Forex Charts - Using The ADX Indicator For Bigger Profits

If you're using charts, then you want to trade the strong trends - and the Average Directional Movement Index Indicator, or ADX, enables you to do this.

Wells Wilder developed the ADX, and outlined it in his classic book "New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems".

Let's look at this essential indicator in more detail - and see how to apply it on your forex charts, to give you greater accuracy when generating your trading signals.

Determining the Strength of the Trend

The ADX is a momentum indicator, which aims to measure the strength of the trend - and attempts to determine if the market is trending, or is trading sideways.

The Advantages of the ADX

A core belief of technical analysis is that a strong trend in motion is more likely to continue, than reverse. Therefore, you always want to be trading strong trends - as your odds of success are higher. The Average Directional Movement is a good indictor - and you should consider using it as part of your currency trading system.

The Technical Bit

For the boffin's out there, here's the technical bit - don't worry if you don't understand the calculation, its easy to use when visually plotted. The ADX is based on the comparison of two other directional indicators, both of which were also developed by Wilder, and they are:

Positive Directional Indicator (+DI) and the Negative Directional Indicator (-DI) to produce ADX as showed in the following formula:

ADX = SUM[(+DI-(-DI))/(+DI+(-DI)), N]/N

Where:

N: Refers to the period of calculation. The formula above produces the ADX line, which oscillates between 0 to 100 values. The +DI and -DI are both present and can be seen to make up the indicator.

You don't need to understand the above calculation to use the indicator - you only need to accept that the indicator works.

The indicator is easy to use when it's visually plotted - and you'll find it included, with most of the good forex chart services.

How to Trade using the ADX Indicator

The ADX it's not a bullish, bearish trading signal generator - and should never be used as such.

The ADX indicator simply indicates the strength of the trend - and other indicators should be used to enter, and exit trades.

Although the ADX fluctuates from 0 to 100, it rarely moves above 60.

Use the ADX in the following way:

Readings above 40 indicate the strength of the trend.

Readings below 20 indicate range trading and flat periods of consolidation.

You can use the crossing of +DI and -DI to determine the trend direction; when +DI crosses -DI upward, it's a bullish signal, on the other hand, when +DI crosses -DI downward it's a bearish signal.

The ADX line is a great momentum indicator and like the RSI (also developed by Wells Wilder), the ADX it will help you trade the strongest trends - and give you advance warning of changes in momentum.

The Bottom Line

If you want currency trading success, you can't just trade support and resistance levels, and hope they hold or break. You need confirmation of momentum to get the odds on your side - and the ADX indicator will assist you.

Final Words

New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems was published in 1978, and was one of the first trading books I ever bought. Every trader should make this book a part of his or her forex education. If you want to learn forex trading the right way, get the book, and use the ADX indicator to increase your chances of making big FX Profits.

Read more...

The Best Forex Trading Strategies? Stop Using Indicators

For anybody that has been searching for the best forex strategies, I empathize for you. You have to go through a lot of garbage on the internet to figure out how to trade forex. If there is one thing that most of these strategies have in common, it's probably one thing: the reliance of lagging indicators. Lagging indicators such as moving averages and statistics. By the time these kind of indicators provide a signal, the move has already happened. Here is the best forex trading strategy I can give you: Clear out your charts. YOU be the indicator.

Just look at how the currency is moving. Price action can tell you a heck of a lot more about what the markets are doing than some RSI or MACD Indicator. All the information you need is right there.

There are certain price patterns that happen all the time. Whether it be on a 1 minute chart or a daily chart, these kind of pattern are predictive in nature. They get repeated continuously.

If you think about how most investors made their money in the early days before there was even such a thing as charting software, all they had to rely on was price action. They used the price movements as their sole indicator for opening and closing a position. Believe it or not there are still people today that don't even look at a chart when trading. They just look at the numbers move.

The best forex trading strategies in the world should have nothing to do with some magical indicator. If people in the early 1900s can trade the markets just by using price action, what's your excuse?

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Using the Best FOREX Chart Indicator to Your Advantage

Having control over your investments using the best FOREX chart indicator is essential in being successful. There are a lot of trading indicators that you can use, and not a single one will stand out above the rest. You need to use a combination of two or more trading indicators to be effective in a given circumstance and the mix of which will also vary, depending on the factors available in the current market.

Simple bar charts have long lost their popularity. But whether you believe it or not, they are still quite an effective tool, especially over the candlestick charts that present data like the daily open and close range that is already obvious.

With these four trading indicators that you can probably learn how to use in about thirty minutes each, you will be able to apply right away on your FOREX charts to plan out strategies on how to make larger profits.

1. The Stochastic - is a very powerful trade indicator. It shows you the crossovers of bullish and bearish divergence of oversold and overbought levels. It also enables you to make those precise timings when the best time to trade is available for a particular currency.

2. Relative Strength Index - shows you how high the trend can go by graphing when the RSI strengthens and weakens, so it acts as an advance warning for a move against you. Matched together in combination with the stochastic, these two make a powerful pair for establishing the proper timing in the market trend.

