Do forex market trends even exist? Market trends that can easily be picked up and be used to make a large amount of money over a short period of time? Day traders will no doubt say there is no such thing - the market is 100% unpredictable over any period longer than one day. Swing traders and long term traders will disagree.

Fact is, when you do day trading you make or lose money in the course of one day. If there is any question of a “trend”, then it would be a trend that perhaps lasts a few hours. You have to make quick decisions, move in and out of markets in a split second. If you take into account trading commissions, this market is best left to experts. Strangely enough, the excitement of day trading often appeals to beginners, who proceed to lose their fortunes very quickly.

Swing traders have a somewhat longer time frame in which they trade. For them a trend in the market is an upward or downward price movement that goes on for a few days or weeks. Although it’s very easy to look at a chart and see that the price has been going up for a week, using that as a basis to assume it will be going up for another week might just be slightly flawed.

The last type of trader we are going to discuss is the long term trader. Many would argue that there is no such thing as a long term trader - that it’s simply another word for an investor, someone like Warren Buffet. These guys are often big players in the market. They buy and sell massive quantities of forex, but over a much longer period of time than day traders or swing traders.

The tools of choice for day traders are called technical indicators. These are a series of mathematical formulas often displayed visually in the form of charts. All of them have one thing in common: they use the historical behavior of the market to try and predict future price movements. The most basic technical indicator is probably the moving average. A moving average charts gives one a good visual impression of the direction the price of a currency has been moving in over the past five seconds, or five years, depending on the time frame you are trading in. Another popular group of technical indicators are the trending indicators. They are more refined than simple averages, but still attempt to predict future ups and downs in the price by analyzing past behavior, and then trying to project that into the future.

Another type of analysis, used more by swing traders and long term traders is called fundamental analysis. In fundamental analysis one would try to identify ‘fundamental’ economic factors that will have an effect on the future price movements of a particular currency. One such example is the effect interest rates have on the value of a currency. If the interest rate goes up, it will have an effect on the value of that country’s currency which could not be predicted by looking at technical indicators alone.

There are a number of different chart types being used by traders. The simplest is the line chart, which basically just connects the closing prices to each other. A favorite of many traders is the so-called ‘candlestick’ charts. A candlestick chart shows both the opening and closing prices, and the highest and lowest prices for the day in a colorful bar type chart. Bar charts only shows the lowest and highest prices of the day.

A final note: Anyone who ever develops a system to clearly indicate the start and predict the end of forex market trends will become an instant billionaire. Clearly nobody has done so yet, otherwise all of us wouldn’t still be looking for the holy grail of trading!

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