Hi everyone,
I'm feeling quite generous today for some reason, so I decided to share something with all of you, especially beginner traders.
Have you ever wondered why your system works well for a pair and not so well, or really really bad on another pair? In my lurking I noticed many posts mentioning this behavior.
Only recently I encountered a similar situation when I was testing a system I developed for EURUSD on several other pairs, like GBPUSD, USDCAD and USDCHF.
To my surprise, it worked better on GBPUSD that it worked for EURUSD and worse on USDCAD and USDCHF.
I was intrigued and after giving it a few good hours of thinking, I thought about checking the volatilities of the mentioned pairs for the past month.
Guess what? GBPUSD is less volatile than EURUSD, but USDCAD and USDCHF are more volatile than EURUSD.
So there you go, especially if you're a beginner trader, it would be easier for you to trade pairs with lower volatility (as in more chances at making profits because they'd be easier to forecast), contrary to the "popular" recommendation that beginners should start with EURUSD for instance.
I checked with Alpari and they offer very good spread and max 50 lots instant execution for quite a few of the non-main forex pairs that have low volatilities.
Chances are your broker has good offers as well.
If you still want to start with one of the main pairs, it would be a slightly wiser choice to start with GBPUSD than with EURUSD, if you were to consider their volatilities for the past month.
Obviously if you're more keen on catching big moves, you're stuck with higher volatility pairs, at the risk of also loosing more.
And as always, best to due your own dilligence since there's already so much BS passed around as valid advice.
edit: EURCHF would be a nice pair for a beginner as well, besides GBPUSD
I'm feeling quite generous today for some reason, so I decided to share something with all of you, especially beginner traders.
Have you ever wondered why your system works well for a pair and not so well, or really really bad on another pair? In my lurking I noticed many posts mentioning this behavior.
Only recently I encountered a similar situation when I was testing a system I developed for EURUSD on several other pairs, like GBPUSD, USDCAD and USDCHF.
To my surprise, it worked better on GBPUSD that it worked for EURUSD and worse on USDCAD and USDCHF.
I was intrigued and after giving it a few good hours of thinking, I thought about checking the volatilities of the mentioned pairs for the past month.
Guess what? GBPUSD is less volatile than EURUSD, but USDCAD and USDCHF are more volatile than EURUSD.
So there you go, especially if you're a beginner trader, it would be easier for you to trade pairs with lower volatility (as in more chances at making profits because they'd be easier to forecast), contrary to the "popular" recommendation that beginners should start with EURUSD for instance.
I checked with Alpari and they offer very good spread and max 50 lots instant execution for quite a few of the non-main forex pairs that have low volatilities.
Chances are your broker has good offers as well.
If you still want to start with one of the main pairs, it would be a slightly wiser choice to start with GBPUSD than with EURUSD, if you were to consider their volatilities for the past month.
Obviously if you're more keen on catching big moves, you're stuck with higher volatility pairs, at the risk of also loosing more.
And as always, best to due your own dilligence since there's already so much BS passed around as valid advice.
edit: EURCHF would be a nice pair for a beginner as well, besides GBPUSD