Rule 8. Any participant intentionally hitting the demo price feed off market will be disqualified.  We only review the trading activity of winners at the end of the contest to decide whether contestant will be disqualified.  If we cannot be reasonably sure gains are not largely due to the low slippage of a demo account the account is likely to be disqualified, therefore accounts with many trades open for a very short period will likely be disqualified.

Unfortunately, there is no 'perfect' way to moderate a demo trading contest and ensure no cheating, but if we do not implement these rules it will become a contest of who is the best at cheating, or in other words, taking advantage of latency and lack of slippage.  Our goal is to give manual traders the same chance of winning as automated traders.  Please inquire in the forum if you need clarification.

Rule 10. One entry per household.  We will track and enforce this using several tracking methods.

Rule 8. Any participant intentionally hitting the demo price feed off market will be disqualified.  We only review the trading activity of winners at the end of the contest to decide whether contestant will be disqualified.  If we cannot be reasonably sure gains are not largely due to the low slippage of a demo account the account is likely to be disqualified, therefore accounts with many trades open for a very short period will likely be disqualified.

Unfortunately, there is no 'perfect' way to moderate a demo trading contest and ensure no cheating, but if we do not implement these rules it will become a contest of who is the best at cheating, or in other words, taking advantage of latency and lack of slippage.  Our goal is to give manual traders the same chance of winning as automated traders.  Please inquire in the forum if you need clarification.

Rule 10. One entry per household.  We will track and enforce this using several tracking methods.

• Forex Is a Particularly Risky Form of Investment

  Forex is indeed a risky investment and risk varies to a large degree depending on how much leverage is employed. The availability of high leverage is common in forex. There is market demand for high leverage and perhaps a few traders can successfully exploit the availability of high leverage; however, we recommend that traders use no greater than 1:10 leverage. Even if your account has 1:100 leverage or even higher, you don't have to use it all, nor do we advise it. The huge losses that can occur as a result of high leverage are very likely to negatively affect your trading psychology.
  
  Besides the availability of high leverage and the massive loss of capital that can result from over-leveraging, forex is risky because the market has a very high probability of moving both ways, both up and down on any given currency pair. While this can certainly be considered a good thing at times, like when you are on the right side of a trade, it makes speculating on the direction of currency pairs a complex affair relative to other investments like equities.



• The Odds Are Against You

  You pay your dealer or broker a cost for every transaction, whether that be in the form of a spread on the amount you can sell and buy at, a commission, or both.  Similar to how in a casino the house has only a very slight edge, so it is true in forex and this is referred to as a negative sums game.  If you continually enter trades without a strategy that overcomes the odds being against you and turns the odds in your favor, your account will dwindle down to nothing.  Those who talk about limiting your risk, that's great, but all limiting your risk will do without a winning strategy is delay the amount of time it takes for you to lose everything.
  
  How much the odds are against you depends on your trading strategy and broker.  A trader using a 1000 pip stop loss and looking for a 200 pip take profit will be much less affected by transaction cost than a trader with a 10 pip stop loss and 10 pip take profit.  If the spread is 2 pips and your TP and SL are both 10 pips, it means you need to lose 8 pips to lose the trade or make 12 pips to win the trade.  This is a HUGE house advantage.  Besides trading style, the way your broker operates can make an impact as well.  Some brokers employ dirty tricks like freezing their servers and price feeds, throwing in bad ticks intentionally (note that bad ticks will inevitably be thrown by any broker in rare cases but the honest broker will restore your trading account as if the bad tick never occurred) to make you lose, passing on slippage that benefits the broker but keeping any slippage that benefits the trader (again, slippage is inherent in financial markets but it should be about equal in favor of the trader and broker).  Even some of the biggest most highly-regulated brokers have been caught cheating clients and going completely bankrupt leaving their clients with nothing. At the same time, trading with a small, undercapitalized broker is obviously not advisable.



