, education, family or even an Aston Martin. Whatever floats your boat. Well, that's enough of the deep and boring, albeit very important, stuff. The next chapters will go into a few trading ideas and where we can find these ideas, which should be a little more exciting. But please be very aware of fear and greed and how it can affect your trading!

Chapter 7

Time to Trade with our free forex training course Okay time to get into the trading. To date, I have explained what Forex is all about so you should have a reasonably good idea of the basics. It is now a matter of getting your hands dirty by actually doing a bit of trading. As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of brokers out there that offer you the chance to demo trade. This is a great idea, but please don't be fooled into thinking that you can replicate your demo trading into your live trading without missing a beat. It is just not possible! What I would suggest is that you open a live account that allows you to enter with micro lots (1 pip = 10c), so at least you are trading with real money. Not much I know, but enough to keep you interested. Anyone can successfully trade a demo account as there is just no actual risk or emotions involved. As you have probably guessed by now, I am a technical trader, which means I look at the charts to determine my trade entries etc. I don't trade the news, simply because I don't understand it, but I am very aware of when major news is being released. When I say I trade off the charts, it basically means I am using technical analysis. I like the whole visual thing with charts. Now there are thousands of technical indicators and trading methods out there. They are everywhere. Just look in any of the big Forex trading forums, and you will find plenty of free information on all sorts of methods on trading from tick charts to the monthly charts. Some information is good, but most of it is rubbish. You have to remember, what may work well for one trader, may not work at all for another. Also, you may have two traders trading the EUR/USD. Trader A may be long, and Trader B may be short. Now naturally you would think that one of them must be wrong, but what if Trader A was trading off a 1 minute chart and Trader B was trading off a daily chart, then it is quite possible that both of them are correct in their analysis (or both maybe wrong). Different horses for different courses. There are so many technical indicators out there that it would be difficult for me to cover them all. I am aware of a lot of them, having tried most of them out. I know quite quickly whether something works for me or not. I do have my favourite indicators, and I have ones that I have no idea of how anyone works them out. One thing I must say is that about 99% of technical indicators are lagging indicators. That is, they only really move after the market moves, and their position is only obvious after the market position is obvious. Anyone can look at the history (left hand side) of a chart and see some beautiful moves based on an indicator of your choice. That hindsight is a great tool! I figure all I need is a time machine that puts me about 1hr into the future and then lookout Forex. Getting a bit silly now, but you can see what I mean. When you are trading live using your indicators and watching the very far right of your chart (the current price), you only have an opinion of which way the price is going to move next, as you do not know for certain which way it will go. Nobody does! All technical indicators do are giving you a higher probability of something happening in a particular direction based on your interpretation of the indicator/s at the time. They say a lot of technical indicators are self-fulfilling. What I mean by this is that a lot of traders use the same indicators and therefore expect the same thing to happen at a particular point. An example would be using Pivot Points. The price is heading up towards the R1 (1st resistance level), hits it briefly and bounces back down. Was it the actual R1 level that stopped price or was it the case where many traders knew about this level and set sell orders at that level, forcing price to bounce down off it? Who knows? The same applies to popular Moving Averages like the 50 or 200, also Fib Levels, Bollinger Bands etc. One thing you have to keep in mind is: PRICE IS KING. Period! You can have all the indicators in the world on your chart, with all the planets aligned, where you think 100% that price is going in a certain direction, only to see the exact opposite. There is no certainty in trading, so you have to be prepared for the worst at all times. PRICE IS KING! As a trader, I much prefer to open a trade in the direction of the market at the time, or to say it another way, I go with the trend. Some traders will prefer to look for turning points, where they will trade the opposite direction to the current trend. Go back to my above example of the Pivot Points with price approaching the R1 level. I would be more inclined to ride the trade up to that level and look at getting out near that level if I had been long, whereas another trader may have placed an order to sell at the R1 level, looking for that bounce down even though price may have been heading up there for the last few hours. There is nothing to say that the market will stop and reverse at that R1 level, as it may continue right through without skipping a beat. I still can't wrap my head around looking for turning points, but it has proved quite successful for other traders. I have seen quite a few different systems over the years, and have come to appreciate the amount of effort and imagination that goes into some of them. A lot of these are done by taking a standard indicator or idea, and slightly twisting it a bit so you aren't doing what everyone else is doing. The trick is finding something that works for you. I use technical indicators, and I look at both short term and long term trading. Sometimes I like to be done for the day quickly and other times, I have no problems being constantly in the market. If I had a choice, I would much prefer to trade the longer time frames just to cut out the noise. Also I don't want to be sitting at my computer for hours on end, but then again, I enjoy the thrill of the chase. Sometimes waiting for set ups on the longer time frames gets a bit boring for me as I like a bit more action. I guess I have to find a balance like everyone else, hence the reason I have two accounts to cover both types of trading. The beauty of day trading is that it doesn't really matter if you miss a day or two, but if you are trading the bigger time frames, you are quite committed to the markets. Day Trading or Longer Term Trading? I will cover short term trading first. Most would call this Day Trading. If you are a Day Trader, that means you will be in and out of the market within the same day or session. Once you have finished for the day, you would have no open trades left. They call this ‘being flat’ in trading jargon. I would prefer not to be sitting at my computer for hours on end if I can help it. You have probably gathered by now that I have a specific target for the day, and this is normally around 20 pips profit. I have been through the math and the power of compounding, so you know my thoughts on this already. With the day trading, I stick to trading just the one pair, the EUR/USD. It is by far the most popular pair to trade and it consistently has the lowest spread. FXTM, which is my day trading platform, the spread is normally less than 0.8 pip. If you were trading a pair that had a spread of 5 pips, then as soon as you enter, the market has to move at least 5 pips in your favour just to get you to break even. Trading the one pair also allows you to concentrate all your efforts into that pair. I will look at starting my trading any time after 2pm local. This is the tail end of the Asian session, which is then followed by the London (European) session, and if I am not done by then, it is into the US session. As previously mentioned, I will check with Forex Factory before I start to see what major news releases are due out that may affect the EUR or the USD. I need to be aware of these so I can be prepared around those times. Very important! I won’t go into specific set ups that Day Traders use; as there are just so many variations I could not do them justice in this book. Some traders look to trade off 1 min charts, while others would look at the higher timeframes. An example could be a Day Trader using the 5 min chart for entries and exits, but bases all these trades on the direction of the 1hr chart, which acts a filter of sorts. If you go into any of the popular trading forums you will find thousands examples of day trading set ups. With day trading, you have to really go all-out effort wise, with total concentration. You have to be prepared to take small losses and keep chipping away at the market. Just about every day, there are one or two decent moves on the 5 min chart that will make it all worthwhile. Don't be greedy, going for the big kill every trade. Perhaps start your day with a small trade looking for 5 pips just to give you that winning feeling. There is a lot of discretion involved in day trading also, as it is very difficult just to rely on indicators to get you in and out of trades. They certainly help but there are plenty of times where you would just look at the chart and see something doesn't look quite right, and in that case, you may give it a miss. You may regret that decision, but that's trading. There will be plenty of trades coming along soon enough. Now I want to talk about long term trading, where you can be in the same trade for hours, days or even weeks. When I say long term, I am normally referring to trading off the 1hr, 4hr or daily charts. Some traders may look to the weekly chart or even the monthly chart, but that's not for me. Some may even refer using the 1hr and 4hr charts as Swing Trading. I find the problem trading off the 1hr charts is that you tend to end up also doing a fair bit of screen monitoring, hence I lean towards the 4hr and daily charts. With the daily charts, I normally check my trades at least once a day, possibly twice. My daily charts tick over to a new day at 8am local, so I check them when I get up first thing in the morning, and even though the new candle has not yet opened, I will have a fair idea of what is happening as it is after the close of the US, and Asia hasn't really kicked in. A bit of a dead zone really, which suits me just fine. Then maybe in the evening sometime, just to make sure there have been no dramatic changes. That will do me. The 4hr charts obviously require a little more monitoring but can still fit nicely in with a normal day job. Trading off the daily charts allows you plenty more free time to do the other things in life, like go to the beach, walk the dogs, play chess or whatever blows your hair back. Because you have much more time and your trading decisions aren't rushed, you can afford to follow several pairs at the same time. No need to limit yourself to the one pair here. Also spreads are not such an issue, because of the big moves involved where even a biggish spread will be well and truly absorbed in the action. But please be warned, you cannot take the same position size in your trades. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that it will be highly unlikely you will use the same tight stops as you would use on a day trading (5 min) method. You may, but I doubt it. Keep in mind your risk per trade. I have discussed risking 2% on each trade, and if you were to use this figure, then that 2% must be maintained on these types of trades also. So it only makes sense that if you used a 15 pip stop on a 5 min chart trade and were using a 150 pip stop on a daily chart, your position size on the daily chart is going to be a lot smaller. And secondly, as you are more than likely trading several pairs at once, your overall risk will be higher, especially if the pairs with open trades are highly correlated like the EUR/USD and the USD/CHF. Again it is a risk issue, but more of an overall risk. If you were to risk 2% on a long EUR trade and also 2% on a short CHF trade, because of their very high correlation, your actual risk is more like 4%, because if one goes wrong, then more than likely, so will the other. Just be aware of your overall risk when you combine all your open trades. It may be a good idea to look for the least correlated pairs to trade when several good signals appear on your radar. A bit of common sense is required here. Now you must keep in mind that you are trading off the daily charts, so you may experience some huge moves against you, and a lot of traders may not be comfortable being a couple of hundred pips or so down in a move against them. It just doesn't sit well with them as it is playing with their mind. Remember some of these majors move on average 100+ pips a day. You have to look at the big picture though, because as soon as you nail the start of a good move, your profit can be in the many hundreds or even thousand plus pips. These are the moves you want to catch and trust me, there are plenty of them. Trading several pairs may also help with an overall result (as long as you are not wrong on every trade). You do have to look at the big picture and not just judge your results on a daily or weekly basis. I would suggest you look to the month to month results, as this will give you a much better overall indication of how your daily chart trading is performing. You have to give it some time to prove itself one way or the other. Trading off the 4hr or Daily charts is a laid back way of trading and may suit the trader that may have a normal day job or family duties that prevent them from becoming a zombie and sitting at your computer for hours on end. The options are fairly unlimited, and the trading forums will give you plenty of ideas if you are having problems coming up with your own system or method. You have to find something that works for you, and something that you are comfortable with. Not all trading systems are the same, nor are all traders the same. According to our free forex training, we understand at some point you will discover your own style of trading, be it high, medium or low risk. Keeping a Journal or Diary Before I get into the actual trading side of things, one thing I do want to mention is the use of a Trading Journal or Diary. This very important to me as it keeps a detailed record of not only my trading results, but also other useful information that I can refer to later if required. A journal or a diary can be as simple as an exercise book where you handwrite everything. When I put pen to paper, it actually makes me think about what I am doing and helps me confirm my thoughts at the time. You may decide to keep your information online via an ongoing word document or something similar - just make sure you keep copies and back it up as you go. I also use excel spreadsheets at times, to provide an overview of results when I am trialling different systems. One glance at these can give me a quick and accurate overview of how a particular method is performing, especially if you add colour to it. A Journal or Diary is not simply a place where you keep your trading results recorded, it is much more than that. If you are trading a particular method, you may wish to describe how it works in detail for future reference, and also to record any modifications to the method as you go. You could also record the details of your money management plan along with adjustments to the plan as you go. Once you have traded a particular method for a while, you could make some comments on how it is performing, and how it may be improved. Any mistakes you have made should also be highlighted to ensure you don't make those same mistakes over and over. Maybe you would like to comment on how you are feeling at the time, or if you had any technical problems, or any other outside interference that disrupted your trading. There is so much you can put into a Trading Journal/Diary, and it is up to you how simple or complex you wish take it. Here is an example of my Journal entries. These are all hand written in a large book in handwriting that I think is a little hard to read and seems to be getting worse with age! But I digress. Before I start trading at all, I will go to my Trading Journal, write in the day and the date, followed by my starting account balance. I am mainly a Day Trader, so every day is a new start for me so I don't have any open positions to worry about. I already know my money management rules as they are loaded into my trading platform, but I would have written this down previously in the Journal. Directly under the day and date, I would put another subheading called 'News', and after checking the Forex Factory Economic Calendar, I would note the time of any major news and the currency it will affect. I don't care what the news is, just when it is coming out so I can be prepared for it. So my news info maybe something simple like this: 10.30pm – USD This tells me that at 10.30pm local, there is major news coming out that may affect the US Dollar. Simple as that and I will set an alarm on my mobile that actually has a voice recording of me saying 'Check the charts Jim, as there is major news coming out soon'. It might sound stupid, but my family knows what it is all about. Then I'm into the trading if I know I have a clear couple of hours. If I had to pick up one of my kids in an hour or so, I may just hang back until that task is completed. Okay, so the first trade is on, and here is an example of how I would write it up. I do use a bit slang and abbreviate words, but I'll explain it all to you. EUR B 1.2 @ 1.4215 @ 6.01pm. Stop -20, target +20 Mkt had turned up nicely with all signals on 5 min chart bullish. Also 60 min confirmed this with price having recently bounced up off the MPL, after price ranging for most of the day. Went up to +15, so stop moved up to 1.4205 (-10). Closed at B/E at 6.23pm as mkt had turned down and was looking a little ugly. Again I was up over 10 pips and let it slip. That is an actual entry from my journal on Tuesday the 21st July. My first trade for the day. So you can see I bought the EUR/USD, with position size, time, stop and target all nominated. The position size, stop and target are all pre-set in my trading platform, so they just happen automatically. I then gave my reasons why I took the trade as all my signals were bullish on my 5 minute chart. I then comment on the 60 minute chart, with MPL standing for the main pivot line. This was followed by some trade management by moving my stop up and reducing my risk as the trade moved in my favour. I then explain why I closed the trade due to the fact I didn't like the look of the 5 minute chart as the indicators must have started to turn bearish. This includes the time of close and the result, and in this case it was at the point of entry or break even (B/E). I then go on to state that I should have taken some profit at least out of this trade as I was up over 10 pips in profit. As each trade is closed, I keep a running total of pips won or lost in the left margin, so I can see at a glance where I am at for the day. Once my target is hit, stops are tightened right up or I just close out. There is no better feeling than getting a trade into a 'no lose' situation. So you can see it is fairly basic, but it does give me something to go back over at the end of the day to see what I did either right or wrong. You may end up trying a few different trading methods, and in a few months go back through your Journal to see what worked for you and what didn't. The Journal will cover a lot more detail than just a simple spreadsheet with results. That’s all I have to share for now, so it’s time to get your Trading Journal organized and get ready to start trading…

