Hello, dummies
It's your old pal, Fuzzy.
As I'm sure you've all noticed, a lot of the stuff that gets posted here is - to put it delicately - fucking ridiculous. More backwards-ass shit gets posted to wallstreetbets than you'd see on a Westboro Baptist community message board. I mean, I had a look at the daily thread yesterday and..... yeesh. I know, I know. We all make like the divine Laura Dern circa 1992 on the daily and stick our hands deep into this steaming heap of shit to find the nuggets of valuable and/or hilarious information within (thanks for reading, BTW). I agree. I love it just the way it is too. That's what makes WSB great.
What I'm getting at is that a lot of the stuff that gets posted here - notwithstanding it being funny or interesting - is just... wrong. Like, fucking your cousin wrong. And to be clear, I mean the fucking your *first* cousin kinda wrong, before my Southerners in the back get all het up (simmer down, Billy Ray - I know Mabel's twice removed on your grand-sister's side). Truly, I try to let it slide. I do my bit to try and put you on the right path. Most of the time, I sleep easy no matter how badly I've seen someone explain what a bank liquidity crisis is. But out of all of those tens of thousands of misguided, autistic attempts at understanding the world of high finance, one thing gets so consistently - so *emphatically* - fucked up and misunderstood by you retards that last night I felt obligated at the end of a long work day to pull together this edition of Finance with Fuzzy just for you. It's so serious I'm not even going to make a u/pokimane gag. Have you guessed what it is yet? Here's a clue. It's in the title of the post.
That's right, friends. Today in the neighborhood we're going to talk all about hedging in financial markets - spots, swaps, collars, forwards, CDS, synthetic CDOs, all that fun shit. Don't worry; I'm going to explain what all the scary words mean and how they impact your OTM RH positions along the way.
We're going to break it down like this. (1) "What's a hedge, Fuzzy?" (2) Common Hedging Strategies and (3) All About ISDAs and Credit Default Swaps.
Before we begin. For the nerds and JV traders in the back (and anyone else who needs to hear this up front) - I am simplifying these descriptions for the purposes of this post. I am also obviously not going to try and cover every exotic form of hedge under the sun or give a detailed summation of what caused the financial crisis. If you are interested in something specific ask a question, but don't try and impress me with your Investopedia skills or technical points I didn't cover; I will just be forced to flex my years of IRL experience on you in the comments and you'll look like a big dummy.
TL;DR? Fuck you. There is no TL;DR. You've come this far already. What's a few more paragraphs? Put down the Cheetos and try to concentrate for the next 5-7 minutes. You'll learn something, and I promise I'll be gentle.
Ready? Let's get started.
1. The Tao of Risk: Hedging as a Way of Life
The simplest way to characterize what a hedge 'is' is to imagine every action having a binary outcome. One is bad, one is good. Red lines, green lines; uppie, downie. With me so far? Good. A 'hedge' is simply the employment of a strategy to mitigate the effect of your action having the wrong binary outcome. You wanted X, but you got Z! Frowny face. A hedge strategy introduces a third outcome. If you hedged against the possibility of Z happening, then you can wind up with Y instead. Not as good as X, but not as bad as Z. The technical definition I like to give my idiot juniors is as follows:
Utilization of a defensive strategy to mitigate risk, at a fraction of the cost to capital of the risk itself.
Congratulations. You just finished Hedging 101. "But Fuzzy, that's easy! I just sold a naked call against my 95% OTM put! I'm adequately hedged!". Spoiler alert: you're not (although good work on executing a collar, which I describe below). What I'm talking about here is what would be referred to as a 'perfect hedge'; a binary outcome where downside is totally mitigated by a risk management strategy. That's not how it works IRL. Pay attention; this is the tricky part.
You can't take a single position and conclude that you're adequately hedged because risks are fluid, not static. So you need to constantly adjust your position in order to maximize the value of the hedge and insure your position. You also need to consider exposure to more than one category of risk. There are micro (specific exposure) risks, and macro (trend exposure) risks, and both need to factor into the hedge calculus.
That's why, in the real world, the value of hedging depends entirely on the design of the hedging strategy itself. Here, when we say "value" of the hedge, we're not talking about cash money - we're talking about the intrinsic value of the hedge relative to the the risk profile of your underlying exposure. To achieve this, people hedge dynamically. In wallstreetbets terms, this means that as the value of your position changes, you need to change your hedges too. The idea is to efficiently and continuously distribute and rebalance risk across different states and periods, taking value from states in which the marginal cost of the hedge is low and putting it back into states where marginal cost of the hedge is high, until the shadow value of your underlying exposure is equalized across your positions. The punchline, I guess, is that one static position is a hedge in the same way that the finger paintings you make for your wife's boyfriend are art - it's technically correct, but you're only playing yourself by believing it.
Anyway. Obviously doing this as a small potatoes trader is hard but it's worth taking into account. Enough basic shit. So how does this work in markets?
2. A Hedging Taxonomy
The best place to start here is a practical question. What does a business need to hedge against? Think about the specific risk that an individual business faces. These are legion, so I'm just going to list a few of the key ones that apply to most corporates. (1) You have commodity risk for the shit you buy or the shit you use. (2) You have currency risk for the money you borrow. (3) You have rate risk on the debt you carry. (4) You have offtake risk for the shit you sell. Complicated, right? To help address the many and varied ways that shit can go wrong in a sophisticated market, smart operators like yours truly have devised a whole bundle of different instruments which can help you manage the risk. I might write about some of the more complicated ones in a later post if people are interested (CDO/CLOs, strip/stack hedges and bond swaps with option toggles come to mind) but let's stick to the basics for now.
(i) Swaps
A swap is one of the most common forms of hedge instrument, and they're used by pretty much everyone that can afford them. The language is complicated but the concept isn't, so pay attention and you'll be fine. This is the most important part of this section so it'll be the longest one.
Swaps are derivative contracts with two counterparties (before you ask, you can't trade 'em on an exchange - they're OTC instruments only). They're used to exchange one cash flow for another cash flow of equal expected value; doing this allows you to take speculative positions on certain financial prices or to alter the cash flows of existing assets or liabilities within a business. "Wait, Fuzz; slow down! What do you mean sets of cash flows?". Fear not, little autist. Ol' Fuzz has you covered.
The cash flows I'm talking about are referred to in swap-land as 'legs'. One leg is fixed - a set payment that's the same every time it gets paid - and the other is variable - it fluctuates (typically indexed off the price of the underlying risk that you are speculating on / protecting against). You set it up at the start so that they're notionally equal and the two legs net off; so at open, the swap is a zero NPV instrument. Here's where the fun starts. If the price that you based the variable leg of the swap on changes, the value of the swap will shift; the party on the wrong side of the move ponies up via the variable payment. It's a zero sum game.
I'll give you an example using the most vanilla swap around; an interest rate trade. Here's how it works. You borrow money from a bank, and they charge you a rate of interest. You lock the rate up front, because you're smart like that. But then - quelle surprise! - the rate gets better after you borrow. Now you're bagholding to the tune of, I don't know, 5 bps. Doesn't sound like much but on a billion dollar loan that's a lot of money (a classic example of the kind of 'small, deep hole' that's terrible for profits). Now, if you had a swap contract on the rate before you entered the trade, you're set; if the rate goes down, you get a payment under the swap. If it goes up, whatever payment you're making to the bank is netted off by the fact that you're borrowing at a sub-market rate. Win-win! Or, at least, Lose Less / Lose Less. That's the name of the game in hedging.
There are many different kinds of swaps, some of which are pretty exotic; but they're all different variations on the same theme. If your business has exposure to something which fluctuates in price, you trade swaps to hedge against the fluctuation. The valuation of swaps is also super interesting but I guarantee you that 99% of you won't understand it so I'm not going to try and explain it here although I encourage you to google it if you're interested.