• Margin, Margin Calls, and Leverage

  It is important that you understand leverage and position sizing and it's impact on risk and margin requirements. There are many good resources for this on the internet, and a read through our school article at Leverage, Lots and Margin will help to educate you. Ensure you are always aware of the available free margin on your account. Once you have no available free margin in your account, all of your positions will be closed out automatically. This is referred to as a 'Margin Call' and occurs BEFORE your account equity reaches 0. If you are trading with low leverage and reasonable stop losses, your available free margin should not be a big concern, although you should always monitor it.



• The Downsides of Trading with Small Risk Capital

  It is important you trade both with money you can afford to lose, and enough money that small percentage gains will 'feel' sufficient. Trading with money that you cannot afford to lose or will negatively impact your life or mental state in any way is very likely to negatively affect your trading psychology. One example of a very bad idea - in our opinion of course - is to trade using retirement funds that you are likely to need in the future. Another bad idea is quitting your job under the presumption that you can make adequate money trading forex when you have failed to do so on a live account for a lengthy period of time already.
  
  Trading with an account that is very small can make small percentage gains feel like they are not worth your time, causing you to employ higher leverage and risk to try for larger gains, and the larger losses that may result are also likely to negatively affect your trading psychology. The caveat here is that you should not deposit a large sum of funds until you have gained the necessary trading experience and established a reasonable likelihood of success. When trading on a small account, it is imperative you do not fall victim to the desire to make money as a higher priority than protecting your account equity.



• Remember that analysts are entertainers first and foremost

  Their primary job is to get traffic to a website or television station, or in some cases attempt to persuade the market to trade a certain way that benefits them.  Their primary concern is not necessarily making money and typically there is no proof a particular market analyst has a track record of making money trading the markets.  Also, let's say they were traders but would typically only trade once per week, yet they are forced to write an article every day and have to come up with something to say.  Reading good solid analytics from professionals can certainly be helpful, just be mindful of their first order of business.  In the forex market, analytics are filled with lots of amateur analysts that you would do well to stay far away from.



• Learn basic automated trading coding skills

  Even if you want to only be a manual trader, my opinion is that learning to program in a way that allows setting up trading strategies and performing historical backtests is a great tool.  You may or may not employ it in actual trading, but you can learn a lot from it by coding some of your ideas and seeing how they do when backtested.  Coding in languages like MQL4 is relatively simply, it will be a bit uncomfortable at first but using the right resources to learn from and with a solid day or 2 of work you should have a firm grasp on it.  You may visit our school section about automated trading and coding in MQL.



• Focus on strategy, not simple technologies

  Men especially, at least in my opinion, love the idea of adding tons of technology to their trading arsenal.  By this I mean lots of extra screens, maybe a tweaked-out computer.  No doubt for the specialized high-speed guys, they may need some special equipment, but for the vast majority of traders these things won't help you, it's not going to help the market go the way you want it to go.



• Don't Get Competitive

  Another one I believe men are probably much more prone to than women and one more reason women typically make better traders.  Often competition can push us to our limits and help us to grow, but in trading the opposite is true.  People are far more likely to talk about their winners than their losers, and a few of those people may indeed actually have a lot more winners than losers and be making positive cash flow trading forex. You must resist the temptation to compete, to place a trade simply because they just won one and now you need to win one.  Your entries and exits are what comprises your edge on the market, anything that adversely affects your decisions about these entries and exits threatens to place you in a trade you really don't want to be in, and you will likely be sorry for it later.



• Ride the horse in the direction it's going

  More often than not, when the market is trending there is a good reason for it and it is likely to continue.  Of course, if this was always the case everyone would be a winner, but make sure you have a good reason for trading against the prevailing trend.



• Trade Strategy and Risk Management

  Sometimes the market is quite sure where it is going and trots on with confidence, while sometimes there is no clear direction and the market bounces around.  Personally, I like to use very large stop losses places well outside where the rate is likely to go, thereby taking advantage of the ups and downs without being stopped out.  I have to control my risk which means these stop losses which could be 500-1000 pips cause minimal damage to my account if they are hit.  This is where risk % comes into play.  It is often cited that one does well to risk 2% of their account value on a single trade.  Personally, I think this risk management has to be based on trading style.  For instance, one of my trades may last far longer than someone else's trade and may take profit several times within that period, since often my take profits would be lower than my stop loss in order to catch the market moves of a couple hundred pips that are more likely than a couple thousand pips.  I don't believe it makes sense to risk only 2% with such a small chance of losing and with a trade that statistically should win many more times than it loses.  Based on my confidence, I could risk up to 10% on a trade, and if needed I will wait however long it takes for a price that has run against me to return so I can exit at break even.  At the same time, if fundamentals and market sentiment changes so much it becomes clear that I should take my position off the board, I am willing to do that.
  