Chapter 8

Conclusion This brings me to the end of this book on Forex Trading. Thank you again for downloading this book! I hope it has helped you gain a good understanding of how the whole Forex market is set up and how it works. I have deliberately kept the explanations simple and straightforward so everyone can understand it. You do not need to be bamboozled with technical and complicated jargon. Just like driving a car where you don’t need to know how it all works, as long as you know how to drive it and understand the road rules. The same applies to Forex Trading. Some people try to make it sound harder than it is, but having said that, it is not as simple as it looks to be a consistently profitable trader. There are so many factors to be taken into consideration, but like anything, if you practice enough and learn by your mistakes, you can go on to be a part of the small group of successful traders. Remember the motto of our free forex training from earlier PATIENCE, COURAGE and DISCIPLINE. Bonus Trading System Download MT4 and indicators HERE: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sB1Gp4gYiIRXo0Gu_eKbhkwIXUJ9VZUk Please open (unzip) this folder to access the following: Instructions.pdf (also provided below) Template Modified MACD.tpl 5 x Custom Indicators MACD_Complete.ex4 MACD_Platinum.ex4 PIP-F_AFTRStop.ex4 QMP Filter 1.01.ex4 QQE ADV.ex4 Introduction This system will work on the MT4 Trading Platform only. Version 2 of this presentation was put together in December 2015 therefore; any MT4 version close to this date will work well. MT4 is the Metatrader 4 platform which is offered by many brokers for free, either in the demonstration or live accounts. It is owned by the Metaquotes Software Company. An internet search of MT4, will provide several reputable brokers in the first few results, where you can download the MT4 platform for free. It is simple to use and if you are having any difficulties, Google and YouTube also provide access to many free tutorials. You should have by now provided your email address to automatically receive the modified MACD template and a number of custom indicators. You will need to upload all of these indicators onto your MT4 platform for the template to display correctly. Template and Custom Indicators Instructions on how to upload a template or a custom indicator onto your MT4 platform and how to display them are available here: There is no mention of the ATR Stop indicator on the video and this will be explained later. Indicators required are QMP Filter, MACD Platinum, QQE Adv and MACD Complete. With regards to the MACD Platinum and QQE Adv indicators, there is no requirement for them to be displayed on the chart, but they do have to be uploaded onto your MT4 platform as they are the two indicators required to make the QMP Filter work. It may sound a little confusing now, but it will all be clear shortly. When you load your template you should see a grey background chart with a 25 SMA and 240 LMA over price, and also the QMP Filter with the red and green dots. Below that you will have a modified MACD with the settings of 6,12,1. This is represented by the dark blue line and also the zero level. On top of that MACD, there is an orange dotted line which is actually the standard 12,26,9 MACD (explained later). Below these 2x MACDs, you will have a 3rd standard MACD with the histogram highlighted also. If you have used my template, your chart should look something like the following on your MT4 trading platform:

My Thoughts on Trading Once you have loaded the indicators and have your charts set up the way you like them (or use my template), it is time to start trading. Here are a few ideas regarding how I like to trade and of course, it is entirely up to you whether you choose to do this too. I like to trade off the 4hr or Daily charts. I may drop down to 1hr or 30m charts if I do have screen time available. The reason I trade is to make money so I don’t have to work in a “normal” job. Trading gives me a lifestyle, which doesn’t include sitting in front of my computer staring at charts for hours on end. I do keep it very simple and generally trade with the trend as I am not a huge fan of limit orders. I like the price already heading in the direction I am trading. You will see this with the chart examples. I keep the position size very small, for example I may use 0.02 lots on accounts with balances of around $5-$10K, especially on the Daily charts where there may be a huge stop. With the 4hr charts and lower, I generally consider a position size of 1 to 2% risk on each trade, already knowing approximately where my stop would be. There are free Excel spreadsheets available, which have been designed specifically for forex trading to assist you with these calculations. However, please be aware of combined correlation (risk) when trading multiple pairs. An example: you are long on the GBP/USD, GBP/JPY and GBP/AUD at the same time, and there is some major GBP news released, which will greatly affect the GBP only. Sure it may go in your favour, but it also may not, and with 3x trades on involving the GBP, it could get painful very fast. I normally keep my charts loaded with the same template no matter what time frame I am trading. News events do not worry me too much when trading off the Daily charts, but I will keep an eye on them with the smaller time frames. Entry Signals For a buy or sell signal I look for at least 3 of 4 things to happen, preferably all 4. The absolute critical one is that the Modified MACD (6,12,1) must have crossed the zero level, and this must have been confirmed. I normally take all my trades atthe close/open of whatever time frame I am trading. Rarely do I trade mid candle unless I have set a buy or sell stop order. Once I have that Mod MACD confirmed cross, I will need either of the following to have occurred at the same time or prior: A same color QMP Filter dot. If the Mod MACD crossed down through the zero level, then this represents a sell, therefore the QMP Filter has to have had a red dot for sell also. If the Mod MACD had crossed up through the zero level, then this signifies a buy and therefore you would need a green dot on the QMP Filter. Normally, but not always, the QMP Filter is the leading indicator. This means that you will see a red/green dot on this before anything else which gives you a warning that there may be a change of direction coming. Price has to have closed either above or below the 25 SMA depending on whether you are buying or selling. Obviously above for a buy and below for a sell and; The bottom standard MACD has to have had a cross of the two lines in the same way as the buy/sell signal above. It doesn’t matter where this is compared to the zero level on this MACD. And it does not matter what the histogram is showing. All we are interested in is the cross of the two MACD lines. Following, are some examples of entries.

In the above screenshot, you can see the red QMP Filter dot appeared first which was then followed by the cross of the bottom MACD lines also indicating a sell. It wasn’t until the fast 6,12,1 MACD in the center crossed the zero level that the sell entry was then confirmed.

Remember, there is no trade until that MACD crosses the zero level, and that cross is confirmed by a close of that candle. The trade is entered on the open of the small white candle just to the right of the red dashed line. The price also closed below the 25 SMA which just helped confirm it all and as you can see, it was quite a good trade.

The above screenshot also shows numerous entries across a chart with both buy and sell. All entries would have been on the opening of the candle to the right of each vertical line. As you can see, up until the last sell entry, the others all had the QMP Filter give an early indication of impending reversal trades. The second buy trade would have been a loser but you can see that the other trades certainly made up for it.

In the above screenshot, I am using an example of where you may only wish to take trades that are going in the same direction as the 240 LMA. Here all the action is below the 240 LMA, and you can see that the 25 SMA is also below it, so I would only be taking sell trades and ignoring any buy signals altogether. I would tend to do this style of trading if I was trading off the smaller time frame charts. You can clearly see that 4x sell trades were taken here. No.2 was definitely a loser but it was closed out quickly when the fast middle 6,12,1 MACD crossed back up over the zero line. I explain that in further detail below. But again, the winning trades would have more than made up for that loss. You may even wish to consider trading within a certain time if you were say, trading off the 5m charts eg the start of the London session for 3hrs only. It is entirely up to you. Another possibility would be to look at a higher time frame and identify a major trend and then drop down to the lower time frame charts and only take trades in that same direction. There are plenty of options available to you. Another option would be to consider re-entries if already stopped out, or even additional entries. There may be a decent major trend in one direction with the MAs flaring out, and you have had an initial entry into this trend but now the fast MACD is staying well and truly away from the zero level, but the QMP Filter is producing new signals in the same direction on pullbacks. Great opportunity to enter further trades in the same direction however, be careful of position size and overall risk when doing this as eventually that trend will end. It can be a clever way to trade though.

In the above screenshot you can see a nice trend up. The initial buy trade was signalled just to the right of the left vertical line. As the trend progressed up there were a couple of pullbacks which were indicated by the red QMP Filter dots. These pullbacks were not enough to push the fast 6,12,1 MACD back down over the zero level, which then resulted in further green QMP Filter dots appearing on the trend resumption. Take further buy positions? It’s up to you. Trade Management It is your decision where you place stops. I normally go near the previous high/low area, or on the other side of the MAs if they are close. I may even consider just above/below the candle the QMP Filter signal was given on or the actual entry candle. You can also add the ATR Stop indicator to the chart at this time and use a level just on the other side of it, if in fact price is on the correct side at the time of entry. It sometimes isn’t which is fine. I would still take the trade anyway.

In the above screenshot I have added the ATR Stop to the chart on this same sell trade I have been using as an example. This is the indicator with the stepped looking red and blue lines above and below price. You can see how it kept me in the trade nicely on this big downtrend. I tend to keep price either just above it in a sell trade or just below it in a buy trade. There are times when price will just poke through the ATR Stop and then resume the original trend so it is best to give yourself a small buffer. Here you can see how it would have had me stopped out near the bottom of the trend. It doesn’t always work but it is handy to add to your chart once a trend begins forming. I keep it off the charts until I need it, as it does clutter up the chart somewhat. I use the 240 LMA as a possible target if trading towards it. At least close half my position if it hits this area. It also gives me a good idea of the overall trend, where I may only take trades heading away from it, ignoring trades back in towards it. Taking profits or trailing stops is up to the individual. You could use the ATR Stop I supplied. This works well on the bigger time frames. The dotted standard MACD line overlaid the Mod MACD can also be useful. These two MACDs, even though in the same window, actually work independent of each other and can be very dynamic. There are times when the two lines cross after you have been in a decent trend for a while, that may indicate the trend is either over or losing steam. It doesn't happen all of the time, but you will see it often. This is a good time to take some profit or tighten up stops. The histogram also gives me an idea of momentum and it is something I keep an eye on for an early indication.

The screenshot above displays one of the same trade examples from above. Here you can see that the center MACDs have had a line cross marked by the arrow. Now remember that these two MACDs work independent of each other and that crossing point may change if you shift the chart across your screen. But generally, if this appears on the right side of your chart in live time, then consider tightening up your stop or closing out a part of your position (or both). You can also see the histogram on the bottom MACD starting to run out of momentum. Then there is the green dot on the QMP Filter, which is another early warning that price could be changing direction. And now looking at the screenshot, I can also see divergence between price and the fast 6,12,1 MACD. So there are plenty of signs showing you that there is more than likely a possible price reversal on the way. When to exit a trade? I will always exit if the Mod MACD (6,12,1) crosses (and is confirmed) back to the other side of the zero level. Always! The ONLY exception which I may consider is when major news is coming out soon and I am in a trade already that has either a small loss, or is sitting on a small profit. If there is a new signal in the opposite direction, I may enter that trade also so I have both directions covered when the news is released. Both, with stops in place. This would not be possible for those that aren’t permitted to hedge (mainly US based clients), so in that case I would go with the confirmed trade direction and close the other. Now you may get a change of direction with a new QMP Filter signal, which is quite common, but everything else remains intact. Here I would stay in the trade and may even tighten up my stop. But if the bottom standard MACD also changes direction and price is getting ugly, I may bail out of the trade altogether.

