Tuesday, October 19, 2010

FOREX SPREAD

The difference between stock markets and the Forex market brokers, is that in the Forex market, broker commissions are either very low or zero. So how do the ?? make money? They make it from the "spread" - difference between the actual price and the offered price through a broker. On the right you can see a typical board of currency pairs and their spreads. This one is taken from our feed this morning, and you can see the difference between the Offer (the price you can place on a sell order) and the Bid (the price you can place on a buy order) is 3 pips (the spread).

What does this mean to you though? Well, let's look at the board. If you bought the EUR/USD at 1.2158 as it is offered under the Offer column, and immediately sold it again before the price moved, you would only get 1.2155 as is shown in the Bid column. So the net result is -3 pips, or a loss to you, and a profit to the broker. Remember to always take the spread into account when placing a trade, setting targets and stop losses.

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