  Typically, I like to place my stop losses behind strategic locations that are far off and should at least cause a bounce of they are met.  Nothing in trading is concrete, this is just my way of dong my best to get an edge on the market.  As you can tell, such a strategy won't yield 1000% per year, but then who can show a strategy that has made 1000% per year sustainably on a live account with a significant amount of money in the account that did not involve cheating the broker and the money was able to be withdrawn :)  This strategy is, of course, only one of many, many strategies and I am not advocating that anyone adopt it, rather I am simply sharing my thoughts and experiences.



• Wave Psychology Cause and Effect

  Remember when trading a market you are trading largely against the collective psychological makeup of a group of diverse people with diverse interests and lives.  Sure, there are players out there hedging for commercial reasons and central banks intervening for their own reasons, but by and large markets move on collective psychology.  I see humans as something like herd animals, 'sheeples' if you will, and I see resolve as something ever-changing, unable to remain consistent.  Sure, fundamental events can change the direction of the herd but I believe just as much in the ability of the herd mentality to make its own collective decision to turn as waves of collective emotion inevitably manifest, beyond precise comprehension at least for me but present nonetheless.  What I am saying is that sometimes economic realities cause psychological effects, but just the same I believe psychological realities cause economic effects or at least the perception of economic effects.  This one people might call me crazy for, or have no idea what I am talking about, fortunately it is the only point I make like this.



• Use Limited Leverage but Recall Unleveraged Rates

  When thinking of the possible market movements and the randomness of some movement, I like to think about forex not in terms of leveraged forex where we talk about fractions of a pip out to the third or fifth decimal, but more like dollars and cents.  In the real world, how big a move is it when the EURUSD goes from 1.40 to 1.39, or even 1.4 to 1.3.  These might be considered huge movements depending on the perspective of each trader, but the reality is these are not extremely large movements in terms of % change, they only appear so large to the retail trader because positions are leverages, sometimes way too much!



• Infrequent, High Probability Trading

  Last, but far from least, only trade when you have a very strong reason to believe your planned entry and exit has a high probability of overcoming the fact you are entering the market starting with a loss, with the odds against you.  Personally, I don't believe such a situation can often arise solely from a simple candlestick formation or technical pattern, much better is when fundamentals and technicals strongly converge to say the same thing.  To me, it seems there are times that there are just so many variables pointing to a certain currency pair going a certain way.  It may be weeks between these times, even months, but invariably that time comes when there is a high likelihood of a currency pair traveling one way vs the other.  If you can properly identify these moments and have the patience to wait for them, you just might have a good chance at becoming a profitable forex trader. 

1. FX Capitalist (Real Account)
2. InvestBot (Real Account)
3. FX Flash (Real & Demo Accounts)
4. Scalper EA (Real & Demo Accounts)
5. GridMeUp (Real Account)
6. Ascent (Demo Account)
7. Forex Steam (Demo Account)
8. 4exia (Demo Account)

FX Capitalist (Real)

Features Description Style 24-hr scalper with tight stop SL/TP SL: 4 (L), 2 (S) / TP: 13 (L), 11 (S) Pairs EURUSD Timeframe M1 Price $129 License 1 account Refund Policy 60 days unconditional (Clickbank) NFA Compliance Yes Protection Member area act# authentication  Website http://www.fxcapitalist.com Settings Default (MM 22), Started March 17, 2013 Broker www.ExcelMarkets.com Account Type Live, micro ($300) EA Version  Basic L 1.1.8

$300 Real Account: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14131

Invest Bot (Real)

FX Flash (Real & Demo)

