Learn to Trade The News

This section gives us the opportunity to welcome you on board the course, provide you with a more detailed background on your course tutor and their trading journey as well as giving some pointers on how to make the most of the course.

This video details the different types of broker model which you can choose from. It covers the importance of choosing the right one and a suggestion of our preferred broker to make your choice simpler.

Here you will learn how to open both your trading account and online account and be given a brief intro into the powerful resources you will go on to use. Your account is a key element of the course so it ideal to get this sorted out before heading into the meat of the course.

Following on from the previous video you will find here a PDF document containing the 3 key steps you need to follow in order to open your trading account. Your account is a key element of the course so it is ideal to get this sorted out before heading into the meat of the course.

In this section you will learn what an economic news release is and when they occur. You will also learn about the importance/relevance of central banks and who are the key ones to get to know.

Here you will learn about the effect of news on the currency markets and how we can replicate the trading approach of the large institutional traders (who trade this very news). The powerful nature of news based trading is hit home by using several recent examples illustrating just how quick and large the moves can be as a direct result of an economic news event.

Not every economic news item which comes out is tradeable. Instead we focus on those news items which have the potential to create the largest moves to give us the greatest profit potential. In this video, we identify the 8 key news items which are likely to have the greatest impact on a nation's economy and as such the nations currency. Here you will learn what news items to focus your attention on and what you need to see happen when they are released before you would consider a trade.

This section explains which currencies to focus on so that not only can you filter news events by their likely impact but also the currencies they effect. This will then lead into other sections where we aim to identify the relative strength or weakness of these currencies in order to build a trading plan / idea.

Now we have our list of currencies to focus on (previous lecture) we need to now determine whether they are strong, weak or neutral so that we can use this information when constructing our trading plan/ideas (see future sections). Part 1 of this video covers how to easily identify the Long Term View on a currencies strength or weakness and how by understanding the bigger picture you can then align it with the short term economic events (next video) for the highest probability trading opportunities provided in the FX markets.

In the previous section we stressed the importance of understanding the long term view of a currency - bullish, bearish or neutral - and how this is directly related to a central bank's stance. As you will discover in future topics, knowing the outlook of a central bank on its economy and thus its local currency is massively important as it will help you to clearly identify strong currencies and weak currencies to trade. In this video I demo the website I use to provide me with a plethora of useful information regarding each major developed central bank and how this helps me keep my finger on the pulse of every major central bank every single week. Reviewing this site once a week in your early days will reward your handsomely down the line.

Following on from the previous video (part 1) we now move on to looking at how we are able to identify the short term strength or weakness on a currency pair. This will be provided via the economic events themselves and will either provide fresh strength or weakness to the currency depending on the outcome. You will then learn to how align this short term strength or weakness to that of the longer time frame perspective for maximum effect in your trades. The video also covers the important topic of how to avoid currencies where there is no bias i.e. neutral and in what other trading situations you would not trade certain currencies.

Now that you have learnt how to identify whether a currency is strong or weak (previous lecture) it is all about pairing polar opposites together for maximum impact. In this video we explore the importance of pairing a weak currency against a strong one or vice versa and why this is so important and powerful when constructing a trade plan/idea.

Ensure you keep up to date with the latest fundamental picture on each of the 8 major currencies! Here you will find an example template to guide you however it is up to you to ensure that you keep abreast of both the short term and long term fundamental drivers of each currency. You can do this via the regular monthly updates from each respective central bank which are communicated via the squawk/news feeds. This offers an insight into the current stance (bullish/strong, bearish/weak or neutral) of the respective central bank and their views on rates going forward and it is this which will ultimately guide your view on the currency going forward. It will also offer a view on what data is key to influencing their rate setting going forward. 

As a private individual trader we may not have the financial clout of a tier 1 bank or major hedge fund however we can closely replicate them. In this video we run through the critical resources you will need to not only plan a trade ahead of time but also execute it in a timely, efficient manner.

NOTE! The free FNG news gun tool is NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Therefore please take a look at https://next.newsimpact.com/NewsWidget/sbyt09032011 as a very cost-effective alternative.

Forexfactory.com is one of your critical resources and the starting point for planning your trades. In this video we demo the platform showing you exactly how to get set-up and how to filter the news items so that you are only left with those you would consider trading i.e. The high impact, statistical data points effecting the 8 major currencies you are focused on. This website will become your best friend as a news trader as it will literally showcase your trading opportunities every single month.

To purchase a real-time news feed you will need to spend several hundred dollars each month however this is not necessary. Instead use the FXPro squawk feed which, although slightly delayed, is still very fast and faster than most websites. Coming from a major news provider, the audio will provide you with the breaking news you need, when you need it. In this demonstration video we run through how to get it set-up and how to use it in real time to take advantage of a trading opportunity. Use this in conjunction with the Forex News Gun (next lecture) to ensure you access every relevant news announcement in the quickest possible time.

Many of you have been emailing in about the FNG which we think is now officially out of use. It always did have issues but these were normally resolved by the developers quite quickly however these past few weeks it seems to have sadly died. We did try and get in touch with the guys who produced it but didn't hear back so it looks like its no longer going to be an option for us. A shame as it was a decent bit of kit when it worked. 

So what we have been doing in the meantime is looking into and testing a number of alternatives to ensure they were at the required level of use and we have narrowed it down to one produced by the guys over at Forexlive. It is called 'News Impact' and its excellent. It delivers the news a few seconds faster than the squawk, its lovely and visual so easy to use and you also get sound alongside this if needed. So its essentially a much superior version of the FNG. The downside is that this comes with a small monthly cost of $10 dollars but we do feel that this is pretty fair given what you get and how much it will help with your execution and you can get a 14 day trial to check it out before purchase. 

Now of course you still have the squawk as a free resource to deliver the news so by no means do you have to get this extra tool but if it can help make the difference of a few pips each trade, and help make your execution of a trade easier, then its probably worth the investment. Anyway we thought we would share it with you all as so many of you had been asking for an alternative to the FNG. Link below.

https://next.newsimpact.com/NewsWidget/sbyt09032011

In this video we start to bring the individual topics together to help us construct trading plans/ideas for the week ahead. By building a trading plan for certain events we can be pro-active, leaving the execution of the trade to be the quickest and easiest bit. We run you through the routine you need to follow on a weekly, daily, hourly and executional basis to help tune you into the best trading opportunities the market has to offer each week. Essentially you will learn what to trade, how you will trade it, and when you will trade it. We use illustrations to bring the process to life.

When a trading plan comes together and the news release comes in as we wanted, attention then focuses in on executing the trade we had planned for. In this video we detail the 3 key elements of the trade namely how to get in, where to put your protective stop and where to put your take profit level.

In this video we discuss the two management techniques you will adopt to ensure that where possible we are reducing our risk on a trade effectively to keep our losses small and our gains large.

This demonstration video concentrates on the MT4 trading platform and will bring you fully up to speed with how to both set-up your charts and how to execute a trade.

This demonstration video concentrates on the C-Trader trading platform and will bring you fully up to speed with how to both set-up your charts and how to execute a trade.

This short video demonstrates part 2 of your management criteria - what to do when a trade hasn't done as you had anticipated one hour after execution.

Risk management is the holy grail to long term trading success. In this video you will learn to appreciate its importance and how to implement it into your trading. You will know exactly how to work out your trade/position size and how to keep this to a very small % risk of your overall trading account.

Risk management is a hugely important part of your trading so we need to get it right every single time. To help you do this, we talk you through how to use an online calculator which not only makes your life easier and quicker but ensures you get your calculations spot on every time.