Forex Trading in Barbados • Forex Strategies • Benzinga
Traders in Barbados are able to engage in the online foreign exchange (forex) market to speculate on exchange rate movements. If you reside in Barbados and are new to forex trading, here’s how you can get involved in trading currency pairs.
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Traders in Barbados are able to engage in the online foreign exchange (forex) market to speculate on exchange rate movements. If you reside in Barbados and are new to forex trading, here’s how you can get involved in trading currency pairs.
Table of Contents
Get Started with Forex in Barbados
The Central Bank of Barbados was established in 1972. As part of its plans for economic development, the Barbados dollar (BBD) was introduced in 1973 to be used in place of the Eastern Caribbean dollar in Barbados. The Central Bank of Barbados has the sole authority to issue Barbados dollars. The banknotes of Barbadian dollars have denominations of 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. A Barbadian dollar is divided into 100 cents.
The Barbados dollar notes were redesigned in 2013. The new series of banknotes featured imprints of outstanding Barbadians and major security measures to curb the counterfeiting of the national currency.
The cultivation of cash crops such as sugarcane, yam, sweet potatoes and corn are prevalent in Barbados. Apart from agriculture, tourism and financial services also generate sizable revenue for the Caribbean country. There are more than 45 offshore banks, 242 insurance companies and 3,065 international business companies operating in Barbados.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started with forex trading in Barbados.
Step 1: Get a digital device with fast internet connectivity.
You can use your desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone to trade forex. The exchange rates of the currency pairs listed at online brokers frequently fluctuate. Having a personal device to track these changes whenever necessary and adjust positions is very helpful to successful forex trading.
Step 2: Find an online forex broker.
There are several forex brokers available online. Go through their websites and choose a broker that lets you trade the currency pairs you are most interested in speculating on.
Be sure to check the footer of its website for information on their regulatory status. If you can’t find any such information from reputable regulators like the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or another strict regulatory agency, the broker probably can’t be trusted.
Step 3: Sign up for an account.
You can open a new account with the forex broker on its website. Most online forex brokers require a minimum deposit amount to open an account. Most brokers also offer different kinds of accounts based on your initial deposit amount, desired benefits and other trading requirements. Choose the one that’s right for you.
Step 4: Transfer funds to your account.
Once you’ve signed up for an account, you need to transfer funds to start trading forex. Depending on the broker you’ve chosen, you can choose your accounting currency and fund your account using several options. Generally, these funding options include bank wire transfers, ewallet transfers and debit cards.
Step 5: Download a forex trading platform.
You may need to download a forex trading platform on your computer or smartphone that your broker supports. Take the time to customize the look and feel of the platform to help you trade more efficiently.
Step 6: Begin your forex trading journey.
Before you start trading forex, you might want to open a demo account funded with virtual money. These practice accounts can help you get used to the interface of the forex broker without the risk of losing money. After you feel confident using the platform and your trading strategy, you can start trading forex using real money in a live account.
Barbados Forex Trading Strategies
Many forex traders from all over the world rely on a few basic trading strategy types to maximize their profits and minimize losses. You can check out these common forex trading strategies to help achieve better results when trading.
Day Trading
Day trading involves closely monitoring intraday exchange rate movements of forex currency pairs as you open and close out all positions within a single trading session. These day trades can take place anytime during the day and will be closed out on the same day. Traders have adopted this method to reduce the chance of losses from overnight market volatility when they cannot watch the market.
You can adjust your day trading positions a couple of times over the day based on market movements and as your market views change. Day trading can be time-consuming, so make sure you have the spare time required to commit to a particular day trading strategy.
News Trading
Global economic news and events can have a strong impact on relevant currency pairs quoted in the forex market. Many traders stay on top of influential financial information to anticipate the short-term exchange rate movements of forex currency pairs.
You can research relative inflation and interest rates, monetary policy and multinational trade deals made between countries. News trading often involves quick and appropriate reactions to new information to make a profit and low stop-loss order slippage at your broker to help limit losses. You run the risk of missing the window of opportunity if you’re not fast enough with your trade executions.
Scalping
Scalping is a very short-term trading strategy that typically involves making numerous quick trades throughout the day aiming to capture small profits while taking even smaller losses. The accumulated profits earned scalping currency pairs can add up to a sizable income for quick traders.
Rapid exchange rate movements during daily trading sessions can cause slippage on your stop-loss trade executions. These losses can quickly eat away at your profits, so it makes sense to choose a broker that offers no order slippage if possible. This method of trading requires a lot of time and focus to be successful, so scalping will probably not be suitable for traders with another full-time job.
Momentum Trading
Momentum trading or swing trading is a short- to medium-term trading strategy that can involve taking overnight positions and tends to profit from market volatility. Swing traders typically trade along with the prevailing trend but also watch momentum indicators for market reversal signals so that they can also profit from corrections.
