Online Forex Trading For You

Monday, December 7, 2009

Choosing A Forex Signal Provider

By Tk Kearns

With the growing popularity and easy access to the foreign exchange (ForEx) market, more and more people are drawn to it as their financial vehicle of choice. Along with this popularity come all the extras. This includes all kinds of software, trading systems for sale, books, videos, and third party signal providers. Today I'm going to touch on a few points when seeking out a third party forex signal provider.

For you to choose a quality third party signal provider, we should have a good understanding about who they are and what they do. Signal providers are other traders or analysts that are able to place trades in your own account with the hope of turning a profit. Depending on your trading needs, you can have one or many signal providers.

You have to be careful when choosing your forex signal providers. At a glance a trader may look like he or she has a really good track record. If you take a better look, though, you may find that the trader isn't quite as good as you thought. To help to make sure that you always choose quality providers to trade your forex account we have to set some ground rules.

1. Is your signal provider a winner? It would seem that no one would trade the signals of a losing trader, but still I see losers with a big following from time to time.

2. The next thing I look at is how long they have been a winner. If a trader has been winning for a week, this means nothing to me. I recommend that you don't trade any signal provider with less than a few months of results to show you. Any one can place a few good trades one week and get lucky. If you are going to be trading this trader's signals they need to be established.

3. Have a look at the amount of draw down the account has generated in the past. This is the furthest that their equity has dropped from their high water mark. Some traders cannot stand to book a loser. This means that they will hold onto trades indefinitely when they are in the red. They often close out trades for a very small profit but tend to accumulate massive draw downs. These are not traders that you want trading your account.

4. You should be able to spot any traders that meet our first three guidelines. Once you have some traders that you are considering using you should take a closer look at some of their stats.

a. Take a look at individual trades. Are all of the trades placed in the same direction on the same currency pair? If so this trader has not yet seen a reversal.

b. Look at their draw down on individual trades. Do they let a trade go 300 pips against them and then close it out when it hits 5 pips of profit? This is a trader who lets their losses run out of control and cuts their winning trades short. It's not a trader that you want in control of your money.

c. Do they add to losing positions? A trader who constantly adds to losing positions hoping it will turn for them is not someone you want trading your account.

5. Make sure that the signal provider that you choose is suitable for your risk tolerance. Choosing a very aggressive trader will not work for a very conservative investor no matter what the win rate.

These are just a few things to look for when choosing a third party signal provider to trade your forex account. You should always trade a demo account before opening a live account with real money. Remember it's your account. In the end you choose the signal providers, and you are responsible for what happens. - 23311

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