The Geared Investor

The Geared Investor is Moving to ForexProtectors.com

The Geared Investor — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:51:52 +0000

Site is Moving to ForexProtectors.com!

Dear followers and fellow traders,

I have decided to rename the website to Forex Protectors, and with it comes a new site address. I will not be posting to The Geared Investor anymore, so please subscribe to the new site feed for new content (no need to resign up for signals, that’s covered) I’m excited about the new site because it is much more interactive and exciting for viewers. Some of the new features will include:

Same 100% free forex signals, but now more focused and detailed
Educational videos for beginners and videos on my method
End of the week results posted as a video to give more transparency
A live chatroom where I will announce when I will be there so you can ask questions
A Facebook page with additional content
Bonus forex articles written by other top websites.

So I hope you like the new look and fun feel of the site. Because forex trading should be fun, so I have designed a site full of superheroes to guide you along the way. If you have any comments or questions, please send them to me at contact@forexprotectors.com

http://forexprotectors.com

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Currency Tactics and Implied Market Stability Video from Bloomberg for April 20, 2009

The Geared Investor — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:14:57 +0000

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Why is Setting Realistic Goals When Trading Forex So Difficult for Everyone?

The Geared Investor — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:58:10 +0000

I started to write this post about a month ago and realized that I couldn’t capture the mood I wanted to so that I could get my point across. I now have the correct words and mindset and would like to address why it is a difficult task to realize that you are not going to be a millionaire because of forex just by reading any blog or buying some crappy automatic trading system.

People, get real. I think the problem is that there are so many awful forex pitch websites out there that people think that making millions of dollars is the norm. Well if there are so many great systems out there, then why aren’t all of the large investing firms just trading forex instead of stocks, bonds, options, etc.?

And take this bite of logic for a second: Why are these automatic forex systems even sold if they can make the inventor so much money by just trading his own system? This doesn’t make sense to go to all of the trouble to sell the product if you can just trade it yourself and be a gazzilonaire. Think about it: If the author sells 1000 copies of the software at $250, that is $250,000 profit for them. Meanwhile, they’re probably losing money trading forex and don’t even use their own system. All they have to do is slap a disclaimer on the system and a false Metatrader backtest result and they have no responsibility because past results are not indicative of future performance. Pathetic.

So all of these advertisements, combined with the allure of up to 1:500 leverage in forex just makes people’s mouths water. I know a great trader who is very successful and averages about 2.7% per month return on his account. Pretty measly returns right? Especially for forex, right? Wrong. This averages out to 32.4% annualized return. And this is only by risking 1% of his account capital per trade because he knows how risky forex is.

While I really thank all of my readers, I do realize that 95% of you don’t have the patience to stay in the forex game for long term investing. It’s just the nature of the game. Forex in my opinion takes more studying time than stocks, and the emotions can be much more paralyzing.

My signals are a great indication of realistic goals in trading. I lose on the trades that I send out. I win on some trades that I send. I send these signals because maybe they’ll help you and me both become better traders. And I get some nice feedback from subscribers in the form of questions that I didn’t think of, or suggestions that could better an entry or exit.

So keep your goals realistic and maybe you’ll be around in a few years, not the few months most forex traders average for their currency trading lifetime.

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Why I Now Trade Forex Completely Indicator Free

The Geared Investor — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:22:54 +0000

As with every good forex trader I have ever talked to, my trading style is one of extreme evolution combined with epiphanies along the way. I started this website for the simple reason that I wanted to become a better trader, and to keep track of my trading recommendations publicly. I have made some good calls, some very bad calls, and everything in between. But through the whole experience about having to be honest about your trades, I have worked harder to find a trading style that won’t make me rich in the short term, but sustainable for many years to come.

Unlike many new forex traders, I don’t look at this as a get rich scheme. I am 100% confident that I can use currencies as my investing foundation instead of trading stocks and mutual funds. Since I am not even 30, I knew that I needed to come up with this long term plan.

I arrived at what I have believe to be my final destination when it comes to changing trading methods. After more than 5 years of studying and trading the markets, I have determined that no indicator is going to save the day or make me a better trader. My trading mostly used RSI, ADX and some EMAs over the last couple of years that I was in depth with my trading. I can honestly say that none of them singularly or in combination did anything better than to barely keep my head above water at best.

All technical indicators are lagging no matter what any trader tells you. And don’t get me started about some of the indicators people write that say they predict the future. By the time you get into a trade based on your indicator, the action has already happened. I started to catch on to this when I realized that the two best traders I know trade completely indicator free.

Needless to say I was intrigued and ready for change I could believe in. So therefore after testing out my new strategy and realizing the benefits, I feel like I am a reborn trader with a new found invigoration in my step.

Stay Tuned!

Stay tuned for future posts as I describe why I am trading this way, and the person who taught me the basics of the method.

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Forex Economic Calendar

The Geared Investor — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:05:17 +0000

Economic Calendar Powered by Forex Pros

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Financial Times Has Surprisingly Robust Currency Commentary

The Geared Investor — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:03:46 +0000

I am quite ashamed to say that even though I read the financial times frequently during the week because I feel they are a publication far superior to the Wall Street Journal, I have never visited their dedicated currency section of the website.

Well I’m here to tell you that I was pleasantly surprised when I starting looking around. The currency articles at FT.com focus on fundamental analysis and where each currency will go because of it. Their analysis is in-depth and definitely not your run of the mill commentary that you see on every site.

I especially like how they deal with currencies outside of the normal G7 that we always think about, because it gives readers a much broader perspective as to what is really driving the world markets.

For instance: I was quite pleased to read that most experts believe that commodities will come back down to earth in the short term, and the AUD, NZD, and CAD will give back their gains. This bodes very well for my NZD/USD short call on March 23rd that is still open. I like to see my technical calls matching up with the fundamentals for a double whammy!

