Simple Three Step Bollinger Band Strategy That Makes Money

Top professional traders all over the world use this system to trade. It works on any time frame but produces better results on the longer time frames such as daily, weekly and monthly. If used properly it can help you make money.

The first step in the system is identifying one of three specific candlestick patterns. There are over 80 Japanese candlestick patterns however, we are only interested in the strongest patterns. The strong patterns we are looking for are dark cloud cover, bearish engulfing patterns, bullish engulfing patterns and piercing lines. Each of these patterns need two candlesticks to form completely. The second candlestick is the most important and it must appear very strong.

The first thing we need is a strong candlestick pattern. A order should not be placed unless a strong candle stick pattern has formed.

The second step is the candlestick pattern must have a strong Bollinger band break out of the upper or lower bands. The first and second candle must break out of the upper or lower band strongly. If the rules are not met the trade set up should be ignored.

So the second thing we need is a very strong upper or lower Bollinger band breakout.

Rule one and two show a sign which indicates that the price wants to change. Either to collapse or advance. It only tells us that either the buyers (bulls) or the sellers (bears) are getting tired, giving up, or switching sides.

The rules also requires that the strong candle stick pattern should form were neither the bulls or the bears do not have full control over the price. This means one of the parties have become exhausted in the struggle to control the price movement.

So the third thing we need is a market showing signs of exhaustion where neither bulls or bears have full control over the price action.

If you do not have all three of these conditions it is too risky to place an order.

Using this Bollinger band system you can expect to trade five times in one month. You can set your take profit order up to ten times your stop-loss order. Your stop-loss order is best set at the previous candles high or low price.

I recommend that you practice in a demo account first. No strategy is one hundred percent right all the time. We are traders not fortune tellers. However, with proper risk management, and a solid exit plan it is possible to become consistently profitable trading currencies.

You are welcome to join our blog and community of experienced professional traders who love to mentor novice traders absolutely free of charge.To receive a free eBook explaining the system described here in full detail visit

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Becoming an Expert Forex Trader by Knowing How to Use an Economic Calendar

The Forex trading industry is a highly competitive one. There are people who have been working in the field for years and still have not figured out a way to consistently predict the direction of currencies. If you are new to forex, you will want to know about an economic calendar and how to make the best use of them to make money.

Why you need them

The economic calendar is not just another calendar with dates and a list of events. It tells you:

• When important events are going to occur
• Which ones will impact forex rates the most
• When certain important announcements are going to be made

The professional forex traders use these calendars to:

• Consider various economic and political factors that will influence forex trading
• Get advanced information about the direction of a particular currency pair
• Understand current events better so they can make better forex decisions in the future

Economic calendars will not make you a millionaire with forex, but they are a valuable tool that will provide you with valuable information and insights to help you reach your goals.

Using a calendar

When you see such a calendar for the first time, you will be overwhelmed with the amount of data you have. There are literally thousands of events every week, so how do you know which ones you need to keep an eye on.

Here are a few ways to use the calendar:

• Make a list of events that are most likely to affect the forex rates of a particular country
• You can find this information from various new sources
• Eliminate those events that you think will have little impact on forex
• Check out blogs from forex experts and well-known economists to hints on which events to focus on more

Even the most seasoned forex traders cannot predict 100% which events will have the most significant impact on currency rates between two countries. However, we you get more and more experienced, you will get deeper insights into how two unrelated events can heavily influence forex rates.

Important releases

As a rule, here are some of the announcements and reports that routinely influence foreign exchange rates between the US and other countries:

• Consumer confidence index
• Consumer credit report
• Consumer price index
• Durable goods report
• Employment situation report
• Existing home sales report
• Jobless claims report
• Mutual fund flows
• Money supply

All of these are important markers of the health of the American economy. Even if the overall trend goes one way or another, you can track every report to come up with decent predictions by following them closely. You can then use the insights gained in order to invest smartly in forex and gain healthy profits.