The above screenshot shows where this method can get really ugly. This normally occurs in sideways markets, especially in the lower time frames during the very quiet times of the trading day. The above example is of a GBP/JPY 15m chart and between those two vertical lines is the tail end of the US session and into the Asian session. Plenty of red and green dots on the QMP Filter, but remember to watch the fast 6,12,1 MACD in the center and how that moves around the zero level. This is actually a very good pair to trade on this time frame, but it is generally much better in the busy trading sessions. The best way to check this out is by putting the template on a few different pairs over a few different time frames and manually back testing it to see how it works. Use your MT4’s Data Window feature to check to confirm if certain lines had crossed if in doubt. Also using the cross hair can be a very useful tool to assist. I am in the process of having a new MACD indicator built that has a something similar to the QMP Filter with green/red dots to indicate crosses, but this may be some weeks off. I have prepared a YouTube video with some trade examples, along with some discussion on trade management here: Conclusion Do not be thrown by the simplicity of this system. It is simple, very mechanical and can also be very profitable if you remain disciplined. What I have provided should give you an excellent framework to develop your own system with your chosen indicators, fibs, pivots, support/resistance levels, etc. which you can add to suit as appropriate. Like all trading, the hardest decision is determining when to take profit and there is no simple answer to this. As I stated earlier, keep your position size reasonably small, your risk small and scale-out of winning positions. If there is a trend reversal, exit the trade. You do not have to wait for a stop loss to be activated if you can see or suspect a reversal is coming. Use the ATR Stop to trail at a safe distance. Every Trader loves it when you have a trade on with zero risks as your stop is on the good side of your entry. Take what I have shown you here and modify it to suit your own trading style.

Are you ready to trade on a real account?

Go to forextime.com and login into your account. Click “My Accounts” and then “Accounts overview”

Under My Demo Accounts, click on the down arrow and select “Delete Account”. We would like to delete the Demo account so that we do not confuse it with our real accounts.

Under My Trading Accounts, click on the Deposit button (Minimum 100 USD).

Choose your deposit method and follow the instructions. Remember to deposit using your Credit card or Debit card (e.g. A cheque/current account) select the Credit/Debit Cards option depending on whether your card is VISA or Mastercard. Once the money deposited reflects on your account, you may trade real money the same way you have been trading with a demo account. Our free forex training course is just the start, to move to the next level, go to: https://www.xyzpocket.com/forex-academy-the-ultimate-price-action-2020/ Do you prefer video tutorials? Go to: Video Courses Video Courses Link Ultimate Forex Trading Training Videos - Level 1 https://videos.xyzpocket.com/ Best forex trading videos - Level 2 Advanced https://videos.xyzpocket.com/best-forex-trading-videos-level-2-advanced/ Complete Forex Trading - how to do Forex trading https://videos.xyzpocket.com/complete-forex-trading-how-to-do-forex-trading-1/ Easy Forex Trading for Beginners https://videos.xyzpocket.com/easy-forex-trading-for-beginners-1/ Forex courses online – Trading Forex indices https://videos.xyzpocket.com/forex-courses-online-trading-forex-indices-2020/ Learn Fundamental Analysis - Best Forex Training Online https://videos.xyzpocket.com/learn-fundamental-analysis-best-forex-training-online-2020/ Winning Forex trading learning with Live Trading Examples https://videos.xyzpocket.com/winning-forex-trading-learning-with-live-trading-examples-2020/ Written Courses Link 50 Pips A Day https://www.xyzpocket.com/forex-trading-training-50-pips-a-day/ Forex Academy - The Ultimate Price Action https://www.xyzpocket.com/forex-academy-the-ultimate-price-action-2020/ Forex Masters Course 2020 - Follow Price Action Trends https://www.xyzpocket.com/forex-masters-course-2020-follow-price-action/ Forex Trading School - Best Day Trading Forex https://www.xyzpocket.com/forex-trading-school-best-day-trading-forex-2020/ Free Forex Training - The Ultimate Basics https://www.xyzpocket.com/free-forex-training-the-ultimate-basics-2020/ Master in forex trading - 15 minutes a day https://www.xyzpocket.com/master-in-forex-trading-15-minutes-a-day/ Read the full article

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evanvanness · 4 years

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Narrative edition, Week in Ethereum News, Jan 12, 2020

This is the 5th edition of the 6 annotated versions that I committed in my head to doing when I decided to see how an annotated edition would be received.

Given the response on my Gitcoin matching grant, I may have to keep going. Check it out - giving 1 DAI right now will get more than 100x matching.

Thanks to everyone who has given on my Gitcoin grant. It’s the best way to show you want these annotated editions to continue.

Even 1 Dai is super appreciated given the matching! Since Tumblr adds odd forwarders to links, here’s the text of the link: https://gitcoin.co/grants/237/week-in-ethereum-news

Eth1

Latest core devs call. Notes from Tim Beiko, discussion of EIPs 2456, 1962, 2348

EthereumJS v4.13 – bugfix release for Muir Glacier

Slockit released a stable version of their Incubed stateless ultralight client, aimed at IoT devices. 150kb to verify transactions or 500kb including EVM. incentive layer coming soon.

A little slow on in the eth1 section, but Incubed getting to be stable is cool. Obviously if they can get the incentive layer worked out, that will be fantastic.

When I think about that that I was wrong about, definitely if I go back to q1 or q2 2017, I thought that IoT Ethereum was much more of a thing. There was Brody’s early washing machine prototype, Airlock->Oaken, Slockit had some stuff 3 years ago, etc. It hasn’t really happened.

Why not? It seems to me like most of those things require enterprises to take the plunge. No one is going to go out and manufacture a domestic electronic device just yet with all the uncertainty there.

And light client server incentivization hasn’t happened yet. There’s just things to be built still. So it’s cool to see Incubed hitting a stable release. Slowly but surely all the necessary primitives get built. I still think there will be lots of robots transacting some day.

Eth2

Latest Eth2 implementer call. Notes from Mamy and from Ben.

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Spec version v0.10 with BLS standards

Prysmatic restarted its testnet with a newer version of the spec and mainnet config

Lodestar update on light clients and dev tooling

3 options for state providers

Eth2 for Dummies

Exploring validator costs

Eth2 for dummies was the most clicked this week. Even within the universe of people who subscribe to the newsletter, there’s always demand for high level explainers.

The spec is essentially finalized and out the door for auditing, so now it’s a sprint towards shipping, though of course there may be some minor changes as a result of further networking and of course from the audit.

Lately some in the community have been promoting a July ship date and I personally would be disappointed if it slipped that far.

Layer2

Optimistic rollup for tokens Fuel ships first public testnet

Optimistic Game Semantics for a generalized layer2 client

Loopring presents full results of their zk rollup testing

StarkEx says they can do 9000 trades per second at 75 gas per trade with offchain data, with the limiting factor being the prover, not onchain throughput.

9000 is a pretty crazy number, although since the data is offchain that makes it a Plasma construct and not a rollup. StarkWare to my memory hasn’t provided details on what the exit game is - as an end user do i get a proof I can submit if i need to exit? I have no idea.

Anyway, it’s very cool that the limiting factor is the prover, ie, nothing about Ethereum is what is currently limiting the 9000 transactions per second number.

Of course Loopring would also have a fairly crazy number if they did offchain data, but they have a thousand or 2k tps per second number with onchain data, and let’s be honest: right now the limiting factor here is the demand for dexes. No dex at the moment can fill even a hundred transactions per second. But as trades get cheaper, presumably there is more demand. And token trading will certainly increase in the next bull market.

Meanwhile Fuel shipped its first testnet. Very neat.

Stuff for developers

An update on the Vyper compiler: there’s now two efforts, a new one in Rust using YUL to target both EVM & ewasm as well as the existing one in Python.

A look at vulnerabilities of deployed code over time

a beginner’s guide to the K framework

Vulnerability: hash collisions with multiple variable length arguments

Verifying wasm transactions (and part2)

Austin Griffith’s eth.build metatransactions

Build your own customized Burner Wallet

Abridged v2 aiming to make it easy to onboard new users of web2 networks

Ethcode v0.9 VSCode extension

Embark v5

The Vyper saga is interesting. The existing Vyper compiler had a number of security holes found. EF’s Python team decided they didn’t like the existing codebase. So now some of the existing Vyper team is continuing on with the existing Python compiler, whereas there will also be an effort to write a Vyper compiler in Rust but to the intermediate language Yul, which means it will have both ewasm and EVM.

Also interesting to see the data viz of depoyed vulnerabilities over time. App security has been improving!

Ecosystem

RicMoo: SQRLing mnemonic phrases

ethsear.ch – Ethereum specific search engine

Avado’s RYO node – nodes opt-in and let users access them via load balancer

30 days of Eth ecosystem shipping

Aztec’s BN-254 trusted setup ceremony post-mortem. Confidential transactions launching this month

RicMoo always has interesting posts on techniques to use in Ethereum that aren’t mainstream. This one is pretty interesting.

I’m very excited about Aztec’s confidential transactions shipping this month. Much like Tornado, this is huge. The difference is that Aztec is about obscuring transaction amounts. Well, it’s about more than that and will be an interesting primitive for people to build with.

Enterprise

700m USD volume on Komgo commodity trade finance platform

TraSeable seafood tracker article on the challenges points out the troubles with no private chain interoperability

Caterpillar business process management system

Q&A with Marley Gray about the EEA’s Token Taxonomy Initiative

700m USD. It continues to strike me that enterprise is one of Ethereum’s biggest moats, and yet I don’t think I do a great job covering it. Much of what gets published is press release rewrites.

And of course I did a small bit of editorializing by noting that an article on private chains was finding how hard it was to have all these private chains. They need mainnet!

Governance and standards

EIP1559 implementation discussion

EIP2456: Time based upgrades

Metamask’s bounty for a generalized metatransaction standard

1559 is important because it kills economic abstraction forever! It’s happening in eth2, it’d be nice to have it happen in eth1. While I think some of the tradeoffs have not been written about - and that originally caused me to be a bit skeptical, perhaps i’ll write a post about that -- it’d be great to get 1559 into production.

In general, Eth needs better standardization around wallets for frontend devs.

Application layer

Flashloans within one transaction using Aave Protocol are live on mainnet

Orchid’s decentralized VPN launches

Data viz on dexes in 2019

ZRXPortal for ZRX holders to delegate their tokens to stakers

Dai Stability Fee and Dai Savings Rate go up to 6%, while Sai Stability Fee at 5%

EthHub’s new Ethereum user guides

It’s great that EthHub is doing user guides, that’s something that is missing. What’s also missing is a concerted Ethereum effort to link to stuff so that old uncle Google does a better job of returning search results.

Aave’s flashloans is another neat primitive. Things unique to DeFi.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

David Hoffman: the money game landscape

Australia experimenting with a digital Aussie dollar, with a prototype on a private Ethereum chain

3 cryptocurrency regulation themes for 2020

OpenSea’s compendium of NFT knowledge

A newsletter to keep track of the NFT space

Initial Sardine Coin Offering

NBA guard Spencer Dinwiddie’s tokenized contract launches January 13

Progressive decentralization: a dapp business plan

I wrote a Twitter thread about Dinwiddie’s tokens. I’m curious how they do, given that the NBA made him change plans and just do a bond. I haven’t seen the prospectus, and press accounts have conflicting information, but it appears that the annual interest rate is 14%. In that case, I wonder who puts fiat in? I doubt anyone would sell their ETH at these prices for a 14% USD return. There is some risk, but it basically requires Dinwiddie to lose the plot and get arrested or fail a drug test. So it seems like quite a good return given the low risk (assuming it is indeed 14%)

That Sardine token is wild, but not crazy. I won’t even try to summarize it, but perhaps even weirder is that they announced it at CES. Is your average CES attendee going to have any idea what ETH is during the depths of cryptowinter? Unclear to me.

Lots of good stuff in this section this week. Jesse Walden wrote up the “get product market fit, then community, then decentralize” which has worked for a bunch of DeFi protocols.

It’s also the opposite of what folks like Augur and Melon have done. So far the “decentralize later” camp has gotten more traction, but I personally don’t consider this argument decided at all, especially if you are in heavily regulated industries like Augur or Melon where regulators might put you into bankruptcy just because they got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.

I also think Augur could be a sleeper hit for 2020, and I think Melon’s best days are still in front of it.

General

Andrew Keys: 20 blockchain predictions for 2020

Haseeb Qureshi’s intro to cryptocurrency class for programmers

Ben Edgington’s BLS12-381 for the rest of us

Visualizing efficient Merkle trees for zero knowledge proofs

Eli Ben-Sasson’s catalog of the Cambrian zero knowledge explosion

Bounty for breaking RSA assumptions

It’s amusing how heavy crypto stuff often gets put into this section. The cryptography stuff is all super interesting, but not sure I can provide much more context for it.

Juxtaposed with intense cryptography in this section is Andrew Keys’ annual new year predictions. Always a fun read.

Haseeb’s class looked great. A place to pick up all the knowledge that has taken some of us years to piece together, blog post by blog post.

Full Week in Ethereum News issue.

