You can trade futures on the Hang Seng index from a number of brokerages, including Interactive Brokers. (You cannot trade an index directly. You have to use some tool such as a futures contract or an ETF.)
<<<I've noticed that very often the Asian Market follows the US market's previous day's results, am watching to see how often this happens. What a trading advantage it would be to be able to predict with fair accuracy what will happen in Asia and be able to trade accordingly. Any ideas?>>>
I am not sure how you expect to use US market results to improve your trading results. Every other trader in the world has the same information readily available, so any impact will be factored into the price at least as quickly as you can submit a trade order.
Unfortunately you are right, you do need money to day trade and as a previous writer noted you need $25k for a broker to allow you to consistently day trade. I believe that is a Fed Reserve requirement not SEC. Note that I say consistent though. The broker can't prevent you from selling a position you recently bought but if they identify you as a daytrader you will have to bring your equity up to $25 before they let you do it again.
Try the top 10 trader thing below or any kind of honest papertrading. And while your at it try a long term paper portfolio for kicks. I'll bet in a year you'll wish you really invested the long term ideas – its amazing!
I could try to open a fund. Any better ideas where to get it funded from?
Thanks
Mike
http://www.marketocracy.com
Once you've done that, have your performance audited by an independent third party. It could look like this:
http://www.inside-alpha.com/support-files/ifsa_perf_summary_2003-2005.pdf
With this in hand, you can start looking for investors. There's so much money around that it shouldn't be too much of a problem if you're good.
Let's make money!
Good luck
Marc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis
And you can test your ideas here:
http://www.wealth-lab.com/
There are some conservative strategies to invest in the forex market that many people consider too boring and evidently not complicated enough. It seems there is a breed of players entering the Forex market the same way they would belly up to a roulette wheel in Las Vegas.
I ran an analysis a couple of weeks ago that you may find interesting. First of all it is important to note that this is based on historical prices and is not necessarily representative of future results. But it is interesting.
Let's say that you opened a conservative hedge trade on the 1st of any month this year.with $10,000 and used a conservative margin of 10% You just let the account sit and didn't touch it what would it have looked like on 7/20/2007 (the day I ran the analysis).
If you opened your account on
Jan 1st = $13,161 on 7/20/2007
Feb 1st = $13,645
Mar 1st = $11,924
Apr 1st = $12,045
May 1st = $10,473
Jun 1st = $10,530
None of these accounts would have ever been close to a margin call and the Jan and Feb accounts would seem to have faired quite well through the China correction during late Feb / early Mar.
So I guess the morale of the story is that it is not the Forex market that is the problem. It is the human elements of greed, fear, lack of knowledge and lack of a conservative investment strategy.
It's not what you do it's how you do it!
Good luck with your decision process.
Paul
Here are this month's best traders:
http://www.top10traders.com/Top10Standings.aspx
Good luck.
Here are this month's best traders:
http://www.top10traders.com/Top10Standings.aspx
Once you are comfortable investing with "play" money, you can slowly start investing the real stuff.
Good luck.