Because they're OTC, none of them are filed publicly. Someeeeeetimes you see an ISDA (dsicussed below) but the confirms themselves (the individual swaps) are not filed. You can usually read about the hedging strategy in a 10-K, though. For what it's worth, most modern credit agreements ban speculative hedging. Top tip: This is occasionally something worth checking in credit agreements when you invest in businesses that are debt issuers - being able to do this increases the risk profile significantly and is particularly important in times of economic volatility (ctrl+f "non-speculative" in the credit agreement to be sure).
(ii) Forwards
A forward is a contract made today for the future delivery of an asset at a pre-agreed price. That's it. "But Fuzzy! That sounds just like a futures contract!". I know. Confusing, right? Just like a futures trade, forwards are generally used in commodity or forex land to protect against price fluctuations. The differences between forwards and futures are small but significant. I'm not going to go into super boring detail because I don't think many of you are commodities traders but it is still an important thing to understand even if you're just an RH jockey, so stick with me.
Just like swaps, forwards are OTC contracts - they're not publicly traded. This is distinct from futures, which are traded on exchanges (see The Ballad Of Big Dick Vick for some more color on this). In a forward, no money changes hands until the maturity date of the contract when delivery and receipt are carried out; price and quantity are locked in from day 1. As you now know having read about BDV, futures are marked to market daily, and normally people close them out with synthetic settlement using an inverse position. They're also liquid, and that makes them easier to unwind or close out in case shit goes sideways.
People use forwards when they absolutely have to get rid of the thing they made (or take delivery of the thing they need). If you're a miner, or a farmer, you use this shit to make sure that at the end of the production cycle, you can get rid of the shit you made (and you won't get fucked by someone taking cash settlement over delivery). If you're a buyer, you use them to guarantee that you'll get whatever the shit is that you'll need at a price agreed in advance. Because they're OTC, you can also exactly tailor them to the requirements of your particular circumstances.
These contracts are incredibly byzantine (and there are even crazier synthetic forwards you can see in money markets for the true degenerate fund managers). In my experience, only Texan oilfield magnates, commodities traders, and the weirdo forex crowd fuck with them. I (i) do not own a 10 gallon hat or a novelty size belt buckle (ii) do not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out about the price of pork fat and (iii) love greenbacks too much to care about other countries' monopoly money, so I don't fuck with them.
(iii) Collars
No, not the kind your wife is encouraging you to wear try out to 'spice things up' in the bedroom during quarantine. Collars are actually the hedging strategy most applicable to WSB. Collars deal with options! Hooray!
To execute a basic collar (also called a wrapper by tea-drinking Brits and people from the Antipodes), you buy an out of the money put while simultaneously writing a covered call on the same equity. The put protects your position against price drops and writing the call produces income that offsets the put premium. Doing this limits your tendies (you can only profit up to the strike price of the call) but also writes down your risk. If you screen large volume trades with a VOL/OI of more than 3 or 4x (and they're not bullshit biotech stocks), you can sometimes see these being constructed in real time as hedge funds protect themselves on their shorts.
(3) All About ISDAs, CDS and Synthetic CDOs
You may have heard about the mythical ISDA. Much like an indenture (discussed in my post on $F), it's a magic legal machine that lets you build swaps via trade confirms with a willing counterparty. They are very complicated legal documents and you need to be a true expert to fuck with them. Fortunately, I am, so I do. They're made of two parts; a Master (which is a form agreement that's always the same) and a Schedule (which amends the Master to include your specific terms). They are also the engine behind just about every major credit crunch of the last 10+ years.
First - a brief explainer. An ISDA is a not in and of itself a hedge - it's an umbrella contract that governs the terms of your swaps, which you use to construct your hedge position. You can trade commodities, forex, rates, whatever, all under the same ISDA.
Let me explain. Remember when we talked about swaps? Right. So. You can trade swaps on just about anything. In the late 90s and early 2000s, people had the smart idea of using other people's debt and or credit ratings as the variable leg of swap documentation. These are called credit default swaps. I was actually starting out at a bank during this time and, I gotta tell you, the only thing I can compare people's enthusiasm for this shit to was that moment in your early teens when you discover jerking off. Except, unlike your bathroom bound shame sessions to Mom's Sears catalogue, every single person you know felt that way too; and they're all doing it at once. It was a fiscal circlejerk of epic proportions, and the financial crisis was the inevitable bukkake finish. WSB autism is absolutely no comparison for the enthusiasm people had during this time for lighting each other's money on fire.
Here's how it works. You pick a company. Any company. Maybe even your own! And then you write a swap. In the swap, you define "Credit Event" with respect to that company's debt as the variable leg . And you write in... whatever you want. A ratings downgrade, default under the docs, failure to meet a leverage ratio or FCCR for a certain testing period... whatever. Now, this started out as a hedge position, just like we discussed above. The purest of intentions, of course. But then people realized - if bad shit happens, you make money. And banks... don't like calling in loans or forcing bankruptcies. Can you smell what the moral hazard is cooking?
Enter synthetic CDOs. CDOs are basically pools of asset backed securities that invest in debt (loans or bonds). They've been around for a minute but they got famous in the 2000s because a shitload of them containing subprime mortgage debt went belly up in 2008. This got a lot of publicity because a lot of sad looking rednecks got foreclosed on and were interviewed on CNBC. "OH!", the people cried. "Look at those big bad bankers buying up subprime loans! They caused this!". Wrong answer, America. The debt wasn't the problem. What a lot of people don't realize is that the real meat of the problem was not in regular way CDOs investing in bundles of shit mortgage debts in synthetic CDOs investing in CDS predicated on that debt. They're synthetic because they don't have a stake in the actual underlying debt; just the instruments riding on the coattails. The reason these are so popular (and remain so) is that smart structured attorneys and bankers like your faithful correspondent realized that an even more profitable and efficient way of building high yield products with limited downside was investing in instruments that profit from failure of debt and in instruments that rely on that debt and then hedging that exposure with other CDS instruments in paired trades, and on and on up the chain. The problem with doing this was that everyone wound up exposed to everybody else's books as a result, and when one went tits up, everybody did. Hence, recession, Basel III, etc. Thanks, Obama.
Heavy investment in CDS can also have a warping effect on the price of debt (something else that happened during the pre-financial crisis years and is starting to happen again now). This happens in three different ways. (1) Investors who previously were long on the debt hedge their position by selling CDS protection on the underlying, putting downward pressure on the debt price. (2) Investors who previously shorted the debt switch to buying CDS protection because the relatively illiquid debt (partic. when its a bond) trades at a discount below par compared to the CDS. The resulting reduction in short selling puts upward pressure on the bond price. (3) The delta in price and actual value of the debt tempts some investors to become NBTs (neg basis traders) who long the debt and purchase CDS protection. If traders can't take leverage, nothing happens to the price of the debt. If basis traders can take leverage (which is nearly always the case because they're holding a hedged position), they can push up or depress the debt price, goosing swap premiums etc. Anyway. Enough technical details.
I could keep going. This is a fascinating topic that is very poorly understood and explained, mainly because the people that caused it all still work on the street and use the same tactics today (it's also terribly taught at business schools because none of the teachers were actually around to see how this played out live). But it relates to the topic of today's lesson, so I thought I'd include it here.
Work depending, I'll be back next week with a covenant breakdown. Most upvoted ticker gets the post.
*EDIT 1\* In a total blowout, $PLAY won. So it's D&B time next week. Post will drop Monday at market open.

