As Seen on Yahoo Finance!

New individual traders often feel lost and clueless after they spend a few days trading in the foreign exchange market. Specifically, if you are new to the world of Forex, you often feel under-privileged compared with senior traders and financial institutions, especially the banks who seem to have access to market knowledge that individual traders do not. However, what makes the senior traders and banks so successful is no secret; it’s just a matter of experience and resources. The main factors that distinguish them from the rest of the speculating crowd are their superior trading strategies, expertise in fundamental and technical analysis, swift access to financial data releases and command over Forex signals.

Big Players in the Forex Market

Large international banks and foreign exchange banks are the most active traders on the foreign exchange market, accounting for almost 80 percent of currency trading volume. These big players completely dominate the Forex market in terms of trading. The banks participate in currency trading using their huge pool of clients and their own accounts. 2010 Euromoney FX survey revealed that top ten most active traders including Deutsche Bank, UBS AG, Barclays Capital, Citi Bank etc alone account for 77 percent of Forex trading volume. Needless to say, they dictate the bid and ask prices in the Forex market.

The Role of Banks in the Forex Market

This undisputed dominance of banks in the Forex market often leads individual traders to believe that institutional banks have access to secret information about the Forex market. However, while the banks have power, they do not have access to insider information in the Forex market. They do not enjoy the competitive advantage of insider trading over common traders the way professional traders and analysts in the equity market do.

With the passage of time, the advancement in Information Technology has made the Forex market much more transparent and accessible.  Consequently, the transparency and accessibility turned it into a very democratic market.

Today virtually almost every trader has access to the same prices with narrow spreads that are quoted in the interbank market. Beside banks, a new category of market makers, for instance hedge funds, retailers and trading advisors has also emerged on Forex horizon over the past decade. Retail Forex has been growing at a remarkable rate over the past 10 years. Experts believe that this sector accounts for about 20 percent of the Forex market now.

The Competitive Advantages of the Big Banks over Individual Traders

Even though the Forex market is a democratic market where virtually all traders have instant access to the same market-moving-info as everyone else, the first competitive advantage the large banks have is access to high priority news announcements before individual traders. While any trader can watch business channels such as CNBC or Bloomberg, or check Forex news websites like DailyFX.com and Fxstreet.com for news updates, the fact remains that these sources often report news that is too late to trade profitably. Banks, on the other hand, have access to news sources that provide instant news.

These instant news sources include expensive electronic financial data providers such as Bloomberg terminal, Morningstar Direct, FactSet Research Systems, Capital IQ, Reuters, and Jackson Terminal etc. Since these news sources report information before it is released to the public, bankers have an obvious advantage that allows them to predict the market movement and trade currencies before the market actually moves.

Another advantage that banks have over individual Forex investors is access to a network of trustworthy advisors. The big banks not only have the expertise of hundreds of financial advisors, economists and senior Forex analysts, they can discuss the news that is being reported with Forex experts and economists from other banks. They collectively form a consensus about the news and move in a profitable direction with the currencies. Forming quality teams of quality Forex experts allows banks to maximize their profits.

Last but not the least, the banks possess the largest share of trading volume in the Forex market and they have access to the best Forex spreads

How can you Trade like a Banker?

While you may feel under-privileged and disadvantaged in comparison to banks, there are steps you can take to trade like a banker.

To begin with, you need access to instant news sources such as Bloomberg terminal. However, these instant news sources do not come cheap, often costing no less than $1,500 a month. Also, even if you could afford an instant news source, interpreting raw data is difficult for an individual trader. You can only utilize the news to predict the market movement when you completely understand the data. For an individual trader who may be inexperienced, interpreting this information can be problematic.

You can overcome this issue by emulating another superior behavior of banks: working with a team. Working as an individual yields minimal profits, but working as a team can help you interpret data and make profitable trades.

However, forming a quality team for an individual trader can be very difficult. While most of the traders might be able to read the opinions of experts on the Forex market, they will never be able to accomplish what they could with a 24-hour team of expert economists, researchers, and traders.

