[Type here] [Type here] [Type here] Stage 1* ❇️INTRODUCTION ❇️WHAT IS FOREX ❇️WHAT IS TRADED ON FOREX ❇️WHO IS A FOREX BROOKER ❇️TRADING TIMES & TRADING SESSIONS ❇️TERMINOLOGIES USED IN FOREX. ❇️FORMS OF TRADING ❇️CURRENCY PAIRS. ❇️MT4 INTERFACE PART 1 1.0 INTRODUCTION AND WHAT IS FOREX* Forex is just a Short form for *FOREIGN EXCHANGE. Forex is one of the largest markets in the world with a Total Daily Liquidity of $5.3 Trillion dollars. It is larger than New York Stock Exchange market and Crypto-market combined together. 1.1 WHAT IS TRADED ON FOREX Someone would ask what is traded on the Forex Market. This is not the form of market where buying of clothes or shoes takes place. This is not Idiomata or Oshodi or your normal markets in any parts of the world you are. In forex market we trade the following: SpotOIL, Futures, Gold, GoldE, Silver, OIL, Shares EU, Crypto, Commodities, Shares US, Shares UK, Bonds Energy, Crypto1, AUDCAD, AUDCHF, AUDJPY Some are currency pairs of different countries, others are commodities, Oil, Precious metals, some Cryptos, and Bonds etc. we would come to see them later. 1.2 WHO IS A FOREX BROOKER? Forex Brookers are Firms that gives you access to the FOREX MARKET. They provide Traders access to the Financial Market. They provide a trader with a trading account. They give traders what we call leverage. They also provide support functions to the traders. There are various 1 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] Brookers in the Forex Market. We have Hotforex, Fxtm, Fxcm,Fbs, LitesForex, Alphaforex, Atlas Fx, Bluestone etc. 1.3 TRADING TIME AND TRADING SESSIONS There are various trading times and trading session in Forex. They include; Sydney Session Tokyo Session London Session Frankfurt Session New York Session The session names are derived from the major cities in which most of the Transactions are done. For example Sydney Session represents Australia and other countries around the Time Zone. Tokyo Session, sometimes called Asian Session represents Japan and some of the Asian countries. London Session represents the United Kingdom and the countries within it. Frankfurt Session which is in Germany represents Europe while New York Session represents the Americas. Forex is actually a 24hour market. It is most times regarded as the Market that never sleeps because it’s open for 24hours of the day except on weekends. So there are 5 times in sessions. No matter where you are around the World, no matter your Time Zone you can actually trade this large. Highly Liquid market. Each Session have their own Opening and Closing times. Sydney - Opens by 9pm GMT Tokyo - Opens by 11pm GMT London - Opens by 7am GMT Frankfurt – Opens by 8am GMT NewYork – Opens by 1pm GMT Note that these TIMES are listed in GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time). All sessions last for 9hours. Having known their Opening, to get their appropriate Closing Times just add 9hrs to the Opening Time to get when they would close. Example Sydney Sessions that opens by 9pm GMT will close by 6am GMT. NOTE There is an important thing to Note. This is what many Forex Traders don’t actually understand because nobody taught them. It is always good to Trade the Market when 2 markets are open at the same time. This is because, volatility is always more when 2 or more 2 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] Sessions are opened. In Forex Market, more Volatility means more money. As a Forex Trader, you wouldn’t want to trade a Quiet market because there won’t be much fluctuations and it’s those movements that make money for us. EXAMPLE You can trade London and Frankfurt at the same time since their time is very close EXAMPLE 1 12am GMT Sydney Session and Tokyo Session would be opened together and it would have more volatility than someone that is trading at 9pm GMT EXAMPLE 2 8am GMT London Session and Frankfurt Session would open, in fact even Tokyo would be with them briefly, so you would notice that Volatility would increase during such times since their time are very close So as a Forex Trader, always time your trading to fall in periods where 2 or more Markets are open at the same time. By doing that you would always have an edge in the market. Some of you have heard about Forex before though you may not have known how to trade the Market. Also some of you have friends that Trade Forex. They would rather prefer to buy you exotic drinks in clubs, take you and your spouses out but they will never teach you how to Trade Forex. I was once in that situation The only thing you would see how this Friend Pop Champagne in Clubs but will never teach you or show how to make this money. I used to tell people that hoarding knowledge won’t make you progress. You progress faster when you share this Knowledge and the beauty about Forex is that one’s profit doesn’t hinder the next persons own 1.4 TERMINOLOGIES USED IN FOREX Just like every Field you try to learn, you would have to get accustomed to its Terms and Terminologies. So for every new field you embark upon in life, you would encounter New Terminologies and terms which is peculiar to such fields. Be it Law, Medicine, Journalism, Engineering etc. you would have to get yourself acquainted with their Terminologies so as to be able to communicate properly. So also in Forex, for you to be able to Learn and Trade, you would get to know some of the terms that is used in Forex Trading. So that you can understand the