The Financial Reader

Trading forex is one of the most popular forms of trading and at any given point in time there must be tens of thousands of forex traders glued to they computer screens, trying to manipulate those price charts to move in the direction they want them to go! Professional traders mostly make use of live forex charts.

When it comes to forex price feeds, there are generally speaking two different types. In the one prices are delayed by a certain interval, whether it’s minutes, hours or days. In the other type of chart prices are fed to the charting software of the trader in real time.

Someone working in a longer time frame, for example swing traders and investors, will most likely not find live charts of the utmost importance. When you’ve waited weeks or months for a trade to mature, another couple of minutes is unlikely to make a huge difference. Day traders on the other hand, will mostly tell you that they absolutely can’t work without live charts.

How this functions is that a trader would usually sign up for a live price feed with a particular provider. This feed will then be imported into whichever charting package he uses. Depending on the software, he’ll then be able to see charts showing the price movements of the currency he is trading, as well as various technical indicators he may use to base his trading decisions on.

These technical indicators are used by most if not all professional traders to assist them in making buying and selling decisions. If you talk to a seasoned trader, he will most likely tell you that he will be like a blind man without charts showing moving averages, the RSI and stochastic indicators.

Traders who have access to live price quotes can of course then chart all these technical indicators in real time as well. They instantly know when the price of a specific currency has risen above the moving average or when the RSI indicates that the market has entered an overbought zone. Professional traders regularly use such trading signals to shape their opinions about whether they should enter or exit a trade.

Many experienced traders sometimes make use of not just a single technical indicator but two or even more. They could as an example require that both the RSI and the MACD should send a buy signal before actually entering a trade. Conversely they might have a rule to only exit a trade if two different indicators trigger a send signal.

Live forex charts thus form a very important part of the tool kit of the professional trader. Forex markets change quickly and fortunes are sometimes made in hours. Timely information is therefore very important.

For more about live Forex charts take a look at these Forex secrets.

Filed under: Currency-Trading