There are several things to explore when considering what a good signal is in Forex. The first is to decide the purpose of a signal. The second would be to answer if every signal in Forex is a good one which means we must decide what a "good" signal is. Then, is a good signal enough?
What is the purpose of a Forex trading signal?
This may seem obvious but it is also obvious that most signals provided by trading systems are not correct. Otherwise Forex would be easy and everyone in the world would be trading it and making money. They are not. There are many people in the world trading Forex but there aren't very many people making money.
For example, if you were going to take a job in which you could make good money but you had to work for 3 months at no pay and 95% of the people who tried to do the job failed, would you do it? Probably not, yet for every 100 people who attempt to trade Forex, 95 walk away with losses.
So the simple definition I would propose is that a Forex signal is a signal that alerts the trader to the opportunity to make a measurable profit. What is a measurable profit? A trading system must have a future price in mind when the trader enters the trade and the trader should know what the likelihood is of reaching that goal.
Signals are alerts
A signal alerts the trader to the opportunity to make a measurable profit. Not every signal is going to lead to profit. If your trading system produces 60% profitable trades after trading 100 signals you would want to devise a method to remove as many of the 40 losses. This would increase your profitability in significant ways. When a signal alerts us to the "possibility" of a trade, we should have a few checks and balances before we enter.
What do you need in addition to a good signal?
A good trading signal must have the momentum of the market. Have you ever entered a trade in the Asian session? Quite often there is not enough volume for the trade to go anywhere. There is no momentum behind the trade. It is like you are at the Starting Line ready to race and the Green Flag falls and you press on the accelerator and nothing happens. Typically these trades with no momentum behind them fail because of market "noise."
Knowing your trading system and knowing when it is best to trade your signal is all part of becoming a well trained Forex trader. We have done this very successfully with RSI and would invite you to look at our website.
Paul Dean is the owner of You Learn Forex and has been trading Forex for nearly five years. He has worked extensively with RSI, the Relative Strength Index in the past three years developing new insights with trader/programmer, David Moser. Their research has brought to light important statistical data regarding RSI that benefits traders who use it make better trading decisions.
This information is available in his eBook, RSI Fundamentals: Beginning to Advanced with 195 pages and over 100 colored charts in downloadable format, all part of a statistically based Forex trading system, The RSI PRO Forex Trading System, which uses 4 signals on RSI to trade.
In addition, he has developed a successful indicator called the RSI Paint Indicator (with David Moser) that was adapted from a standard RSI to alert traders all 4 RSI signals.
Paul writes a daily blog post at http://www.youlearnforex.com.
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