This method of trading can be less stressful than day trading or scalping, although taking overnight positions does involve extra risks. You can adjust your positions throughout the week to take profits and cut losses.
Forex Trading Example in Barbados
The long-standing peg of the Barbadian or Bajan dollar to the U.S. dollar makes the USD/BBD an unusually stable forex currency pair. Most traders will therefore want to operate in other currency pairs that exhibit greater exchange rate volatility.
As an example, let’s say that the USD/BBD forex currency pair is trading at 1.9919. It will cost you 1.9919 Barbadian dollars to buy 1 U.S. dollar, so you can buy $100,000 for 199,190 Barbadian dollars. You can also take a $100,000 position in USD/BDD in your margin account if your forex broker allows you to trade that currency pair.
Assuming a leverage ratio of 30:1, that means you would need to have at least $3,333.33 in your broker account as margin to initiate that position. After 1 month, the price of the USD/BBD currency pair might have risen to 1.9981.
At that time, you can sell out your $100,000 position in USD/BBD to realize a profit of 620 Barbadian dollars over that time frame. Alternatively, if the USD/BBD exchange rate instead fell to 1.9880, you would have lost 390 Barbadian dollars.
When the Barbadian dollar was newly launched in 1973, 2 Barbadian dollars equaled 1 U.S. dollar. In almost 50 years, the Barbados dollar has maintained that value with minimal changes. This aspect of the native Barbadian currency has prompted some forex traders to trade the well-established range around that pegged value if they have access to the Interbank market or can actually find an online broker that will let them operate in the USD/BBD pair.
Over the past year, the USD/BBD currency pair has hit a 52-week high of 2.0421 and a 52-week low of 1.9800. These relatively small exchange rate movements can present a range trading opportunity for residents of Barbados, although most Barbadians will probably want to trade other more liquid currency pairs that exhibit greater volatility.
Best Online Forex Brokers that Accept Clients from Barbados
You will probably need an online broker to start your forex trading journey. These brokers support trading platforms with advanced tools to help you browse through, chart and trade numerous forex currency pairs. You can also find tons of educational resources and daily financial news from around the globe to improve your forex trading knowledge on many brokers’ websites.
Take a look at some of the best forex brokers that will take clients from Barbados in the table below.
Forex Terminology
You should be familiar with a few basic forex terms before you start trading. Many forex traders use these terms regularly.
Pip: The smallest exchange rate movement in a particular currency pair. In most cases, a single forex currency pip change will be in the 4thdecimal place or 0.0001. For instance, if the USD/BBD exchange rate rose from 1.9981 to 1.9982, it is considered a movement of 1 pip.
Lot size: This is a standardized trading amount; 100,000 base currency units are the standard lot size at most online forex brokers. You can also transact currency pairs in smaller micro and mini-lot sizes at some brokers.
Orders: An order is a command given to your online forex broker to execute a trade for you in the market. When you want to buy or go long a forex currency pair, you place an order to buy the base currency and sell the counter currency. When you want to sell or go short on a forex currency pair, you execute an order to sell the base currency and buy the counter currency in your desired amount.
Margin calls: A notification from your broker to deposit more margin in your trading account. Instead of issuing a margin call, most online forex brokers will instead automatically close out your open positions if the margin required to hold them exceeds your trading account’s balance. Keep an eye on your account balance and required margin when trading to make sure this does not happen.
Trade from Barbados Today
Islands in the Caribbean such as Barbados have limited job opportunities. Due to a shortage of employment options, Barbadians who feel comfortable taking financial risks can explore trading forex as a way to possibly generate more money from their risk capital. Moreover, the Barbados government stated in 2019 that it had increased the amount of foreign currency that residents can hold in bank accounts to $10,000 in 2019 and that it aims to pursue a policy of gradually relaxing exchange controls. This may help residents of Barbados trade BBD, although most online forex traders will want to operate in the major currency pairs instead because of its greater liquidity.
These new pairs have been available since July 1st, 2019 and provide an excellent opportunity to diversify your clients’ portfolios and increase their exposure to this vibrant 24/7 market.
Asset
Typical Spread
Leverage
Margin
Min Nominal Trade Size
NEOUSD
1.5% Over-market
2:01
50%
10
EOSUSD
2% Over-market
2:01
50%
10
MIOTAUSD
1.5% Over-market
2:01
50%
10
To unify their cryptocurrency instrument labels, They are relabeling their existing Ethereum, Ripple & Litecoin instruments, by replacing the existing instruments with new USD labelled ones:
Asset
Old Symbol
New Symbol
RIPPLE
XRP
XRPUSD
ETHEREUM
ETH
ETHUSD
LITECOIN
LTC_Mini
LTCUSD
These new pairs have also been available since July 1st,
The trading conditions for each one is identical to those of the older respective assets they replace.
