Hi Jon
I can only speak with regards to retail forex trading.
Forex trading is a big world wide "money game" that is non regulated and full of corruption as well as totally legal manipulation.
Price moves first - because someone wants to make money from the movements - whether Deutsche Bank ( the largest player)or a government or another big world wide player - and the fundamentals are just really an excuse for movements - although indirectly there should be some type of correlation through out the quarter or year.
Once you understand that and realise Fundamental analysis is basically a waste of time - unless your are investing in a currency pair for the longer term - ie over 6 months or years etc - and even then its still not much help - as profit is the name of the game not a fair and proper relative price compared to other world wide currencies.
Moving onto brokers and charts - yes between 2003 and 2010 - brokers were screwing their clients and up to every trick possible - just like their commercial friends - the banks.
However in the last few years - with more competition - reduced spreads - large fines - most regulated brokers have had to tidy up their act - and so the games a little bit fairer - especially if you use a ECN/ STP regulated broker.
The legal manipulation is by the liquidity providers of the day and the players
If the players see a pair with loads of billions of dollars on sells and price as dropped say 150 -400 pips - like the EU in May - then if they chose to - they can just bet against the masses or sheeple - and turn price the other way - and therefore taking the profits away or taking all sellers out etc.
PS - a player need not necessary be a Bank or major Hedge Fund - don't forget the dark pools and the Mafia and the new drug barons in South America and Russia
They end up with a nice profit on their stake - and of course they have the muscle to do it - and there is nothing illegal is there ( lol) if 2 or 3 large players do the same thing.
To have any chance of being with these moves - forget really any chart with a time frame above 1 hour - so the 5 -10 min charts have their use - its just most newbies and traders with less than 3-5 yrs of experience will not be able tor read and use them to their advantage
I have noticed on quite a few sites a "new" fashion for using weekly and monthly charts - great if you are investing for 3- 12 months - but hardly helpful for making daily and weekly profits - as you need large stops and have to wait too long to achieve your targets
Why wait 2 weeks for a 250 pip target with a 125 pip stop to come to fruition - ie a RR of say 2 - when a 5 -10 min experienced FX trader can get the same result in under 30 mins??? ie 15 pip win with a 7 pip stop. ( yes and same money earned if done correctly)
So in conclusion - Forex trading is for the brave and for the experienced - and basically that maybe just for 10 out of every 50 traders - not like it was in the massively hyped days of 2000 -2009 - when you would get 80% of all new traders only looking at FX - as it was sold as the "dream" - not just by dodgy vendors - but also by the trade - they had a lot to gain from it
Just my opinion
Regards
F
