Trader Education
Learn to Use the Tools You Need to Succeed
Getting Started
One can gather an indefinitely large amount information on trading the foreign exchange markets and still not understand the market the way that you will confront once you initiate your first real forex trade. There is no substitute for experience. That stated, we suggest cultivating a certain mindset before starting your trading – even demo trading.
In 480 B.C., Spartan King Leonidas formulated a defensive strategy against the invading Persian army of blocking the mountain pass at Thermopylae. The Persian’s huge numerical advantage was useless on the narrow battleground. Then a traitor named Ephialtes revealed a secret mountain path around the Greek lines that enabled the Persians to outflank and defeat the Greeks. King Leonidas and few hundred members of his royal bodyguard and several hundred non-Spartan allies then made their legendary last stand in an effort to delay the Persian advance as long as possible.
Ephialtes’s name is now lumped with other iconic traitors such as Judas and Benedict Arnold. However unsavory his reputation, we would direct your attention to a lesson to be gleaned from Ephialtes’s treachery and usefully absorbed by forex traders: Knowledge acquired about the alternative pathway gave the invaders an edge with which to upset the Greeks’ best-laid battle plans. Forex traders should be alert for the presence of exactly such an edge on the foreign exchange markets battlefield.
SpartanForex provides the education and training to our warriors (traders) to build a Spartan warrior-like prowess, and also to gain the street smarts to discover the edge which makes the difference between victory and defeat. With direct market access; no bucket shop re-quotes; flawless market execution; Asian, European and New York market daily analysis and news feeds delivered direct to your personal platform; and the provision of armaments – customized indicators, trade system templates, and effective expert advisor technology – we give our warriors the ability to overcome the opponent and outflank our competitors.
Why Trade the Forex Market?
History clearly reveals the inherent risks in investing the stock market. The market can be fundamentally overvalued for years, and then a seemingly trivial catalyst leads to a massive change in investor sentiment and a wholesale downwards revaluation. Company insiders feather their own nests at the expense of the shareholders, and laws and regulations offer no effective remedy against these depredations. Even with a lot of time and effort it is a difficult task to accurately value a company’s assets and its stock and bond liabilities.
In the forex market the rules of the game are unambiguous and stark. Every trade is a zero-sum game. One side’s gain is the other side’s loss. Being politically connected, having a charming personality, or having government-granted franchise are of no help. It is a pure meritocracy, and while any trader can have a lucky streak, the only thing that matters over time is your trading ability. Your job is to, on average, win more than you lose. SpartanForex is here to help you do exactly this.
Traditional equity and fixed income investing perforce entails adopting a bullish bias. One buys a security and hopes its price rises. Short selling stocks is primarily limited to professionals and insiders. A currency trader, contrariwise, routinely employs both long and short positions to profit under any market conditions.
The idea of gaining international diversification by investing in equities, e.g., of companies based in many countries, often falls short in practice. The stock markets of all nations are highly correlated in our interconnected world. Portfolios with these investments end up lacking effective diversification, even when positions are geographically dispersed. Many foreign currency pair movements, however, display little correlation with each other – showing even less as the U.S. dollar loses its reserve currency status – bringing the desired diversification within easy reach.
A word of warning: Forex traders routinely use amounts of leverage unavailable in traditional markets. This means rapid gains and losses are possible any time, and quickly. Leverage should be used with strict management methodology, with stop-loss orders always in place. Without proper risk management, this high degree of leverage can lead to large losses as well as gains. Please be mindful that the possibility exits that you could sustain a loss of some or all of your investment.
Learn to Trade Forex Markets
This is our blunt assessment about successfully trading the forex markets: There is no formula. There is no “Holy Grail” trading system out there. It is an idea without a real world referent. Trading success will never be a mail-it-in proposition. If you think you can come up with an automated black box system which will profitably trade while you sleep, forget it. The competition is too intense. Markets are inherently chaotic, like their human participants, and change structurally. What works one day can deplete your capital in a heartbeat the next. Get over it. While there is no analytic formula for success, there are many ways that are pretty well guaranteed to fail – save brief flashes of luck. Have the discipline to avoid those pitfalls, and you have an excellent chance of making a lot of money while having some fun and learning about yourself in the process.
This is where having a trading system is vital. To overgeneralize, the trading booby traps to be avoided largely involve following one’s human instincts. Our minds have – seemingly diabolically – evolved in ways which if followed unquestioningly lead us over the cliff to trading losses rather than gains. You need to check your mind and emotions at the door. If it were as easy to do as to say there would be a far larger successful trader population. Refraining from those tendencies and engaging in practices conducive to productive trading requires a system which steers you towards trading success. If the system gives you an edge AND you are disciplined about following it, including your capital conservation measures, then you have moved the odds in your favor. Our observation is that the primary challenge is to discipline yourself to follow your system, as opposed to second-guessing it and instead following your wayward instincts.
There are many books and systems with associated training available to help further one’s trading ability. A good starter book is Trading Chaos (second edition) by Bill Williams and Justine Gregory-Williams. There is no substitute for experience, but any good approach will help you keep your capital intact while you learn.