Using Currency Trading Software

Video Transcript

"Welcome back to 'What is Currency Trading?' Unlike stock and bond trading, where you have many individuals buying and selling stock and bidding which way that they'll go, in the currency market you have the biggest companies, the biggest banks, and the smartest individuals trading there. You have to be very, very careful. Software has been developed in order to help people make decisions as to what to buy and sell. And how to go about it. Now you can read your Money magazine, or Fortune magazine, and read about the different software packages that are available. We use one that's public, and it's called Bloomberg, and you can see it, in fact, on the screen right in back of me, where various currency rates are displayed, and then updated as a change occurs. There is software available to help you make decisions on what to buy and sell, and what to pay for those products that you're buying and selling. The one that we use is Bloomberg, and is readily available at Bloomberg.com. It's free. All it does is display, though, prices of currencies against other currencies. That's it, that's all it does. There are other programs available for you to use that will help you identify specific ways to buy that currency, to make it work in your favor. Other would include Reuters, as a program that will do that for you, as an example, and MicroSoft also has one. And there are others, certainly, that are available. And if you Google it, many will come up and you can pick and choose through them. One thought, though. The most important thing is that the prices of the currencies have to be updated instantly, because if they're not, you're kidding yourself. Because the price that you're going to pay for a currency or an option, which is very volatile, will not be accurate. And you'll be hurting yourself and somebody will try and take advantage of you. So the most important thing is, currency prices have to update immediately. Trading software will help you tremendously. It'll track your trades, it'll help you show what to buy, it'll help you show when to sell it. It'll help you determine when you want to cut your losses, or when you want to take your gains. It will also track your tax. And that's our next topic."