New, Flow with your fellow Forex traders and understand Analysts. You may be among the gathering 3 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] of Forex Traders but you won’t understand a dime of what they are saying. This is because you don’t know the terms. So that is what we would be learning in this section TERMINOLOGIES USED IN FOREX TO GO LONG – buy TO GO SHORT – sell If a trader tells you that he went Long on a Currency pair. He meant that, he Bought the pair. While if they tell you that they Short a Currency pair, it means that they Sold the pair. BULLISH MARKET A market that is going Upwards BEARISH MARKET A market that is going Downwards When someone tells you that a currency pair or a commodity is Bullish its telling you that its going Up. While one that is Bearish is going down. BULLS The Buyer are referred to as Bulls. BEARS The Sellers are referred to as Bears. RANGING A market is said to be Ranging, if it does not have any particular direction. Its neither moving Upwards nor Downwards TRENDING A market that has a direction. Its ether moving Upwards or Downwards 4 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] So you can hear people say a market is Trending Upwards or the Market is Trending Downwards. You may hear people tell you that the Market is Just Ranging. They are indirectly telling you that the market is not found any direction yet HAWKISH This term is mostly used when referring to the Central Bank Governor or personnel of a country. When they are Hawkish, they tend to be liberal on interest rate and are willing to increase it. This is good news for investors. DOVISH This is the opposite of Hawkish. Financial personnel who are Dovish are very restrictive. They do not want to tamper with the interest rate. They even want to reduce it. This is bad news for investors. Like what is happening to Great Britain right now NFP An acronym for Non Farm Payroll. A very important New Event in the US. Also most of the Currency pairs have specific names in which they are called. We would get to know them soon. Example 1.5 the dollar is sometimes called Greenback the Pounds is called cable the New Zealand dollar is called Kiwi the Australian dollars is the Aussie etc. FORMS OF TRADING There are basically Two (2) forms of Trading in Forex. They are sometimes referred to as ANALYSIS. 5 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] a. Fundamental Analysis b. Technical Analysis 1.5.1 FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS Fundamental Analysis is also known as News Trading. Here you are analyzing Forex market with respect to the News. It’s been said that News is what moves the market. Everyday various news are being released by these major countries and they either Positively or Negatively affect the Currency pair involved and then you make your Trading decision based on New heard. We see all these news on CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC etc. Also your MT4 App has a Summary of news section. Some sites like forexfactory.com, dailyfx.com etc gives summary of this News. Whether the News is Positive or Negative as a Forex Trader that is none of your business because you make money both ways. Those into Crypto Trading would tell you that you only make money when a Coin is appreciating but in Forex we make money both ways. If a currency pair is appreciating, we go long on the pair. When a Currency is also depreciating based on News, we go short on the pair. So in Forex, you make money on both sides of the News. (We will come to see how to trade the News Later. Today we would be discussing an important News Released by the United States even though there are News released every day. This is what we Forex Traders call KING OF ALL NEWS. It is called NFM (NON FARM PAYROLL). This is a news released by the United States of America. Among all the news released by the US, this is the highest because it causes the most Volatility in the market. By Volatility, we mean making the market fluctuate and move in a particular direction most rapidly. Example, in Forex we calculate Profit in PIPS (we talk about pips soon). Those Traders I did today is averagely about 121 pips and I traded about 3 currencies to make that. On a day of NFP, you don’t even need to Trade that much Currency pairs to make such profit. Just one Currency pair could make a move of 100pips within 5 minutes. (We would all see this soon). Non Farm Payroll is one of the Biggest News that every trader awaits on. It’s a News that contains various data and statistics released by the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics. It’s very influential as an indicator of US Economy because of the US Federal Reserve makes monetary policy decisions with the News hence, Investors, Financial Analysts, Forex Traders, Stock Traders make trading decisions with the News. It’s released every 1st Friday of the Month by 8:30am(EST) that is 12;30pm(GMT). 