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Inside The Forex Markets
Rollover in Forex
You may have heard of the rollover in forex trading, and you might not be familiar with what it is. It's actually a very simple concept. Rollover is a situation that occurs when you hold a trade beyond the ending time of a particular day's trading.
There are different times at which this may happen, and that will depend on which broker you are using for your forex trading. But at any time of day, the rollover is the time when your trade is carried to a new day and you pay, or are paid, for the position you hold on that trade.
When you take a position in the forex market, you are simultaneously buying one currency and selling another. No matter what currency it is, all currencies are paired in forex, so you must sell one to buy another. When you do this, you are, in effect, borrowing one currency from someone to sell it or buy it. The in-depth details of this borrowing are not of much concern to you as a trader, but what is of concern is the interest rate for the currencies involved.
Each currency bears an interest rate that is very similar to the rate established by that currency's central bank. The difference between the rates of the currencies in the pair you are trading is what determines whether you pay, or are paid, when the day changes in the currency market. In some instances, you will pay regardless of the direction you take on a currency pair, such as the GBP/USD pair where the rates are so close at this time that the spread between them leads to you paying whether you buy or sell.
As noted earlier, the times vary as to when you will see the rollover occur. In the case of many US forex brokers and market makers, the time used for the rollover is the end of banking hours on the east coast. Basically, when the banks close in New York, the rollover occurs, and the next day is started. At that time you will either be charged or credited, depending on your trade.
To avoid this, all you have to do is to close your positions before the rollover occurs. In the case of most brokers, you can exit the trade prior to the rollover and incur no charges or credits for that day. However, some brokers have moved to a continuous rate calculation and charge or credit based on how long you held the position, regardless of whether or not it carries through the rollover.
See Also:
Rollover Interest - CMS Forex
Use Caution In Forex
The Leading Indicator for Forex
Bond spreads are a very popular and helpful indicator in foreign currency trading. However, they are not an indicator of rapid and sudden change, but rather a cue as to what will eventually happen, perhaps a year into the future.
That's exactly why bond spreads are called a "leading" indicator, because they lead the event, rather than following it like a moving average or other indicators do by their nature.
A bond spread is typically viewed on the difference between the five year, and the ten year, bonds of two currencies. For instance, if you are studying the Euro and the US Dollar, you would need to look at the spread, or difference, between the yields for the bonds of both the Euro and of the US Dollar.
Whichever currency in the pair has the higher interest rate is likely to be favored for the benefit of that interest. However, be careful to look at a chart of historical data to make sure the spread is increasing and not decreasing.
The way this is used as an indicator is really simple. When the spread reaches its highest, or its lowest point, and begins to turn in the other direction, you can expect the value of the currencies involved to follow suit at some point later on.
Sometimes the delay between the turnaround in spreads and the turnaround in currency valuation is as much as a year.
Some exceptions to this indicator have occurred. The Japanese Yen continued to gain value even though Japanese bonds were suffering from the recently ended zero interest rate policy, or ZIRP.
The reason for this was that, despite the interest rate, Japanese equity markets, especially stocks, were climbing in value, and therefore attracted much international investment. This demand for Japanese equities led to an equal demand, and therefore an appreciation, in the Yen.
It is important to note here that bond spreads are not going to do you much good if you are a day trader or other form of short-term trader. For this type of indicator to work, you must plan on staying the course for as little as six months, and up to perhaps a year or more.
Therefore, you should not enter a trade with high leverage using this indicator. Shorter term fluctuations could flush you out well before the true appreciation of this indicator could be realized. |
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Intermediate Forex Trading
There are many different intervals in forex trading, including scalpers (very short term), day traders (short term), intermediate traders (days), and investors (week, months, even years). Intermediate trading is advantageous for several reasons, and this is why it is perhaps one of the more popular trading intervals used.
Intermediate trading allows you to look at the market and say "this is where I think prices will go over the next several days". This allows you the opportunity to enter a position that you can hold for long enough to get through all of the "market noise", price action that occurs but is not relevant to the trend you are pursuing.
You should be aware that in order to trade over the intermediate term, you must scale back your leverage a bit to avoid margin calls as the result of this noise.
Intermediate trading is based largely on technical analysis, to include the usage of indicators, trend lines, and support and resistance lines on charts. However, it is helpful to also include some fundamental analysis in your decision.
Rather than the fundamentals that would tell you where a currency will be next year, use fundamentals to help you gauge the current market sentiment on the currencies you are trading. This can help you to know whether there is a particular favorite in the market, or if sideways action will occur because of market indecision.
As with any trading time frame, you should always be looking at three intervals of charts. For intermediate trading, perhaps the best way to do this is with daily charts for the overall trend, two- three- or four-hour charts for your actual trading, and one-hour charts for details, especially on good entry and exit points.
What indicators you choose for each of these charts will be up to you. However, you should never operate off just one time frame because you will miss the bigger picture of where price is going, and you will miss the perfect entry and exit points provided by the smaller time frame.
No matter what, leave room for prices to move against you. Study the charts for indications of how prices swing to know how much room to leave yourself on the trade, and consider stop-loss orders to help you avoid further loss.
The one thing you should never do is put yourself in the position of a margin call.
Related Topics: Some Bad Forex Strategies,
Get A Forex Trading Education, Getting Started in Forex Options
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