It Is Crucial That Forex Traders Learn To Interpret A Forex Chart

There are several different weapons in the forex trader's arsenal and one very important tool important is the forex chart. Simply put, a forex chart is a graph of the prices of a chosen currency pair over a given time period. Reading forex charts is critical to any forex trader’s business and so it is important to know how to read them and to understand just what they mean.A forex chart is plotted for a currency pair such as the EUR/USD or GBP/JPY and shows the movement of the currencies concerned against one another over a period of time. For instance, a EUR/USD chart tells you how the Euro and the US dollar have moved against one another during the period for which the chart has been plotted.Along the bottom of the chart you have the timeline that can for example be divided into 15 minute, one hour, one day, one week, or longer time periods. Then going up the right-hand side of the chart are incremental values that are generally set to run from just below to just above the lowest and highest prices reached during the period in question. For example, for a EUR/USD chart the values could run from 1.2534 at the bottom to 1.2566 at the top.Forex charts are helpful because they paint a clear and simple to read picture of just how a pair of currencies is doing and you can see at a glance if a currency is strengthening or weakening so that you can act as necessary. The choice of a time frame for a forex chart is also important as a short time scale can help you to see minor trends while a long time scale can help you to identify longer term trends.You can find free forex charts across the Internet on numerous different websites and many of these will even let you put charts on your own websites. These charts are alright for glancing at trends from time to time but serious traders will have to have access to much more detailed charts that are continuously being updated in real time. This is essence means having access to suitable forex trading software that is operated on a broadband internet connection so that you are always connected. Anything less than twenty four hour access to the most up-to-date forex charts covering a wide range of different currencies will make life very difficult for the serious trader.With dozens of the world's currencies being traded every day there are way too many currency combinations for anybody to track of them all in their heads and the beauty of the right forex software is that it permits you to see multiple forex charts to show at a glance exactly what your favorite currency pairs are up to. Of course you will wish to keep a close eye on those forex charts displaying currencies in which you have already made investments, but you are also going to want to keep track of other currency pairings which you might wish to open trades in if they move in the right direction.Being able to easily and quickly watch the progress of a wide variety of currency pairings means that you are much less likely to miss investment opportunities that you could easily miss without access to the right forex charting software.