1. Non Farm Payroll increase. The data include This is the number of new jobs added in the US Labor sector in the previous month. These data includes employment in the manufacturing sector, Construction sector, Goods sector etc. Excluding Farm workers (hence the name). Also excluding Private Household employees and non- profit organizations. It is usually compared to the previous data. 6 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] Example The one we traded on Friday, September 7th is the number of jobs added in August. It also includes 2. Unemployment rate of the US 3. Which sectors of the economy, these jobs were added mostly It gives investors and traders where are the possible sectors to invest in as the sector that added more jobs would be most likely to have experienced growth 4. It also includes the Average hourly earnings of the workers in the US. This is also an Economic indicator because even if the number of workers didn’t change but however their earnings increased. It would have the same effect as if their number increased. Same also could be interpreted in revision of previous non form payroll because investors compare these values together whether there has been an improvement or reduction. This also gives you an idea of the economy is growing or reducing. 1.5.1(a) INTERPRETATION OF NFP When more jobs are added, it means Business ventures are growing and remember that these newly employed would be paid. Hence more people would have money to spend on goods and services hence increasing the growth of the economy. However when the number of Jobs added are reduced. The Reverse occurs. People won’t have money to spend on goods produced and service hence dwindling the economy Also the US government has an amount of money paid to the unemployed. When more Jobs are added, more people would be employed. This reduces the unemployment rate, as the unemployed citizens reduce less money leaves the government pockets hence boosting the economy. This is just a Breakdown of what NFP entails and why it’s so volatile. It’s usually released 1 st Friday of every month. So we would together Trade the Next NFP, because it’s seen than explained. No Forex Trading fixes his Wedding or Party on the First Friday of any month except it’s a Night event. So as Forex Traders, never miss it. If you are driving and its 12:20PM (GMT) just park, open your phone Trade your NFP and continue where you are going. If you are sick (God forbid), just tell them to give you your phone that Friday, because you can’t miss NFP. That how Big it is. Most traders Trade once a month. They fund their accounts especially for NFP and close for the month. Most people make what you would be in a year just on an NFP afternoon. That’s how massive NFP News are. It causes large volatility in the market 1.5.2 TECHNICAL ANALYSIS This form of Trading is when you analyze the market using Indicators, Charts, Patterns, Candlesticks, Fiboacci, Support and Resistance, Pivot Points, Elliot waves etc. When you see any of the above to analyze the market, it’s called Technical Analysis. Majority of what we listed on the course outline are Technical Analysis 7 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] How to know when to actually buy or sell How to generate signals for your selves. Indicators- Moving Averages, Stochastic, MACD, Bollinger bands, RSI, ADX, Parabolic SAR, ATR, Ichimoku etc. Time Frame Analysis Support and Resistance level Candle Sticks Analysis Fibonnacci Levels Pivot Points Elliot Waves and Fractals Chart Patterns It’s the most popular Form of Trading This is because High Volatile News in not released everyday so you can’t just depend on Fundamental Analysis alone. Everyday can’t be Christmas. So as a Forex Trader, you must learn how to trade the market using Technical Analysis. Because every day can’t be Christmas, High Volatile News like NFP is not going to be released every day. So you have to learn to analyze the market and Trade in the absences of any Major News released. That’s what makes you a complete Forex Trader. Amon the 2 major forms of Analysis, no one is superior to each other and also no one is used in isolation. You would learn as we move on, how to harmonize the two to constantly keep you on top. 1.6 CURRENCY PAIRS For this part to be more interactive we would all need to open our MT4 Apps. We are getting into more serious Business right now. Let us open the app so that we can register it. We would all start with DEMO ACCOUNTS. Example 1 8 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] If you look at the currencies listed above you would discover that they are listed in pairs. Among those pairs of Currencies. The First Currency within the pair is called BASE CURRENCY while the Second Currency within the pair is called QUOTE CURRENCY. Example EURUSD The first pair (EUR) is called Base currency and the second pair (USD) is called the Quote Currency. Euro is stronger than the US dollar. (I believe we all know that). Hence EURO is the Base while USD is the Quote. An important thing to note here is that the Base Currency is always stronger than the Quote Currency (with few exceptions and we would see why soon). Example 2 While in the second example (USDJPY) USD is the Base while Japanese Yen is the Quote because the USD is stronger than Japanese Yen. 9 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] Example 3 Also in USDJPY you are seeing 112.94, this number is telling you how many Units of the Quote Currency you will need to get 1 Unit of the Base Currency. Let us a Local scenario to give an example. If you have a Currency pair between USD and Naira USD/NGN ….360 This is first telling you that USD is stronger than Naira hence USD is the Base and Naira the Quote. The next important thing it is telling you how many Quote currencies do you need to get 1 Unit of the Base Currency. So in this case you will need 360 Naira to be able to get 1 US dollar 10 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] EXCEPTIONS