So I highly recommend the Financial Times to educate you about the big picture of the currency markets on a daily basis.

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Help Other Forex Traders by Providing Your Input at ReviewPips.com

The Geared Investor — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:00:25 +0000

Want to help out your fellow traders to stay away from awful brokers and get rich forex schemes? Then you should sign up and participate at the rather newly opened website ReviewPips.com. This website is a spin off from the same owners of BabyPips.com and FreshPips.com.

Review Pips appears to be gaining ground rather quickly, and allows users to give their input on the following categories as you can see in the image of the menu that I provide to the rightsignal services, etc. Based on the quality of your review as a user, you can earn points and gain followers who would like to be updated when you provide another useful review.

There are several quality sites out there that have very comprehensive reviews on forex brokers. My favorite place to look for these reviews has been Forex Peace Army. I think that ReviewPips.com will be a great place to find reviews on forex blogs that could help you along your way as a forex trader. But as of right now there are not any reviews on forex blogs, so this site still needs a bit of time to mature.

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Using Pin Bars in Forex Trading to Identify False Breakouts and Turnarounds

The Geared Investor — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:31:36 +0000

Most of my time lately has been devoted to understanding the importance of support and resistance lines drawn on the weekly candles in my forex trading. By drawing S&R lines on this long of a timeframe you identify the long term trends and filter through the noise. I have been studying setups where ‘Pin Bars’ are formed when meeting S&R lines for high probability turnaround trades. Within the forums at Forex Factory, I found a post that linked to two nice tutorials on how to play pin pars at beginner and advanced levels. I have embedded these tutorials below and hope you get as much out of them as I did.

Pin Bars Introduction

Advanced Pin bars

Pin Bars Advanced

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Send Forex Price and Indicator Alerts to Your Phone or Email with AlertFX.com

The Geared Investor — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:02:45 +0000

There are times when you just need to know when the forex pairs that you are watching hit certain price levels such as key support and resistance lines. If you are using Metatrader 4, you can have these alerts sent as an email alert. I have used systems where I was sending an email to myself to alert when all of my indicators had aligned perfectly and the system recommended a trade. This was nice because I would take one last look before actually making the trade. But for those of you who are not using the Metatrader platform, there is still hope.

AlertFX.com is providing a service that allows you to send alerts to an email address, and then get those alerts on your email enabled phone (smartphone, Blackberry in my case, etc.). Directly from the website, here are the alerts offered:

TYPES OF ALERTS

Rate Alert: This alert will send out a message to traders when the chosen currency pair reaches* the target price.

Indicator Alert: This alert is triggered* when one of our featured technical indicators — Moving Averages (Simple, Weighted, Exponential), Relative Strength Index (RSI), Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD), Stochastics, Bollinger Bands and Directional Movement Index (DMI) — reaches a technically significant level. See the indicator features in the Charts section of the DealStation™ platform or register for Forexnews’ Charts & News for a comprehensive charting solution.

More information about technical indicators is also available in the Educational Articles section of MG Financial Group’s website.

*Rate and Indicator alerts are based on the dealing Bid prices of the DealStation™ platform.

Custom Alert: These alerts serve as useful reminders for any event that you may accidentally forget. Set a Custom Alert and never miss another birthday, appointment, business meeting, or economic data release.

As you can see, they have a deal setup with MG Financial Group of which I know nothing about, to where you can link a demo account to set up special alerts from their DealStation Platform. I would not need this, but some of you might.

So I signed Up. What do I get?

The best part about this service is that it is free. And with free, you usually get what you pay for. With that I mean that you can only get price alerts for the 8 major currency pairs, which puts a damper on my trading where I look for the same entry signals across every pair. As you can see above, you can even send custom messages such as birthdays and anniversaries so you’re never in the doghouse again!

This service is perfect for setting support and resistance on the weekly candles chart where you only have a few key levels for each pair. Either way, AlertFX is a nice free service to send yourself alerts when you’re on the go and not in front of the charts.

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Worth Reading: 2009 Currency Outlook in SFO Magazine

The Geared Investor — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:32:19 +0000

I always like to find currency outlooks that focus on an entire year, bookmark the article, then look back and see how accurate the authors were in their claims. Currency Markets 2009: Prepare for the Year’s Moves is the first yearly outlook I have read from SFO magazine. The article is broken down into independent analysis by different individuals depending on the currency as I have outlined below:

U.S. Dollar By Kira McCaffrey Brecht

Japanese Yen By Terri Belkas

British Pound By Antonio Sousa

New Zealand Dollar By Earl I. Johnson

Australian Dollar By Earl I. Johnson

Russian Ruble By Joseph Trevisani

Mexican Peso By Joseph Trevisani

I’ll be the first one to tell you that I knew nothing about the Ruble and the Peso until I read this article. I think it is always a great idea to learn as much as you can about all currencies, even if you feel you will never trade them.

What did I get out of this article?

Well, I’m glad you asked. I have to disagree with Earl I. Johnson about the New Zealand dollar. I’m really big on the NZD having a major run this year once commodities start to rebound. There is a fine balance between when the US financial system recovers and when commodity prices bounce back to give the NZD a boost. The NZD/USD was just pummeled in 2008 losing more than 40% of it’s value since May. I’m going to be banking on the commodity currencies to have a strong run between 2009 and 2011.

I was quite impressed with the section on the Russian Ruble because it was very informative and easy to understand. Great emphasis was placed on giving a fundamental analysis between the price of oil, Russia’s invasion of Georgia, and the importance of the economy in Putin’s vicotry.

Overall, an article worth reading with commentary from a bunch of people that I know have a far more intimate understanding of the fundamentals of each of these countries than I do.