ForexMinute is one of the best online resources for Forex traders, and we also offer some of the most useful trading tools like the best economic calendar. Please visit our website to access the best trading tools.

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5 Proven Steps To Doing Really Well In Trading

Have you ever wondered what it takes to do really well in trading or what necessary steps you need to do? I keep receiving these questions quite often. So let me give you my five proven steps. I've been doing really well with them in my own trading, so I believe they can help you too.

Step #1: Questions 
You may or may not like it, but successful trading is about the ability to come up with new, fresh ideas. Fortunately, it's not as difficult as it sounds. All you need to do is to keep asking this question: "What happens if... ?" What happens if I buy when the RSI indicator is overbought instead of oversold? What happens if I start moving my stop-loss according to my moving average? By asking the "What happens if... ?" question constantly, you start to move forward really fast and I can guarantee you some of your ideas will be sooner or later really big winners.

Step #2: Robustness testing 
Most strategies are crap. That's the fact. But how do you know which ones aren't? You can always find it out through extensive robustness testing. What does it mean? In my case it mainly means three things: A) A good strategy can easily adjust to changing market conditions. An extensive walk-forward testing is needed at this stage. B) A good strategy performs reasonably well in other markets. C) A good strategy has been developed only on a part of all your historical data and performs well on the rest. To be very honest with you, about 95% of all my strategies never pass my robustness testing criteria, but when they do, it's time to move to the next step.

Step #3: Portfolio 
One strategy will help you learn, but a portfolio of strategies will help you grow. You don't need to have a big portfolio at the beginning, but even three strategies are much better than just a single one. Remember, if you want a smooth equity and a steady income from your trading as soon as possible, the only way is through diversification and portfolio. Very few people are aware of this and even fewer spend significant time by modeling different portfolios. I personally spend a lot of time trying to find out the best way to combine my strategies together to make a really good portfolio.

Step #4: Position sizing 
Let me ask you a question: Do you want to make it big or do you want to stay small? Because if you want to make it really big, then you need to start seriously thinking about position sizing. This topic can be pretty complex, but it can be also extremely rewarding. So, where do you start? I highly suggest reading Van Tharp's book "The Definitive Guide to Position Sizing." You will learn a lot. Personally, it has moved my trading to a whole new level.

Step #5: Persistence 
Listen, it can be done. It doesn't matter what education you have, how old you are, or even how confident you feel at this moment. I've seen many people succeed. I've seen traders making it from zero to quite a nice living, and that's why I believe that you can do it too. Yes, it does take some time, effort and learning, but once you're finally there, it's all worth it. So, stay persistent and mainly never give up, and that's really all.

Happy Trading!

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Is Bitcoin As Good As Gold?

Gold and Bitcoin have been used synonymously as safe havens and currencies. What is a safe haven? It is a place to park wealth or money when there is a high degree of uncertainty in the environment. It has to be something that everyone can believe in even if the current institutions, governments or players in the business game are not available. The wealth has to be kept safe in times of trouble. What are the risks to someone's wealth? There is theft by robbery if it is a physical asset. There is damage by fire, flood or other elements. There is the legal issue in not being able to determine if the asset is really yours or not. There is access risk in that you may own the asset but may not be able to get your hands on it. You may own the asset but may not be able to use it due to some restriction. Who else do you have to rely on to be able to use your wealth - spending it, investing it or converting it into different units of measure (currencies)?

In cases like cash or currencies, you may have the asset and can freely use it, but it does not have value due to a systemic issue. There may be too many units of the currency such that using them would not purchase very much (hyperinflation). There is also devaluation - where a currency is arbitrarily devalued due to some economic or institution issue. Most of these issues come from too much debt and not enough assets to pay for them. A currency devaluation is like a partial or slow motion bankruptcy for a government or issuer. In a foreclosure scenario, the creditors (or users of the currency) would be getting a fraction of what the asset (or currency) was originally worth.

