222 - Trading FX on Live Prices

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to make a typical FX spot trade using SaxoTraderGO. The easiest way to make a FX spot trade is from the "Trade board", or you can also search for instruments, and place spot trades from the "trade ticket". But, in this example we are going to use the "Trade board". If you don't have an "FX Trade board", you can open one from the instrument list selector under "Forex", and select a regional list. If the Forex cross you want is not available in the list, click the "Edit" button. You may need to copy the standard list to "My Watchlist", so you can edit it. Now I can add the instrument to the "Trade board" using the "Add instrument" button. I'll be trading Euro Yen so I'll just enter: "EURJPY Euro Yen". You can then select the instrument from the Instrument finder. Then click "Done" to finish editing your "Trade board". Euro Yen is now selected, and it's available in the "Trade board". I can now trade Euro Yen very quickly and simply. First, we select the amount to trade. In this case, I'm going to sell 500.000. What this means is that I'm going to sell 500.000 Euros buying in Japanese Yen at the rate shown on the button. Or alternatively, I think the Euro is going to rise against the Dollar. Before I place the trade, let's just take a look around the tiles in the "Trade board". The "Bid" and "Ask" buttons are where I'll be making the trade when I am ready. I always sell at the "Bid" price and buy at the "Ask", and the button shows me the current market price for Euro Yen. The first thing to note about the buttons is they are green. For most FX they'll be green except at the weekends, if you are trading very large amounts, or if the market is extremely volatile. Green buttons mean that the price is a live tradable price. You can be sure that when I click to trade on a green price, the price displayed is the price I'll get. The panel between the "Bid" and the "Ask" button shows the spread, or the difference between the "Bid" and "Ask" prices. It's usually very small, quoted in pips, or changes in the last whole decimal of the price. Not the small one at the end, that's a decipip, or a fractional pip. In this case the spread is 2.5 pips. This is what I have to beat to start making profit. Let's go ahead and make our trade. First, I click the "Trade" button. Now this is a safety mechanism to make sure I don't trade accidentally. It arms the buttons for up to 10 seconds, before they are disabled again. If you're an aggressive trader, you can disable this safety mechanism in the Platform settings by setting "Trading to one click". I'll now click the "Sell" button on the bid to make the trade. The Trade confirmation appears to confirm the trade was accepted, and confirms the account, amount, and prices trade. And I'll just acknowledge that. And now I can see my new Euro Yen position in the positions list. As you can see, we are short 500.000. We opened it at this price, and this is the current price in the Close column. Based on the amount, the open, and the current price, here is the current P and L on my position in real time. And here is the P and L converted back to my account currency. I can also see the difference since I opened the position in pips. I can add a stop loss or limit order to my position, if I want to set a stop level in case the market goes against my position, and/or take a profit if the market reaches a target I set. I can close the position at any time by clicking the "Close" button, and the Close position dialog will guide me through closing the position.