0 notes

smartoptionsio · 5 years

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A Pretty Boring ByBit Review

The Bulls are back (a bit) and the ref-shillers are heating up their game. ByBit, Deribit, BitMAX reviews everywhere you look. Everyone shills a ref-link here a real “review” there. But damn! Did you ever look at the UX of BitMAX? Do you think this is a website that could be ever successful and does you really believe that it outranked each and every other exchange with that insane volume numbers? OK. I admit, I did not do my research here, this is just a baseless rant. I visited the site, it put me instantly off and I went away. Similar thing with ByBit and all the other shrooms which are popping out of every cowpat. I get hammered with ByBit affiliate links on Twitter, on Telegram, needless to say, they are emailing us often to promote them (because they follow us on Instagram, and love our content there – thing is only we aren’t there). OK, here is the boring ByBit review like on any other crypto site so we can finally put a lid on it. In a nutshell: A few differences, but basically BitMEX with a Binance theme.

In 2018 the Security Exchange commission blocked several Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) citing that the risk to investors would be potentially too high. While the SEC did not entirely dismiss the idea of Bitcoin ETFs in the future they argued the market was yet to mature enough for ETFs. After the stalling of Bitcoin ETFs albeit momentary, cryptocurrency derivatives are increasingly coming to the fore. One of the companies that are strongly involved in this evolution is BitMEX and therefore other derivatives exchange pop out everywhere trying to copy their successful model. In this article, we conduct an in-depth review of the features and workings of the ByBit derivatives exchange as an example for all the other ones flodding to the market recently.

What is ByBit?

ByBit is a worldwide platform that allows retail traders, professionals, investment institutions and enthusiast to participate in cryptocurrencies derivatives trading. The platforms aim at combining the best of traditional assets and digital assets to create a safe, reliable, fair and user-centric exchange for crypto-derivatives. The exchange largely focuses on trading the pairs of BTC/USD and ETH/USD. The platform is one of the most robust networks with an impressive rate of 100,000 transactions per second.

Claim: Handles a massive amount of transaction per second. BitMEX Comparison: This would basically mean no Overload issues like on Mex, which would be neat of course. Reality: I doubt ByBit really expecierenced the traffic and server load BitMEX did. So this has yet to be proven.

ByBit is registered as a cryptocurrency exchange in the British Virgin Islands and its headquarters are based in Singapore. The founding and management teams are comprised of financial executives and blockchain investors.

Claim: The project also boasts of highly competent professionals who are in charge of research and development within the company. BitMEX Comparison: Hey, we have Arthur here. Frankly, I prefer to have money on a BVI based exchange, than on the Seychelles. Reality: The company registration is OK. The team can be checked on LinkedIn. However, this information has to be verified.

In her bid to standardize financial regulations in the crypto-space, ByBit is driven by three major core values of promoting: transparency, innovation, and user support. So far, the innovation point is not yet clearly visible to me, but let’s check for the features.

The Features of ByBit

Perpetual contracts.

Perpetual contracts are financial derivatives that are designed to be a compromise between spot contracts and future contracts. On one hand, spot contracts require immediate settlement, while on the other hand, future contracts are settled on a specific date in the future, like for example TRX or CARDANO on BitMEX. Perpetual contracts adopted by ByBit, therefore provide a simple and efficient trading option for traders to hold positions for as long as they desire. This results in more opportunities for financial gain. However, just as known, funding rates apply.

BitMEX Comparison: ByBit covers only Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetuals and no further altcoin futures like BitMEX. Funding rates apply on perpetual contracts like on ByBit.

Dual-price mechanism.

The crypto-space has been constantly facing accusations of price manipulations, where exchanges have often resulted in intentionally deflating or inflating prices for malicious gains. To counter this, ByBit uses the dual-price mechanism to protect investors from manipulation and uses mark prace AND last traded price. For instance, if the price of ETH plummets from $180 to $40 as a result of attempted manipulation, the Mark Price will remain at $180, effectively protecting the traders from liquidation since the mark price is the sole trigger for liquidation.

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Claim: Basically, this would mean you get less wicked out. Reality: Could not find any user feedback until now. To be observed.

Mark to Market.

On ByBit a contracts prices are usually tethered to the last traded price using a mechanism called funding. Funding is exchanged between long and short positions every 8 hours, thus making the last traded price marked to market every 8 hours.

BitMEX Comparison: Exactly the same.

Leveraged Trading.

ByBit offers up to 100 times leverage on perpetual contracts, this is way above the 3-5x and 5-20x leverage offered on spot trading and future trading respectively. Traders are also able to adjust the leverage and margin of an open position, hence increasing flexibility. However, while leveraged trading can lead to massive returns it can also lead to equally massive losses. ByBit offers 100x Leverage on both perpetual contracts.

BitMEX comparison: OMG! A Difference: On ByBit you can use 100x Leverage on ETH (BitMEX has a maximum on 50x for ETH))

Comprehensive contract loss mechanism.

With comprehensive contract loss, ByBit is able to determine who bears what cost when positions cannot be liquidated at bankruptcy. Unlike socialized loss systems where all profitable traders share the loss, ByBit uses the deleveraging system. Users are ranked according to profit ratio and effective leverage and the more profitable and higher leveraged traders(risky traders) are de-leveraged first.

BitMEX comparison: Mirror, Mirror on the wall. We have a twin here.

ByBit Fees, Deposit and Withdrawal

Every trade on ByBit has two main parties a marker who places the order and the take who takes the markers order. Takers are charged 0.075% on each order, makers on the other end receive 0.025% on each trade. However, in comparison with BitMEX which also offers derivative trading one can argue that the fees are fair since the fees are identical.

BitMEX Fee Structure

When withdrawing BTC from the ByBit trading platform, you will have to pay 0.0005 BTC. This is 40% lower than the global industry average BTC withdrawal fee (0.0008 BTC) and thus also a very competitive withdrawal fee.

ByBit does not accept fiat deposits and hence first-time cryptocurrencies holders ought to first buy either BITCOIN or Ethereum from entry-level exchanges like Coinbase.

BitMEX Comparsion: Innovation! You can deposit/withdraw in ETH. At least something new!

How to register on ByBit.

If you are not bored to death by now by the copycats of ByBit, or you finally found a use case for your ETH, you might consider registering. ByBit is also very easy to satisfy when it comes to customer data – there is almost none needed. You can register either using your email or phone number. Your phone or email will then be verified via either a text, call, or email and you are now ready to set up. Upon filling all the required fields you are now free to begin trading.

It is important to note that ByBit does not accept traders from the US. This is largely a result of stringent regulatory requirements by the SEC. The SEC imposes strict obligations on any companies that wish to accept funds from US-investors.

BitMEX Comparison: Same same, no different.

Order Types & Trading

ByBit – BitMEX with a Binance Theme

If you ever wished for BitMEX with a Binance theme, ByBit is your way to go! Very funny mashup, that might confuse you in the first place, when you are used to using both of the other exchanges on a regular base. ByBit offers the usual three order types that traders can choose according to their trading needs. Like on the most exchanges you can choose from limit order, market order, and conditional orders. The friendly interface allows users to adjust leverage, commission price, and a number of contracts. Orders can also be executed until close, immediately canceled or canceled completely. The platform also allows users to take profits or stops loss at certain positions of the trade.

Interesting spots: Truly interesting are two things here, which sets ByBit apart from BitMEX. On one hand, you have a currency dropdown in the upper right area, which lets you choose between BTC and ETH for your trade. The second and even more interesting difference is the conditional order. On BitMEX you have these kinds of orders only for stops. If you’d place the same orders without the conditional order engine on BitMEX they would execute against the market order book, on ByBit they become active once certain price conditions are met.

EXAMPLE: Let’s say ETH is at 155 USD and you want to place a short once support at 142 is broken. You cannot place a short order on BitMEX while we are above 142 for 142 and below. On ByBit you can say if the conditional price of 142 is reached, place a limit or market order at 143 short. Finally something new.

Yet another boring Conclusion

Overall, ByBit seems like a really reliable and robust platform for conducting derivatives exchanges. The platform not only has unique features that are not available with many exchanges but also has a vibrant and committed community behind it. As the need for cryptocurrency derivatives continue to rise the popularity of the exchange is also going to increase.

This is the conclusion your average blog would write to lure you into doing the clicky-clicky thing with their affiliate link. The real conclusion is: It is basically the very same offering as BitMEX in a Binance dress. Are there really less “wick-quidations“? It will show if you use it for a while. Is the exchange liquid enough to make trading possible? It seems like, yeah. Do we really need an option to go 100x into ETH? At least the deposit and trading in ETH is something new. But the real deal with ByBit are the conditional orders – that’s a great feature for sure, and we would love to see it on other exchanges as well.

0 notes

savetopnow · 6 years

Text

2018-03-31 00 BIT COIN now

BIT COIN

@AmberBaldet

Kind of got too busy to remember to boost this one, but I’m thrilled to host this month’s sold out #ETHNYC @ JPM’s Hudson Yards innovation hub! There is... a lot of pizza. https://twitter.com/nyc_techevents/status/977571246819995648 …

The selfish reason to be ethical is that it attracts the other ethical people in the network.

A privilege and honor to welcome Kathryn Haun @katie_haun to the board of directors of HackerOne http://fortune.com/2018/03/28/kathryn-haun-hackerone/ …

In 1999, I asked David Gerrold to write a "future of computing" prediction for the magazine where I was Technology Editor. Here's what he wrote.pic.twitter.com/UAMM0Pm4W6

Reminder: It’s not good enough to be right; you need to be right at the right time.

@AriDavidPaul

2/ Or just put the whole treasury in cryptokitty accessory stickers. https://www.kittyhats.co/

Projects ask me about treasury management. I say, "you're already all-in on crypto. Your project is pro-cyclical in all regards. Your costs are all in USD. You should be 100% USD in your treasury." ...death stares. "Fine you want to gamble, at least be 50% USD." https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/979507369448296455 …

I came up with a half dozen religion-cryptocurrency jokes, but I'd rather avoid offending believers in both. Beautiful setting for a fun discussion with @prestonjbyrne, Joel, and Rebecca moderating. https://twitter.com/JohnnyAntos/status/979136970860441600 …

New (facetious) ICO idea: a one-time pad based cryptocurrency. https://twitter.com/desantis/status/979452268620795905 …

CME futures average daily volume in the picture below. Each contract is equivalent to 5 BTC, so they're averaging about 12,500 BTC a day, or about $100m a day in volume. Still small, but I like the trend.pic.twitter.com/E0VWMcsoNX

@ErikVoorhees

If someone proposes that "blockchain can solve X"... ask them "Which blockchain?" If they are confused by that question, they may not know what they're talking about.

Fantastic episode today with @zooko Wilcox of @zcashco! We discuss whether people care about privacy, why so few people choose the shielded addresses on Zcash and the moral implications of creating a tool that could aid criminals. Check it out! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/zcashs-zooko-wilcox-on-why-he-believes-privacy-coins/id1123922160?i=1000407572319&mt=2 …

When (not if) interest rates rise by 3%, putting them back in the range of normal, the US Federal Government will incur $600 billion in additional interest costs per year on its debt... roughly the size of the entire military budget.

too good https://twitter.com/Annrhefn/status/977966087458447361 …

Trump's advocacy of tariffs betrays not only economic ignorance, but moral desolation, for they impoverish private citizens on both sides of a border. Tariffs of all kinds, everywhere, should be extinguished on both moral, and economic, grounds.

@Excellion

HODL. Or HODL not. There is no try. #Bitcoinpic.twitter.com/bcLZu7f50a

C'mon, guys, we can't wait for the next episode! This is what we need, I mean based on the episodes I've watched so far - I consider The Magical Crypto Friends the "TOP GEAR" of Crypto space. In all seriousness. One learns a lot as well enjoys tons of fun and laugh.

When is "Episode 6: What did Charlie do this time?" coming out? @MagicalCrypto @Excellion @WhalePanda @fluffypony @SatoshiLitepic.twitter.com/sZVYU1kbTM

I think you’re obligated to record the song and make a music video now @La__Cuen. https://twitter.com/la__cuen/status/979530081361125376 …

If you’re an exchange operator and want to be a part of the #CryptocurrencyDataFeed hit me up! https://twitter.com/blockstream/status/979539061001113601 …

@KevinRose

Reminder: Mister Rogers stamps are now available at USPS, just ordered mine: https://store.usps.com/store/results?_dyncharset=UTF-8&Dy=1&Nty=1&siteScope=ok&_D%3AsiteScope=+&Ntt=mister+rogers&search=&_D%3Asearch=+&_DARGS=%2Fstore%2Fcartridges%2FSearchBox%2FSearchBox.jsp …

can't wait to read this!! https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/976850741985009664 …

So many cool topics in this episode...more reasons to use the sauna. https://twitter.com/foundmyfitness/status/975769511788929024 …

Happy Wednesday, much love to you all.

