Get Started with Online Trading
This is for anyone interested in getting started with online trading. Whilst we are experts in trading gold online, the information outlined here could apply to any market. It is written for beginners who may have heard that online trading is a great way to generate an income but haven’t any idea how to trade online.
It’s not intended to be a comprehensive guide to online trading as the subject is huge and way too much for any single article!
How to Trade Online - Choosing How to Trade
Online trading has become massively popular since the advent of high-speed internet. Nowadays anyone, anywhere can trade pretty much any financial instrument in the same way that used to be the exclusive domain of investment bankers.This means that for the online trading novice wondering how to trade online there is a huge (and often confusing) choice of products, markets, brokers and trading platforms.
We would suggest that someone new to online trading should stick with the more popular (and simple to understand) trading methods.
Spread-betting
The
premise is quite simple. A dealer provides you with a “Buy” price and a
“Sell” price for the market you are trading, with the difference
between being the spread. If you think the market will rise you open a
trade at the buy price, which is known as going long. If you think the
market will fall you open a trade at the sell price, known as going
short.
Your stake is the value that you will win or lose for each point the market moves for or against the position you are holding. For instance, if we open a long position at £10 per $ on gold and the price of gold goes up by $10 we win £100.
Your stake is the value that you will win or lose for each point the market moves for or against the position you are holding. For instance, if we open a long position at £10 per $ on gold and the price of gold goes up by $10 we win £100.
CFDs
CFD
stands for Contracts For Difference. Like spread-betting, they allow
you to take advantage of rising and falling markets with buy and sell
prices set by the dealer.
Profits from CFDs are liable to capital gains tax in the UK, whereas any profits from spread-betting are tax-free. This cuts both ways though as losses from CFDs can be offset against other investment gains, but losses from spread-betting cannot.
CFD traders will trade a certain number of shares or lots at a given buy or sell price (depending on whether going long or short) as opposed to the spread-better who is betting a value per point of price movement. CFDs have tighter spreads than spread-betting, but funding charges and dealer commission apply instead.
Profits from CFDs are liable to capital gains tax in the UK, whereas any profits from spread-betting are tax-free. This cuts both ways though as losses from CFDs can be offset against other investment gains, but losses from spread-betting cannot.
CFD traders will trade a certain number of shares or lots at a given buy or sell price (depending on whether going long or short) as opposed to the spread-better who is betting a value per point of price movement. CFDs have tighter spreads than spread-betting, but funding charges and dealer commission apply instead.
ETFs
ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund. ETFs are essentially like shares, but rather than buying a stake in an individual company, you buy a share in a fund that tracks the price of a commodity – there are a huge range of ETFs available for those wanting to trade oil, gold, silver and many others.ETFs are bought and sold in the exactly the same way as stock market shares, with commission paid to a broker for arranging the purchase and sale.
Unlike CFDs and spread-betting, ETFs do not offer the opportunity to leverage, however this means that losses cannot exceed your initial investment. In the UK, gains arising from ETFs are taxable as capital gains, the same as CFDs.
How to Trade Online - Choosing your Market
We trade gold online.
We are experts in the gold market. We have a passion for learning
everything we can about the gold market and we only focus on that. We
are obsessed with it.
You too need to decide what you are going to focus on and become an expert in that field.
You too need to decide what you are going to focus on and become an expert in that field.
Forex
The
forex is a form of global exchange which determines the relative value
of different currencies compared against one another.
Forex trading is very popular on a global basis and operates around the clock, except at weekends.
Each market is stated as a currency pairs – for instance GBP/ USD is the value of the British Pound against the US Dollar. When you trade the forex you are speculating on the value of one currency against its opposing pair. So if I’m long GBP/ USD, I’m hoping that the British Pound increases in value against the US Dollar.
Forex trading is very popular on a global basis and operates around the clock, except at weekends.
Each market is stated as a currency pairs – for instance GBP/ USD is the value of the British Pound against the US Dollar. When you trade the forex you are speculating on the value of one currency against its opposing pair. So if I’m long GBP/ USD, I’m hoping that the British Pound increases in value against the US Dollar.
Indices
A
stock market index is a method of measuring the value of a chosen
selection of the stock market. For instance, the FTSE 100 index is a
rating of the top 100 companies listed on the UK stock exchange (in
share-price terms).