Forex markets can be volatile and uncertain at the best of times, and inexperienced traders can easily end up chasing their losses. Yet it is precisely this volatility that gives you the potential for major profits. These 10 rules of forex trading may give you the best chance of landing on the winning side. Please remember, however, that trading carries a high level of risk to your capital, and profit is not guaranteed. Over 95% of all new individuals lose all their capital in the first month of trading forex

1. Avoid forex trading software that claims to guarantee returns

While you’re on the hunt for forex trading software, be sure that you’re not taken in by promises of guaranteed returns. There is no forex trading software that can assure you of winning trades. If there was, why would anyone sell it?

2. Always use a demo trading account

We’ve all heard that practice makes perfect, and it’s true. A demo trading account can help you improve your trading skills with virtual trades in real markets. Once you’re skilled at demo trading, you can switch over to real-money forex trading. And even once you’re using a live account, you may still want to use your demo account to try out new forex trading strategies. Of course, you should always remember that your performance on a demo account may not be replicated in a live trading account.

3. Forex trading can be highly stressful – avoid emotional trading

Whenever real money is changing hands, the risk of loss is ever-present. Therefore you should base your trades on considered tactics and strategies. To avoid being led by your emotions stay focused on technical and fundamental factors and market news at all times.

4. Invest in a solid forex education

Knowledge is power – we all know that. Ensure that your forex provider gives you access to tutorials, webinars, expert financial analysis and commentary, an economic calendar, graphs and charts, and even forex trading signals. All of these tools will work to improve your trading performance. The ultimate goal is to generate greater profits than losses over time, even if you have less winning trades than losing trades.

5. You can learn to trade forex successfully

No forex trading system guarantees success (see rule 1) but some may be used as reliable guides. If you learn from the experience of successful forex strategists, your likelihood of success is far greater. But remember, when judging the results of any system or any expert, that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

6. Manage your forex capital wisely

The forex markets can change on a dime, as currency markets are often characterized by high volatility. If you have generated winning trades, be sure to manage your profits. Use stop-loss and limit orders, closeout positions, and hedge your exposure to the best of your ability. Be sure that you are in control of your capital at all times.

7. Manage your investment-per-trade wisely

This is one of the most crucial aspects of forex trading. Many traders fail to heed this important advice: Don't trade more than one currency at a time. Doing so puts you at a significant risk of loss. If you spread your investments over a wide number of trades, you limit your overall losses by not putting all your proverbial eggs into one basket!

8. Use common sense

If you know you’re trading a strong currency against a weak currency, chances are the strong currency will dominate. We are going through a period now where USD is a strong global currency. With a Fed rate hike looming, you may want to back USD against emerging-market currencies. Use your common sense when judging the effect of current and upcoming events.

9. Ensure you use risk protection strategies at all times

Risk protection varies from one trader to the next. However, you can limit your risk by managing your capital wisely, limiting the amount you trade per position, using forex trading signals, trading with greater knowledge, hedging your trades, and using specific technical strategies. Your key risk protection tool is always your stop-loss order. Remember, however, that stop-losses are not guaranteed and you can lose more than your initial deposit.

10. Be especially cautious about overextending yourself with leverage

Leverage allows you to increase the size of trade you can control with your investment capital. It magnifies your profits but it can also magnify your losses. Be sure to limit the leverage you use so you don’t get into serious financial trouble.

The bottom line

By following these 10 golden rules to forex trading, you should find yourself in a much better position over the long term. Your focus should always be on trading currency pairs that you understand, in a way that does not expose you to too much risk. Read up about market conditions likely to impact upon the currencies you’re trading, limit your leverage to an affordable amount, and use a demo trading account to understand the market dynamics.

Now's a good time for to get a lesson in the greeks you fucking retards. This document outlines the relative risks and rewards of certain trading strategies and how to manage risks along with some basic math and econ. This should be basic for most of you.
Why do stocks go up?
Because capital growth has a diminishing returns to scale. In the long run capital is used to create more capital generating growth until it balances with capital depreciation which is linear. You can increase the equilibrium capital accumulation by increasing savings rates essentially trading off short run consumption for long run consumption. The implications of this are that less capital intensive economies grow at faster rates than developed because developed economies are very close to hitting the equilibrium point and have to rely on technological advancements for long run growth. Not every economy is equal though, all have differences in economic institutions, government effectiveness and political norms which will also affect their long run effectiveness. Long story short if the government engages in ineffective policies like protectionism, price manipulation, overly burdensome regulations, underregulation, or inefficient redistribution programs the short run micro/macro picture will be hurt and reflected in the long run picture. The US has had a thriving stock market despite having relatively low growth because it has taken the first mover advantage in many industries. Global Tech, higher education, finance, and pharma are all centered in the US because the US policies have made doing business in the US the optimal choice for these industries. For as long as the US is a capitalist nation you can be sure that the stock market will go up in the long run. This is not necessarily the case for commodities or forex as higher growth has typically led to investments in productive efficiency outweighing increased demand in raw materials and exchange rates do not have a long run trend. Fundamentally, the stock market is a good place to invest savings into in the long run.
Stocks and exponential returns.
Stocks go up so you want to capture the value of price increases. Stocks have a delta of one and a gamma of zero resulting in a linear return to movement of the stock price. Long run capital accumulation, although diminishing, is still exponential and in the long run will return an exponentially increasing return to investment on stock. Linear gains * exponential increase in underlying = exponential gains. But what if things go down? In the short run stocks decrease in value at exponential rates which is absolutely fantastic for investors because exponential declines are diminishing in scale. 10% of 100 is 10, 10% of 90 is 9, 10% of 81 is less and so on and so forth. You may get linear returns from movement but you receive increasing returns to scale gains on the upside and decreasing returns to scale losses on the downside.
Delta and Gamma
Long options have even better fundamentals than stocks because they amplify the exponentiality through gamma. As an option moves into the money its delta increases creating exponential gains in value. As an option moves out of the money delta decreases, lowering losses. Thus options while having more risk per dollar than stocks have far superior risk returns in the short run.
Theta and Vega
The opposite is true of selling a call and you're put into the position of wanting to sell when times are most dire and hold when times are good. In exchange you get benefit from theta decay but if you can reasonably predict the movement of the market that's pretty much nothing compared to the gains from delta you could get investing the same amount of money into long calls. Selling also requires way more money further reducing its risk to return. But what about vega? When markets crash, volatility skyrockets. Long calls gain and the opposite is true once again for selling them.
Mathematically, buying longs has the best return on risk of any option strategy but higher absolute losses when delta doesn't move in your favor. Selling longs or spreads has a way worse return to risk but you'll lose less money when delta moves against you and it's harder for any one position to lose all of its value.
Theta gang isn't more profitable than bullgang, it's less risky per dollar spent. The reason market makers don't play like WSB retards is because they play on margin and the 20-30% losses we typically take and make back buying longs would cause their investors to flee bankrupting them.
Strategy implications
Longs

• If you can reasonably predict positive price movement these should be your go to position to capture delta and gamma. Otm has better delta to price but comes at the cost of worse theta to price. I recommend getting slightly OTM options to balance collecting gamma with exposure to theta risk.
• Optimal position size: The total size of spy correlated longs should not exceed 25-50% of your account balance. Only double down on a losing position if your longs get blown up. Your risk return from delta gets better the more blown up your contracts get and exponential gains can bring you back to green.
• When to sell? Sell when you think there's a chance risk from theta or vega might outweigh delta gains. Also sell when the underlying moves against you but that should be obvious. Delta goes up the more you go into the money so its better to hold winners than profit take early when possible.
• Profit taking: If you don't want bail from a position completely when you profit take consider selling a call to lock in most of your profits while retaining some delta risk with a debt spread.
• You will take losses buying tons of longs but if you do it right your winners will outweigh your losers easily.

