Forex trading is typically done through a broker or market maker. As a forex trader you can choose a currency pair that you expect to change in value and place a trade accordingly. For example, if you had purchased 1,000 Euros in January of 2005, it would have cost you around $1,200 USD. Throughout 2005 the Euroâ€™s value vs. the U.S. Dollarâ€™s value increased. At the end of the year 1,000 Euros was worth $1,300 U.S. Dollars. If you had chosen to end your trade at that point, you would have a $100 gain. Forex trades can be placed through a broker or market maker. Orders can be placed with just a few clicks and the broker then passes the order along to a partner in the Interbank Market to fill your position. When you close your trade, the broker closes the position on the Interbank Market and credits your account with the loss or gain. This can all happen literally within a few seconds.

The Bladerunner Trade

Perhaps the best free forex trading strategy I know is the Bladerunner and combined with price action it may just be the easiest to trade.
Update 28 May 2013: the technical basics of this strategy remain unchanged, but I have started using the forex polarity indicator – a combination of the Bollinger mid-band and the 20 EMA – to trade it. There are other minor differences which you will notice if you read the Bladerunner trading blogs, but the essentials are the same: the Bladerunner remains a simple EMA trading strategy. For completeness, I give an example of trading the Bladerunner using the polarity indicator at the end of this article. The Bladerunner is a forex price action strategy trading strategy that uses pure Price Action to find entries. We use candlesticks, pivot points, round numbers and good old support and resistance levels when trading this strategy. No off-chart indicators (those appearing below the chart window in their own window, e.g. RSI, stochastics, MACD etc) are necessary, but you may include your favourite if you find it useful or feel more comfortable having some extra confirmation. Some people might wish to incorporate Fibonacci levels and that's fine, too. The only indicator I do use with this strategy is an on-chart indicator, the 20 EMA. An alternative is to use the midline of the standard 20 Bollinger bands. Either works well, in fact you can use both to trade it as a Bollinger band EMA strategy. The examples here will be using the 20 EMA. This setup can be traded on any pair. It can also be traded on any time frame, but the examples below are from 5 min charts. It can be traded at almost any time of the day, but obviously some times are more reliable than others. For example, the early part of the Asian session may provide a decent break out and retest giving an entry, whereas the Asian afternoon session can be very slow. Then, when London opens the price may be too erratic and volatile to give any reasonable entries for any strategy. Later again, after the initial flurry of news announcements has passed and price has settled, you may once more get a reliable entry or two. You will therefore have to adjust this strategy to the times when you are able to trade it. The strategy is named Bladerunner because the 20 EMA acts like a knife edge dividing price. If price is above the EMA, and respecting it, and retests the EMA, it will likely reject to the long side. And if price is below the EMA, and respecting it, and retests the EMA, it will likely reject to the short side. A few examples might help to clarify:

trading

If price is below the 20 EMA, our bias is short and we would be looking for price to move up and hit the 20 EMA, reject and then move down. However, if price pierces the 20 EMA and closes convincingly above it, we deem price to have switched polarity and now our bias changes to long. (This can be seen occurring at the right of the above picture). From now on we would be looking for price to move down and hit the 20 EMA, reject and then move up.

ENTRY

Essential entry parameters for this setup are:

Price must break out of consolidation or a range prior to entry, i.e. it must be trending
Price must then retest the 20 EMA successfully

What constitutes a successful retest?

If price is above the EMA it must bounce from and stay above the EMA; and vice versa for when price is below the EMA. More specifically: The first candle that touches the EMA should close on the same side of the EMA as it approached it from. This then becomes the signal candle. Price has now rejected from the EMA and we are looking to see if the next candle confirms the move. If the next candle continues the move away from the EMA then this candle becomes the confirmatory candle. This is a simple way to trade the strategy; if you want to play it safer you could insist on a recognisable forex candlestick pattern occurring to confirm the trade. n.b. if the Bladerunner seems simplistic, it is because forex price action and current fundamentals are factored into trading decisions. No entry is ever taken based purely on price having rejected from the 20 EMA.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

Always look for a confluence of reasons to enter the trade. For example, it’s safer to have more than just a rejection from the 20 EMA. Ideally, you would like to see this happening at the same place as an old support / resistance level, pivot level or other significant price impact point.
Always be on the lookout for impending news announcements when trading this setup, especially on the lower time frame charts. I generally will not enter any trade within 30 to 45 mins before a scheduled news event, and will always wait at least 15 mins after the event before considering a trade.
Always trade with the direction of the current trend, as determined by which side of the EMA or polarity indicator price is currently on.

ORDER PLACEMENT

(Note: the following parameters call for spreading your entry across two orders, but nowadays I have found that it is simpler for me to just enter one position/order per trade. However, many traders prefer to have their trade split across two positions, as this enables them more flexibility in their exits.)