Trading techniques for the currency crowd: These 10 articles from past issues of Currency Trader and Active Trader magazines contain various strategies and systems for trading spot forex and currency futures. These approaches range from intraday techniques to longer-term trend and reversal methods.

Now this collection is on sale for 30 percent off. Price shown is the discounted price.


ARTICLE 1: "Day trading the FX market: A different approach to the pound" by Kristian Kerr (Active Trader, June 2004)
Summary: Opening-range breakout techniques have long been favorites of intraday stock index traders. A similar technique can be used in the currency market to capitalize on price moves in the British pound. 

Introduction: Day trading the foreign currency market is definitely one of the more challenging endeavors an aspiring trader can pursue. The higher degree of leverage (as high as 50:1 or 100:1) available in this market can increase profits, but it equally accelerates losses.

ARTICLE 2: "Channeling currencies" by Andy Bushak (Currency Trader, November 2004)
Summary: If you’re trading a market that tends to trend, a good way to get in is to find out when the market is likely to take off in the direction of that trend after stalling or pulling back.

ARTICLE 3: "Countertrend forex trading with TD Sequential" by Tom DeMark and Rocke DeMark (Currency Trader, January 2005).

Summary: Currencies have long been praised for their capacity to trend, but in today’s market, an objective countertrend technique might be a forex trader’s most valuable asset. TD Sequential is designed to identify trend exhaustion points and keep you one step ahead of the trend-following crowd.

Introduction: There is a market adage that describes the modus operandi of almost all currency traders: The trend is your friend.

Granted, that is often the case. However, to make it more truthful, we have added the corollary, "unless the trend is about to end. " This qualifier has never been more appropriate for the forex market than in recent times.

Markets will trend, but research proves this is the exception rather than the rule. Overall, markets trend 25 to 30 percent of the time, which means 70 to 75 percent of the time they move within defined trading ranges.

ARTICLE 4: "Spike-low bottoms" by Currency Trader Staff (Currency Trader, March 2005).
Summary: Historical testing of a one-bar price pattern reveals a useful confirmation signal the day after the pattern. Find out the probabilities of catching a reversal.

Introduction: Nowhere is the adage "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is" more applicable than in trading. Promises of 90-percent win rates and easy millions are marketing hype aimed at the unwary masses. Any trader who has spent enough time in the markets to develop successful trading techniques knows how rare viable ideas are for every useful methodology, 10 (or 20, etc.) others have likely been consigned to the dustbin of history.

ARTICLE 5: "Finding price targets and risk points" by Thom Hartle (Currency Trader, July 2005)
Summary: There’s more to trading than entry setups. To get the most out of a trading approach, you have to move beyond the obvious. Find out how to analyze trades to determine the best places to set stops and take profits.

Introduction: Most new traders are focused on finding entry signals for their trades. They spend time studying indicators and technical patterns, looking to create combinations that lead to high-probability entry points. After finding reasonable setups, many traders stop their research and start placing trades, ignoring the question of where to exit.

If they become dissatisfied with how their trades turn out, they might review any number of popular trading books, which will inform them to let your profits run and limit your losses. The idea is to capture the occasional big winners that will more than make up for a larger number of small losses.

ARTICLE 6: "Progressive entry technique" by Boris Schlossberg (Currency Trader, July 2005)
Summary: A staggered trade-entry approach allows you to be more flexible and structure your trade depending on market developments.

Introduction: Unlike the stock market, which can be affected by many company-specific factors, the currency market is almost uniformly focused on macroeconomic trends. In the stock market, prices can rise in the morning on good news from Microsoft only to collapse later in the day on a warning from General Motors.

In the currency market, however, price moves driven by major fundamental adjustments are more likely to continue. As a result, many traders like to buy breakouts and sell breakdowns with the goal of capturing additional price movement in the direction of the original price thrust.

If it was truly that simple, however, every forex breakout trader would be a multi-millionaire. In reality, the breakout trade, like every setup, requires nuanced understanding and proper planning and execution to be profitable.

ARTICLE 7: "Trading the Euro inside out" by Currency Trader Staff (Currency Trader, September 2005)
Summary: Analysis of inside and outside days in the Eurocurrency futures offer some interesting surprises — and clues for how to trade this market.

Introduction: Outside bars and inside bars: The definitions are simple, but the interpretation is a different story.

What happens after these bars can be affected by many things what occurred the day of the outside bar (as reflected in where it opens and closes), the nature of the preceding price action, the range of the outside bar, and so on.

Studying the characteristics and aftermath of inside and outside days in the Eurocurrency (EC) futures highlights certain characteristics including some surprising ones that point toward useful ways to trade these patterns.

ARTICLE 8: "Support and resistance zones" by Thom Hartle (Currency Trader, October 2005)
Summary: Traders sometimes think of support and resistance as precise price levels, but this approach has little use in real trading. Defining broader support and resistance zones provides a sensible framework for making trades.

Introduction: Classic chart analysis is built upon the concept of support and resistance levels. By and large, support and resistance are thought of as precise numbers. For example, if a market drops to a price of 100, and then climbs to 110, the low at 100 is considered support. Resistance is a peak price: If the market then backs off and eventually bounces off 100, then resistance is at 110.

Short-term traders typically interpret support or resistance as low-risk levels at which to place trades. One technique during an uptrend is to buy a pullback that ends near a previous support point and exit the trade with a small loss if the support is broken. Similarly, in a downtrend, you would go short when a bounce stalls near a previous resistance level.

At what point can you say price has come close enough to the support or resistance level to warrant taking a position?

ARTICLE 9: "Trading intraday FX swings" by Currency Trader Staff (Currency Trader, January 2006)
Summary: A simple idea — measuring the size of intraday price moves — provides the basis of a potential trading system. In the first of a series of articles, we walk through the process of finding and testing this strategy.

Introduction: Of all the maxims cluttering trading and investing, one all traders would do well to keep in mind is, "Simpler is better. " We are often tempted by arcane theories and complex indicators because they offer the appearance of intelligence ("appearance" being the operative word) we often like to wrap around ourselves for protection — i.e., its complicated, so it must be worthwhile.

Trading is extremely difficult, but that does not mean the basic ideas that drive trades need to be. The following strategy is the essence of simplicity it looks for price moves of a certain size to indicate swings in the opposite direction but it offers plenty of useful market insights and the potential to develop a workable trading plan.

ARTICLE 10: "Long swings, short swings" by Currency Trader Staff (Currency Trader, February 2006)
Summary: Adding a short-side perspective to a price-pattern signal rounds out a potential trading strategy. Now it’s time to experiment and test. (Second of two articles.)

Introduction: Developing a trading strategy or system is typically a process of fits and starts. The deeper you investigate an idea, the more challenges you find it faces especially when the idea looks really good from the outset.
Things are never as simple in real trading as they are on paper, and the more rigorously you test something, the more apparent its limitations usually become. Progress can be slow, but the process itself is often the ultimate reward because through testing you often stumble upon new ideas or explore concepts you hadn’t even thought of before. Purchased separately, these 10 articles would cost $44.75. Now you can buy them as a set for $31.32 — 30 percent off.