Selling naked longs

• If you're doing wheel, go for it. Selling naked longs shouldn't be done otherwise unless you want to park your cash somewhere and bond yields are too long for your liking or you anticipate a IV decrease. The tradeoff is receiving gains from theta, smaller delta per dollar spent(lower risk) and less options leverage.

Credit spreads

• For all intents and purposes OTM credit spreads are like selling naked with more leverage.
• Edit: The prior statement was kinda wrong. Selling a wide credit spread is like selling a long. There's still a tradeoff with reduced gains from theta and reduced delta.

Debit spreads

• When deciding between debt or credit make a prediction about whether IV will increase or decrease and whether you want risk up front or later.
• Absolutely do not buy OTM debit spreads in any situation where you wouldn't buy the same position as a credit spread. Compared to a long call you're reducing your delta and vega in exchange for the possibility of theta gains as you reach the short leg of your spread. If you actually managed to reach the short leg of your debt spread before expiration a long call would have made many times more money and now you're stuck sitting on your debt spread waiting for theta to decay it to its maximum value at expiration. Every youtube resource I've seen on debt spread pricing is wrong, if your spread goes completely in the money you will not have something worth max value, you will have something that decays towards max value akin to a close to the money credit spread.
• The best usage for OTM debt spreads is as hedges where you think the price will reach a certain point at some specific point in the future and you're worried about adverse movements in delta or IV between now and then.

Edit: For what to do with your cash position, you could put it into gold, bonds, bond etfs, non spy correlated stocks or whatever. Low risk theta gang strats are fine in bull markets but don't expect to make real money from them. I'm cash since volatility is high, u do u.

Rules for Trading Forex

Forex markets can be volatile and uncertain at the best of times, and inexperienced traders can easily end up chasing their losses. Yet it is precisely this volatility that gives you the potential for major profits. These 10 rules of forex trading may give you the best chance of landing on the winning side. Please remember, however, that trading carries a high level of risk to your capital, and profit is not guaranteed. Over 95% of all new individuals lose all their capital in the first month of trading forex

1. Avoid forex trading software that claims to guarantee returns

While you’re on the hunt for forex trading software, be sure that you’re not taken in by promises of guaranteed returns. There is no forex trading software that can assure you of winning trades. If there was, why would anyone sell it?

1. Always use a demo trading account

We’ve all heard that practice makes perfect, and it’s true. A demo trading account can help you improve your trading skills with virtual trades in real markets. Once you’re skilled at demo trading, you can switch over to real-money forex trading. And even once you’re using a live account, you may still want to use your demo account to try out new forex trading strategies. Of course, you should always remember that your performance on a demo account may not be replicated in a live trading account.

1. Forex trading can be highly stressful – avoid emotional trading

Whenever real money is changing hands, the risk of loss is ever-present. Therefore you should base your trades on considered tactics and strategies. To avoid being led by your emotions stay focused on technical and fundamental factors and market news at all times.

1. Invest in a solid forex education

Knowledge is power – we all know that. Ensure that your forex provider gives you access to tutorials, webinars, expert financial analysis and commentary, an economic calendar, graphs and charts, and even forex trading signals. All of these tools will work to improve your trading performance. The ultimate goal is to generate greater profits than losses over time, even if you have less winning trades than losing trades.

1. You can learn to trade forex successfully

No forex trading system guarantees success (see rule 1) but some may be used as reliable guides. If you learn from the experience of successful forex strategists, your likelihood of success is far greater. But remember, when judging the results of any system or any expert, that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

1. Manage your forex capital wisely

The forex markets can change on a dime, as currency markets are often characterized by high volatility. If you have generated winning trades, be sure to manage your profits. Use stop-loss and limit orders, closeout positions, and hedge your exposure to the best of your ability. Be sure that you are in control of your capital at all times.

1. Manage your investment-per-trade wisely

This is one of the most crucial aspects of forex trading. Many traders fail to heed this important advice: Don't trade more than one currency at a time. Doing so puts you at a significant risk of loss. If you spread your investments over a wide number of trades, you limit your overall losses by not putting all your proverbial eggs into one basket!

1. Use common sense

If you know you’re trading a strong currency against a weak currency, chances are the strong currency will dominate. We are going through a period now where USD is a strong global currency. With a Fed rate hike looming, you may want to back USD against emerging-market currencies. Use your common sense when judging the effect of current and upcoming events.

1. Ensure you use risk protection strategies at all times

Risk protection varies from one trader to the next. However, you can limit your risk by managing your capital wisely, limiting the amount you trade per position, using forex trading signals, trading with greater knowledge, hedging your trades, and using specific technical strategies. Your key risk protection tool is always your stop-loss order. Remember, however, that stop-losses are not guaranteed and you can lose more than your initial deposit.

1. Be especially cautious about overextending yourself with leverage

Leverage allows you to increase the size of trade you can control with your investment capital. It magnifies your profits but it can also magnify your losses. Be sure to limit the leverage you use so you don’t get into serious financial trouble.
The bottom line
By following these 10 golden rules to forex trading, you should find yourself in a much better position over the long term. Your focus should always be on trading currency pairs that you understand, in a way that does not expose you to too much risk. Read up about market conditions likely to impact upon the currencies you’re trading, limit your leverage to an affordable amount, and use a demo trading account to understand the market dynamics.

3) Over leveraged - Twist is a two way street. The Money is a trade; upon being about the currency that makes up the 22, failure or success is dependent. Profit targets will produce the agent rich. The desire to"just" make a couple hundred dollars each day by bending in miniature profits whenever possible will be a losing strategy. A price becomes a top price when you are trading from the trend. 2) Overtrading - Trading frequently with tiny and tight stops 4) Deciding Others -- Real traders play a lone hand; yet they Brokers would like you to utilize high top forex brokersleverage since that means disperse income because your position dimension determines the amount of spread income; the bigger the position the more spread income the broker earns.
Hedge funds, and Dealers have a huge benefit they could push the currencies around the final game is new dealers get fleeced trying to exchange signals and when no quantity is going through. There is hours stay out. Trading strategy is a blueprint for trading success; it spells out exactly what you see that your edge as being; if you do not have an edge, you don't have a plan, and probably forex bonus you'll wind up a statistic (a part of the 95 percent of traders that lose and quit). 1) Knowledge Deficiency -- Most new FOREX traders don't take Make their own decisions and do not rely on others to produce their trading decisions to these there is absolutely no halfway; either exchange on your own or have somebody else trade for you. Brokers is a recipe for disaster. When you set on a trade commit to a fair stop loss limit which permits your trade a opportunity to develop.
9) No Trading Strategy - earn money isn't a trading plan. A 7) Trading Through Off Hours -- Bank FX traders, option The opportunity to learn what drives currency rates (primarily fundamentals). When news or a statement is because they must close out their positions forex trading tips and also sit out the very best trading opportunities. They are educated to trade after the market melts. So they overlook the noise that follows a cost movement to the movement and trade. About trading the wake of a price movement just think ; there is not any potential. 8) Trading a Money, Not a Pair -- Becoming right about a Sorts; they are not as time sensitive as accounts and so give the impression sensitive trading strategies, such as short-term moving average crossovers could be consistently profitably traded:once you begin dealing with real cash reality is quick to set in. Difference between buying and purchasing. What was 10) Trading Against Prevailing Trend -- There's a huge

