Forex traders use a variety of strategies and techniques to determine the best entry and exit points—and timing—to buy and sell currencies. Market analysts and traders are constantly innovating and improving upon strategies to devise new analytical methods for understanding currency market movements. What follow are some of the more basic categories and major types of strategies developed that traders often employ.
FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS
In fundamental analysis, traders will look at the fundamental indicators of an economy to try to understand whether a currency is undervalued or overvalued, and how its value is likely to move relative to another currency. Fundamental analysis can be highly complex, involving the many elements of a country’s economic data that can indicate future trade and investment trends.
A good place for traders to start, however, is in analysing currency inflows and outflows of an economy, which are often published by the nation’s central bank. Additionally, they may rely on news and data releases from a country to get a notion of future currency trends.1)
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
Technical analysis is another main category of currency trading strategies that is highly favoured among traders. Most often it involves reviewing the past and recent behaviour of currency price trends on charts to determine where they may move going forward. The rationale behind using technical analysis is that many traders believe that market movements are ultimately determined by supply, demand and mass market psychology, which establishes limits and ranges for currency prices to move upward and downward.
Technical analysis encompasses a long list of individual methods used to detect likely currency trends. Many traders appreciate technical analysis because they feel it gives them an objective, visual and scientific basis for determining when to buy and sell currencies.2)
TREND TRADING
Trend trading is one of the most popular and common forex trading strategies. It involves identifying an upward or downward trend in a currency price movement and choosing trade entry and exit points based on the positioning of the currency’s price within the trend and the trend’s relative strength.
Traders will often cite the phrase, “The trend is your friend,” as a reminder that recent trends can be reliable indicators of where prices are likely to go moving forward and where to best set up trade entry and exit points. Trend traders use a variety of tools to evaluate trends, such as moving averages, relative strength indicators, volume measurements, directional indices and stochastics.3)
RANGE TRADING
Range trading is a simple and popular strategy based on the idea that prices can often hold within a steady and predictable range for a given period of time. That’s particularly evident in markets involving stable and predictable economies, and currencies that aren’t often subject to surprise news events.
Range traders rely on being able to frequently buy and sell at predictable highs and lows of resistance and support, sometimes repeatedly over one or more trading sessions. Range traders may use some of the same tools as trend traders to identify opportune trade entry and exit levels, including the relative strength index, the commodity channel index and stochastics.4)
MOMENTUM TRADING
Momentum trading and momentum indicators are based on the notion that strong price movements in a particular direction are a likely indication that a price trend will continue in that direction. Similarly, weakening movements indicate that a trend has lost strength and could be headed for a reversal. Momentum strategies may take into consideration both price and volume, and often use analysis of graphic aides like oscillators and candlestick charts.5)
SWING TRADING
Swing trading is customarily a medium-term trading strategy that is often used over a period from one day to a week. Swing traders will look to set up trades on “swings” to highs and lows over a longer period of time. This is to filter out some of the “noise,” or erratic price movements, seen in intraday trading. It’s also to avoid setting narrowly placed stop losses that could force them to be “stopped-out” of a trade during a very short-term market movement.6)
BREAKOUT TRADING
A breakout strategy is a method where traders will try to identify a trade entry point at a breakout from a previously defined trading range. If the price breaks higher from a previously defined level of resistance on a chart, the trader may buy with the expectation that the currency will continue to move higher. Similarly, if the price breaks a level of support within a range, the trader may sell with an aim to buy the currency once again at a more favourable price.7)
RETRACEMENT
Retracement strategies are based on the idea that prices never move in perfectly straight lines between highs and lows, and usually make some sort of a pause and change of their direction in the middle of their larger paths between firm support and resistance levels.
With this in mind, retracement traders will wait for a price to pull back, or “retrace,” a portion of its movement as a sign of confirmation of a trend before buying or selling to take advantage of a longer and more probable price movement in a particular direction. Traders will often pick a particular percentage movement as a sign of confirmation (such as 50%), or rely on Fibonacciratios (of 23.6%, 38.2% or 61.8%) to help identify optimal points for entering and exiting trades.8)
REVERSAL TRADING
As the name implies, reversal trading is when traders seek to anticipate a reversal in a price trend with the aim to guarantee entrance into a trade ahead of the market. This strategy is considered more difficult and risky. True reversals can be difficult to spot, but they’re also more rewarding if they are correctly predicted.
Traders use a variety of tools to spot reversals, such as momentum and volume indicators or visual cues on charts such as triple tops and bottoms, and head-and-shoulders patterns.9)
POSITION TRADING
Position trading is a long-term strategy that may play out over periods of weeks, months or even years. Position traders often base their strategies on long-term macroeconomic trends of different economies. They also typically operate with low levels of leverage and smaller trade sizes with the expectation of possibly profiting on large price movements over a long period of time.
These traders are more likely to rely on fundamental analysis together with technical indicators to choose their entry and exit levels. This type of trading may require greater levels of patience and stamina from traders, and may not be desirable for those seeking to turn a fast profit in a day-trading situation.10)
CARRY TRADE
Carry trade is a unique category of forex trading that seeks to augment gains by taking advantage of interest rate differentials between the countries of currencies being traded.
Typically, currencies bought and held overnight will pay the trader the interbank interest rate of the country of which the currency was purchased. Carry traders may seek out a currency of a country with a low interest rate in order to buy a currency of a country paying a high interest rate, thus profiting from the difference.
Traders may use a strategy of trend trading together with carry trade to assure that the differences in currency prices and interest earned complement one another and do not offset one another.11)
PIVOT POINTS
Pivot point trading seeks to determine resistance and support levels based on an average of the previous trading session’s high, low and closing prices. This average is considered to help predict the next likely highs and lows, and intraday market reversals.
Because these averages are widely used in the market, they are considered a healthy gauge for how long a short-term trend may continue, and whether a particular range has been surpassed and a new price trend breakout is occurring.12)
SUMMARY
Traders have a wide variety of strategies at their disposal to try to interpret price movements and take advantageous trading positions. Some traders may use a particular approach almost exclusively, while others may employ a variety or hybrid versions of the strategies described above.
While none is guaranteed to work all of the time, traders may find it useful to familiarise themselves with a number of strategies to build an arsenal of available tools for adapting to changing market conditions.
Taken from: https://www.fxcm.com/insights/different-types-forex-trading-strategies/
