Major Forex Indicators

Certain financial indicators have a history of moving the financial markets when the actual numbers don't match consensus. This article explain what some of the better financial indicators are and the ones traders should pay close attention to when trading the forex market.

APICS Survey - The APICS survey provides detailed information of the manufacturing sector. This survey is less well known than the ISM, but can also suggest trends in production.

Business Inventories - The degree of inventories in relation to sales is an important signal of the near-term direction of production activity.

Chain Stores Sales - It is monthly sales volumes from department, chain, discount and apparel stores. Sales are reported by the individual retailers. Chain store sales are an indicator of retail sales and consumer spending results.

Construction Spending - Data are available in nominal and real (inflation-adjusted) dollars. Because of their forex trading strategies, businesses only put money into construction of new factories or offices when they are sure that demand is strong enough to justify the expansion.

Consumer Confidence - It is study of consumer attitudes concerning both the present position as well as expectations regarding economic conditions conducted by The Conference Board.

Consumer Price Index (CPI) - It is measure of the average price level of a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by consumers.

Current account - It is a measure of the country's international trade balance in goods, services and unilateral transfers.

Forex Trading Station

The FXCM Trading Station is a world-class online foreign exchange trading station designed to provide clients with comprehensive market information and a high level of execution.

FXCM feeds real-time streaming prices into the FXCM Trading Station. These prices update dynamically tick by tick with the slightest market move. They are not simply indications of where the market is trading but actual executable prices where traders can buy or sell the currency pair.

In an over-the counter market like foreign exchange, not all participants have equal access to competitive pricing. The larger and more creditworthy an institution is, the better its access to other market participants and the more competitive it’s pricing. According to the financial data posted on the CFTC website*, FXCM is one of the largest non-bank FCMs that specialize in the Spot FX Market.

The “No Dealing Desk” execution option is designed for “scalpers” or active FX traders. The no dealing desk option provides traders, through direct access to FXCM, to some of the best bid and ask prices via multiple bank access. There is no dealer confirmation. This means that during key news and economic events there are no restrictions on order placement. The no dealing desk option also allows traders to place entry orders within the spread. FXCM offers traders all the advantages of a “No Dealing Desk” option with the added benefit of the ability to place orders over the phone 24 hours a day.

On the FXCM trading platform, all trades are executed in standard sizes of 100,000 units of base currency per one lot**. There are no restrictions on order sizes; however, clients trading in sizes of more than $3,000,000 (30 100K lots) who want the entirety of their orders filled should use “At Best” price execution.

Forex Definition - A Brief Overview

Forex or "Foreign Exchange" is where the money of one nation is traded with another. The most important and popular pairs of exchange in the forex market are "Euro Dollar", and you will see this pairs in all forex display screens as "EUR/USD". There are also a lot of others pairs but sure not important and not famous as "EUR/USD" pairs, like:-

1-The British Pound, and you will see this pairs in all forex display screens as "GBP/USD".

2- The Japanese Yen, and you will see this pairs in all forex display screens as "USD/JPY".

3- The Swiss Franc, and you will see this pairs in all forex display screens as "USD/CHF".

However there is a problem in the forex market until this day, there is no one central exchange where everyone can exchange the currency. All the currency traded are done over the telephone and online through a very big networks that connects all the banks, brokers and currency traders with each others.
Currency trading in the past was just for the banks, but today and after the new revolution electronic economy, online forex trading companies start to offer a lot of services to all traders around the world. Today if anyone have a computer and internet connection can easily start to trade currencies, but sure the experience and analysis is very important to success in forex game.