The time to understand what pushes currency rates (mainly fundamentals). When news or a statement is due out they need to close out their positions and also sit out the best trading opportunities. Following the market calms down, They're educated to trade So basically they overlook the entire move and then trade the random sound that follows a price movement. About trading the wake of a price move just think ; there's not any potential. 3) More Than leveraged - Twist is a two way street. The 7) Trading Through Off Hours -- Bank FX traders, alternative 8) Trading a Money, Not a Demo -- Becoming right about a 1) Knowledge Deficiency -- Most new FOREX traders forex expert advisor do Not take Brokers want you to utilize leverage because that means disperse income since your position dimension determines the amount of spread income; the larger the position the more spread income the agent earns. 4) Relying on Others –
Actual investors play a lone hand; yet they Make their own conclusions and don't rely on others to make their trading decisions to them; there is no halfway; either trade on your own or have someone exchange for you. Currency is a transaction; failure or success is dependent upon being about the next money that makes up the pair. Dealers, and hedge funds have a huge benefit throughout hours; they could push against the monies round the final game is new tradersforex trading software become fleeced attempting to exchange signals and when no quantity is currently going through. There is only one signal during off hours -- stay out. Profit targets will create the agent wealthy. The need to"just" make a couple of hundred dollars per day by locking in tiny profits whenever possible will be a losing strategy. 6) Demo Accounts -- Broker demo accounts are a shill sport of 9) No Trading Plan - Make money isn't a trading plan.
A Two ) Overtrading - trading often with miniature and stops Brokers is a recipe for failure. When you put on a commerce commit to a fair stop loss limit that permits your trade a opportunity to develop. Sorts; they're less sensitive as accounts and therefore give the impression that time sensitive trading strategies, such as average crossovers can be always profitably traded; after you start dealing with real money reality is quick to install. Trading plan is a blueprint for trading achievement;best forex brokers it spells out exactly what you see your advantage as being; even if you don't have an advantage, you do not have a plan, and probably you will end up a statistic (a part of this 95 percent of traders who lose and quit). Difference between buying and purchasing. What was A cost quickly becomes a top cost when you are trading from the trend.

3) More Than leveraged - Leverage is a two way street. The Currency is half a commerce; failure or success depends upon being about the money that makes up the set. Profit targets will produce the agent rich. The desire to"only" make a couple hundred dollars per day by bending in miniature profits whenever possible will be a losing approach. A cost fast becomes a high cost when you're trading from the trend. Two ) Overtrading - trading with tiny and tight stops 4) Determined by Others -- Actual investors play a lone hand; they Brokers want you to work with leverage since that means more disperse income because your position dimension determines the quantity of spread income; the bigger the position the spread income the broker earns. Traders, and hedge funds have a enormous advantage they could push the currencies round when no volume is currently going through and the ending game is new traders get fleeced attempting to exchange signs best forex brokers in uk.
There is just one signal during off hours – stay out. Trading plan is a blueprint for trading success; it spells out everything you see your edge as being; if you don't have an advantage, you do not have a plan, and likely you'll wind up a statistic (portion of this 95% of traders that lose and quit). 1) Knowledge Deficiency -- Many new FOREX traders do Not take Make their own conclusions and do not rely on others to make their trading decisions for themthere is not any halfway; either trade for yourself or have someone else exchange for you. Agents is a recipe for disaster. When you place on a commerce commit to a stop loss limit which enables your trade a fair opportunity to develop. 9) No Trading Strategy - earn money is not a trading plan brokers reviews.
A 7) Trading Through Off Hours -- Bank FX traders, option The time to find out what pushes money rates (mostly fundamentals). When news or a statement is because they have to close out their positions and also sit out the very best trading opportunities. Following the market calms down, they are taught to only trade. So they overlook the entire move and trade the random sound that follows a cost move that is fundamental. About trading the aftermath of a price movement, just think for a minute . 8) Trading a Currency, Not a Demo -- Becoming right about a Sorts; they are not as time sensitive as actual accounts and so give the impression that time sensitive trading systems, such as average crossovers can be constantly profitably traded; after you start dealing with real cash reality is fast to set in. Difference between buying and buying. What was 5) Stop Losses -- Putting tight stop losses with retail top forex brokers

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https://preview.redd.it/afpkritv1fk41.png?width=3556&format=png&auto=webp&s=9296f8b63636c34729c10d8575a37dcd65e76a6f
https://medium.com/coss-official/update-coss-exchange-relaunch-roadmap-18a5ff7549a3/
Hello everyone.
COSS exchange is ready to resume operations shortly after almost 8 weeks of downtime.
In this update, we discuss the following:

• The downtime
• New management
• New technology partner
• Roadmap
• Relaunch FAQ

The Downtime

COSS exchange was taken offline on January 7th 2020 with immediate notice to all users. The plan was to begin migration to a white label platform after proceeding with account-level snapshots.
The migration was halted mid-way as COSS entered and finalised acquisition negotiations, followed by audits of the existing technology, user data and wallets.
With the audits completed, the new management decided to do away with the old exchange platform and introduce a much more advanced engine for its users.
This is the platform which goes online this week with many added features including derivatives with up to 100x leverage, as well as an Exchange Swap Engine for instant conversions.

New Management

We apologise for the downtime — unconditionally.

The decision to shut down the exchange was not in our control and we, unfortunately, were handed over a shut exchange. We have done our best to re-enable the exchange for all users quickly and assure you that such missteps will be avoided at all costs in the future.
The new COSS is a group of investors, professional traders, and financial technology specialists. Who strongly believes in the original vision of COSS — a one-stop platform for modern digital assets whose success is dependent on and shared with all its users — a unique approach to decentralised finance.

The idea is in line with the original concept of creating a shared ‘digital economy’ instead of mirroring a system where the traditional institutional lenders and service providers benefit while the people pay fees to use and access their own assets.

The investment group has appointed a board of directors and is currently assessing nominations for the role of CEO.
The board will leave the day-to-day operations to the CEO and their team with a clear mandate — to restore and build COSS the brand for success.
Rune and the previous technology, operations and marketing teams will no longer be involved with COSS. We appreciate their work in the past and wish them all the best for future endeavours.
Satyarth will continue to remain on board with us and support the community management, marketing and PR team.

New Technology Partner

The new management has carefully evaluated several options to ensure COSS has a stable, scalable and continuously improving technology platform.
We have partnered with XHUB — a financial and trading technology company.
The XHUB team has vast experience in working with brokers, hedge funds, and proprietary trading firms.
XHUB maintains one of the largest cryptocurrency liquidity and order routing systems in the industry, and a trading platform which has been exclusively and extensively used in-house by large trading firms.
The XHUB technology team will extend its support to COSS API consumers and encourage them to keep building trading applications for the community. Consumers will have access to extensive historical and real-time market data which will allow them to create advanced strategies supported by back-testing.

Roadmap

A general roadmap of the board’s vision for the immediate future is included below. We remain focused on ensuring that COSS provides a reliable trading platform for retail and professional traders alike.