3. The Bollinger Bands - show you the volatile price levels of a currency. Understanding how this properly works can help you achieve how to make decent earnings in the FOREX market.

You can use pops on the outer band, close to chart resistance and support, to check profit, or create an opposing trend. If there is a strong market trend, you will be able to see dips down the centre band of the moving average. These are areas of great value that you can add more possible watches to an upcoming trend.

These are the long term investments that you do not rush into. This is where you take your time analyzing a good spot with resistance and support to make a huge slide in profit.

4. Simple Moving Averages - pertain to taking the average out of a certain period of days for analysis of long-term trends. A good basis for this sample would be between 18- to 25- day cycles.

Learn and understand these tools well and you will have the best FOREX chart indicator at your side to help you harvest in those dollars.

Read more...

Using the Best FOREX Chart Indicator to Your Advantage

Having control over your investments using the best FOREX chart indicator is essential in being successful. There are a lot of trading indicators that you can use, and not a single one will stand out above the rest. You need to use a combination of two or more trading indicators to be effective in a given circumstance and the mix of which will also vary, depending on the factors available in the current market.

Simple bar charts have long lost their popularity. But whether you believe it or not, they are still quite an effective tool, especially over the candlestick charts that present data like the daily open and close range that is already obvious.

With these four trading indicators that you can probably learn how to use in about thirty minutes each, you will be able to apply right away on your FOREX charts to plan out strategies on how to make larger profits.

1. The Stochastic - is a very powerful trade indicator. It shows you the crossovers of bullish and bearish divergence of oversold and overbought levels. It also enables you to make those precise timings when the best time to trade is available for a particular currency.

2. Relative Strength Index - shows you how high the trend can go by graphing when the RSI strengthens and weakens, so it acts as an advance warning for a move against you. Matched together in combination with the stochastic, these two make a powerful pair for establishing the proper timing in the market trend.

3. The Bollinger Bands - show you the volatile price levels of a currency. Understanding how this properly works can help you achieve how to make decent earnings in the FOREX market.

You can use pops on the outer band, close to chart resistance and support, to check profit, or create an opposing trend. If there is a strong market trend, you will be able to see dips down the centre band of the moving average. These are areas of great value that you can add more possible watches to an upcoming trend.

These are the long term investments that you do not rush into. This is where you take your time analyzing a good spot with resistance and support to make a huge slide in profit.

4. Simple Moving Averages - pertain to taking the average out of a certain period of days for analysis of long-term trends. A good basis for this sample would be between 18- to 25- day cycles.

Learn and understand these tools well and you will have the best FOREX chart indicator at your side to help you harvest in those dollars.

Read more...

Reliable Forex Analysis Using Forex Indicators

Forex is a highly volatile market where price will move up and down every single second. Because of the volatile nature of forex, traders have to be very precise and accurate in their forex analysis in order to profit from it. Therefore being able to have a reliable forex analysis can be a great help to your trading account.

In order to do a good forex analysis, you definitely requires the use of several forex indicators that can help you to decide on your entry and exit position. If you have been reading up books or have been attending seminars, you are already exposed to the various commonly used forex indicators that most traders use for their forex analysis and you would have seen how they managed to use them successfully.

However, you need to know that those examples that are used in the books and courses are usually the ideal situation demonstrated by the forex indicators. In reality, the market movement will not be as ideal as those pictures in the books or courses. This is something that made me scratch my head when I first started trading currency after reading some forex books.

The most reliable forex indicators that I have used is the 200 EMA, it is in fact voted as the most realiable forex indicators in a currency trading magazine. You can use the 200 EMA as a gauge for your forex analysis. If your price move above the 200 EMA, it most likely means that the trend is shifting upward and vice versa. Another way to know the trend lies in the steepness of the 200 EMA, the steeper it is, the stronger the trend.

Once you have identified the trend, you can make use of a type of forex indicators called oscillator like the stochastic or RSI to help you check whether the market is oversold or overbought. This can make your forex analysis more reliable as you can check for possibility of reversal. If the currency pair is oversold and the price is above the 200 EMA, there is a good chance that the price is going to move up after the retracement and the opposite is true as well.

There are so many different way you can do your forex analysis using different forex indicators. The most important is for you to come up with a trading plan and then pick different indicators that can fit into your trading plan so that you can profit from it.

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Make Money Using FOREX Indicators

Indicators are the most used form of technical tools in the field of FOREX Trading. In this article I will describe the most profitable and effective methods of using indicators in your trading.

Key Element 1: Chart Patterns Confirmation

One of the best ways of profiting with indicators is to cross verify them with chart patterns. Chart patterns is the oldest idea of technical analysis, whose roots trace back to the beginning of 20th century. Confirming your indicator signals with chart patterns can enhance your winning percentage greatly, and provide you with more profitable entries. Spotting a breakout and confirming with an trending indicator can get you on a big trend, and filter range periods which result in many whipsaws.

