Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Forex – How to Make Progress and Improve (by Vincenzo)

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 Once you’ve found the best forex broker for you and had some time to learn the market, it’s too easy to stagnate—not that traders stop wanting to succeed. Every person in the forex market wants to do a little better and increase his profits. But some traders can fail to push themselves towards better understanding and improved strategies. Once you find a method that works, it is simply too easy to be satisfied with past successes and stagnate. This is natural, since we all have a preference for what we already understand and feel uncomfortable with things we haven’t tried.

Not only does this ignore new opportunities for bigger profits, but it is also the surest way to lose the success you already enjoy. The problem is that the market itself never stays stagnant. It has hardly been 10 years since online forex trading began, but huge changes have come about during that short time and the market only continues to develop. As trading becomes increasingly sophisticated, there are no guarantee that your current method will continue to work.

Even more so, the last few years have seen revolutionary changes in the developed economies. No one ever knows the future with certainty, but there is likely to be significant fallout as the world’s largest economies face their mounting debts. All of that will require new and more innovative trading strategies for success.

So how do you push yourself to progress and stay current in this market? First, identify other areas of forex investment you don’t understand or strategies you haven’t used. Consider making an education schedule of when you will study each new area.

Second, compare notes with other forex investors. This may seem like a purely social endeavor, but it is actually worth money to network with other people and learn what works for them. Consider traveling or telecommunicating on a regular basis in order to meet with successful traders. Start paying attention to some of the most followed currency pairs like the EUR USD chart.

Third, invest in quality forex education. This is another way that comparing notes with others is a good idea—not all courses are worth their price. But if you can find something on your level of experience and knowledge, it will help you think about even familiar concepts in a fresh way.

Fourth, take advantage of the demo accounts that are available for free from most forex brokers. Try a completely different method—without facing any risk of losses. One of the best reasons to do so is the fact that the best strategies are usually a hybrid of several others. Not all market conditions are the same, and one of the strategies usually works best in a given circumstances. If you learn how to trade with multiple methods, you can maximize your profits no matter what is happening.

Fifth, push yourself to investigate exotic currencies and currency pairs. It is quite likely that world currencies may diversify in the near future, with the overwhelmingly majority of trades no longer belonging to the Euro and USD. In the future, successful traders will need to understand and manage many different currencies from developing and developed economies.

So even if you already have multiple years of experience, you will benefit from expanding your knowledge and trying something new. That kind of progress only happens when you step out of your comfort zone and give it a try.

The Economic Food Chain

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In a world where the currency market is the major mover and shaker of global politics and the world economy, it’s fascinating when we recognize that it is the least known global market, and it’s filled with misnomers and misconceptions about investing, forex charts, and the art of currency trading.

The economic food chain is like a regular food chain. The food chain has bottom feeders and it has middle level feeders, and then big time predators rule the chain. The economic food chain is structured in a similar fashion.

People who trade manual labor for money would be at the bottom of the economic food chain. Then the commodity and future traders enter the chain; they trade goods for money. Above them are information traders who sell information for money, and then we have the money for money traders like bankers, and ever since the Bretton Woods Treaty was abandoned in 1990, which was the system where a country maintained a fixed value exchange rate for its currency, the main predator or group of predators in the economic chain are the country currency values, which are measured against currencies in other countries, which is better known as the Foreign Exchange Currency Market.

The Foreign Exchange Market Affects Everyone

This economic food chain affects everyone in one way or another. When the dollar’s value drops, buying power decreases, which is the melting pot for inflation. Even though the Bretton Woods Treaty was put out to pasture, and we changed our worldwide financial books, new books have not been written to deal with these new mighty predators.

Most people believe inflation comes from a business cycle, but it comes from printing money and creating an excess supply. Since the new predators are connected by forex trading, there are elements in the system that didn’t exist before. Foreigners can buy local currency and dry up the supply. Local central banks then print more currency to compensate, and a new inflationary tool is created where currencies compete for their own destruction; this new game is called who can inflate more, and how fast can they do it.

In a global currency market filled with countries that are dependant on each other for goods and services, especially in industrialized nations, and in particular the G8, the value of a countries currency determines how many goods and services can be purchased and imported. The delicate balance of financial power is obvious in the forex market; there is a constant shift of value from one currency to another. When we need to exchange Dollars for Euros in order to buy products or use services from Europe we fuel a predator, and when Europe doesn’t return the favor by buying our goods and services, because the value of the Dollar has changed, we pay the price in higher costs, which is one of the elements of inflation.

Our lack of understanding of how the Foreign Exchange Market works is creating new global predators, which impact our modern lifestyle in some way. But in spite of all the risks, and the inflation threats that are associated with the currency market, investing in the currency market can be a low risk personal venture if you’re willing to do some research, and find a professional that can evaluate the performances of different strategies, and then choose one that fits your investment goals and risk profile.