My first job was also $4.25/hr making bread sticks at Olive Garden. Then I got a job as a cashier at Computer City https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/970010441702260736 …

@Melt_Dem

“with their reach considerably larger than any college professor, (insert famous VC name) apes expertise in an effort to get us to believe that the best society is one where men like him determine legitimacy.” - @girlziplocked slays me https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/paul-graham-is-still-asking-to-be-eaten-5f021c0c0650 …

is it bad that i view someone calling me “an absurdist, contrarian crypto troll” as a compliment? paging my mom aka @D_Demirors - can you put that on the fridge at home?

can we have a support group called "bag holders anonymous"? asking for a friend...

so excited for the US version of Crypto Finance Conference! if it's anything like the St Moritz, it's going to be absolute FIRE! https://twitter.com/marcpbernegger/status/979240765741240320 …

People are more mad at Facebook that Cambridge Analytica found out which sex and the city character they are than they are at Equifax for letting their personal and financial info get stolen.

@Naval

Groups who externalize thinking have to externalize responsibility as well.

Groups can’t admit to their members that they were wrong. That’s why when they lose in public, they fall back to conspiracy theories.

20) What is THE TRUTH about The Zone? 21) This is what I have discovered through my own experimentation. The Zone is not a state in which the mind is calm. 22) The Zone is a state in which the mind has disappeared.

When the email hosts, the web hosts, the domain registrars, the banks, the payment systems, the censors and the politicians crack down on crypto... only then will we see the true power of decentralization.

Make a smart person look dumb if you want to know if their humility is real

@NeerajKA

Doing my jobpic.twitter.com/MuMjQ8gKlz

Should I make this my cover photopic.twitter.com/466ctQL1LR

2018 is amazing https://twitter.com/iamnomad/status/979471429749149707 …

Open again because I’m bored in a waiting room

live look at a hodler https://twitter.com/blippguy/status/979461147161178112 …

@NickSzabo4

All phones have spy backdoors these days. But if you live outside of China buy a phone from Huawei and use encrypted communication apps. That way it’s the Chinese spying on you and they don’t share your data with US / EU spy agencies #PickYourSpies

We will look back on the idea that government bonds can be "risk-free" as a kind of collective insanity: "Despite history and facts, associating the word 'risk' with UST is for some reason blasphemous among financial professionals." ht @michaellebowitz https://realinvestmentadvice.com/the-mind-blowing-concept-of-risk-freeier/ …pic.twitter.com/IgyCNqQBiq

Welcome to the UK in 2018, where publicly elected officials snitch on citizens for saying things they don't like it and call for their imprisonment.pic.twitter.com/auBXFA1lVv

how a well diversified modern portfolio management strategy would have managed in 1912 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/holy-grail-hedge-fund-strategy-handle-black-swan-size-world-war-i-1576915 …

@SatoshiLite

Yes, it's been a rough week for cryptocurrency, but look on the bright side. BTC and ETH is just back to the levels 4.5 months ago, yet LTC has almost doubled since that time! Poor BCH though. https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20171112/ …pic.twitter.com/7tdL8z2LrO

Hugo @hugohanoi wrote a great article highlighting how proof of stake is inferior to proof of work when handling the worst case scenarios. IMO, for a robust and decentralized cryptocurrency, PoW is the only way to go. https://medium.com/@hugonguyen/proof-of-stake-the-wrong-engineering-mindset-15e641ab65a2 …

Are you ready folks? @billbarhydt from @AbraGlobal is dropping by r/litecoin to do an AMA ! Come hang out with us to learn more about Abra and ask him anything! #Litecoin $LTC https://redd.it/883dub

It's actually definitely the Litecoin logo. I just watched it on HBO and there are 3 logos being tossed around: BTC, LTC, and ETH. You can see it on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eMYiDaY3-Q …

Is this the Litecoin logo I see next to the Coinbase logo in the new opening intro of @SiliconHBO?! We've made it! pic.twitter.com/hBkCIk1WHv

@TuurDemeester

Discussion about the mathematical proof that it is impossible to determine the “true” transaction history in a PoS blockchain without an additional source of trust: https://forum.blockstack.org/t/pos-blockchains-require-subjectivity-to-reach-consensus/762?u=muneeb …

Given the math proof that proof-of-stake is impossible without relying on an external source of trust, imo the PoS school is ultimately a set of political theories. Vitalik's article reminded me of Plato's belief that everything would be great if only philosophers were in charge.pic.twitter.com/kuGvZOTIQE

Vitalik Buterin criticizes delegated proof of stake, yet still believes: "The answer is ... cryptoeconomics". https://vitalik.ca/general/2018/03/28/plutocracy.html …

Thread: https://twitter.com/MartyBent/status/896775534658686979 …

Truth has friends: just like math theorems can be proven in multiple ways, identifying an architecture or strategy as fundamentally flawed should be possible from multiple angles. The fewer robust criticisms I find, the higher the chance my skepticism is misguided.

@VitalikButerin

I just published "Governance, Part 2: Plutocracy Is Still Bad": https://vitalik.ca/general/2018/03/28/plutocracy.html … @VladZamfir @dannyryan

The State of Ethereum Union - Ex Unitate Vires https://blog.cosmos.network/ethereum-and-cosmos-bae657645e31?source=linkShare-aa134d2d5140-1522374466 …pic.twitter.com/IZlcCWSNUq

Over 5 days and that https://www.facebook.com/VitalikButerln account has still not been removed. Shame on you, @facebook. BTW, can someone who has not yet deleted their instagram account please report https://www.instagram.com/vitalik.buterin ? I HAVE NO SOCIAL MEDIA EXCEPT REDDIT AND TWITTER.https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/977557216080273414 …

Recap: Ethereum Sharding Workshop in Taipei https://medium.com/@icebearhww/ethereum-sharding-workshop-in-taipei-a44c0db8b8d9 … Thank you! @ethereum #sharding #icanttageveryone

Excited to be part of this initiative! https://twitter.com/Give_Directly/status/978796862936375296 …

@WhalePanda

Oh damn all social media usernames? They better add an extra page for the @BitcoinCom staff if any of Roger's employees want to enter the US. https://twitter.com/business/status/979589162910257152?s=19 …

Real Tether vs Wannabe Tether. Interesting times we live in. https://twitter.com/BittrexExchange/status/979419926917275651 …

$Crypto is definitely crumbling. #Bitcoin only up 7x in a year. Please send help. https://twitter.com/izakaminska/status/979323457728073728?s=19 …

Got some cool @magicalcrypto t-shirts in the mail today. Going to take some extra with me to #Consensus2018.pic.twitter.com/Z0Dq6aLWL8

It's taking them a bit longer than the Bitcoiners, but seems like more and more of the $BCH die hard fans/devs are finally calling out CSW's bs.pic.twitter.com/yLhE4wXXCe

@aantonop

Ridiculous yet true. Reality has become absurd. https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/979498330710425602 …

Sorry to longtime followers that know all this, but if you like Twitter bots and: - public records, @FOIAfeed - fruit watercolors, @pomological - emoji trains, @choochoobot - Joe Brainard, @i_remember_txt - old 78 records, @78_sampler - weird postcard poetry, @postcards_past

They also shot down our list that supposed to be used to announce critical updates to ETC

Great comments on my video about chargeback risks and decentralized exchanges like Bisq - Thread https://twitter.com/bisq_network/status/979472634747514882 …

This is the second instance I hear of @mailchimp shutting down accounts related to crypto-currencies. Not ones advertising ICOs, or even exchanges. Just news, books, event announcements. https://twitter.com/evan_van_ness/status/979485548476710912 …

@brian_armstrong

Lots of rain today, but quite warm. Amazon rainforest https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg7aOwvFamE/

Old Spanish churchs in Latin America https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg6017NF-TT/

Amazon river https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg6dImilfXI/

Amazon rain forest hikes https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg6dFwMFfIA/

Our app doesn't follow this pattern yet but soon. More important for apps used in low connectivity countries.

@gavinandresen

The Ventures @ CICS (@umasscs) event will be held on April 3rd. See you there. #Entrepreneurship https://www.cics.umass.edu/event/ventures-cics-panel-networking-event …pic.twitter.com/HDQ9AmAhly

We’ve created https://doublespend.cash -- a tool demonstrating Bitcoin XT’s ability to monitor double spends on the Bitcoin Cash network

After a devastating earthquake in 2010, the world collectively pledged about $13B to aid to Haiti. That's enough to give every Haitian a 50% pay increase for 3 years (on average) and far less than we'd need to fund a #crypto #UBI there. https://jamespflynn.com/2018/03/21/the-cryptoeconomics-of-funding-a-universal-basic-income/ …

Damned if you do, damned if you don't? http://gavinthink.blogspot.com/2018/03/precautionary-principle-problems.html?spref=tw …

What’s new with BlockSci, Princeton’s blockchain analysis tool: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/03/15/whats-new-with-blocksci-princetons-blockchain-analysis-tool/ …https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/948408704596168704 ��

@lopp

In high stakes adversarial environments you must defend against the impossible because the impossible will happen. H/T @hugohanoi https://medium.com/@hugonguyen/proof-of-stake-the-wrong-engineering-mindset-15e641ab65a2#---0-283 …pic.twitter.com/JNuohs6dn6

Connecting your hardware wallet to your own full node https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/880q54/electrum_personal_server_beta_release/ …

Grin team is making great progress & just launched testnet2! New features: * Schnorr-style signatures * Fast chain sync & pruning * Dandelion protocol * Compact range proofs w / bulletproofs * An efficient multi-device GPU miner * Compact block propagation https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/ …

The same qualities that make Bitcoin resistant to manipulation also make it coldly unforgiving of mistakes. Financial freedom and cryptographic catastrophe comprise two sides of the same coin.

The dollar is just a fad - the real potential can be found in the underlying money printing technology!

@prestonjbyrne

#FF... on an "Adam" theme. @AdamSinger @ASI @ScottAdamsSays @agkrellenstein @GamerAndy https://twitter.com/AdamSinger/status/979712870178058240 …

This is amazing https://twitter.com/ofnumbers/status/979618874831273984 …

The Assault Weapons Ban is the anti-Trumpers' border wall. An impractical, magical, brute-force attempt to impede a complex set of social dynamics. Even those of its proponents who realize it'll cost dearly & deliver nothing still love it for the symbolism.

Via late-night Twitter DMs with Jaime, Preston and I quickly convinced JPM to: (1) not use Bitcoin to handle all of its post-trade processing needs (2) but instead to invest resources into multiple different vendors trying to build customized solutions for JPMs specific needs

one overlooked cause for the slump in coin prices: Mavrodi, the mastermind behind the infamous MMM Ponzi scheme, had a heart attack and died. MMM-related schemes have waxing/waning popularity in Africa and China. Some Chinese exchanges materially benefited from MMM volume. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/979324811062206464 …

@rogerkver

Be your own leader.

Too many people don’t understand that: GUN CONTROL IS GUN VIOLENCEpic.twitter.com/rIrEKkSCHr

Software developers far too often underestimate the importance of business developers.

[email protected] , the man who had the vision to go all in on bitcoin in 2011 is one of Bitcoin Cash’s biggest supporters today. #MeToo https://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/ …

Thanks to @MoneyToken Bitcoin Cash holders can leverage their BCH holdings into spending cash, while continuing to hold their BCH positions. That's why I'm now an advisor for http://moneytoken.com

@starkness

Just released the first beta of LightningTip! I created it to make it easy to accept tips via the Lightning Network on my website. It uses LND as backend to create invoices and monitor which of them were paid. Source code: https://github.com/michael1011/lightningtip …pic.twitter.com/wIMb4a5SsJ

Tonight: @lightning Labs CTO @roasbeef to speak @SFBitcoinDevs about lnd 0.4, the beta release for the live bitcoin network! https://www.meetup.com/SF-Bitcoin-Devs/events/248815578/ …

Meet @starkness. The Lightning Queen. She'll stitch a global payment network on a shoestring budget. One of few people who can follow a rosabeef conversation in realtime. 15/10pic.twitter.com/Yvt8qRPbgN

The Times 21/Mar/2018 Bitcoin will the become world's single currency, tech chief says. https://twitter.com/Beautyon_/status/976511842926432256 …

Yes

@twobitidiot

surprise, surprise -- just published “Token Daily: March 28” also there's a @naval tweet inside this time around. happy reading! https://medium.com/tokendaily/token-daily-march-28-6018aa50723f …

[email protected] I've spent thousands of dollars with you and sent hundreds of subscriber emails on crypto over the past five years. I'm restarting my Daily Bit Monday. I don't shill ICOs. Don't fuck with me.pic.twitter.com/XHdWBUQGPF

Should I email our investors an April fools' joke this weekend saying we're out of money from our Jan raise because ETH crashed? Or is that too close to home because many other projects are drafting the same emails...but for real, yo. #treasurymanagement

Designing the Messari TCR is the most fun professional project I've ever participated in. It's like playing chess and settlers of catan on the same board. If you're a solidity engineer and want to help, send an application to [email protected] ! cc: @QWQiao

You know it’s a bloodbath when your mom sends you this.pic.twitter.com/dMeBWLmv7J

Bitcoin Magazine

Newegg to Accept Bitcoin Payments from Canadian Customers

Promoted: Sharing Your Identity? Get Paid in ShoCoin

Two More Japanese Exchanges Shutter Their Businesses

Cryptocurrency Interest: Is It on the Decline, and Could It Spike Again?

