TradeSmarter Moves to 24-hour Trading Day
We are pleased to announce that as of January 12, 2010 TradeSmarter has extended trading hours to offer a 24-hour trading day. TradeSmarter will now be open from 11:00 pm GMT on Sunday to market close on Friday. By extending trading hours, our members now have the opportunity to trade most of our currency, commodity and stocks overnight when trading was previously unavailable.
In addition, a 24-hour trading day is now offered by our partner StartOptions.com who offers real money trading.
If you have any questions, our customer service team will be happy to assist you. Please e-mail us at: support@tradesmarter.com
Sincerely,
TradeSmarter Team
The Ins and Outs of Trying Out our Binary Options Full Demo Account
TradeSmarter is glad to announce that thousands of traders and investors have taken advantage of trading on our virtual platform. Many Investors have had the opportunity to become familiar with our product and our user-friendly platform, as well as testing and improving trading strategies.
Our virtual money account operates exactly the same as a real account, enabling you to have the full binary options trading experience without risking real money. On a virtual account you can buy CALL, or buy PUT and trade the same way you would in the real account. Also you have access to your trading history, as well as all the tools and features of our trading platform.
Whilst binary options trading might sound complex it is in fact very straight forward. We offer stock options, forex options and commodity options, all an investor has to do to trade is by simply choosing a direction of an option, as simple as Above (CALL) or Below (PUT). Once the option expires if the you chose the correct direction and settled ‘in the money’ your return will be 70-75%, if settles ‘out of the money’ you get 10% of your deposit returned.
So why spend your time with demo trading accounts? Why not just jump right into it if it’s so simplistic?
Well, as with all trading there is high risk involved, arguably the pre-determined exposure to each trade reduces the risk however starting with the virtual trading is still the sensible option. Capitalize on this a virtual safe opportunity to test trading strategies and try out different options that work best for you. It’s much safer to learn when there is no real money and no risk. However it is still important to always treat your virtual account as if it is a real account, therefore when it is time to jump into the water your ready!
Are you a trading rockstar? come and show the world the trader in you- TradeSmarter.com
Resources:
Perfect your options trades for free with virtual trading by Steve Sarnoff
Hedging breakouts of the USDCHF and AUDUSD by using forex binary options
In my previous posts I outlined and gave examples of how to use binary options trading as a vehicle to hedge Forex trading. The links to these previous posts can be found below, and they are very useful if you still find this technique confusing, or if you just want to delve deeper into the theory. But just as a reminder, one of the many ways that binary options trading can be useful is as a hedging vehicle. Rather than use a traditional stop-loss to protect against loss, I have been using binary options. The reason that binary options can be more attractive than stop-losses, is that stop-losses are risky below the breakout point, assuming that’s where you are placing them, and generate losses when they are hit.
On the other hand, using a binary option hedge, which is simply a binary option position placed to win in the opposite direction of our Forex trade, we gain better protection than with stop-loss because if our Forex trade fails than our binary options wins, thus fully hedging our Forex position and ultimately leading to zero losses if our Forex trade fails. Thus the risk is shifted from below the breakout point, in the area between the breakout point and the stop-loss, to above the breakout point, in the area between the breakout point and the cost of the binary option. Again, have a look at my previous posts if this is still confusing.
Today I used binary option hedging to protect against breakout failure of the USDCHF and AUDUSD. As you can see in the image below, these instruments were in full swing today. As usual, within the hour after breakout both instruments tested their breakout points. While placing a traditional stop-loss may succeed if placed exactly right, it is nearly impossible to guess how far below a breakout point a test may descend, often shaking us out of our position before breaking out again shortly afterwards. This is where a binary option hedge is useful. Immediately after placing my Forex trades at the breakout points, I placed $100 binary option hedges (a trade of a binary option in the opposite direction of my Forex trade) on TradeSmarter.com’s binary option trading site. As a result, I was completely covered up to $70 of losses when the breakouts were tested. Had the breakouts truly failed I would have exited with zero losses thanks to the binary option wins, rather than losing money had I used traditional stop-losses. Since the breakouts succeeded after testing the breakout points, I became profitable as soon as I made more than $85 on my Forex positions ($85 is the amount lost when the binary option fails).
The strength of this hedging strategy relies on the properties of trader momentum. Since nearly all traders use stop-losses below the breakout points, a test of the breakout point is very risky below the breakout point when more and more stops get hit and selling momentum builds. The same is true after the breakout test, when the breakout occurs again. At this point most traders are aware that the breakout did not fail and re-enter with greater momentum. This helps us quickly recoop the $85 loss of the binary option. You can see this in the image provided, as well as in my previous posts using the GBPUSD.
In conclusion, by using binary option hedging we shift the risk from below the breakout to above. This allows us to take advantage of trader momentum which works against us when using a stop-loss and works for us when using binary option hedging.
For more information on how this works see
http://tradesmarter.com/2009/06/hedging-a-breakout-of-the-gbpusd-using-binary-options-trading/
and
http://tradesmarter.com/2009/06/trading-binary-options-as-a-hedging-strategy-for-forex-trading/
Go to trade options