Trade like a Banker by Joining LTG GoldRock

Realistically, even if you emulate the banks, you will never achieve your full potential as a Forex trader on your own. You need to seek help of a professional company, with a team of expert financial advisors and traders possessing vast experience of Forex trading and having financial data systems which are available to banks. For instance LTG Goldrock, which provides its members with a 24-hour live trading room, providing its members with access to instant news and a team of experts that they can interact with in real time.

Additionally, LTG GoldRock enables its clients to access the most powerful and comprehensive training and education system and opens up the lucrative world of Currency trading to them LIVE. The company’s professional team of trainers and traders teach the clients the systems, techniques and strategies used by some of the largest banks, institutions and successful investors. Since Forex trading is unpredictable, LTG GoldRock is an invaluable resource, providing the tools and guidance to help you understand market sentiments and trends, investors’ psychology, and money and risk management strategies.

Banker-like-Privileges for LTG GoldRock Members

By joining LTG GoldRock, a new individual trader can actually master the “art” of trading, just like the bankers do. The company’s goal is to provide “an average investor the same profit opportunity that large institutional investors have had and enjoyed for years.” The following list is just some of the banker-like-privileges you can enjoy by being a member of LTG GoldRock.

1. Get the training and education of a banker

LTG GoldRock trains and educates traders in the techniques and skills bankers use by offering them a Professional Trading System. LTG GoldRock’s trading system mainly focuses on price action: the leading indicator for Forex market movement and teaches the customers techniques foreign to most novice traders.

2. Have instant access to financial data and news

LTG GoldRock members are offered instant access to financial data and news. The company also offers members a live professionally run trading room and Trade Text Alert service, allowing you to receive daily text alerts of all LTG GoldRock official signals on your mobile phone. If you want to trade via your mobile phone, you can install the trading platform on your cell phone too.

3. Work with a team of professional trading experts

LTG GoldRock gives you opportunity to interact daily in the live training/trading room with the company’s moderators, economists and professional traders. You can ask questions and place trades with LTG GoldRock’s community of members. They even guide you into each trade with their own live account and suggest the perfect entry and exit points for each trade.

4. Enjoy the most competitive brokerage rates

LTG GoldRock can provide you with the most competitive brokerage rates. The company has well-built working relationship with the largest brokerage firms in the world, with over five decades of experience. The company’s partner brokerage firms execute over a million trades every day and manage more than $4 billion of their clients. With their professional relationships with such reputable brokerage firms, LTG GoldRock offers the most competitive rates to its members along with the peace of mind of being associated with highly reputable brokerage firms.

By way of LTG GoldRock’s guidance and resources, you will learn how to compete with the banks, learn how to think like a banker, and how to establish yourself in the Forex trading marketplace.

Gerard increased his account in June by 47.56% ROI.

Hi, my name is Gerard DeJager and I’ve been a member of LTG Goldrock since June 2009.

I have my own business and work as a Sourcing / Procurement consultant on projects in Australia and Asia.  I have been living with my wife and 2 young kids in Melbourne since 2006 after having lived in The Netherlands, Malaysia, China and South-Korea and definitely don’t want to move anywhere else……. Australia is the place to be !!!!

I have gone through the learning curve of trading, lost and won loads of money by taking too much risk and finally after a year I think I am getting the hang of it and trade beyond the calls made in the room.

Thanks to LTG GoldRock I have learned to settle for a disciplined and responsible way of trading that will pay off in the end but not as quick as I thought a year ago. There is no wonder recipe that makes you wealthy overnight. I am spending maybe 20 hours a week trading, mainly mobile trading and my target is 1% ROI per day. My favorite trades are the range and trend trades, but I love to scalp at least 3-4 times a day on the EUR/USD. If I can achieve that consistently I will stop working in 2011.

Ken Buncharoen

From my perspective, country’s economy and news have influence on price of currency. I will always try to follow news of currency pairs that I trade, determine impact of each indicator and predict short term trend from minute to week trend.  I like to trade major currency pairs with low spread like AUDUSD, EURUSD, USDJPY and USDCAD.