Cryptocurrency Exchange Bitfinex Plans Move to Switzerland

Bitcoin Price

Cryptocurrency market bloodbath continues; Bitcoin Cash topples hard and fast – March 29

Litecoin dips hard for the first time since February – March 28

Ethereum falls to new 2018 low as markets tumble; Australia seeks public input on cryptocurrency taxation – Mar 27

Cryptocurrency market declines slightly; Monero devs say no to ASIC mining – March 26

Bitcoin continues to trade sideways. Traffic at crypto exchanges declines – March 23

Bitcoin Reddit

The Bitcoin Miner - Behind the Scenes

Bitcoin is clearly dead ...

Please don’t get offended.

My prediction for Bitcoin. Based on only facts.

South Koreans Will Be Able to Pay in Cryptocurrency at Over 6,000 Stores

Bitcoin.com

Not Dead: There’s Good Reason to Be Long on Bitcoin

Testing Cryptocurrency Atomic Swaps With Barterdex

PR: Crypto Commodity Exchange Digital Ticks Pre – ICO Sells out in 40 Minutes Flat! Public ICO on 15th April 2018

Hacked Cryptocurrency Exchange Youbit Re-Emerges Amid Insurance Controversy

Thailand Approves Draft Decree on Crypto

Brave New Coin

Towards a practice of token engineering

Blockchain as life: Incentivizing humans with machines

How blockchain can revolutionize the HR and recruitment industries

ICOs so hot right now and Morgan Creek hedge fund goes crypto

What the tech billionaires think of cryptocurrencies

CCN

Money Pit? Telegram ICO Hits $1.7 Billion After 2nd Funding Round

Indeed: Bitcoin Price Retreat Weighs Heavily on Demand for Crypto Jobs

Tim Draper’s Draper Dragon Fund Backs OPEN’s Pioneering Blockchain Payments Infrastructure for Apps

Denmark’s Biggest Bank Warns Customers Against Cryptocurrencies, Blocks Trading

Final Call to Board the CoinMetro ICO – The Future Fintech Platform for Blockchain

Coin Journal

Can Minds Capitalize on Facebook’s Failures ?

Two More Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Shut Down as Regulations Tighten

London Block Exchange Adds Ripple, More Coins to Follow

8base Launches “No-Code” Software Development Platform Powered By Blockchain

Uphold Adds XRP Following US$57.5M Investment From Ripple Investor And Former Exec

Coin Telegraph

OKEx Resolves Futures Price Slip Impact As Trader Threatens Suicide

Dogecoin’s Creator Jackson Palmer: 2018 Is Shaping Up To Be The ‘Year Of The Fork’

Singapore Media Regulator Launches ‘Blockchain Challenge’ To Promote Adoption, Innovation

Nvidia CEO: Blockchain Will Stay ‘For Long Time’ Thanks To ‘Low Friction’ Cryptocurrency

US Tech Company Intel Files Patent To Reduce Bitcoin Mining Energy Use

CoinSpectator Blog

How Zerocoin is Set to Solve the “House Always Wins” Problem?

You can now pay with crypto in over 6,000 South Korean Shops

Gibraltar leads on ICO regulation

How Blockchain can Solve Problems for Online Gambling Sites?

Blockchain-based Container Shipping Platform 300cubits to start the TEU ICO on 12th April 2018

Coindesk

Arizona Bitcoin Trader Convicted for Crypto Money Laundering

Does the IRS Get a Cut of Your Bitcoin Cash?

Bitcoin Eyes Bottom After 50-Day Low Below $7K

Singapore Launches Blockchain Challenge with Funding Prizes

Malta Watchdog Proposes New Blockchain Gaming Guidelines

Crypto Currency Reddit

More Than 70% of Ethereum DApps are Games

REQ Mainnet is live!

China is Still Planning to Launch its Own National Cryptocurrency

TIL the supply of Bitcoin is infinite and it's creator alone controls its value AND rate of production. This level of ignorance is hard to read

Extreme positioning of margin traders on Bitfinex! Might be close to a low.

NewsBTC

Tron Developers Announce Test Net Launch, But is it Such a Big Deal?

Trader Threatens to Commit Suicide, as Millions Worth of Bitcoin Were Liquidated

China is Still Planning to Launch its Own National Cryptocurrency

Ethereum Price Technical Analysis – ETH/USD Breaks Down

Mailchimp Bans Cryptocurrency Ads Following Twitter and Facebook

Reddit Cryptocurrency

More Than 70% of Ethereum DApps are Games

REQ Mainnet is live!

China is Still Planning to Launch its Own National Cryptocurrency

TIL the supply of Bitcoin is infinite and it's creator alone controls its value AND rate of production. This level of ignorance is hard to read

Extreme positioning of margin traders on Bitfinex! Might be close to a low.

#bit coin

0 notes

dropswisdom · 4 years

Text

This review unit was sent to me courtesy of the good people at Tronsmart, so thank you all, and especially Jim, for a very helpful communication.

Today I review a second box (so far) from Tronsmart: Vega S95 Telos. This box is one of the new generation of boxes based on the AMLogic S905 SOC, and like Eny EM95, and Minix Neo U1 before, it supports 10 bit TS video playback – which makes it one of the most advanced TV Boxes out there.

What’s in the Box?

As can be seen, the items included in this package are quite standard.. Power adapter, HDMI cable, IR Remote control, User manual… all aside from the SATA cable which is included to allow for the connection of Hard drives directly into this box!

Looks

The S95 Telos is a black box with matte finish and the company logo embossed in shiny black on its top. It is remarkably skinny and light. No rubber legs are to be found, but it also means it will be easier to attach it to the back of your TV – if you so wish.

Specifications

Chipset Amlogic S905,Quad-core 64-bit ARM® Cortex™-A53 GPU Penta-Core ARM® Mali™-450 Memory / Storage 2 GB DDR3 / 16 GB eMMC 5.0 Storage LAN Gigabit (10/100/1000M) Wireless 802.11ac Dual-Band Wi-Fi(2.4GHz/5.0GHz) ap6335 Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 OS Android Lollipop 5.1.1 Video Output HDMI™2.0,up to 4K @60Hz,Supports HDMI-CEC Audio Output / Input HDMI out, SPDIF (optical) Power DC 12V / 2A Peripheral Interface

3 * USB 2.0 Ports

1 * SD card slot

1 * SPDIF

1 * HDMI 2.0 port

1 * RJ45 LAN Port

1 * SATA port

Packing Included

1 * Vega S95 Telos

1 * Adapter (DC 12V/2A)

1 * HDMI 2.0 Cable

1 * IR Remote Control

1 * SATA cable

1 * User Manual

Benchmarks and Testing

All benchmarks have been repeated 3 times and results have been averaged to give a more accurate reading:

* Antutu Benchmark

The Antutu benchmark tests single core performance over multi-core as it is a better indication of the performance of one device over others in most situations. The box shows that it’s single core performance is not the highest which is consistent with the S905 being a more “budget-y” SOC and not really meant for the high end products. * Recently, Antutu benchmark has been updated to version 6 which uses different parameters and sub-tests, so the graphs are still based on the older 5.7.2 version for comparison, but here is the result of the new (6.0.0) Antutu version: 35393

GPU Mark Benchmark

GPU Mark tests 3d gaming performance and also provides a normalized score according to the used screen resolution (for a more accurate result). The test is quite short and should be taken as a supporting result to that of the more serious 3D Mark benchmark.

A1 SD Benchmark

A1 SD Benchmark tests RAM and flash memory speeds. As can be seen in the provided graphs, RAM is much faster (by a factor of about 40) than flash memory – that is why it’s in smaller amount and is also volatile (does not keep its contents after a reboot). The RAM performance is better than the Minix Neo U1, which helps the general performance. But in both Internal and External SD card tests, the S95 seems to take a backseat to the new Minix, probably due to a better implementation of a memory reader/controller in the latter.

PC Mark Benchmark

The PC Mark benchmark tests run several productivity tests and the S95 did not show great performance. (concentrate on the work performance score). It may be due to lack of optimization in the firmware and may get better in time.

3D Mark Benchmark

3D Mark benchmark is considered as one of the best ways to test 3d performance on Android (and other platforms). The S95 did not shine in it, coming right after its competitor – the Minix Neo U1. As this is the budget chip of the new AMLogic generation, it is understandable.

Issues and Bugs

1. Google play games crashes on opening

2. Volume bar bug – appears randomly on the screen without any remote control interaction.

3. 10mb bug. Unable to copy to, rename on, or delete from connected USB drives. in my case it’s a 1.5 TB hard drive that works perfectly when connected to any other (non S905 based) TV box.

4. Backing up XBMC/Kodi/SPMC to a folder either on the external USB drive or a MicroSD card failed. (“not writeable” error) It seems that small files can be written correctly to the targets, but bigger files just refuse to write. The targets are formatted in NTFS, and I was using compression in the backup add-on.

5. Torrent streaming Kodi Add-ons still do not work (pulsar, Kmediatorrent and so on) in Kodi or Kodi variants.

Keep in mind that this is a brand new model and that those are most likely growing pains that will be ironed out in time. All issues have been reported to Tronsmart and should be dealt with in future updates.

Network performance

Network performance has been tested using Speedtest.net Internet speed measuring app, in WiFi and in Wired mode. My Internet connection is 200 Mbit Synchronous Fibre connection. Notice that in comparison to Minix Neo U1, it has room to improve, although it shows a respectable performance (WiFi wise):

5 Ghz (802.11ac) WiFi Speed

AV500 Internet over Powerline (wired) Speed

Video Playback testing (Using KODI)

Resolution Video Format Local Playback Network (Wi-Fi/LAN) Playback 720p (1280*720) AVC ([email protected]) Playing correctly Playing correctly 1080P (1920*1080) AVC (High@L4) Playing correctly Playing correctly 2160P (3840*2160) HEVC (H.265) Playing correctly Playing correctly 4K (4096*2304) AVC ([email protected]) Playing correctly Long Pre-buffering, and some jitter (on Wifi. PLC over LAN is worse with stutter and buffering) 4K TS HEVC files HEVC (H.265) 10Bit Playing correctly Long Pre-buffering (on Wifi. PLC over LAN is worse with stutter and buffering)

Video playback is quite great. 10 Bit TS files that never worked before are now playing quite well, but bandwidth still affects playback, and the heavier the file is, the more of an issue it is. Wi-Fi performance is noticeably better (especially AC/5GHz connection) than LAN over PLC. Tronsmart includes a Pro version of a customized Kodi player called VidOn. It has support for DTS-HD & Dolby TrueHD, pass-through, 3D MKV, 3D BDMV and 3D ISO playback, as well as BD-J menu navigation. However, be aware that VidOn is considered as a company that employs low tactics and circumvents Kodi’s GPL in order to sell their product (by using “XBMC” in their name instead of “Kodi”).

Gaming performance

Rooting became available during testing, and so Frame rate and resource usage can be measured:

Asphalt 8 Airborne – a 3d graphic intensive racing game. Game performance is fine in standard settings. It is not completely smooth, but is more than playable.

Average frame rate was measured at 41 Frames per second, while CPU usage was at 26 % and 298 MB of RAM were used.

Angry Birds 2 – a popular 2d action game. The gameplay was mostly smooth with a few stutters/jerks (both in picture and audio) along the way. The loading times were a little slower than I expected. Overall, a mediocre to good experience. The GPU/RAM handling may need some polishing to avoid these issues in the future, and it may also have to do with the “Google play services” bug that does not allow games to use it for game play tracking.

Average frame rate was measured at 32 Frames per second, while CPU usage was at 13% and 255 MB of RAM were used.

Walking War Robots – an online robot warfare game that requires a game-pad (I don’t have a game-pad). Game loaded fast and frame rate was quite satisfactory.

Average frame rate was measured at 30 Frames per second, while CPU usage was at 15% and 247 MB of RAM were used.

Conclusions

Did I like it? Yes, as can be seen by the high marks. I think that even though it performs somewhat lower than it’s direct competitor – the U1, it also costs less and poses a real alternative to Minix.

Would I recommend it? Definitely.

UPDATE: A first rooting solution has been presented recently (15 December) on Tronsmart forum: http://forum.tronsmart.com/forum/vega-s95/1454-tronsmart-vega-s95-root-method#.VndtOuh96Uk

I have verified that it works.

So, you like it? To buy it, for 85.21 USD go here: Tronsmart Vega S95 Telos 2G+16G Quad Core Dual WiFi Android TV Box

For a cheaper model (Meta) which differs in Wifi module used, less storage space, and no SATA support, you can save some money and buy it for 71.50 USD: Tronsmart Vega S95 Meta 2G+8G Quad Core Dual WiFi Android TV Box

Thanks for reading! please like and share!