Q1–2020

Exchange Relaunch

1. COSS will relaunch the exchange platform and enable full trading on supported pairs
2. Current COSS account holders will be sent new login credentials via email and an invitation to begin trading
3. COS holders will be allocated 100% of the fees generated by the exchange until the FSA dashboard is completed and launched
4. Balance transfers from previous exchange platform are initiated by the account login. This begins the final-phase of the account audit.
5. Withdrawal of audited portfolios / balances will be available within 48 hrs of the account portfolio transfer

API Release

1. REST and Websocket access to market data
2. REST access to account and trade endpoints
3. Websocket access to account end points
4. FIX Engine quote and trade functional release

Mobile Trading App (iOS, Android)

1. Beta release of the full-featured mobile app
2. Full public launch of the trading app

Listing Policy Release

1. Compliant with all regulatory requirements

API Community Development

1. GitHub community to showcase public projects
2. Technical support
3. Budget allocated for development competitions

Q2–2020

Mobile Wallet App (v2) (iOS, Android)

1. Release of the full-featured wallet/payment and proximity peer to peer payment app

Metaquotes MT5

1. Release full scale derivative trading platform for Windows, iOS and Android
2. Enabling:

• Cryptocurrency arbitrage between popular exchanges
• Forex, Commodities and Indices with institutional enterprise grade liquidity
• Expert Advisors, MQL5, back testing and bot trading

Regulatory Licensing

1. Leverage trading will be reduced as the final step for licensing

Vendor and Payments API

1. Release of web and mobile payment processing for merchants

Roadmap will be updated in the first and third quarter every year, and will cover plans for that period.
Relaunch FAQ
The exchange will be operational on 4th March, 2020.
To adhere to existing anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing and know your customer regulations, existing users will need to complete level-1 KYC. This can be done with a single government-issued photo identity document.
Final phase account audit clearance is subject to KYC approval.
COS token trading will be available on the COS_USD pair. More pairs will be added as trading activity improves.
Maker and taker fees will be set at 0.05% and 0.1% respectively.
Trading fee discount and negative maker fees will be discontinued.
An updated COS holding based fee tier system may be introduced in the future.
The Fee Split Allocation (FSA) dashboard is under development. However, FSA will be tracked and accrue from day one. COS held in private wallets will need to be re-identified and linked to your new user accounts once the dashboard is launched.
We will initiate a delisting procedure for some assets. A complete list of pairs and the withdrawal process for the same will be released at a later date.
Crypto deposits will remain at 0 fees. A fee schedule for crypto withdrawals will be published on the website.
Fiat deposits will be available via Epay and transfers from Epay wallet to COSS will be at 0 fees.
Deposits through credit and debit cards will be introduced at 4% fees.
We will add more fiat options including withdrawals in the coming weeks.
Thank you for all your support and feedback.
We are expecting a rush to access COSS accounts and will complete verification for all applicants as quickly as possible. We apologise for any unforeseen delays during the process. You can reach us on [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) in case you require any further assistance.

Almost every day people come to this subreddit asking the same basic questions over and over again. I've put this guide together to point you in the right direction and help you get started on your forex journey.
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A quick background on me before you ask: My name is Bob, I'm based out of western Canada. I started my forex journey back in January 2018 and am still learning. However I am trading live, not on demo accounts. I also code my own EA's. I not certified, licensed, insured, or even remotely qualified as a professional in the finance industry. Nothing I say constitutes financial advice. Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but everything I've outlined below is a synopsis of some tough lessons I've learned over the last year of being in this business.
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LET'S GET SOME UNPLEASANTNESS OUT OF THE WAY
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I'm going to call you stupid. I'm also going to call you dumb. I'm going to call you many other things. I do this because odds are, you are stupid, foolish,and just asking to have your money taken away. Welcome to the 95% of retail traders. Perhaps uneducated or uninformed are better phrases, but I've never been a big proponent of being politically correct.
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Want to get out of the 95% and join the 5% of us who actually make money doing this? Put your grown up pants on, buck up, and don't give me any of this pc "This is hurting my feelings so I'm not going to listen to you" bullshit that the world has been moving towards.
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Let's rip the bandage off quickly on this point - the world does not give a fuck about you. At one point maybe it did, it was this amazing vision nicknamed the American Dream. It died an agonizing, horrible death at the hand of capitalists and entrepreneurs. The world today revolves around money. Your money, my money, everybody's money. People want to take your money to add it to theirs. They don't give a fuck if it forces you out on the street and your family has to live in cardboard box. The world just stopped caring in general. It sucks, but it's the way the world works now. Welcome to the new world order. It's called Capitalism.
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And here comes the next hard truth that you will need to accept - Forex is a cruel bitch of a mistress. She will hurt you. She will torment you. She will give you nightmares. She will keep you awake at night. And then she will tease you with a glimmer of hope to lure you into a false sense of security before she then guts you like a fish and shows you what your insides look like. This statement applies to all trading markets - they are cruel, ruthless, and not for the weak minded.
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The sooner you accept these truths, the sooner you will become profitable. Don't accept it? That's fine. Don't bother reading any further. If I've offended you I don't give a fuck. You can run back home and hide under your bed. The world doesn't care and neither do I.
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For what it's worth - I am not normally an major condescending asshole like the above paragraphs would suggest. In fact, if you look through my posts on this subreddit you will see I am actually quite helpful most of the time to many people who come here. But I need you to really understand that Forex is not for most people. It will make you cry. And if the markets themselves don't do it, the people in the markets will.
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LESSON 1 - LEARN THE BASICS
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Save yourself and everybody here a bunch of time - learn the basics of forex. You can learn the basics for free - BabyPips has one of the best free courses online which explains what exactly forex is, how it works, different strategies and methods of how to approach trading, and many other amazing topics.
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You can access the BabyPips course by clicking this link: https://www.babypips.com/learn/forex
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Do EVERY course in the School of Pipsology. It's free, it's comprehensive, and it will save you from a lot of trouble. It also has the added benefit of preventing you from looking foolish and uneducated when you come here asking for help if you already know this stuff.
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If you still have questions about how forex works, please see the FREE RESOURCES links on the /Forex FAQ which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/wiki/index
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Quiz Time
Answer these questions truthfully to yourself:
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-What is the difference between a market order, a stop order, and a limit order?
-How do you draw a support/resistance line? (Demonstrate it to yourself)
-What is the difference between MACD, RSI, and Stochastic indicators?
-What is fundamental analysis and how does it differ from technical analysis and price action trading?
-True or False: It's better to have a broker who gives you 500:1 margin instead of 50:1 margin. Be able to justify your reasoning.
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If you don't know to answer to any of these questions, then you aren't ready to move on. Go back to the School of Pipsology linked above and do it all again.
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If you can answer these questions without having to refer to any kind of reference then congratulations, you are ready to move past being a forex newbie and are ready to dive into the wonderful world of currency trading! Move onto Lesson 2 below.
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LESSON 2 - RANDOM STRANGERS ARE NOT GOING TO HELP YOU GET RICH IN FOREX
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This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but that random stranger on instagram who is posting about how he is killing it on forex is not trying to insprire you to greatness. He's also not trying to help you. He's also not trying to teach you how to attain financial freedom.
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99.99999% of people posting about wanting to help you become rich in forex are LYING TO YOU.
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Why would such nice, polite people do such a thing? Because THEY ARE TRYING TO PROFIT FROM YOUR STUPIDITY.
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Plain and simple. Here's just a few ways these "experts" and "gurus" profit from you:
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• Referral Links - If they require you to click a specific link to signup for something, it means they are an affiliate. They get a commission from whatever the third party is that they are sending you to. I don't care if it's a brokerage, training program, hell even an Amazon link to a book - if they insist you have to click their super exclusive, can't-get-this-deal-any-other-way-but-clicking-my-link type bullshit, it's an affiliate link. There is nothing inherently wrong with affiliate programs, but you are literally generating money for some stranger because they convinced you to buy something. Some brokers such as ICMarkets have affiliate programs that payout a percentage of the commission you generate - this is a really clever system - whether you profit or blow your entire account, the person who referred you to the broker makes a profit off you. Clever eh?
• Signal Services, Education & Training Programs, Courses - If somebody is telling you they are making a killing with a signal service and are trying to convince you to join it, I guarantee they are getting a piece of your monthly fee. And better still, these signal services often work...for about a week. Just long enough to suck a bunch of poor fools into it. You see people making money, you want in so you agree to pay the $200+/month subscription fee. You follow the signals and it looks like it's making money for a few days or weeks. Then it turns sideways, you start losing money hand over fist. Pretty soon you have lost most of your trading account because you blindly followed a signal service. And better still - when you go screaming at the person running the signal service they will be very quick to point you to their No Refunds policy. To add insult to injury, the buttfucker that referred you to the signal service in the past will likely listen to you getting mad, and then come back with something like "Sorry it didn't work out, but I just joined this other amazing service and it's working great, you should come join it to earn your money back. Here's my link..." You get the point here right?
• Multi-Level Marketing (MLMs) - These people are scum. They are going to offer you training and education, signals, access to forex experts and gurus, and all kinds of other shit with the promise that you will live the dream and become financially free. They are also loading you into a pyrmaid scheme where you will be hounded to recruit other people and make money off them just like you got roped into it. A really prime example here is iMarkets Live (or IML for short). Don't touch this shit with a 10 foot pole. I don't care what they are claiming, you will lose everything using them.
• Fund Managers - These people make my skin crawl. It's a classic scam and it works like this - somebody will post online about how much money they are making trading forex/commodities/stocks/whatever. Most of the time they won't explicitly post they are offering a trading service, rather they just put the message out there and wait for the ignorant masses (that's you) to contact them. They will charm you. They will lie to you. They will promise you the moon if you simply wire them some money or give them API access to your trading account. Care to guess what happens next? If you send a wire transfer (or Western Union...hell any kind of payment to them) they will vanish. Happens usually after they take a bunch of suckers for the ride. You sent them $2,000 and so do 9 other suckers. They just made $20,000 and are gone. With API access to your account, you will find your account gets blown super fast or worse - possibly leaving you open to persecution by the broker you are using.