WHERE THE QUOTE IS STRONGER THAN THE BASE CURRENCY Picture 4 There are occasions in which the stronger ones are written as the second pair. Example include *AUDUSD US dollar is stronger than Australian dollars *EURGBP Pounds is stronger than Euro *USDCHF Swis Franc is stronger than USD When you see these few exceptions don’t bother too much about why the weaker one is written first even though it’s quite glaring that the Quote is Stronger. What you need to do is look at those numbers beside it (Picture 4). All the numbers that starts with 0.yyyyy (ie Zero point something) 11 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] are exceptions. In them the Quote is stronger. It doesn’t affect your Trading. It’s just for knowledge sake. However apart from those few exceptions generally in Forex the Base is always stronger than the Quote. Picture 5 We only do two things in Forex.. We BUY and we SELL these currency pairs. The Big question is Now when Do you Buy and When do you Sell. This is where people always get confused because those who taught them used the wrong semantics. YOU BUY WHEN YOU KNOW THAT THE MARKET WOULD GO UP WHILE YOU SELL WHEN YOU KNOW THAT THE MARKET WOULD GO DOWN If you notice, I carefully labeled WOULD. I didn’t say you buy when the market is going Up. Assuming I said that, I would still be correct but you would get more confused. You would start asking, who buys any item when it’s going Up. As usual, I would use a Local scenario to explain this topic, by the time I’m done this seemingly complex concept would look very easy to you. Believe me nothing is hard in Forex. Just tell yourself that if young boys who are not even half educated as you can do this then you too can do it. 12 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] Let me use this Analogy to explain what I mean, For those of you who are not Nigerians I would use 2 names in this brief Analogy. Name 1: Buhari (He is the current president of Nigeria) Name 2: Jonathan (former president) Lets get to the Analogy so as to understand in a layman’s way of how Forex actually works. When Jonathan was in Power, Dollar was at a time around 180 Naira to 220 Naira. Let’s just take the average and say 200 Naira. When Buhari entered power some of you would recall that around 2016, at some point the dollar shut up to 500 Naira per one Assuming you knew Dollar would appreciate against Naira like this and you had 2 Million Naira lying fallow in the Bank account. You knew from your experience as a Forex trader that uncertainty in Government weakens a currency pair and you used this your 2 million and bought dollars and kept in 2015 It would give you about $10,000. 1 year later, Dollar just escalated to 500 Naira per dollar and you went to the Bank cashed $10,000 and exchanged it back to Naira. It would now yield you 5 million Naira (remember you just stocked 2 million Naira) that means you made 3 million Naira Profit. Ask yourself did you use that 2 million Naira to do any Business? The answer is No. you practically did nothing. What you just did right here was Forex. You leveraged on the fluctuations in the Price of Dollar to Naira to make yourself Money without doing anything. You just sat at home while the Foreign Exchange market did the job for you. This is basically what we do in Forex. This is not the normal market Oshodi or Idumota, Kaneshie market, Accra Mall etc. that you Buy and Sell clothes. For some that would as what you Buying and Selling. This is just a raw Analogy because in Forex market it’s even more interesting. You don’t have to wait 1 year or months to make Money. These Currencies are constantly Fluctuating in minutes (what I usually refer to as Volatility) so it’s those opportunities caused by these Fluctuations in the Price of one Currency with respect to another that Forex traders make their money from because they happen daily. That’s why Banks would never allow you to learn Forex. They prefer you come to their Banks and fix the money for meager interest rates. To even shock you, investment Banks contribute more than 70% of the total Liquidity in Forex. They use your money to Trade. Drive big cars and Live in Big Houses and give you peanuts as interest or meager amounts as Salary. In the above Analogy you would notice that you didn’t really Buy or Sell any real commodity to make money. You took advantage of the exchange in Exchange rate to make money. Why did you Buy USD/NGN? 13 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] In the above scenario, you bought USDNGN because you knew beforehand that the value Would rise. Take note Would. We would also be touching our Next topic which is MT4 interface. Let me show you guys where to see the Buy and Sell button. Picture 6 Picture 7 Click on that icon labeled by the Red arrow on any page you are currently on. It would bring you to Chart interface. While on the Chart interface click that icon pointed at the Purple arrow 14 [Type here] [Type here] [Type here] Picture 8 As you click on that icon, it would now bring you to this Page where you can Place your Buy and Sell order on any Currency pair you want to trade on In Summary We have seen that we Buy when we know a Currency pair Would rise And we Sell when we know a currency Would fall The Big Question is, how do we know when it would rise and when it would fall. That is what Technical Analysis would tell you Candlesticks Fibonacci Elliot waves Indicators Pivot point etc. 15