Review | Tronsmart S95 Telos S905 TV Box This review unit was sent to me courtesy of the good people at Tronsmart, so thank you all, and especially Jim, for a very helpful communication.

0 notes

coin-news-blog · 5 years

Text

Market Outlook: Uncertainty Builds With Thin Trade Volumes and Bitcoin Futures Launch

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/market-outlook-uncertainty-builds-with-thin-trade-volumes-and-bitcoin-futures-launch

Market Outlook: Uncertainty Builds With Thin Trade Volumes and Bitcoin Futures Launch

Digital currency markets have dropped in value over the last three weeks, losing $25 billion since mid-August. Market prices have been creeping downward on thin global trade volume and the last two months of volatility seem to be taking a toll on short-term bullish optimism.

Cryptoconomy Loses $25 Billion in Three Weeks

Cryptocurrency market confidence seems to be dwindling as many digital assets have struggled to surpass higher price ranges over the last few weeks. Three weeks ago, market prices were much higher and the market cap was roughly $282 billion for all the crypto markets combined. On Sep. 11, the global valuation for all 2,000+ cryptocurrencies is now $261 billion, indicating a loss of over 7%. Wednesday’s trading sessions show bitcoin core (BTC) is hovering just above the $10K zone between $10,025 to $10,225 over the last 24 hours.

Top 10 cryptocurrency market prices on Sep. 11, 2019. Did you know Bitcoin.com just launched a secure, professional-grade trading platform called exchange.Bitcoin.com? Check it out today.

BTC is seeing $15.7 billion in global trades and has a market valuation of roughly $180 billion or 69% of the entire crypto market cap. Ethereum is following behind BTC and hovering around $177 per coin. ETH markets are down 1.5% today and are down 0.06% over the last seven days. XRP markets lost 2.3% today and 2.2% for the week as each XRP is swapping for $0.25. Lastly, the fifth largest market valuation still belongs to litecoin (LTC) as each coin is swapping for $69. LTC markets are down 1.87% today but have gained 2.6% over the last seven days.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Market Action

The fourth largest market capitalization is held by bitcoin cash (BCH) at the moment. BCH is coasting along between $290 and $305 over the last 24 hours. There’s roughly $1.27 billion in global BCH trade volume and bitcoin cash has a market cap of over $5.3 billion at the time of writing. BCH has lost 2.8% in the last 24 hours, but over the last week BCH market prices are only down by 0.44%.

BCH/USD price on Sep. 11, 2019.

Bithumb is trading the most BCH this Wednesday with $544 million in global trades. There’s also Coinbene, Coinex, P2pb2b, and Bibox as well following behind the South Korean exchange in BCH trade volume. Tether (USDT) is the top trading pair with BCH today capturing 59.7% of all BCH trades worldwide. This is followed by trading pairs like BTC (18.7%), USD (9.5%), ETH (9.2%), KRW (1.6%), and the EUR (0.56%). Over the last seven days, BCH transactions per day (TPD) have been averaging roughly 45,000 to 55,000.

Macroeconomic Storms Fail to Push Crypto Markets Higher

Over the last two months, many cryptocurrency supporters believe that macroeconomic turmoil pushed the price of BTC and other cryptocurrencies upwards. However, on Tuesday, BTC/USD prices dropped to $9,930 quickly before jumping back up over the $10k range. Most digital assets have at least two significant resistance levels before gaining the same headway they had weeks ago. The chief investment officer of asset manager Arca, Jeff Dorman, explained on Sep. 3 that the macroeconomic turmoil which was attributed to the spike last month has seen negative correlations in recent days.

Many speculators believe macroeconomic storms will push cryptocurrency and precious metals markets much higher.

“August began with a 20% rally in Bitcoin led once again by the same macro factors that have supported it for most of this year – endless rate cuts from global central banks, declining currencies including the critically important Chinese yuan, a series of Trump tweets about tariffs and reckless monetary policy, a nasty decline in equities, and, of course, the potentially significant impact of a no-deal Brexit,” Dorman remarked. The “end of an ugly and peculiar month” retrospective continued:

The Federal Reserve should get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less, and we should then start to refinance our debt. INTEREST COST COULD BE BROUGHT WAY DOWN, while at the same time substantially lengthening the term. We have the great currency, power, and balance sheet…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2019

Price Perspectives From Crypto Twitter

Crypto Twitter (CT) has seen an awful lot of opinions and technical analysis takes on the price of BTC and other digital assets. This week, Twitter user Planb who often comments on crypto analysis believes the price of BTC is being fueled by stock to flow trends. “Proof is in: bitcoin price is mainly driven by stock to flow, not by any other factor — Cointegration, not correlation, is key: BTC price has been and likely will be below and above S2F model value every year,” Planb stated on Sep. 7. The next day Mr. Jozza commented on BTC/USD on-balance volume (OBV) and his outlook seemed dreary. “That is not a happy OBV — A market creeping up on thin volume doesn’t fill me with confidence,” he tweeted. The crypto trader at Texas West Capital known as the Wolf of All Streets remarked on Twitter that even during the price drops he’s always bullish in regards to the long term.

“When someone asks me if I am bullish or bearish on bitcoin, the answer is always bullish,” the Wolf of All Streets stated on Sep. 11. “I believe that this market will continue to trend up over a long time frame, even if the price drops significantly in the short term — I will buy those dips.”

Investors Move Away From Safe Haven Assets as Gold Sees Worst Daily Decline in Two Years

After spiking in parallel with cryptocurrencies last month, the price of gold saw the worst daily decline in years on Sep. 5 and has dropped for a fourth straight session on Sep. 10. During the first drop in value last week since the initial rise, frontier markets investor Mark Mobius told CNBC that digital currencies and gold need to come together. Mobius explained that digital assets could trigger gold prices and bolster the demand for the precious metal. However, analysts are seeing investors leave safe haven assets and investing in riskier growth markets instead. “Globally we are seeing a shift back towards growth assets and that’s coming at the cost of the safe havens,” remarked Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets on Tuesday. Since touching a high of $1,557 on Sep. 4, gold spiked to its highest price range in six years, but bullion spot prices tumbled by more than 5% to $1,493 today.

Gold spot prices on Sep. 11, 2019.

BTC/USD Shorts Rise While ICE Preps for Bakkt’s Upcoming Bitcoin Futures

Overall, crypto market observers are uncertain of where prices will be in the short term. BTC/USD short contracts are not nearly as high as they were months ago but they are starting to rise steadily. As far as ETH/USD shorts are concerned, markets have been meandering along with no significant increases or decreases in short contract volume.

BTC/USD shorts on Sep. 11, 2019.

The long-awaited futures products from Bakkt continue to make headway as the exchange has started letting customers initiate deposits. However, the ICE futures notice explains clients are required to deposit $3,900 to participate in monthly and daily futures contracts on Monday, Sep. 23. Speculative requirements rather than initial hedge rates mandate depositing $4,290 to participate in Bakkt’s bitcoin futures markets. Some speculators think that the physically-delivered futures markets may create price discovery.

“Seven business days until the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is offering physically settled Bitcoin futures through its Bakkt unit. It will act as exchange, clearinghouse and settlement authority. ICE BTC futures will create price discovery apart from any cash market influence,” Planb tweeted on Wednesday. “CME is cash-settled, therefore dependent on (an average of) exchange rates, thus sensitive to manipulation & fraud. Institutions don’t like that. ICE/Bakkt has its own price based on real bitcoin,” he added.

Source: news.bitcoin

0 notes

jolandblog · 5 years

Text

Sri Lanka is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating countries I have ever visited. In the land of tea and spices, I have found landscapes covered in breathtaking green mantles, postcard-worthy beaches, an ancient history and a welcoming population that will open their arms to visitors without a second thought. It’s no wonder that its Sanskrit name means “resplendent island”. The Portuguese heritage, left in the country between 1505 and 1602, is still visible in various places, as well as in Sinhalese language itself through the sharing of words such as “bola” (ball), “lenço” (scarf), “sapato” (shoe) or “camisa” (shirt), among others. Below you will find a Travel Guide about Sri Lanka full of useful tips that will help you plan your visit to this country as thouroughly as possible.

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Praia de Mirissa / Mirissa Beach

Comboio na Nine Arches Bridge (Nine Arches Bridge Train

New Town Hall – Colombo

No topo do Little Adam’s Peak / At the top of Little Adma’s Peak

Galle

Praia de Koggala / Kogalla Beach

Sigiriya

Location

Sri Lanka is located in an island in the Indian Ocean, which has a length of 432km and a width of 224km and is home to approximately 21 million people. It is separated from India by the Palk Strait. The capital of Sri Lanka is the city of Colombo, located on the west coast of the country.

Language in Sri Lanka

The official languages of Sri Lanka are Sinhala and Tamil. Both are composed of words originated from the Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch and English languages. The Sinhalese language consists of two different dialects: one in the central/western area and the other in the southern area. Tamil has 3 distinct variations: one of Batticaloa, one of Negombo and one of Jaffna. The most spoken language in the country (spoken by around 70% of the population) is Sinhalese.

English is regularly spoken by 10% of the population. Younger generations often communicate with each other entirely in English.

Some basic words/phrases in Sinhalese and Tamil:

Yes= Owu (“Ou”) – cingalês | aːm (“aam”) – tamil

No= Nǣ (“Né“) – cingalês | Ilːaj (“illai”) – tamil

Hello= Halō (“alô“) – cingalês | Vaṇakkam (“vanécam”) – tamil

How much is it? = Kee∙yȧ∙dhȧ? (“qui â da“) – cingalês | Idhevvalavu? (“idiavalave”) – tamil

Please = Ka∙ru∙naa kȧ∙rȧ∙la (“cáruná queralá“) – cingalês | Tajavu seiθu (“tayavu seitu”) – tamil

Excuse me= Sa∙maa vén∙nȧ (“sámá ven nâ“) – cingalês | Porukkavum (“porukkavum”) – tamil

Thank you very much = Bo∙hō∙mȧ sthoo∙thi (“bohome isstuti“) – cingalês | Romba nandri (“romba nandri”) – tamil

Climate in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has a tropical climate with 2 seasons: the dry season and the rainy season. Despite the country’s small size, the climate on the West and South coasts contrasts with the climate on the East and North coasts. Monsoons affect the West and South coasts from May to September and the East and North coasts from October to April. The best time to visit Sri Lanka is therefore very relative, as the West and South coasts are best enjoyed from December to March and the East and North coasts from April to September. However, it’s important to bear in mind that, despite this information, the climate in Sri Lanka can be extremely unpredictable.

The high season is from December to March, when European tourists flee the cold temperatures and invade the country. Christmas and the New Year are times when Sri Lanka is in high demand, as well as the months of July and August, when the festival season is occurring.

The highest areas of the country have lower temperatures throughout the year with averages between 16º and 20º. The coastal zones reach annual averages of 27º, reaching up to 33º from March to June.

Money in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s currency is the Singhalese rupee. Check the exchange rates here.

There are several ATMs spread all over the country, with a larger volume in the biggest/ most populated cities. The ATM’s usually accept VISA or MASTERCARD, although I had some problems in Colombo. The only bank where I managed to withdraw money on my last day there was at the Commercial Bank. There is a fee of 300 rupees for each transaction (to which you have to add the fees usually charged by your bank).

There are many places where you can exchange money in Sri Lanka, with the USD, Euro and GBP being the most widely accepted currencies. You can do this at banks or at one of the many exchange houses available, as well as in some hotels (although in this case the exchange rates may be less good and entail additional fees).

In most restaurants there is a service charge of 10 to 15% of the invoice value, which makes tipping an unusual practice in Sri Lanka.

Average prices:

1 meal in a local restaurant: 300 – 600 LKR

1 meal in a touristic restaurant: 800 – 1000 LKR

Short Tuk Tuk ride (within the city): 150 – 300 LKR

Bus Ride: 40 – 350 LKR

Train Ride (2nd class): 90 – 400 LKR

1,5L Water Bottle: 80LKR

Low-budget accommodation rate: 1500 – 4000 LKR

Average-priced accommodation rate: 4000 – 20000 LKR

Visa for Sri Lanka

In order to avoid longer waiting times at the airport on arrival, it is advisable to obtain a prior authorization to enter Sri Lanka, which you can do online. I used the ETA Sri Lanka website. On the same day I received an email authorizing my entry which I printed and presented together with my passport when I arrived at Colombo airport. This prior authorization costs 35 USD. No additional payment will be required at the airport.

The visa is valid for 30 days as of the entry date in Sri Lanka. You may apply for a visa extension at the Immigration Office in Colombo for a maximum period of 6 months. Documents required for the visa extension application: official form (you can download the file here to save time, or fill it in there), passport and a passport-type photo. The fee you pay depends on the nationality of the passport.