Effective immediately, new positions are only available on the new pairs.
Avatrade Clients will not be able to open new positions on the old assets, but those already open will remain unaffected until July 29th.
Existing positions on XRP, ETH and Litecoin-mini that remain open on July 29th will be automatically replaced with corresponding positions on the new pairs, , at the same opening price and at no cost to clients.
as any broker that values their clients would do , Avatrade makes sure that the clients will not be affected by the change.
Neteller one of the most known Digital fiat currency wallet provider , has started allowing its users to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies including BTC, BCH, ETH, ETC, and LTC.
They do this on the large scale with a pilot in 10 countries and soon another 50 countries to join . They understand that if you do this effort it will only succeed if you can do this on a global scale.
founded in 1999, Paysafe Financial Services entered the market with the mission to provide an online alternative to the known traditional payment methods.
Most of the traders aiming us now neteller as one of the companies through which we made our deposits and if we had any profits also our withdrawals. A couple of years ago they left the Forex and Binary industry behind since the charge-back issue became just too expensive.
But as any companies knows, if you do not adept you die. The binary option market is all but dead and the Forex industry has moved also into the directions of the cryptocurrencies. thus, neteller understands that this is where the future is.
So Lasts week they announced that they are now offering a wallet with buy and sell cryptocurrency options.
As of today, Neteller users can buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies via a recognized cryptocurrency exchange including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, ethereum classic and litecoin, purchased using any one of 28 fiat currencies available in the Neteller wallet.
It may not seem so exciting but for many users that love this service it actually is. More and more currencies will be added making them an true exchange in the near future.
Now one is able to fund their neteller account through many different means (Mobile, Epay, Paysafecard, local bank deposits, and bitcoin)
We think that will make the threshold for many people, who would want to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, lower. This in return is a good thing for the overall acceptance of the cryptocurrencies in the mainstream of every day life.
The rates offered are somewhat in the lower middle of the current market making them go for the save route. The average market rates on the major cryptocurrency exchanges differ all in all not that much anyways, as this is not the main reason to choose to buy Bitcoin through Neteller
The minimum cryptocurrency purchase or sale amount is “approximately equal to 10 EUR,” the firm clarified, adding that the maximum amount depends on the transaction limits associated with each account.
When You open an account with Neteller you have to choose your default currency. This is of course for most people in accordance on their geographical locations, people in Britain will go for the pound most Europeans go for the euro and pretty much the rest of the work goes for the US Dollar, thou other currencies are available
The fee is 1.5 percent for purchasing and selling cryptocurrencies from wallets with EUR or USD as the default currency.
The fee rises to 3 percent for wallets with other default currencies.
Neteller | Why is this a good move for neteller and one that we should expect from other online Payment providers as well ?
At this moment till last week Neteller users can pay, get paid on thousands of sites, and send money around the world through their system.
The company claims to have “millions of point-of-sale, ATM and online locations” for users to withdraw or spend their cash.
Last July 25, Paysafe ( which as you remember is the company that owns Neteller and Skrill) announced that another digital wallet provider in its group, Skrill ( formerly known as moneybookers), started allowing customers to “instantly buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin, using any one of the 40+ fiat currencies available in the Skrill wallet.”
We could now see that this was like their test run on this concept.
We do not know the numbers that Skrill produced since they offered this service but it must have been encouraging enough for Paysafe to include their flagship brand in this endevour.
We will see where this leads but we are hopeful that this is the next step in global acceptance to the cryptocurrency revolution. Let me know what you think
The currency trading industry and now also the cryptocurrency trading industry have gone through enormous volatile times the last couple of years. Now with trump and its trade wars. The fast rise and somewhat recline of the cryptocurrencies and the fast pace of international politics and economies that create high rises and steep fall of the currencies.
So what does it all mean and what can you do before start to trade on these news headlines.
Good brokers like LegacyFX and UBCFX provide the traders with the latest market news and updates on a continuous basis but if you are new to trading you still have no idea what to do with this.
You start by understanding that the involves a high degree of risk, including the risk of losing you hard earned money. Besides the ones that were lucky enough to have bought Bitcoin a couple of years back and cashed in in the end of 2017, most people don’t get rich overnight.
You have to understand that you only trade with money that you are able to lose, going hungry because you want to open a trade is not the right wy to go about it.
So, What is Forex?
You should by now understand that the value of currencies goes up and down every day.
This in general becomes apparent the moment you go on vacation and what you bought last year with your money now is not the same amount you get today at the exchange.
This is on a large scale, what a lot of people do not know is that there is a foreign exchange market – or ‘Forex’ for short – or “FX” for even shorter, where you can potentially make a profit from the movement of these currencies.