Therefore apart from taking trades from LTG’s indicators, I also trade high important news. I like to trade high important news because it can move price by 20 to over 100 pips within few minutes. If you can predict the trend, enter and exit the right time you can get good return in short time. There are many good Forex’s high important news analysts available on internet that you can Google.

One of recent high important news is on CAD Employment Change and Unemployment Rate.

As the result, USDCAD drop by 68 pips in a minute, and 100 pips in an hour.

However, during high important news price tend to fluctuate and spread tend to increased. I think it is important to choose broker with fixed and low spread for news trades.

Although many Forex traders preferred not to trade news due to high risk and sometime price move in opposite direction to news indicators. However, even if you don’t trade news it is good idea to avoid taking trade (or even close trade) when it is close to the release of high important news that could affect your currency pairs.

Warm Regards,

Ken Buncharoen

Daniel Fitzgerald made 7.74% ROI last month and will no doubt keep growing his Nett Profit.

Dr Daniel Fitzgerald is a 28 year old Aerospace Engineer, graduating from the Queensland University of Technology in 2002.

He followed for the next 3.5 year completing a PhD in the autonomous aerial vehicle area, with particular focus on artificial intelligence and automated algorithms.  He has worked with the CSIRO and some other private companies in this area.  He is currently in a project manager role in Brisbane with a research centre.

He has a huge passion for the stockmarket, being introduced to it several years ago.  Since then he has focussed on learning as much as possible about the markets.  Initially focussing on eminis, he has in the past 9 months moved focus onto the forex market.   Having programmed computers since an early age, and being highly motivated and excited in working out patterns in the market, Daniel spends a lot of time backtesting his strategies on historical data.

“My basic approach is to develop a strategy on different timeframes, allow sufficient enough data to ensure that the results are statistically significant, so as to hopefully produce a strategy that has a positive expectancy when traded live in the market.”

“I have recently released my first live strategy in the Forex market which resulted in profits in the first month which I’m pleased with.  I will be continuing to develop strategies so that over the coming months I can have multiple strategies running in the market.”

“My advice for other traders is that entry signals can be quite simple, it’s in the exit strategy which you protect and make you money.  For example, I have learnt now, that on any particular strategy I have a number of exits – eg: a hard fixed stop loss (at your worst loss point, ie: 2% of your capital), a breakeven point (where you move your stop loss higher) and a time based stop – to exit the market if the trend you though was happening didn’t happen”

“My primary goal is to be investing in Forex full time and property developing within 2 years.”

Daniel is passionate about trading and is currently developing technical indicators and testing various strategies for his future trading.

Kerwin Rae shared some of his marketing secrets

I recently had the opportunity to speak in Portugal to a group of successful investors and business owners who were at a conference called the Billionaire Boot Camp. During the course of 7 days the attendees effectively studied how Billionaire’s run businesses, how they think, how they act and how they make what seems like consistent successful decisions. I was simply there to share with the attendees the power of learning about the Foreign Currency markets and share with them my views on the current market conditions and how they can best take advantage of learning how to trade Forex.

Now I am not professing to know how all Billionaire’s operate but I did share with the attendees how some of them go about considering financial decisions. What sets successful people apart from the rest is simply the decisions they make in life and business and the ability to make the right decisions at the right time.

This often comes down to a simple set of questions.

1. What is the cost?
2. What is the return?
3. Can the return keep paying me for the same cost?

These are 3 simple questions are what many successful people ask themselves when making a financial decision.

Dan Storey from ThinkBig UK after the Billionaire Bootcamp in Portugal

When the answer to the final question is Yes, then the answer to the investment decision should always be Yes. This is part of the process of making a successful decision and in my view you should be constantly learning and studying what these people do if you want to make it to the top and stay at the top. Think about it for a second. Would you rather invest in a business where the cost keeps paying you for the same cost, or would you rather invest in a business that requires you to put in more capital every month or every year. I am sure you would prefer the former opportunity.

Successful people making decisions quickly and decisively through asking the right questions. They also change their minds slowly through ensuring they also ask the right questions. Unsuccessful people make up their minds slowly and change their minds quickly. This is so true as most people who are not reaching their full potential are constant procrastinators.