Transportation in Sri Lanka

It’s possible to move around inside Sri Lanka in an inexpensive and easy way. There are tuk-tuks, buses, mini-vans with AC, trains or private cars at your disposal. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages. Below I give you additional information about each one so that you can choose the ones that suit you best.

Tuk Tuk

The tuk-tuk is the Sri Lankan taxi. They can be found everywhere, be it in big cities or in more rural and remote areas. In Colombo there are some tuk-tuks with a taximeter, but as a rule you’ll always have to negotiate the fare before you start your journey. A good way to get a feel for the right price: tuk-tuks with a taximeter charge 50 rupees per km. If you have your GPS on hand (the app maps.me is a good option) calculate the number of kms until your destination, multiply it by 50 and then you will get the correct price for your trip. Usually within the cities/locations, I paid between 150 and 300 rupees.

Bus

A bus will take you anywhere in the country. For intercity journeys you may have to take the bus at the terminals (this is the best way to get a seat). There are always several buses leaving every 5 or every 30 minutes to several destinations. The ticket is paid inside to the driver’s assistant. There are 2 options: air-conditioned mini-vans and regular buses. The mini-vans offer you a more comfortable trip but the ticket is more expensive and since there is no room for luggage you will have to pay an extra ticket as your backpack/bag will occupy one seat. Buses usually have space for luggage in the back, and although the journey is not as comfortable as in the mini-vans, it is the most affordable transport for you. For journeys within localities you can have the buses stop at any time on the road to get in, since there are no actual stops. Oh, bear in mind that travelling by bus in Sri Lanka means seeing your life flash before your eyes a few times. Drivers are completely delusional and think that they are constantly driving on a rally track.

Train

Riding a train in Sri Lanka is one of the best experiences you can have in the country. It allows you to have contact with the local population, travel in a cheap way and enjoy the magnificent landscapes that this country has to offer, particularly on the routes between Colombo and Kandy, Kandy and Ella and Colombo and Galle. You can check the train schedule on the official Sri Lanka Railways website, but you can’t buy tickets online unless you do it through a travel agency. I have never used a travel agency before, so I cannot recommend one in particular. For these particular routes it is important that you buy your tickets as early as possible, at least 2-3 days in advance. You will be able to choose between carriages with reserved seats and carriages without reserved seats (2nd or 3rd class). On the Seat 61 website you will find more detailed information about the routes and the types of existing railways and carriages.

Private Cars

In the areas with the highest tourist demand it’ easy to find private cars to move to another place. If you want to save time and travel more comfortably, this may be a good option, but considerably more expensive. For example: a 90km drive from Ella to Tissa (near the Yala Natural Park) would cost 8500 rupees (about 53€). To reduce prices, most travelers who choose this type of transportation are looking for other travelers to share the ride with.

Motorcycle rental

You can always rent a motorcycle (something I did when I was there) for short trips within the localities. However, I don’t advise you to travel around the country like this, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience riding bikes in this type of country. The traffic is chaotic (as in any other Asian country) and this would be a very dangerous adventure. The rental of a motorcycle is about 800 rupees a day (about €5).

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HealthCare in Sri Lanka

The only mandatory vaccine for those who visit Sri Lanka is the Yellow Fever vaccine and only for those who come from high risk countries, such as Brazil. However, there are other vaccines recommended by the CDC for most travelers such as Hepatitis A and Typhoid. These recommendations obviously do not exempt the consultation of professional advice through a Pre-Travel Consultation.

Some important recommendations:

Use a lot of mosquito repellent both during the day and during the night (there is Dengue in the country and the mosquito is more likely to attack during the day);

Always drink bottled water

Peel the fruit before eating it, especially if it is bought in the street or eaten cooked.

If your meal consists of fish, make sure that the fish is properly cooked before eating it.

If you have to walk through dense vegetation after a rainstorm, wear trousers. Leeches usually appear after rain and wait attached to the vegetation for a ” prey ” to which they can cling to.

I recommend that you get yourself travel insurance before you leave for Sri Lanka. From the poor road conditions, to the crazy driving of bus and tuk-tuk drivers, to the poor hygiene conditions of some destinations: there’s a high chance you’ll have some misfortune during the journey. I usually recommend the one I normally use, World Nomads insurance, one of the most complete on the market.

What to eat in Sri Lanka

Food in Sri Lanka is one of the spiciest and seasoned food that I have had the opportunity to try in Asia. It doesn’t matter how many times and how intensely you say “no spicy” when ordering your dish: you can be sure it will always come spicy. But it’s undoubtedly one of the most interesting and tasty gastronomies that I’ve ever tasted.

Kothu Roti is one of Sri Lanka‘s traditional dishes and it is absolutely delicious. It consists of a mixture of vegetables and Roti (bread) cut into small pieces using 2 blades that produce one of the most characteristic sounds of the country. If you’re looking for economical alternatives for your meals, immerse yourself in the world of Rotis: a kind of flat bread that can be served simple or with several fillings. Everywhere in the country you’ll find the famous Roti Shops, where Rotis are made in all shapes and sizes: of chicken, vegetables, egg, chocolate, banana… Normally the prices are around 250 to 350 rupees per Roti (between €1,50 to €2,50). Curry is also another traditional Sinhalese dish, with Chicken Curry being one of the most famous (but watch out for the spiciness).

You can’t leave Sri Lanka without having tried a traditional breakfast as well. I swear you’ll be full nearly until mid-afternoon. In addition to the traditional elements of Western breakfasts (toast, juice, eggs…), you are also served a banquet of curry (usually potatoes), egg hoppers (a dough made from coconut milk and flour), with an egg on top), string hoppers (the same dough but in threads and without the egg) pancakes stuffed with coconut and honey and a separate bowl with Coconut Sambol to be sprinkled all over the food (grated coconut with coconut milk, lemon and salt). Everything is delicious, I promise!

Don’t forget to take a look at the article 10 Typical Sri Lankan Dishes not be missed

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Roti de vegetais / Vegetable Roti

String hoppers

Restaurante local / Local Restaurant

What to visit in Sri Lanka

Colombo

Sri Lanka‘s capital is located on the West coast of the country and, like all major cities in Asia, is a city with chaotic traffic and an intense lifestyle. The large skyscrapers contrast with the architectural heritage of hundreds of years scattered throughout the city, composed of ancient colonial houses, European-inspired churches (Portuguese, Dutch, British) and centenary military structures. It’s a destination that contrasts sharply with the more modest, rural and humble environment found in the rest of the country. I confess that it wasn’t one of my favorite places in Sri Lanka (perhaps because I left it to the end), but it certainly deserves a visit, even if it’s just for one day. In Colombo I recommend the ACA Hotel where I stayed one night.

Kandy

Kandy is located in the center of Sri Lanka and was in the past the capital of the country. Set amidst tea plantations, densely forested mountains and characterized by the large lake around which it was established, Kandy is also home to one of Sri Lanka‘s largest temples and one of the most important of the Buddhist religion: the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, which is said to house a Buddha’s tooth. The train journey from Colombo to Kandy is a special experience in itself, offering a magnificent landscape along the way. In Kandy, as far as accommodation is concerned, I recommend the Gruhaya Boutique Villa, where I stayed for 2 nights.

Ella

The train journey from Kandy to Ella is undoubtedly one of the highlights of a trip in Sri Lanka. The scenery is stunning: hills, valleys and mountains covered in a breathtaking green mantle. The city of Ella is a paradise for those who love hiking and trekking. There you can climb to the top of the Little Adam’s Peak or to the top of Ella’s Rock, be close to waterfalls or watch the train go over the magnificent Nine Arches Bridge. Walking along the train tracks (despite the prohibition signs at the train station) is also part of the experience. In Ella I recommend the Ella Rock House Hotel, where I stayed at for 3 nights.

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Comboio na Nine Arches Bridge (Nine Arches Bridge Train

No topo do Little Adam’s Peak / At the top of Little Adma’s Peak

Nuwara Eliya

Nuwara Eliya was once a shelter for the Brits and Scots who worked in the tea industry in Sri Lanka because of its high location in the hills, and because it offered cooler temperatures than the rest of the country. Here you’ll find waterfalls, tea plantations, parks and gardens, golf courses and racetracks (if you’re interested). It’s also a good place to explore the famous World’s End, in the Horton Plains National Park.

http://www.therock.lk

Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada)

Adam’s Peak is one of the most important places of religious pilgrimage in the world. Every year, from December to May, thousands of pilgrims come to this 2,243m-high mountain to climb the 5000 steps that lead all the way to the top. At the top a sacred footprint can be found. Buddhists claim that it is a footprint of Buddha, the Hindus of Shiva, and the Catholics of Adam. Regardless of whose footprint it is, the view from the top (especially at dawn) is absolutely magnificent. Walks are usually initiated at dawn, around 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., and the top is reached just before sunrise, at 5:00 a.m. To avoid the typical “traffic” of the pilgrimage season, it’s advisable to do the hike in the period between June and October, however, at that time, the path is not illuminated and it’s necessary to carry a flashlight. It’s possible to stop on the way to go to the toilet or to drink hot tea. The town of Hatton is a good place for your exploration.

Srilanka Travel

Arugam Bay

If surfing is one of your passions, then Arugam Bay cannot be missing from your Sri Lanka travel itinerary. Located on the East coast, it’s considered the best surf spot of the country. The town itself is quite small, with only a few hundred inhabitants, offering a quieter and more relaxed environment. The high season lasts from June to October.

Youtube

Cultural Triangle

The Cultural Triangle of Sri Lanka is made up of Anaradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Dambulla and Sigiriya. These are destinations that cannot be missed when visiting this country, because of their historical and cultural importance. Sigiriya was indeed one of the highlights of my trip in this country. In Dambulla you can find the Golden Temple and the fabulous Cave Temple, filled with figures and religious paintings that have inhabited these caves since the 1st century. In Polonnarwua and Anaradhapura you have the opportunity to visit a variety of millenary historical ruins and in Sigiriya you will find the famous Lion’s Rock: a rock that is about 360m high where you can also see the ruins of an ancient civilization and find a magnificent view over the surrounding area. I chose to stay in Dambulla in order to explore the Triangle. In terms of accommodation I recommend the Sevonrich Holiday Resort Guesthouse where I stayed at for 3 nights.

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Cave Temple – Dambulla

Polonnaruwa

Sigiriya

South Coast Beaches

Looking for postcard-worthy beaches? Then head towards the beaches on the South coast of Sri Lanka. Here you’ll find giant palm trees that bend over the sea, sunsets that don’t even need an Instagramfilter, grilled fish eaten with your feet tucked in the sand, warm water and near-perfect waves for surf lovers. Mirissa, Hikkaduwa, Midigama, Ahangama and Weligama are some of the beaches on this side of Sri Lanka. The coast is entirely coursed by the road and the railway that connects Galle to Colombo, making it extremely easy to move from area to area. As for accommodation, I recommend the Sooriya Sewana Guesthouse where I stayed for a few nights, in Mirissa, and the beautiful Sakara House, where I spent the last days of my trip, in Ahangama.

Galle

Galle is probably one of the prettiest cities in Sri Lanka, if not the prettiest. You can find traces of Portuguese, Dutch and British presence and colonial architecture everywhere: from the Dutch fort, initially built by the Portuguese and later fortified by the Dutch (it’s the largest fortification of European origin in Asia), to the St. Mary’s Cathedral (built by Jesuit priests), the National Maritime Museum or the Galle Harbour. Throughout the city there are now small charming hotels, shops and restaurants appearing, which contribute to the more artistic and sophisticated environment that it has been acquiring. It’s without a doubt a destination to include in your Sri Lanka travel itinerary.

National Parks (safaris)

If there is one thing that is not missing in Sri Lanka it’s wildlife in abundance, of many different species, types and forms. And the best way to get in touch with this wildlife is through a Safari in one of the many Natural Parks around the country. Yala is undoubtedly the most popular and extensive Natural Park of them all. Located on the South coast, it extends over an area of about 978 km2, 300 km away from Colombo. Here you will be able to see (among others) elephants, leopards, bears, deer, jackals, crocodiles and a huge variety of birds.

On my trip I chose to visit the Udawalawe Natural Park, a natural park with a smaller size, which offered me a better possibility of sighting animals. In addition, for being less popular, I could enjoy a calmer environment, with fewer tourists and jeeps, in the middle of that pure nature. In addition to these 2 Parks, there are also Wasgomuwa, Minneriya, Kaudulla, Wilpattu, among others. To visit the Natural Park of Udawalawe, I stayed in the Silent Bungalow Guesthouse (which I recommend) where I ended up buying the tour and entry tickets. (I advise you to visit during the morning in order to enjoy the fresher air and the smaller number of tourists).

Sri Lanka | Travel Guide Sri Lanka is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating countries I have ever visited. In the land of tea and spices, I have found landscapes covered in breathtaking green mantles, postcard-worthy beaches, an ancient history and a welcoming population that will open their arms to visitors without a second thought.

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