Whether you are a new or an experienced forex trader, you can add to your skills by learning forex currency trade strategies for a choppy market.

Many systems are based around identifying trends and it is true that this is often the best way to make money from currency trading, but many traders find that trends alone are not enough to secure them an income.

The market does not always trend; you could have long periods when you cannot trade your usual system at all. And even when a trend is in full flow and you are holding an open position, there can be short term choppy periods that you could take advantage of.

So what is a choppy market? It is one where the price moves quickly up and down, sometimes quite dramatically.

It can be a very dangerous market because traders are often fooled into thinking that a trend is forming, and then just when they open a trade to follow the apparent trend, the price dives back the other way.

Here are some tips for trading this type of fluctuating market.

1. Do not expect to hold your trades for long, and watch the market closely. You will probably want to close with less profit than you might expect to get from trend based trading, and set shorter stops too. If you start out winning, move your stop into the breakeven position as soon as you can.

2. Look at closely correlated currency pairs to help you decide when to open a position. If you are trading EUR/USD, check the support and resistance levels on USD/CHF because almost every time you will find that one of these currency pairs falls when the other rises. The same applies with EUR/GBP and GBP/CHF.

3. Check the announcements calendar. Two or more financial news releases within a short period can often result in wide fluctuations as the market responds to first one then another set of data.

It is best to keep out of the market at times like this even if you are normally comfortable trading choppy markets. Technical analysis will not help you and trading in this situation is nothing more than gambling.

4. A genuinely choppy market will have fairly steady support and resistance levels. Watch out for funnel patterns where the highs and lows are converging, because this often indicates a coming breakout.

Here you will be better off waiting for the breakout rather than trying to pick up pips from the fluctuations during the convergence.

Finally, remember that some markets are so wild that your best solution is to stay out. Some days there is nothing to do but shut down your computer and head for the beach.

A zero at the end of the day is better than taking a large loss because you insisted on opening a forex currency trade in a crazy market.

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