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Forex options are also available as exchange-traded securities, which means you will need an options broker to trade them. You can buy and sell forex options. When you buy, or go long, a forex option, your risk is limited to the amount you paid for the option. When you sell, or go short, an option, your risk is unlimited, just like going long or short a currency pair.
In this section we will talk about using options as a long trade. In later sections, we will talk about how you can use options on the short side. Puts: Put options increase in value if the price of the currency pair drops. If the price of the currency pair rises the put will decrease in value.
A put gives you the right to sell a currency pair for a specific price. That means if the price of the currency pair is dropping, your put is going to increase in value because you have the ability to sell the currency pair for a higher price. Calls: Call options increase in value if the price of the currency pair rises.
If the price of the currency pair drops the call will decrease in value. A call option gives you the right to buy a currency pair for a specific price.
That means if the price of the currency pair is rising, your call is going to increase in value because you have the ability to buy the currency pair for a lower price. Expiration: Forex options are only good for a specific amount of time. You can choose the expiration date when you first purchase the option. For many of the strategies we use at PFX, buying an option that expires in 30 days is usually sufficient Sometimes you may need to sell the option before expiration to prevent it from expiring worthless.
Strike price: Forex options have a specific strike price attached to them. If your strike price was 2. You can simply sell the option back on the open market, and make the same profit. Although there are many strike prices to choose from, in this lesson, we will concentrate on the at-the-money strike price, which is equal to the current spot price. In a later lesson, we will talk about out-of-the-money and in-the-money strike prices and how you can use these in other options strategies.
Leverage: Over-the-counter forex options enjoy the same flexible leverage you enjoy with spot forex contracts.
The exchange-listed forex options described above control around 10, units of the base currency, just like a mini-spot contract. That is comparable with a forex spot contract. To take advantage of this rise, you could buy the forex contract or buy a call option. The call is a good alternative because it has a fixed amount of risk associated with it but could still accumulated unlimited profits. In the video, we will cover this situation and show you how the call increases in value as prices change.
If you are analyzing a pair that you think will decline in value, you could buy a put instead of a call to take advantage of the downside opportunity. Because you cannot lose more than the amount you paid for the call or put option, the option acts like a stop loss. Most traders will not hold an option until it becomes worthless. A surprise decline could eat a lot of profits very quickly, and you want to protect your position. You could set a stop loss that is close to the market, but you have a very high chance of being stopped out on a whipsaw. This is a very common frustration for new and old forex traders.
What if instead of setting a stop loss, you bought a put option? If you buy the put and the pair drops, your gains on the put will offset the losses on the pair itself. What is margin? Margin is estimated based on the size of your trade, which is measured in lots. A standard lot is , units. We also provide mini lots 10, units , micro lots 1, units and nano lots units. The greater the lot, the bigger the margin amount. Margin allows you to trade with leverage, which, in turn, allows you to place trades larger than the amount of your trading capital.
Leverage influences the margin amount too. What is leverage? Leverage is the ability to trade positions larger than the amount of capital you possess. This mechanism allows traders to use extra funds from a broker in order to increase the size of their trades.
Although leverage lets traders increase their trade size and, consequently, potential gains, it magnifies their potential losses putting their capital at risk. When is the forex market open? Due to different time zones, the international forex market is open 24 hours a day — from 5 p. EST on Friday, except holidays. Markets first open in Australasia, then in Europe and afterwards in North America.
So, when the market closes in Australia, traders can have access to markets in other regions. The hour availability of the forex market is what makes it so attractive to millions of traders. Check our trading times for forex pairs. What is a spread? Currencies are traded in pairs in the forex market. A currency pair consists of a base currency, which is the first currency in the pair, and a quote currency, which is the second currency in the pair.
When trading forex, traders buy one currency and sell another at the same time. Currency pairs have two prices: the bid price and the ask price, which form a forex quote. When you intend to buy a base currency, you will do so by selling a quote currency. The price at which your broker will sell you the base currency is called the ask price ask.
When you intend to sell a base currency in order to buy a quote currency, you will have to pay the bid price bid. The bid is the price your broker is willing to pay to purchase the base currency. The bid is always lower than the ask. The difference between the bid and the ask is called the spread. Spreads are measured in pips. What is a pip? A pip is short for percentage in point. A pip measures the minimum price move in the exchange rate of a currency pair. Pips are used to measure the bid-ask spread. For most currency pairs, which are priced out to four decimal places, a pip is 0.
Some currency pairs are priced out to two decimal places, so one pip for them is 0. We also offer our traders fractional pips called pipettes. One pipette is 0. What is a swap? If traders hold their positions open overnight with the intent to forward them to the next delivery day, they will have to pay a swap. A swap is an interest charge that a trader has to pay to a broker for holding positions overnight. Check which charges and fees are applied to each trading instrument. Show More.