Monday, September 22, 2008

Types of Currency Traders | SigmaForex


Traders play a vital role in the futures markets by providing liquidity. While futures are designed primarily to assist hedgers in managing their exposure to price risk, the market would not be possible without the participation of traders, or speculators, who provide a fluid market of buyers and sellers. Speculators provide the bulk of market liquidity, which allows the hedger to enter and exit the market in a more efficient manner.

In summary, the two main categories of traders are hedgers and speculators. Hedgers are those who use the futures market to manage price risk. On the other hand, speculators are those who use the futures market for the profit motive. As such, the speculator assumes a market risk for the potential opportunity to earn a profit. Futures traders can also be categorized in a number of other ways. There are full-time professional traders, part-time traders, individual traders who trade on the forex trading floor. Each of these market participants plays an important role in making the markets efficient places to conduct business.

Retail Traders

The vast majority of speculators are individuals trading off the floor with private funds. This diverse group is generally referred to as the “small speculator.” With the growing movement from currency trading on the floor to the computer screen, the small speculator is becoming more of a force in futures trading. Also, with computer-based trading, leveling the playing field between the different types of traders has become a reality.

Local Traders

Perhaps the most visible and colorful speculator is the professional floor trader. Also referred to as locals, the floor trader trades for his/her own account on the floor of an exchange. Locals are usually more interested in the market activity in the trading pit as opposed to the market activity in the underlying market fundamentals. With the popularity of electronic trading sweeping the industry, a trader who operates in a fashion similar to a floor local has emerged—the “electronic local.” An electronic local will trade using the same method as the local except they do so through the internet and a computer rather than in the trading pits.

Proprietary Traders

A trader who works off the floor for a professional online forex trading firm is known as a proprietary trader. These “upstairs” traders are employees of large investment firms, commercial banks, and trading houses typically located in major financial centers. This group has a number of different online currency trading objectives. Some engage in speculative trading activity, profiting when the market moves in their direction. Such proprietary traders are compensated according to the profits they generate. Other proprietary traders manage risk, hedging or spreading between different markets—both cash and futures. They do so in order to insulate their business from the risk of price fluctuation as well as to exploit the differences and momentary inefficiencies in market-to-market pricing.

Sigma Services

As a professional online trading service Sigma strives to give an eminent beyond comparison of professional and individualized trading services, Sigma also provides several facilities for all kinds of traders.

Sigma helps private and institutional clients achieve their trading goals by offering an inclusive forex trading package, along with the state-of-art trading platform, real-time news and wireless access. We relegate to meeting and exceeding our customers' expectations with the utmost professionalism and integrity.

Sigma provides appropriate services satisfying the needs of all business partners’ specified requirements. A client's profit is our success and a client's loss is a significant call of action for us, we consider every client as a special case and a partner.

Sigma's Customer Support is our business core, as we provide 24/7 customer support. We keep in touch with all our clients to make sure that we are on the right pass.

Forexiegn Exchange Trading Basics


The global foreign exchange market is the biggest market in the world. The USD1.2 trillion daily turnover dwarfs the combined turnover of all the world’s stock and bond markets. There are many reasons for the popularity of foreign exchange trading, but among the most important are the leverage available, the high liquidity 24 hours a day and the very low dealing costs associated with trading.

Of course many commercial organizations participate purely due to the currency trading exposures created by their import and export activities, but the main part of the turnover is accounted for by financial institutions. Investing in foreign exchange remains predominantly the domain of the big professional players in the market - funds, banks and brokers. Nevertheless, any investor with the necessary knowledge of the market’s functions can benefit from the advantages stated above.

In the following, we would like to introduce you to some of the basic concepts of foreign exchange trading.

Trade Currency and Price Currency

When you trade, you will always trade a combination of two currencies. For example, you will buy US dollars and sell German marks. Or buy German marks and sell Japanese yen, or any other mixture of dozens of widely traded currencies. But there is always a long and a short side to a trade, which means that you are speculating on the prospect of one of the currencies intensification and one of them weakening.

The trade currency is normally, but not always, the online currency trading with the highest value. When trading US dollars against German marks, the normal way to trade is buying or selling a fixed amount of US dollars, i.e. USD1, 000,000. When closing the position, the opposite trade is done, again USD1, 000,000. The profit or loss will be apparent in the change of the amount of marks credited and debited for the two transactions. In other words, your profit or loss will be denominated in German marks that are known as the price currency. As part of our service, RCG Trader will automatically exchange your profits and losses into your base currency if you require this.

Margin Trading

Foreign exchange trading is normally undertaken on the basis of margin trading. A relatively small deposit is required to control much larger positions in the market. For major FX trading currency crosses, RCG Trader typically requires a 1 % margin deposit for he first USD 10,000 invested. This means that in order to trade one million dollars, you need to place just USD 10,000 by way of security

If you are an experienced ‘FOREX’ Trader or just a beginner looking for the opportunities offered in the ‘FOREX’ market, Forexgen has created ForexGen Academy to give you the chance to get a ‘FOREX’ education and improve your trading skills. No hard expressions, no buzz words, and no rocket science language are used throughout these lessons.

Practice Competition

Sigma Forex Ultimate Forex Monthly Champion

Interested clients who wish to take part in this competition shall send a request via email at

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Attached with the following information:

  • Full name
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It begins at the beginning of each month.

After recieving your request we will provide you with further details and with your Practice account login information which will be used in the trading contest.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

SigmaForex Teach You How to Trade Foreign Currency



If you're a beginner at trading foreign currencies, this is the article you need to jumpstart your career as a trader in the Forex market. Here you will learn to trade foreign currency the right way, with all the data you need to know out in the open, all secrets exposed for your very use.If you're an individual who's interested to invest in the currency market and learn to trade foreign currency, the basic things you must have is knowledge in the currency market lingo, currency trading software, and a Forex mini account from which you will do all your trading.Basically, the first thing you have to do is to open a Forex mini account. This is an account for new traders who lack the necessary funds to open a standard account. You can open a Forex mini account of your own by paying a relatively small fee so you won't experience any damage to your pocket on the onset. The lot sizes that are traded in a mini account are 10,000 of the base currency, unlike in a standard Forex account in which the lot sizes that are traded are at least 100,000.Of course, you won't be able to make good trading if you don't know your current affairs. If you want to learn to trade foreign currency effectively, try to read the newspapers and watch the cable news channels to be updated on currency status, as well as factors that influence currency value, such as socio-political standing in a country. Also keep track of the rise and fall of interest rates, other political and economic factors, as well as bank activities and import and export policies.Naturally, if you want to earn, you'll have to make an investment - and it's not just about your money. You have to adjust your biological clock. Keep a trusty sleeping and waking patterns. Remember, the Forex market is open 24 hours a day. You don't want to miss any good trading so you must be informed and ready to trade any time, day in and day out.To learn to trade foreign currency, you must be fluent or knowledgeable in the currency market lingo. For example, you have to know what PIP stands for (it stands for price interest point, signifying the tiniest fluctuation in the price of a particular currency). There are many other terms you must discover in order to trade efficiently. You want to be able to understand what's going on, so brush up on your Forex market lingo skills.Finally, download good currency trading free software. In this way, you won't have to deal with a broker in the Internet and shell out big bucks. Most brands of software available in the market are user-friendly so you won't have to worry about messing up the downloading and installing processes.With these secrets exposed, you can now learn to trade foreign currency and profit big from the Forex market.