Forex
Factory:
How To Prepare For Your Trading Session
The Forex Factory web site is a very popular site among developing Forex traders as shown by an Alexa rating of around 5,400 most visited sites on the web. Any site within the first 100,000 gets serious traffic!
Forex Factory provides 3 main services listed in my personal order of importance:
- Calendar
- News
- Forum
Calendar
The main attraction of the Forex Factory calendar of upcoming economic reports and fundamental announcements is that it is so visual and easy to read.
A color coding system gives an indication at a glance as to how volatile the announcement is expected to be:
- Yellow - Low Impact
- Orange - Medium Impact
- Red - High Impact
Another good feature of this calendar is the ability to customize the time to your own time zone. So instead of having to add or subtract a certain number of hours from GMT to arrive at the time of the economic report in your country, you can set the calendar according to your time zone and see the time accurately displayed.
This feature saves some confusion and prevents a newer trader from leaving a trade in around a volatile news report because of getting the time mixed up!
News
A number of news reports are featured daily from authorities and advisors in the financial markets.
Within a few minutes the trader can come up to speed on the latest economic factors that might impact the market.
Forums
The Forums at Forex Factory have a huge appeal as indicated by the thousands of users online each day.
The forums are divided into various themes including:
-
General Discussion
-
Trading Systems
-
Broker Discussion
-
Forex Beginner Questions and Answers
How To Get The Best From Forex Factory
For me, the calendar is by far the most useful feature at Forex Factory. I consult it each day in preparation for the next trading session and make sure I am out of the market around volatile news releases (flagged by the red icon) and also many times the medium impact reports (flagged by the orange icon).
The News feature is also useful to get a broad overview of market sentiment. At the same time caution is needed if you use technical analysis as your main trading tool as the comments and opinions of others can sometimes blur your own analysis and lead to flawed trade entries.
You may have detected a perfectly good trade setup and the trade is going well. Then as it starts to stall the comments of a news analyst come to mind and you exit prematurely from what could have been a very profitable trade.
So it is good to view the News objectively and coordinate it with your own technical analysis.
Forums - Be A Little Cautious
For newer traders the discussion forums can be helpful in bouncing ideas off other newer traders. One of the main benefits is encouragement and motivation from hearing how others are getting on.
However, as to whether you can get good trading tips and strategies from the forums is in my mind a little doubtful.
After I attended a Forex seminar run by a licensed professional who trades the Forex every day and is a fund manager, I noted his comment that the really successful Forex traders rarely have time to visit online forums and participate in discussions. They are too busy making money on the Forex!
So as long as you approach forum discussions with the realization that most participants are also in the learning stage, you can evaluate their comments and suggestions accordingly.
There is no doubt Forex Factory (forexfactory.com) provides an excellent group of services for newer Forex traders. Definitely use the calendar to the full and depending on your level of expertise, use the News and Forums features to gain a better perspective of daily market activity.
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