No Liability

One key aspect for both bitcoin and gold is that in creating either of them, there is no liability involved. National currencies are issued with interest attached, which means there is a liability to the issuer of the currency. The currencies due to being centralized can also be "delisted" or have their value altered, devalued or swapped for other currencies. With Bitcoin, there would have to be consensus among the players for this to happen. Gold is nature's money, and since it was found, there is no one really in charge of how it works. Gold also has the history of being used as money for thousands of years in virtually every culture and society. Bitcoin does not have this reputation. The internet, technology and power grid are needed for Bitcoin to function, whereas gold just is. The value of gold is based on what it is being exchanged for. The value of Bitcoin is similar to buying a stock or a good: It is determined by what the buyer and seller agree it is worth.

Bitcoin Issues

Are there regulatory, institutional or systemic risks with Bitcoin? The answer is yes. What if a bunch of central banks or governments took over the Bitcoin issuance? Would this not lead to control issues that could either stop the Bitcoin transactions or impair them? What if the justification was to stop terrorism or illegal activities? There are also technology issues like who controls the internet, the electrical energy involved in mining Bitcoins, or other issues in infrastructure (the electrical grid, the nuclear grid, the internet servers, the telecom companies etc.) Regulatory risks can also run the gamut from restricting who buys Bitcoins, how many can trade each day or perhaps issuing trillions of units of fiat currency and buying and selling Bitcoins with them which would cause convulsions in the prices of the unit, leading to mistrust and lack of use? Gold does not have these shortcomings. Once it is mined, it cannot get destroyed. It is not reliant on technology, infrastructure or any institution to make it valid. Since it is small and portable, it can be taken anywhere and still be useful without any other mechanism needed. The prevailing institutions can be changed many times and gold will still be valuable.

Gold is a classic safe haven because it does not need institutions to exist, is very hard to forge, cannot be destroyed by the elements and does not have issues of access or restrictions. Physical theft and restriction may be factors, but gold fares better than currencies or digital currencies at this point in time.

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Trading Commodities Through Binary Options Platforms

The commodities market has been around for a long time allowing traders to exchange commodities (raw products) on a very large scale, and the trading has usually been done on a face-to-face basis among the buyers and sellers. In today's market, the trading style has evolved into a more speculative one whether traders are dealing in stocks, commodities or other entities of the market. Many traders nowadays trade in the commodities market through binary options platforms. This type of trading is one of the simplest for making money with commodities, but it is important that you have a good binary options broker before you start.

The way a trader makes money with binary options is by guessing the price of the commodity. When a trader guesses correctly they win and if they guess wrongly they lose. Having an online broker will provide convenience for those wanting to start trading, however, it is important to have a broker that is honest and reliable. It might also be wise to put your money into different brokerage accounts rather than all into one pot. Some small online trading companies may not be regulated and therefore not as stable as the traditional trading brokers so if you use them it would be wise to keep your money in a separate account that is held by a different company.

Trading in commodities with binary options is a very lucrative business but at the same time can be very risky for beginners. There are many brokers that are safe and reliable in this type of business but there are also many brokers who don't even have a license to conduct this type of business and your investment with them is not secured or protected. What a beginner can do is to try several different brokers to compare what each of them has to offer. That way one can decide at a later date which of their brokers are reliable and can be trusted.

As with other types of trading, binary options uses techniques and methods that are very effective in making the trader a nice profit, but the trader needs to follow sound money management rules and always be aware of the risk they are taking. A good rule of thumb with any investment is, never invest more than you are willing to lose. Trading on impulse because of a boon winning streak is very dangerous. Using logic and discipline at all times is imperative to your success.

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What Cryptocurrencies Are Good to Invest in?

This year the value of Bitcoin has soared, even past one gold-ounce. There are also new cryptocurrencies on the market, which is even more surprising which brings cryptocoins' worth up to more than one hundred billion. On the other hand, the longer term cryptocurrency-outlook is somewhat of a blur. There are squabbles of lack of progress among its core developers which make it less alluring as a long term investment and as a system of payment.

