Forex Money Manager

If you are a forex trader, then you should definitely consider investing in a managed forex account. Today, trading in the foreign currency market isn’t what it used to be like, ie a gentleman’s club, limited to the exclusive few, where everyone at the table made money, and left happy. This article examines how the forex market has changed rapidly in recent years, and that profiting from investing in this market on an individual basis is extremely hard.

I remember a friend telling me a story about the wild west days of the forex market, back in the early and mid 90′s, before currency trading became such a fashionable and in vogue past time. In those days, it was extremely easy to make money from the forex market.  There were many tricks you could use to fool the brokers, and it was just not neccessary to invest part of your portfolio in a managed forex account, as there was plenty of money to be had from the brokers themselves.

There used to many ways of fooling the broker, and making money from trading forex, so it was just not necessary to invest in a managed forex account.  One method which was used was to place a buy trade and a sell trade either side of the current price, just before a big news announcement.  In those days, news announcements created big price movements, and it was an easy trade to make upwards of 100 pips with a big news event such as interest rates, unemployment figures etc.

And this was another aspect about the forex market ten years ago which is different than today.  There is not so much volatility in the market than there was back then.  Back in the day, everyone was making money – if your average managed forex account was making returns of 20% or 30% per month, then even the average trader could still make 10 a month on his personal forex trading account, just by using moderate levels of leverage.

So how are things so different today? Well, there are literally millions of retail players, people who have a couple of thousand dollars to play with, and who think they are the next George Soros, and believe that investing in a managed forex account is a waste of time and money.  This is coupled with the extraordinary levels of leverage that the forex brokers are offering their clients to trade with.

More and more forex brokers are opening up for business as it is a very profitable activity for them.  The average spread for a single lot traded of GBP/USD is 4 pips.  So if the broker is getting a price of 1 pip wholesale, he is making 3 pips on each trade, from each trader who opens an account – think about it – that’s $30 for each single trade! Now it becomes clear why so many brokers ares opening up for business each and every day!

To conclude, forex trading today is a very hazardous activity, and not so easy as the brokers want you to believe. Of course, it is very much in the interest of forex brokers to promote high leverage, adn to offer free training courses, in an attempt to lure people into thinking it is easy to make money in the currency market. But unfortunately this is a fallacy, and investors would be much better off investing in a managed forex account.

Managed forex accounts have become one of the most trendy investments in recent years, with thousands of people opening such accounts every month.  This article discusses the benefits of a forex managed account, and how to chooses the best account for an investor’s particular requests and requirements.

A managed currency account is different to a typical mutual fund, or bond fund in a variety of ways.  To begin with, and perhaps most obvious, is the fact that an investment in forex does not expose onself to the risks of shares, stocks or real estate.  There are a very wide variety of forex investments on the market today.  Some funds invest for the short term, others adopt a ‘buy and hold’ strategy.  Other forex funds may only take positions for the short term, indeed they may be in and out of the market in only a few hours, or occasionally, less than an hour.  We call these latter types of traders day traders, or ‘intra day’ traders.  Very often, these traders will exit trades at the end of the day, so they are not exposed to any risk overnight.

Another unique feature of a managed forex account is that, unlike a mutual fund, an investor has real time, 24/7 access to their account.  This can be seen with several examples.  To begin with, the investor can login to their account online, any time, and see their account balance. These figures cannot be changed by your fund manager, so give a true view of the balance of your account.
Secondly, a managed forex fund is different, as a client can take out his funds from the investment whenever he wants, and there is no withdrawal penalty, or restrictions.  This is unlike a mutual fund, hedge fund, or indeed any other form of collective investment scheme, where there can be very onerous restrictions on much you can withdraw at any one time, or where there are very often penalties involved in such withdrawals.
Another key benefit of managed forex accounts is that the returns have little bearing to the returns of other investments.  Ironically, the recent economic turmoil has seen forex returns increase over the past 2 or 3 years. It can therefore be seen that currencies are a good way to create alpha through diversification. If anything, the recent world financial crisis has presented many profitable trading opportunities, since as volatility around the world increases, this volatility creates many opportunities to profit from the market turmoil.

However, a final point to note is that whilst there are considerable advantages of allocating part of your portfolio in a managed forex  account, one requests to do their due diligence before investing their savings in a forex fund.  There are a lot of fraudulent forex fund managers in the marketplace today, the numbers of which are growing rapidly due to the rise of the internet, and the anonymity it provides.  An investor needs to do his or her research.  To start with, you need to see evidence of the fund performance.

Thus, it can be seen that managed forex accounts offer a number of advantages over regular forms of investment funds.  You need to realise that one requirements to analyse the investment returns of  the different managed forex providers, and conduct strict due diligence to ensure that you will get the returns that you are seeking. With prudent due diligence that an investment in a managed forex account will be a successful one.