Forex Trading Software - Easy Money Or Wasting Your Time?

By John Adams

When we talk about Forex Trading Software we mostly refer to software that can automate the forex trading process.

When you trade on the stock market, you ideally have to study the financial statements of the companies involved. You have to know how much profit they made during the last year and how much profit they are expected to make during the next year. You should also be aware of little known 'inside' information that can have a dramatic effect on the share price of a particular company.

With forex it's different - at least theoretically. The information about factors influencing the price movements of a particular currency is readily available to everyone, especially for the major currencies. So all you have to do is study that information and make money, right?

In real life, however, there are a lot of factors influencing currency movements. There are hundreds of currencies each having an effect on each other. To make an informed trading decision, you have to study all these factors and then try to determine which way the market is going to move for a particular currency. Unless you are a full-time trader with access to sophisticated data tracking software, this is a difficult task.

In comes automated trading software - software that will study all the different technical indicators for a particular currency and then come up with a trading signal - telling you whether you should buy or sell that currency.

The good ones will also explain to you how it came to that decision. That way you can learn how to pick up market trends yourself and therefore get valuable trading experience. The cheaper packages simply produce a recommendation, without explaining how it arrived there. An example of the first category is Trading Solutions and of the second category Lazy Trading.

Sworn supporters of fundamental analysis will no doubt tell you that, although the software packages might technically be working fine, they are flawed in a very basic way. That movements in the value of a currency can not be predicted by studying things like moving averages - they don't predict the price, they follow it. These traders will argue that currency movements are caused by fundamental factors: the balance of trade, interest rates and inflation.

Traders who firmly believe in technical analysis will in turn argue that all fundamental factors will in the end have to show itself in terms of a movement in some or other technical indicator. Whether it's the price breaking through the moving average, trading volumes changing suddenly or something else - there will be a change in a technical indicator. And the forex trading software will pick up this signal sent by the technical indicator and come forward with a trading signal. In the end your decision as to whether you prefer to do manual trading or make use of one of these software packages will be determined by time constraints and whether you are a supporter of fundamental analysis or technical analysis. - 31987

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