Bitcoin

Still the most popular, Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that started all of it. It is currently the biggest market cap at around $41 billion and has been around for the past 8 years. Around the world, Bitcoin has been widely used and so far there is no easy to exploit weakness in the method it works. Both as a payment system and as a stored value, Bitcoin enables users to easily receive and send bitcoins. The concept of the blockchain is the basis in which Bitcoin is based. It is necessary to understand the blockchain concept to get a sense of what the cryptocurrencies are all about.

To put it simply, blockchain is a database distribution that stores every network transaction as a data-chunk called a "block." Each user has blockchain copies so when Alice sends 1 bitcoin to Mark, every person on the network knows it.

Litecoin

One alternative to Bitcoin, Litecoin attempts to resolve many of the issues that hold Bitcoin down. It is not quite as resilient as Ethereum with its value derived mostly from adoption of solid users. It pays to note that Charlie Lee, ex-Googler leads Litecoin. He is also practicing transparency with what he is doing with Litecoin and is quite active on Twitter.

Litecoin was Bitcoin's second fiddle for quite some time but things started changing early in the year of 2017. First, Litecoin was adopted by Coinbase along with Ethereum and Bitcoin. Next, Litecoin fixed the Bitcoin issue by adopting the technology of Segregated Witness. This gave it the capacity to lower transaction fees and do more. The deciding factor, however, was when Charlie Lee decided to put his sole focus on Litecoin and even left Coinbase, where're he was the Engineering Director, just for Litecoin. Due to this, the price of Litecoin rose in the last couple of months with its strongest factor being the fact that it could be a true alternative to Bitcoin.

Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin, superstar programmer thought up Ethereum, which can do everything Bitcoin is able to do. However its purpose, primarily, is to be a platform to build decentralized applications. The blockchains are where the differences between the two lie. Basically, the blockchain of Bitcoin records a contract-type, one that states whether funds have been moved from one digital address to another address. However, there is significant expansion with Ethereum as it has a more advanced language script and has a more complex, broader scope of applications.

Projects began to sprout on top of Ethereum when developers began noticing its better qualities. Through token crowd sales, some have even raised dollars by the millions and this is still an ongoing trend even to this day. The fact that you can build wonderful things on the Ethereum platform makes it almost like the internet itself. This caused a skyrocketing in the price so if you purchased a hundred dollars' worth of Ethereum early this year, it would not be valued at almost $3000.

Monero

Monero aims to solve the issue of anonymous transactions. Even if this currency was perceived to be a method of laundering money, Monero aims to change this. Basically, the difference between Monero and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin features a transparent blockchain with every transaction public and recorded. With Bitcoin, anyone can see how and where the money was moved. There is some somewhat imperfect anonymity on Bitcoin, however. In contrast, Monero has an opaque rather than transparent transaction method. No one is quite sold on this method but since some folks love privacy for whatever purpose, Monero is here to stay.

Zcash

Not unlike Monero, Zcash also aims to solve the issues that Bitcoin has. The difference is that rather than being completely transparent, Monero is only partially public in its blockchain style. Zcash also aims to solve the problem of anonymous transactions. After all, no every person loves showing how much money they actually spent on memorabilia by Star Wars. Thus, the conclusion is that this type of cryptocoin really does have an audience and a demand, although it's hard to point out which cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy will eventually come out on top of the pile.

Bancor

Also known as a "smart token," Bancor is the new generation standard of cryptocurrencies which can hold more than one token on reserve. Basically, Bancor attempts to make it easy to trade, manage and create tokens by increasing their level of liquidity and letting them have a market price that is automated. At the moment, Bancor has a product on the front-end that includes a wallet and the creation of a smart token. There are also features in the community such as stats, profiles and discussions. In a nutshell, the protocol of Bancor enables the discovery of a price built-in as well as a mechanism for liquidity for smart contractual tokens through a mechanism of innovative reserve. Through smart contract, you can instantly liquidate or purchase any of the tokens within the reserve of Bancor. With Bancor, you can create new cryptocoins with ease. Now who wouldn't want that?