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These are just a few examples. The reality is that very few people make it big in forex or any kind of trading. If somebody is trying to sell you the dream, they are essentially a magician - making you look the other way while they snatch your wallet and clean you out.
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Additionally, on the topic of fund managers - legitimate fund managers will be certified, licensed, and insured. Ask them for proof of those 3 things. What they typically look like are:

• Certified - This varies from country to country, in the US it's FINRA (http://www.finra.org). They need to have their Series 7 certification minimum. You can make the case that other FINRA certifications are acceptable in lieu of Series 7, but the 7 is the gold standard.
• Licensed - They need to have a valid business license issued by the government. It must clearly state they are an investment company, preferrably a hedge fund because they have some super strict requirements to operate (and often require $25,000+ in fees just to get their business license, so you know they at least have some skin in the game).
• Insured - They need to be backed by an insurance company. I'm not talking general insurance for shit like their office burning down. I'm talking about a government-implemented protection insurance program - in the US I believe that is issued by the Securities Investment Protection Corporation (https://www.sipc.org/).

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If you are talking to a fund manager and they are insisting they have all of these, get a copy of their verification documents and lookup their licenses on the directories of the issuers to verify they are valid. If they are, then at least you are talking to somebody who seems to have their shit together and is doing investment management and trading as a professional and you are at least partially protected when the shit hits the fan.
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LESSON 3 - UNDERSTAND YOUR RISK
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Many people jump into Forex, drop $2000 into a broker account and start trading 1 lot orders because they signed up with a broker thinking they will get rich because they were given 500:1 margin and can risk it all on each trade. Worst-case scenario you lose your account, best case scenario you become a millionaire very quickly. Seems like a pretty good gamble right? You are dead wrong.
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As a new trader, you should never risk more than 1% of your account balance on a trade. If you have some experience and are confident and doing well, then it's perfectly natural to risk 2-3% of your account per trade. Anybody who risks more than 4-5% of their account on a single trade deserves to blow their account. At that point you aren't trading, you are gambling. Don't pretend you are a trader when really you are just putting everything on red and hoping the roulette ball lands in the right spot. It's stupid and reckless and going to screw you very quickly.
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Let's do some math here:
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You put $2,000 into your trading account.
Risking 1% means you are willing to lose $20 per trade. That means you are going to be trading micro lots, or 0.01 lots most likely ($0.10/pip). At that level you can have a trade stop loss at -200 pips and only lose $20. It's the best starting point for anybody. Additionally, if you SL 20 trades in a row you are only down $200 (or 10% of your account) which isn't that difficult to recover from.
Risking 3% means you are willing to lose $60 per trade. You could do mini lots at this point, which is 0.1 lots (or $1/pip). Let's say you SL on 20 trades in a row. You've just lost $1,200 or 60% of your account. Even veteran traders will go through periods of repeat SL'ing, you are not a special snowflake and are not immune to periods of major drawdown.
Risking 5% means you are willing to lose $100 per trade. SL 20 trades in a row, your account is blown. As Red Foreman would call it - Good job dumbass.
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Never risk more than 1% of your account on any trade until you can show that you are either consistently breaking even or making a profit. By consistently, I mean 200 trades minimum. You do 200 trades over a period of time and either break-even or make a profit, then you should be alright to increase your risk.
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Unfortunately, this is where many retail traders get greedy and blow it. They will do 10 trades and hit their profit target on 9 of them. They will start seeing huge piles of money in their future and get greedy. They will start taking more risk on their trades than their account can handle.
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200 trades of break-even or profitable performance risking 1% per trade. Don't even think about increasing your risk tolerance until you do it. When you get to this point, increase you risk to 2%. Do 1,000 trades at this level and show break-even or profit. If you blow your account, go back down to 1% until you can figure out what the hell you did differently or wrong, fix your strategy, and try again.
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Once you clear 1,000 trades at 2%, it's really up to you if you want to increase your risk. I don't recommend it. Even 2% is bordering on gambling to be honest.
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LESSON 4 - THE 500 PIP DRAWDOWN RULE
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This is a rule I created for myself and it's a great way to help protect your account from blowing.
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Sometimes the market goes insane. Like really insane. Insane to the point that your broker can't keep up and they can't hold your orders to the SL and TP levels you specified. They will try, but during a flash crash like we had at the start of January 2019 the rules can sometimes go flying out the window on account of the trading servers being unable to keep up with all the shit that's hitting the fan.
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Because of this I live by a rule I call the 500 Pip Drawdown Rule and it's really quite simple - Have enough funds in your account to cover a 500 pip drawdown on your largest open trade. I don't care if you set a SL of -50 pips. During a flash crash that shit sometimes just breaks.
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So let's use an example - you open a 0.1 lot short order on USDCAD and set the SL to 50 pips (so you'd only lose $50 if you hit stoploss). An hour later Trump makes some absurd announcement which causes a massive fundamental event on the market. A flash crash happens and over the course of the next few minutes USDCAD spikes up 500 pips, your broker is struggling to keep shit under control and your order slips through the cracks. By the time your broker is able to clear the backlog of orders and activity, your order closes out at 500 pips in the red. You just lost $500 when you intended initially to only risk $50.
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It gets kinda scary if you are dealing with whole lot orders. A single order with a 500 pip drawdown is $5,000 gone in an instant. That will decimate many trader accounts.
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Remember my statements above about Forex being a cruel bitch of a mistress? I wasn't kidding.
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Granted - the above scenario is very rare to actually happen. But glitches to happen from time to time. Broker servers go offline. Weird shit happens which sets off a fundamental shift. Lots of stuff can break your account very quickly if you aren't using proper risk management.
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LESSON 5 - UNDERSTAND DIFFERENT TRADING METHODOLOGIES
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Generally speaking, there are 3 trading methodologies that traders employ. It's important to figure out what method you intend to use before asking for help. Each has their pros and cons, and you can combine them in a somewhat hybrid methodology but that introduces challenges as well.
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In a nutshell:

• Price Action Trading (Sometimes called Naked Trading) is very effective at identifying when trends will start and finish. This gives you the advantage of staying ahead of the market and predicting when a change in trend direction will occur. It has the disadvantage of being really easy to screw it up if you don't plot your support and resistance lines properly and interpret the chart wrong. Because you can identify a change in trend direction, you'll generally make more profit on a new trend than a technical strategy will.
• Technical Analytics (or TA) uses math and statistics to try and identify where the market is headed or confirm/reject whether a trend is happening. It has the advantage of being very math and stat driven which is hard to refute the numbers, but it has the disadvantage of being late to the party when it comes to identifying trends (hence why people call TA a lagging strategy). When people fail using TA, it's not because of the math - it's because you misinterpreted what the math is telling you.
• Fundamental Analysis (or FA) uses news and macro scale events to predict what is going on. A really good example right now is Brexit, what a clusterfuck that is. Every time some major brexit news breaks it causes all sorts of choas in almost every currency pair. Fundamental trading has the highest potential profitability per trade but it also has the highest potential drawdown per trade.

