How to Build an Effective Forex Trading Strategy?

You can read scores of online resources or pore over countless books, but it still doesn’t guarantee you success as a Forex trader. So what does establish you as a viable player in the market? Practice and planning! Yes, nothing can come close to gaining hands-on experience and applying the learned knowledge in real life. A prescribed plan of action is also vital to drive your trading approach in the right direction and make you great fortunes. Do not equate Forex trading in South Africa to gambling. Instead, adopt a practical approach, create a plan, execute it, and gain experience to better your trading performance.

Let’s take a look at six tips that will help you craft the best Forex trading plan:

#1 Start with demo trading

Avoid pooling in real currency to test out the field. Instead, open a free Forex trading account, trade with virtual currency, understand the process, get familiar with the platform and assess your skill. Once you’re confident, only then should you venture into live trading.

#2: Emotional Strength

The Forex market with its high volatility and uncertain market conditions can plunge you into periods of emotional turmoil that could jeopardize your trading career. Keep up your emotional strength at all times and devise a plan that suits your personality and lifestyle.

#3) Set targets

You need to be prepared for losses, thus making it necessary that you prescribe an amount of loss that could be borne by you. Likewise, you also need to factor in the profit you’d like to make. Be realistic and come up with trading strategies that could chase down your profit goals.

#4) Stay tuned always

The Forex trading market is accustomed to swaying as per economic, political or other events. You can’t cut yourself off from it all if you expect to succeed as a trader. Read news feeds, magazines, journals and make sure you’re well-informed. This allows you to analyze the market before entering a trade.

#5) Refine your trading system

The trading platform you choose must support your needs. MetaTrader is considered the best by many. Once you’ve opted for the right system, you need to fine-tune it. Set support and resistance levels and use visual and auditory signals to alert you on entry/exit points.

#6) Maintain a journal

One of the biggest mistakes you could make is by believing that you’ve formulated the best Forex trading strategies – because you haven’t. There’s always room for improvement. Keep a journal, record all your trading activities, and know where and why you went wrong. This could help you alter your approach accordingly.

You can always do better by allying with reputed Forex brokers in South Africa. WesternFX is leading brokerage that can equip you with a free Forex demo account, loads of educational materials, and professional guidance to help you form a better trading plan.

Key Features that a Trading Platform Must Have

One of the principal decisions that a newcomer to Forex trading would need to make is which broker to ally with. It is critical that a beginner carries out research in this process, attempting to identify a brokerage that would have all the necessary aids and facilities that he or she would require. 

Among the many features that an online broker provides, possibly the most important one that you need to keep in sight is the trading platform. The trading platform needs to have high performance, along with all the vital requirements needed to trade. The platform needs to also remain reliable and stable, without chances of crashing or freezing in the middle of the trading process. 

In this article, we’re going to be looking at some of the key features that a trading platform needs to have for optimal performance:

1) Security for deposited funds

The first thing that a platform in currency trading should offer is a security for your deposited funds, regardless of what the amount is. 

2) Streaming function

Another vital feature is the capacity to stream data in a real-time manner for the trader to see. Although this facility would be handier with stocks and commodities trading than with Forex trading in South Africa, it could still be an efficient aid. The display of this needs to be convenience-oriented, allowing the trader to identify key data points easily. 

3) Simplicity and order-making capacity

The entire trading environment is better off with a simple and to-the-point arrangement, ensuring that clients do not end up making errors. The buying and selling orders, along with the ability to exit and enter transactions, need to be presented in a more organized and efficient manner. Along with all of these, a reliable trading platform should also allow clients to implement and edit stop losses.

4) Charting aids

A vital feature that most platforms would include is charting software. Charts are central for providing the information and analytics on which traders build their decisions. The better this facility on the platform, the more informed and calculated the trader’s transactions would be. An important factor for charting instruments would be the facility to project both short and long term trading periods. 

Of trading software, the first type is built by third-party entities and is adopted by brokers across the field. A prominent example of this would be MetaTrader 4. The second type would be platforms individually designed and tailored by the brokerage for its clients. Depending on the type of aids and facilities that one would like, both types of platforms come with their own unique advantages. 

If you want to ally with a broker with a stable, high-performance platform and plenty of instruments and aids, then choose WesternFX. We are among the leading Forex brokers in the region, with clients in South Africa and multiple other countries. Get in touch with us now!