What is Forex

The foreign exchange (currency or Forex or FX) market is by far the largest market in the world, in terms of cash value traded. It includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency peculators, multinational corporations, governments, and other financial markets and institutions. Average daily international foreign exchange trading volume was $1.9 trillion in April 2004 according to the BIS study Triennial Central Bank Survey 2004.

$600 billion spot
$1,300 billion in derivatives, ie
$200 billion in outright forwards
$1,000 billion in Forex swaps
$100 billion in FX options.

Enormous trading volume

Low minimum investment

Very high liquidity

Geographically decentralized

Long trading hours - 24 hours a day (Closed on weekends)

Large variety of factors affect currency exchange rates

There are hundreds of retail Forex brokers online that can give you access to trading in the Forex market. Most use their own trading platforms but many also use the MetaTrader 4 trading platform.

A list of brokers is provided at the end of this lens and in the link sections.

Any individual can open a standard or mini forex trading account with a reputable broker and take part in the market.

Free demo accounts are offered by 99% of retail brokers.

Minimum starting balance differs depending on the broker. The average is $300 to $500. to open a mini-account.

A trading platform is the software that you have to install on your computer in order to be able to interact with the trading desk. It usually has a place for live market quotes, graphs and your account information. You typically use the trading platform to open or close trades, adjust take profit and stop loss levels and so on.

Meta Trader 4 is a FREE trading platform developed by a company called Metaquotes software www.metaquotes.net and is one of the most popular trading platforms among retail FOREX brokers. MetaTrader gives a trader the ability to write a program that completely automates the trading operations of the MT4 platform using the MQL4 programming language. These programs are called Expert Advisors, or EA's

An Expert Advisor (EA) is a program written in the MQL4 programming language that has the ability to automate the opening and closing of live trades on the MetaTrader 4 Forex trading platform. It can also manage stop loss, take profit and trailing stop levels according to preprogrammed parameters. Every EA is different. A well tested, solid EA can be left unattended to trade a live trading account with confidence that the balance with grow as a result of the program's logic to enter trades.

> A computer in good working order
> An Internet connection
> MetaTrader 4 (Free download)
> An Expert Advisor program (www.halcyonfx.com)
> A demo or live account with a Forex broker

1- Download and install MetaTrader-4 (Free download at www.metaquotes.net)

2- When you run MT-4 for the first time it will prompt you to open a demo trading account. Do so. It is free. In fact you can open as many free demos as you want over and over on the same instance of Metatrader without re installing the MetaTrader-4 software by simply going to File > Open Account. To add to that, you can install multiple instances of MT 4 and run them all at the same time as long as you install them each in their own directory. I have about 12 instances of MT-4 on my computer because I write and test Expert Advisor programs so I need a lot of MT-4 instances for testing purposes.

3- You need an Expert Advisor in order to automate MetaTrader Without and EA, MetaTrader is just like any other platform. (Please visit www.halcyonfx.com for high performance Exper Advisor programs)

5- Place the EA file (usually a file ending in .EX4) in the "experts" folder while MetaTrader is not running. The 'experts' folder of your MT4 installation is usually: C:\Program Files\MetaTrader 4\experts

6- Start MT-4. You will notice the new EA in the navigator window on the left under "Expert Advisors"

7- Drag-and-drop the icon of the EA to the chart you wan to run it on. This will result in a pop-up box (shown on next page) that will allow you to enter any external variables that may be needed on the "inputs" tab. Also make sure you click on "Allow live trading" under the 'common' tab of that box so the EA will work.Click OK. If you did everything right you will see a tiny smiling face at the top right hand corner of the chart with the name of the Expert Advisor program that you are running next to it. Your automated trading system is now up and running.

NOTE: If the little face is not smiling, (if it has a frown ) it means you did not check the "allow live trading" check box when you attached it (common mistake) to fix this simply left click
anywhere on the chart, and select "expert advisors" from the drop down menu and then "properties" to get to the current EAs properties. Once there, on the common tab, click to allow live trading and click OK.

That is it!

This system could be set up in less than 20 minutes!

Royal Forex Trading - http://www.rfxt.com/index.htm

ODL Securities - http://www.odlsecurities.com/usa/index.html

FXDD (USA)- http://www.fxdd.com/index.html

Alpari (UK) - http://www.alpari-idc.com

MIG Investments (Switzerland) - http://www.migfx.ch