Key Element 2: Larger Time Frame Confirmation

Another way to increase your profits is to cross-verify your trades with signals from a larger timeframe. Exactly like your signal on 15M chart can be a losing one if faced with an opposite signal from the 1 Hour chart, your trades can have explosive accuracy if confirmed with signals of the same direction, in higher timeframes. This way you are flowing against with the bigger waves of the market, and have a bigger chance of success.

Key Element 3: Combine With Existing Trading System

A trader can combine indicators to an already-successfull trading system, to make it even more profitable and reduce its drawdown. Sometimes a single indicator can create an amazing positive change in the system's performance. It is important that the indicator has strong logic and a reason to combine in the system. A range filter would be very helpful to a trend-following system, while another lagging indicator can be correlative and useless. Experiment with several indicator to find the winning combination.

Read more...

Forex Charts - Using The ADX Indicator For Bigger Profits

If you're using charts, then you want to trade the strong trends - and the Average Directional Movement Index Indicator, or ADX, enables you to do this.

Wells Wilder developed the ADX, and outlined it in his classic book "New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems".

Let's look at this essential indicator in more detail - and see how to apply it on your forex charts, to give you greater accuracy when generating your trading signals.

Determining the Strength of the Trend

The ADX is a momentum indicator, which aims to measure the strength of the trend - and attempts to determine if the market is trending, or is trading sideways.

The Advantages of the ADX

A core belief of technical analysis is that a strong trend in motion is more likely to continue, than reverse. Therefore, you always want to be trading strong trends - as your odds of success are higher. The Average Directional Movement is a good indictor - and you should consider using it as part of your currency trading system.

The Technical Bit

For the boffin's out there, here's the technical bit - don't worry if you don't understand the calculation, its easy to use when visually plotted. The ADX is based on the comparison of two other directional indicators, both of which were also developed by Wilder, and they are:

Positive Directional Indicator (+DI) and the Negative Directional Indicator (-DI) to produce ADX as showed in the following formula:

ADX = SUM[(+DI-(-DI))/(+DI+(-DI)), N]/N

Where:

N: Refers to the period of calculation. The formula above produces the ADX line, which oscillates between 0 to 100 values. The +DI and -DI are both present and can be seen to make up the indicator.

You don't need to understand the above calculation to use the indicator - you only need to accept that the indicator works.

The indicator is easy to use when it's visually plotted - and you'll find it included, with most of the good forex chart services.

How to Trade using the ADX Indicator

The ADX it's not a bullish, bearish trading signal generator - and should never be used as such.

The ADX indicator simply indicates the strength of the trend - and other indicators should be used to enter, and exit trades.

Although the ADX fluctuates from 0 to 100, it rarely moves above 60.

Use the ADX in the following way:

Readings above 40 indicate the strength of the trend.

Readings below 20 indicate range trading and flat periods of consolidation.

You can use the crossing of +DI and -DI to determine the trend direction; when +DI crosses -DI upward, it's a bullish signal, on the other hand, when +DI crosses -DI downward it's a bearish signal.

The ADX line is a great momentum indicator and like the RSI (also developed by Wells Wilder), the ADX it will help you trade the strongest trends - and give you advance warning of changes in momentum.

The Bottom Line

If you want currency trading success, you can't just trade support and resistance levels, and hope they hold or break. You need confirmation of momentum to get the odds on your side - and the ADX indicator will assist you.

Final Words

New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems was published in 1978, and was one of the first trading books I ever bought. Every trader should make this book a part of his or her forex education. If you want to learn forex trading the right way, get the book, and use the ADX indicator to increase your chances of making big FX Profits.

Read more...

Forex Beginners - Using Bollinger Bands in a Trending Strategy That Absolutely Works

One of the best forex indicators is Bollinger Bands. They are very simple to use, they are free, and they are extremely reliable. At just a glance, you can tell if the market is trending or stuck in a range. You can tell if the market has hit extreme prices or if it is about to explode.

So I want to show you a simple trading strategy that relies heavily on Bollinger bands. And, oh yeah, it makes pretty good money!

Identifying a trending market with Bollinger bands is very simple. If the market is trending up, price will walk up the upper band. If the market is trending down, price will walk down the lower band.

Bollinger bands plot a moving average in the middle, and the extreme bands are formed by standard deviation lines around that moving average. Now don't be scared by the algebraic term standard deviations. You don't have to know how to calculate them - the indicator does that by itself.

Normally, the standard deviation for Bollinger bands is set at 2. For this strategy, you want to change it to 1. Just go into the settings of the Bollinger indicator and change the number 2 to 1. This will help you identify trading opportunities better.

Now that you have changed the standard deviation, you will notice that the extreme bands are now closer to the moving average. This is exactly what you want.

Now look for any candle that closes outside the bands. When you see this, enter a trade in the direction of the closing candle. Your stop loss will go on the other side of the candle.

So, in an uptrend, you will place your stop below the candle that closed above the upper band. In a downtrend, you will place your stop above the candle that closed below the lower band.

Your take profit should be twice as much as your stop loss. For example, if your stop loss is 25 pips, then your take profit would be 50 pips.

Pretty simple, right? Not hard at all, and that is the way most profitable trading strategies are - simple.

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