The most known Trader is George Soros who made a billion dollars in a day by trading currencies. This is of course on a scale that we are not able to reach and you need a huge amount of money to begin with. Still he made a billion in one day!!
The internet has played a huge part in making trading in currencies accessible for the masses. You also do not need huge amounts of money to actually do this. Now keep in mind that if you make 10% profit on your investment but the investment was just $50 you basically just end up with $55. still no bank will give you 10% interest on your money.
Many people and I am talking millions are now trading every day, most do this on the side and don’t do this as a full-time job, but there are today enough people that are full time traders and making enough money to live comfortably.
Retail forex market needed Brokers
The Forex market for the retail market was born, it started around 15 years ago to become more serious as technologies advanced and the stream of information became almost instant, this is important for trading as one second can make the difference between profit or loss.
So, the moment the technology was there the people that wanted to trade were there all that was needed were the Forex brokers that offered the platform for trading.
There are latterly hundreds of companies of not thousands that offer this service and there are good ones like LegacyFX and there are scams (these tend to not last long)
Forex explained in short
The Forex market is the largest financial market on the planet and has been for many years now.
Its average daily trading volume is more than $4 trillion. (just let that number sink in for a second). Of this total amount around 5% is the retail market meaning traders like you and me. Still 5% of 4 Trillion is still a number with a lot of zeros behind it.
If you compare that with the New York Stock Exchange, which only has an average daily trading volume of $55 billion. You truly see the size.
To give you another example:
if you were to put ALL of the world’s equity and futures markets together, their combined trading volume would still only equal a 25% of the daily Forex market. Insane right?
Why does this even matter?
It matters because there are so many buyers and sellers that transaction prices are kept low. To explain how trading the Forex market is different than trading stocks, here are a few major benefits.
Most Brokers don’t charge commissions – you pay only the bid/ask spreads.
There’s 24hour trading – you decide when to trade and how to trade.
You can focus on your currencies and become experts in only those pairs that you follow instead of following and selecting out of 5000 stocks
You can trade on leverage, (something to be very aware of as it can magnify potential gains but also your losses).
Forex is accessible for almost everyone– you don’t need a lot of money to get started
In the Forex market you can trade on Demo accounts to learn before you commit your money
How is Forex traded?
The mechanics of a trade are virtually identical to those in other markets. The only difference is that you’re buying one currency and selling another at the same time.
This is also the reason as to why the currencies are quoted in pairs, like EUR/USD or USD/GBP.
The exchange rate represents the purchase price between the two currencies.
Example:
The EUR/GBP rate represents the number of GBP one EUR can buy (relevant now with all the Brexit issues going on) . If you think the Euro will increase in value against the British Pound, you buy Euros with British Pounds. If the exchange rate rises, you sell the Euros back, and you cash in your profit.
Now the same works for strading Bitcoin, ethereum, Litecoin or other cryptocurrencies. this has become an entire new market and has introduced many people to Forex . you should here be also aware that trading cryptocurrencies is like regular trading so you will be able to lose great sums of money.
the Best thing i found about trading cryptocurrencies is that the Leverage by default tends to be very low which makes the risk of losing it all much smaller.
Sounds simply enough?
Why does not everyone Trade.
The same could be asked as to why not everyone plays poker, you can make money. The comparison between the 2 is actually closer than you might think.
All traders that are successful will tell you that 80% of successful trading is psychology and the other 20% is research. It takes time to get the research down, but it can take a lifetime to master the psychology.
People tend to do things differently when real money is on the line and are accepting losses in the hope that the trend will reverse or taking out profit too early because they don’t want to lose what they just have gained. In short, the psychology is the hard part.
One should be aware that you can loose real money and a lot of it very fast if you don’t know what you are doing.
Now most Good Forex brokers offer some educational tools, some more than others that will teach you how to trade. There is also something that is called social trading that will allow you to follow other traders and see what they are doing in order for you to learn and make money at the same time.
So here are some ground rules for those that look to start trading
Get involved in the market, watch read and listen to the news to understand what is happening
Go through a trading course ( a good one is here)
Open a demo account and trade at least a month (my advice to do this even longer)only on this before you even think about trading with real money.
Check out social trading, there are some options for this, this broker offers this also.
Try with an amount that you are able to afford losing. See this as your tuition money.
Take it slow, don’t become greedy and follow the basic rules
Basic Rules (there are many more but start with these)
The trend is your friend
Don’t add money to a losing position
Don’t trade on too many different currency pairs
Trade only with a good broker
Don’t open to many positions (no one needs 100 positions a day)
Develop your strategy and stick to it.
Know that NO ONE is 100% of the times right, everyone loses some.
Last but not least, don’t trade with money you cannot afford to lose.