EOS

Another competitor of Ethereum, EOS promises to solve the scaling issue of Ethereum through the provision of a set of tools that are more robust to run and create apps on the platform.

Tezos

An alternative to Ethereum, Tezos can be consensually upgraded without too much effort. This new blockchain is decentralized in the sense that it is self-governing through the establishment of a digital true commonwealth. It facilitates the mathematical technique called formal verification and has security-boosting features of the most financially weighed, sensitive smart contract. Definitely a great investment in the months to come.

Verdict

It is incredibly hard to predict which Bitcoin in the list will become the next superstar. However, user adoption has always be one key success factor when it came to cryptocurrencies. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin have this and even if there is a lot of support from early adopters of every cryptocurrency in the list, some have yet to prove their staying power. Nonetheless, these are the ones to invest in and watch out for in the coming months.

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Easy Tips To Improve Your Stock Trading Profitability

As a trader you need to understand why it is that you enter a particular position, what is your own specific reason for position entry, the answer can't be "It looks like it's going up". You can't put down money based on a gut feeling; you have to be motivated by a technical reason found in the chart that you are observing. Another factor that will influence your trading is volume. The average daily volume of a stock that you choose to trade should be at minimum 1M shares. Be very cautious when risking your equity, make sure you have spent sufficient time paper trading, otherwise you will pay a lot of money in market tuition... and that can be quite costly.

Something else that will have to be considered is your personal workstation. Keep your work area clean, and uncluttered. A messy desktop will not allow you to think clearly, and will prove to be distracting. You will need a good monitor setup (2-3 monitors minimum) so that you have ample real estate to view charts, level 2, etc. You will also require high-speed Internet connection and a good direct access broker. This is a serious profession based on mathematics and market psychology, so act professional. If you trade with a budget day trading casino mentality, you will quickly gamble away your entire account.

A Few Words About Charts

It took me a few months of experimenting to find my personal g-spot for my own personal chart setup. I'm going to offer up some tips on how you can best manage your own charting.

1. Keep it simple, and uncluttered. Have only the essential information displayed because you will spend a lot of time just waiting for a healthy setup to present itself. If you have a complex window to look at with a lot of flashing colours and numbers, you will only get eyestrain.


2. To reiterate on the first point, don't have too many technical indicators on your charts, especially indicators that conflict signals.


3. Have at least one broad market chart and one sector chart, are they making new highs today compared to yesterday? It is important to gauge the market relative to the previous trading day's range.


4. Have a time and sales window for your stock, is there a buy or sell pressure?

When reading your Level 2 window use it primarily for order routing only. You can't always base a trading decision on what information you see there, because there is a lot of bluffing and intentional manipulation that happens in Level 2. You need to focus on the big picture of the market first and foremost, is it a red or green day? Is it a volatile day or is it very choppy with deadly whipsaw like activity? After you have performed this initial diagnosis, then you can use the individual chart patterns to identify a profitable entry and exit point. A common beginner mistake is just jumping in and out whenever and where ever-an entry and exit point must be determined BEFORE you place the trade.

Read this book to learn more strategies that can significantly improve your trading profitability.

Ashbee A. Bakht is an international best-selling author who holds a degree in psychology from Brock University, Canada and he attained his postgraduate education in minerals and mining at the prestigious Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, at the University of British Columbia, Canada. As a professional commodities trader and arbitrage specialist, Ashbee's strength can be found in taking positions based on economic forecasts of trends and seeking out arbitrage opportunities. Ashbee specializes in trading crude oil, gold, silver, and other base metals.

Ashbee's books can be purchased at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon.

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