When trading indices, you are speculating on the rise or fall of the value of any chosen index. Therefore if I’m short on the FTSE 100 I’m hoping for a decrease in the value of the companies which make up that index which will in turn lower the value of the index as a whole.
When trading indices, you are speculating on the rise or fall of the value of any chosen index. Therefore if I’m short on the FTSE 100 I’m hoping for a decrease in the value of the companies which make up that index which will in turn lower the value of the index as a whole.
Stocks/ Equities
These
are the share-values of individual companies listed on stock
exchanges. Trading long or short on these means you are speculating in
the share price of that company increasing or decreasing.
Commodities
The commodity market consists of resources that are produced agriculturally or extracted (mined) such as crude oil, coal, rice, tea, wheat or (our favourite) gold.The price of the commodity is determined by global demand, so if we are long on gold we are hoping that the global demand for gold increases therefore leading to its price increasing.
We have been successfully trading gold online for many years and so know a huge amount about the different macro-economic events affecting global demand and how, when the different events occur, they are likely to influence the price.
To trade any market successfully, you too need to become expert in it.
How to Trade Online - Managing the Risks
Deciding how much money to put in your online trading fund is a very personal choice.
You need to be comfortable with losing all of that money – never trade with funds which you need to survive!
There is a very accurate saying, “scared money don’t make money”. If you are worried about losing it, you will inevitably make the wrong decisions at some point trading online and it will wipe out your funds.
Once you have decided how much to put in your online trading fund, there are things you can do to manage the risks. Your goal is to make money trading online, not to get wiped out!
You need to make sure that you can never be cleaned out in any single trade. To do this, make sure you ALWAYS set a stop-loss. Our dealer provides guaranteed stop losses, so we can sleep easily knowing that if the trade goes against us we will be taken out when our stop-loss is it.
Your stop-loss position and the value of your stake should be such that the maximum loss on a single trade is something which you can withstand. We have developed our own money-management strategy which has worked for us over many years and means we can never be wiped out as our stake is determined as a percentage of our available capital – it works for us. You need to find something which works for you too.
You need to be comfortable with losing all of that money – never trade with funds which you need to survive!
There is a very accurate saying, “scared money don’t make money”. If you are worried about losing it, you will inevitably make the wrong decisions at some point trading online and it will wipe out your funds.
Once you have decided how much to put in your online trading fund, there are things you can do to manage the risks. Your goal is to make money trading online, not to get wiped out!
You need to make sure that you can never be cleaned out in any single trade. To do this, make sure you ALWAYS set a stop-loss. Our dealer provides guaranteed stop losses, so we can sleep easily knowing that if the trade goes against us we will be taken out when our stop-loss is it.
Your stop-loss position and the value of your stake should be such that the maximum loss on a single trade is something which you can withstand. We have developed our own money-management strategy which has worked for us over many years and means we can never be wiped out as our stake is determined as a percentage of our available capital – it works for us. You need to find something which works for you too.
How to Trade Online - Platforms and Brokers
Always make sure you work with a reputable broker – as we are 100%
independent, it would be wrong for us to make any recommendations here,
but there are free forums on the internet where brokers and platforms
are discussed at length.
Once you know your online trading method and chosen market check out forums such as Elite Trader, Trade2Win and Big Mike’s Trading Forum. Search any of these forums and they will have threads discussing all of the available brokers and platforms. If the broker or platform you are considering isn’t highly recommended (or even heard of) within these forums then give it a wide berth!
Once you know your online trading method and chosen market check out forums such as Elite Trader, Trade2Win and Big Mike’s Trading Forum. Search any of these forums and they will have threads discussing all of the available brokers and platforms. If the broker or platform you are considering isn’t highly recommended (or even heard of) within these forums then give it a wide berth!
How to Trade Online - Get Independent Support
The final piece of advice is to work alongside other like-minded people so that you can get support and ask questions if you don’t understand something.Forums are great for this, but you do need to be careful with the advice some individuals offer – you have to remember that they may be just as inexperienced as you are, but they just don’t know it!
Equally, the provider of your trading platform or your broker may offer advice - just remember that their real interest is in you making the trade with them.
We offer an advisory service where we share our views on the gold market and give access to our trades as we make them, so that other people trading gold online can understand how we are trading. This is great if you are interested in gold!
There are many other information services just like us who specialise in the different markets – so do your research and work alongside the experts for a while to see how they make money trading online.
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