The second major tip I gained from the conference was the incredible ability successful people have at leveraging themselves. You may or may not have heard the phrase before look at the doughnut not the hole. This refers to the point that most people will look at what something is going to cost them and not focus on what really matters and that is the return and the leverage that they will gain from the opportunity. Richard Branson is a classic example. A guy who seems to live the most incredible life, tripping all over the world taking part in some of the most exciting adventures all whilst running a billion dollar empire. How does he do it.

1. He asks the right questions and makes good decisions.
2. He doesn’t procrastinate about decisions because he has a process and asks the right questions.
3. He leverages others ability and hires the best people he can find and promotes from within and fosters an incredible culture within his businesses.

Sir Richard when he decides to get involved in a business will spend the first 6 months actively engaged in the business and after that he’s at an arms lengths distance being involved on a need to know and need to be there basis. He leverages others so as it allows him to free up his time to get on with the job of building a bigger better business.

Most business people think they can’t afford to leverage their time because it’s too expensive to hire someone to do their job. I say unless you do leverage your time and hire others to perform day to day tasks your talent and success will never reach its full potential. All of the friends and business colleagues I have that are hugely successful are incredible at getting other people to do their work for them.

Learning to trade Forex successfully will allow you to leverage your money and give you back your time to work on other projects that can help you build your financial portfolio. Since becoming a trader I have spent more time overseas, spent more time with family, helped more people financially, met more incredible people, and built a number of successful business ventures that I would never have been able to do working 9am to 5pm.

Learning to make good decisions and successfully leveraging your time and money is a true path to a happy and fulfilled life.

Karina with her two daughters

Karina Banhuk came 5th last month in our Trader of the Month competition with a total net Return On Investment of 30.08%.

I’m a single mum of three working only a few hours a week (paid work that is) and alot of my free time (when I get it) is spent backtesting trading plans.

The best advice I can give is to only trade plans you’ve backtested and proved to yourself that they work and to make sure you take every trade on that plan in order for the probabilities to play out. If you’ve tested them yourself and had a few stops it will give you the confidence to take that next trade.

Richard Duncan is definitely a fan of the Risk Calculator

Congratulations to Richard Duncan who was our ‘Best Risked’ Account winner for June, he has won $1000 to add to his growing Trading Account.

Richard  joined LTG GoldRock in Oct 2009…

I have found LTG GoldRock’s education and training to be really great and it has been a huge learning curve for me. I made some big mistakes in the beginning, but when I made a plan for my trading things started to change for me.

You take small steps to start off  with and do not leap into it. I am really looking forward to the journey. I use my mobile phone to trade with as I work outside which is a great tool.

Risk Management and not trading beyond his means is an essential part of Richard’s Trading Plan. If you are yet to download and learn how to use the Risk Calculator then I strongly urge you to do so.

So what systems can you put in place to have a ‘well risked’ Trading Account?

• Manage the amount of capital you trade with the Risk Calculator or some other tool to ensure you are not trading beyond your means as lot sizes can alter between the different currency pairs.
• Learn how to manage your Wins and Losses – take a look over last month’s trading account are your average wins bigger than your average losses?
• Always trade with a Stop Loss and try to stick to your Trading Plan.

Thank-you to everyone who entered the competition last month, it’s great to see so many traders growing and evolving into successful traders. I look forward to receiving your entry into the competition this month! We will have some new and exciting prizes so stay tuned!

Shawn achieved an incredible 143% ROI last month trading Fx and added a 1st prize of $1000 to his trading account.

Hi there, my name is Shawn. I am 43 years old and have been a machinist for the best part of my working life.  Before hearing about LTG GoldRock, I didn’t even know what Forex Trading was.  I did a few of the lessons and tried to get up to speed with the FX Market.

I traded a demo account for 2 months and June was my first live month of trading.  I try and take all the LTG GoldRock trades and mainly do all my trading via mobile phone which usually makes it hard to monitor the market completely.

I am trying a few of my own strategies and am having fun doing so.  The best advice I can give is to always use a stop loss. I definitely want to replace my income and believe this is the road for me.

Enjoy the ride…   Shawn Kolman, Western Australia