It’s a fact that most traders who try and trade using online currency news end up losing because they don’t understand how the market works and fail to understand how news is discounted. If you don’t want to join the 95% of losing traders, then you need to understand how to use currency news correctly.
Let’s start with a rather interesting fact:
Today the currency news we get is of a higher quality than 50 years ago, it is delivered faster with the click of a mouse yet, the ratio of winners to losers is still the same as it was 50 years ago which means:
These advances in quality of news and speed of delivery, have not helped improve the success rate.
The reason for this of course is – the news is discounted in a split second and you simply can’t act quickly enough. Furthermore, currency news reflects what the majority think and on most occasions, the majority lose.
It’s a fact that – markets collapse when their most bullish and rally when their most bearish.
Will Rodgers once said:
“I only believe what I read in the papers”
He was joking, but it amazes me how many traders see a story in the financial times or Wall Street Journal and try and trade it and then wonder why they lose.
Currency news is a story and it reflects in most instances what the vast majority believe and is out of date as soon as you see it. Try and trade it and you will have your emotions involved which can lead to a breakdown in discipline.
If you consider the fundamentals are discounted immediately by the market the most effective way to trade is to use forex technical analysis and study forex charts.
Technical analysis simply assumes that all known fundamentals will show up in price action so you don’t need to worry about the news. Furthermore, forex charts give you something more – they tell you how investors perceive the fundamentals and take into account human psychology.
After all it is not the currency news itself that is important, its how each and every investor reads and acts on the news. We all have the same news to read but we will all draw different conclusions. It is this mass of millions of traders, who ultimately determine the price.
By using forex charts you are simply studying the reality – price as it is and acting on it, with no need to guess or assume what the impact of currency news will be.
Forex chartists don’t care how or why markets move, they simply follow price action and try and make money when they do.
There’s a saying:
If you can hold your head when everyone around you is losing theirs you probably haven’t heard the news”
In forex trading, it’s the disciplined trader who wins and he generally stays cool, calm and collected, while other traders lose their discipline and fall prey to the emotions of greed and fear.
If you want to make money at forex trading forget currency news, keep your discipline and react to the reality of price change and you can make big profits over the longer term.