Free Forex Signals: Are They A Waste Of Time?
It is possible to find free forex signals online, but some people argue that they are not worth the time it takes you to implement them, or the money that you could lose if you back them in your live trading account. Is this true? We weigh up the different kinds of free forex signals that you might find and whether you should or should not use them.
Forex signals are messages sent to you by a company who specializes in analyzing the foreign exchange markets and sending out alerts to advise you to place or close an order in the foreign exchange market. Some providers will offer advice on where to set a stop loss at the same time. This can be very helpful. The placing of the stop loss will vary depending on the volatility of the market and how sure they are of the trend. But the buy or sell alert is the main piece of information that traders are waiting for.
In most cases you have to pay to receive these alerts, either per signal or per month. However, sometimes you may be able to find free forex signals. This could be a trial period for a service that the company is hoping you will join as a full member later, or a sample service where you are sent occasional signals but not all of the signals that paying clients receive.
The alerts are usually sent by SMS and email. However, you are less likely to find free signals being sent by SMS because it would usually cost the company something to send them. If you are paying for the messages then they are not genuinely free.
So email only is more common, and this means that you will probably miss some signals because you will not be at your computer 24 hours a day. That is, unless you eat, drink, work out and sleep so close to your computer or PDA that the sound it makes when an email arrives is enough to wake you and make you jump out of bed. We do not recommend this however – if only because many other emails will arrive during the night that are not your forex signals.
Free forex trading alerts can be a good way of testing a service that you are already interested in for other reasons. But do not follow signals just because they are free. You do not want to be wasting money by following unprofitable signals with a real trading account. However, if you use a demo account this could be an interesting and educational experience. In fact many companies will warn you that their signals are provided for educational purposes only.
The bottom line is that if you are looking for free forex signals because you do not have the money to subscribe to a paid service, then you are not in a good position. You probably would not have the money to back the signals if they are profitable, and could not afford to lose if they are not.
On the other hand if you are looking at this as a test before deciding whether to invest in a subscription, and you have money that you can afford to lose in the risky business that is the forex trading market, then free forex signals from a reputable provider could be a good choice for you.
