Thursday, December 31, 2009

Welcome to my new blog

Welcome to my blog on automated Forex trading.

This blog will chronicle my journey with automated trading of the Forex markets with the MetaTrader platform.

MetaTrader is definitely the future of Forex trading and here's why:

  • Contains full-featured charting and free real-time data provided by the broker
  • Open demo accounts of any size with the click of a button
  • Integrated reporting, news, Alerts, Broker mailbox and best of all ..
  • Integrated automated trading through "Expert Advisors" - computer programs that trade your account 24x5, around the clock, tick-by-tick without you having to watch every hour of the day and night.
    • This last one is huge because (due to the 24 hour nature of forex) you can only be up and paying attention to the markets at best half of the trading day before you have to spend some time with the family or go to bed. Plus with features like automated trailing stops, you can have the technology edge you need to make money in this ultra-competitive arena.

      Also, there's a growing industry of expert advisor programs competing for your trading dollar. Most of them have a one-time upfront charge for unlimited ongoing usage. Its become a war of technology between the EA developers and in some cases the Forex brokers themselves who stand to loose money when a really good robot stats chipping away at their dealing desk.

      Realizing that this information is old news to some of you, this post is to get the rest of you folks up to speed. For those of you not already running MetaTrader, do this.

      To Do List
      1) Download MetaTrader from your favorite broker. Here are a few links to get you started:

      FXCM UK-based MT4 page
      FXDD MT4 page
      Forex.com MT4 page
      Alpari UK MT4 page

      2) Get familiar with the major parts of the platform, charting, order entry, etc. There are some excellent videos on Youtube to walk you though at:

      Metatrader videos

      Take your time to get to know the platform, there's a lot to it.

      3) Learn how to setup Expert Advisors by going through the above videos.

      4) Finally download some EA's and play around with them in demo accounts.To find some free EA's, go to Google and search for "free expert advisor download"

      Eventually, I would like to program my own Expert Advisors, and i'm now heading in this direction.

      Also, if any of you have been using a particular EA and having some success, please share that with us and we'll demo them along with you.

      Okay, get busy and check back later for updates and good trading,

      Tcxmon