Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Trading the Gap in Forex

You can search Google, or go to your local library, and find a huge amount of information on complicated, hard to understand, forex trading strategies. Forex education is important but there are many simple, time-tested Forex trading strategies that you can use immediately that will give you profitable results. Profits are the bottom line in this business.

Profiting from Gap Trading

Gap trading is not a new strategy. It's been used in all investment markets for a very long time. To learn this Forex trading technique is relatively easy. Gap trading in an attempt to take advantage of the difference, or "gap," in price between the close of the previous day with the open of the following day. If the open is above the previous day's close, this is commonly referred to as "gapping up." If the open is below the previous day's close, this is called "gapping down.If the open is at the same price level, then there was no gap.

Forex Trading and Gaps

Generally, in Forex trading this strategy tends to be ignored; most people feel that as currencies are traded 24 hours a day, there is no true opening or closing prices. That being said, some people maintain that gap trading in Forex trading can be successful 85% of the time. If this is the case, there is money to be made. The question becomes: "How can you trade gaps on the Forex market?"

If you ignore the 24-hour time frame associated with Forex trading, and set up an opening and closing time to create an artificial market, you can provide yourself with an open high low close data range. Based on that data range, you would be able to trade gaps. An alternative Forex trading strategy is basically to ignore trading on Saturday and Sunday, when volume thin as most of the world is not working. Under this scenario, you establish a closing time on Friday and an opening time on Monday. Based on the gap, you take the appropriate position.

Unlike what you might think, the Forex trading strategy for gaps is contrarian by nature. That is to say, you do the opposite of what's intuitive. If the price gaps up, you sell. If the price gaps down, you buy.

This forex currency trading strategy works more often than not, and thus, it's a simple process that can generate great profits.