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Now you may be thinking that you want to be a a price action trader - you should still learn the principles and concepts behind TA and FA. Same if you are planning to be a technical trader - you should learn about price action and fundamental analysis. More knowledge is better, always.
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With regards to technical analysis, you need to really understand what the different indicators are tell you. It's very easy to misinterpret what an indicator is telling you, which causes you to make a bad trade and lose money. It's also important to understand that every indicator can be tuned to your personal preferences.
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You might find, for example, that using Bollinger Bands with the normal 20 period SMA close, 2 standard deviation is not effective for how you look at the chart, but changing that to say a 20 period EMA average price, 1 standard deviation bollinger band indicator could give you significantly more insight.
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LESSON 6 - TIMEFRAMES MATTER
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Understanding the differences in which timeframes you trade on will make or break your chosen strategy. Some strategies work really well on Daily timeframes (i.e. Ichimoku) but they fall flat on their face if you use them on 1H timeframes, for example.
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There is no right or wrong answer on what timeframe is best to trade on. Generally speaking however, there are 2 things to consider:
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• Speed - If you are scalping (trading on the really fast candles like 1M, 5M, 15M, etc) odds are your trades are very short lived. Maybe 10 minutes to an hour tops. For the most part, scalping strategies will produce little profit per trade but make up for it in the sheer volume of trades. Whereas swing trading may only make a few trades but each one could be worth a significant amount of money.
• Spread (the fee you pay to the broker when you trade) - If you are a scalper, the spread is your worst enemy because you have to overcome it very fast to make a profit on your order. Whereas swing trading the spread hardly impacts you at all.

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If you are a total newbie to forex, I suggest you don't trade on anything shorter than the 1H timeframe when you are first learning. Trading on higher timeframes tends to be much more forgiving and profitable per trade. Scalping is a delicate art and requires finesse and can be very challenging when you are first starting out.
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LESSON 7 - AUTOBOTS...ROLL OUT!
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Yeah...I'm a geek and grew up with the Transformers franchise decades before Michael Bay came along. Deal with it.
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Forex bots are called EA's (Expert Advisors). They can be wonderous and devastating at the same time. /Forex is not really the best place to get help with them. That is what /algotrading is useful for. However some of us that lurk on /Forex code EA's and will try to assist when we can.
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Anybody can learn to code an EA. But just like how 95% of retail traders fail, I would estimate the same is true for forex bots. Either the strategy doesn't work, the code is buggy, or many other reasons can cause EA's to fail. Because EA's can often times run up hundreds of orders in a very quick period of time, it's critical that you test them repeatedly before letting them lose on a live trading account so they don't blow your account to pieces. You have been warned.
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If you want to learn how to code an EA, I suggest you start with MQL. It's a programming language which can be directly interpretted by Meta Trader. The Meta Trader terminal client even gives you a built in IDE for coding EA's in MQL. The downside is it can be buggy and glitchy and caused many frustrating hours of work to figure out what is wrong.
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If you don't want to learn MQL, you can code an EA up in just about any programming language. Python is really popular for forex bots for some reason. But that doesn't mean you couldn't do it in something like C++ or Java or hell even something more unusual like JQuery if you really wanted.
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I'm not going to get into the finer details of how to code EA's, there are some amazing guides out there. Just be careful with them. They can be your best friend and at the same time also your worst enemy when it comes to forex.
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One final note on EA's - don't buy them. Ever. Let me put this into perspective - I create an EA which is literally producing money for me automatically 24/5. If it really is a good EA which is profitable, there is no way in hell I'm selling it. I'm keeping it to myself to make a fortune off of. EA's that are for sale will not work, will blow your account, and the developer who coded it will tell you that's too darn bad but no refunds. Don't ever buy an EA from anybody.
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LESSON 8 - BRING ON THE HATERS
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You are going to find that this subreddit is frequented by trolls. Some of them will get really nasty. Some of them will threaten you. Some of them will just make you miserable. It's the price you pay for admission to the /Forex club.
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If you can't handle it, then I suggest you don't post here. Find a more newbie-friendly site. It sucks, but it's reality.
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We often refer to trolls on this subreddit as shitcunts. That's your word of the day. Learn it, love it. Shitcunts.
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YOU MADE IT, WELCOME TO FOREX!
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If you've made it through all of the above and aren't cringing or getting scared, then welcome aboard the forex train! You will fit in nicely here. Ask your questions and the non-shitcunts of our little corner of reddit will try to help you.
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Assuming this post doesn't get nuked and I don't get banned for it, I'll add more lessons to this post over time. Lessons I intend to add in the future:

• Demo Trading
• Why you will blow your first account and what to do when it happens
• Trading Psychology (this will be a beefy one and will take a while to put together)
• Exotics vs Majors and which you should focus on as a newbie (aka how to blow your account in a single trade with exotics)
• Which Broker Should You Use? (This is covered in pretty good detail on the FAQ already - https://www.reddit.com/Forex/wiki/index - so I may not bother)
• Hedging (there isn't really a good guide written on this anywhere)
• Doubling Your Risk to Save Your Ass or Lose a Shit Ton (aka Martingale & Anti-Martingale)
• Risk On/Off
• Forex Calendars
• Currency Strength / Heat Maps
• Swap
• Margin Calls (What are they and why are you getting them?)

If there is something else you feel should be included please drop a comment and I'll add it to the above list of pending topics.
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Cheers,
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Bob
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As a high level overview, you pay the RBI a certain amount of money, which is equivalent to 'x' grams of gold at todays market price. On maturity you the equivalent value of the 'x' grams of gold on that date. In addition to this, you get 2.5% interest on the amount you paid.
From the perspective of an individual who has decided to 'invest' in gold, this is a no-brainer if you can ignore the liquidity concerns. You get the price of gold + a extra interest component which you wouldnt get if you bought physical gold.
The stated purpose of the government when launching this scheme was to save forex by reducing gold imports, which is a fair point.
Now my question is how does the RBI manage this. There is no point in the RBI buying gold, equivalent to the invested amount, as this would defeat the purpose of reducing gold imports + they would now have to fund the interest out of their own pockets.
My guess is that there is some sort of gold futures hedging mumbo-jumbo happening, I dont know enough about derivatives and the like to know how this works. My first thought was that the RBI uses the capital received like a deposit earning 7% if lent to someone. Is the interest margin of around 4.5% enough to hedge the price of gold over 5-8 years. Does the RBI have the expertise at the lower rungs to do this?
I would guess this strategy would fail, if there was a steep increase in the price of gold near redemption time. Since the RBI is guaranteeing the investment, I assume the investor wont be affected
Disclaimer: I have no intention of investing in the gold bond scheme