Features Description Style Trades the corrections within the larger trend SL/TP SL: 10-50 pips / TP: 10-15 pips Pairs AUDJPY, EURJPY, EURUSD, GBPUSD, NZDUSD, USDCAD, USDCHF Timeframe H1, M15  Price $129 License 1 account Refund Policy 60 days unconditional (Clickbank) NFA Compliance No Protection MQ Lock  Website http://www.fxflash.com Settings  Default (MaxTrades 3),  AutoMM 2 on all pairs Started March 17, 2013 Broker www.ExcelMarkets.com Account Type Live ($300) Demo ($5000) Pairs & Versions All EA Version 1.5 Settings  Default (MaxTrades 3),  AutoMM 2 on all pairs

$300 Real Account:  http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14667 5K Demo Account:  http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14666

Scalper EA (Real & Demo)

Features Description Style Counter-trend Scalping SL/TP Pairs EURUSD Timeframe M5 Price Free License Any Refund Policy Not Necessary NFA Compliance Yes Protection None  Website http://www.onestepremoved.com/scalper-ea/ Settings  Default, Lot Size 0.01 per $100 Started March 17, 2013 Broker www.ExcelMarkets.com Account Type Live, micro ($300) EA Version

$300 Real Account: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14764 $1000 Demo Account: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14763

GridMeUp (Real)

Features Description Style Advanced Grid SL/TP Max DD: 15.5% Pairs GBPUSD Timeframe M15 Price $27 License 1 computer Refund Policy 60 days unconditional NFA Compliance Yes Protection DLL  Website http://gridmeupfx.boards.net/ Settings Default (0.01 per 1K) Started March 13, 2013 Broker www.ExcelMarkets.com Account Type Live, micro ($2000) EA Version 4.1

$2000 Real Account: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14668

Ascent (Demo)

Features Description Style Multitrade breakout SL/TP Pairs EURUSD Timeframe M15 Price $279.00 License 1 computer Refund Policy 60 days unconditional (clickbank) NFA Compliance Yes Protection  Website http://cuttingedgeforex.com/ Settings Default Started March 13, 2013 Broker www.ExcelMarkets.com Account Type Live, micro ($2000) EA Version 2.0

$5000 Demo Account: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14669

Forex Steam (Demo)

Features Description Style Trend Retracement SL/TP Pairs EURUSD Timeframe M15 Price $118.00  License 4 Refund Policy 30 day (regnow) NFA Compliance Protection Member area act# authentication  Website http://forexsteam.com/ Settings Default (Risk=10) Started March 13, 2013 Broker www.ExcelMarkets.com Account Type Demo, micro ($5000) EA Version

$5000 Demo Account: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14772

4exia (Demo)

Features Description Style Breakout, Trend Following SL/TP Varies per system Pairs EURUSD, AUDUSD Timeframe Any Price $88 per month License 1 account Refund Policy None NFA Compliance  Website http://www.4exia.com Settings Default (0.01 per $1000) Started March 13, 2013 Broker www.ExcelMarkets.com Account Type Demo, micro ($3000)

$3000 Demo Account: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/account.aspx?sid=14773

The new ForexRazor website is one of the most powerful websites to hit the market in a single release, ever.

Development on the site began as far back as the days when MT4Stats.com was the only tool to analyze and share trading performance statistics.  Since then, we have seen some innovative companies expand on this initial concept by skillfully constructing far more advanced systems to analyze trading performance and share it with others.  Here at ForexRazor.com, we see our own contribution in the constantly evolving chain of improvements coming in the form of significant advancements in precision, transparency and a handful of very useful features never seen before, such as the ability to define trading robots per trading account and then search out all accounts using a particular robot, customizable widgets, trading journals, etc.

The vision for the Forex Razor Social Trading site has always been to provide traders with everything they need to succeed – a one-stop shop if you will – while being a skilfully-moderated community of traders interacting as mature adults and avoiding the petty cliquishness many of us grown weary of.

Besides the most accurate and sophisticated trading account performance analyzer available today, Razor boasts a large spectrum of features. Some of the features are: a huge forex education resource with hundreds of pages of high quality content developed by literary and trading professionals and organized into easy to navigate and intuitive sections of progressively advanced topics, an ultra-fast economic calendar, a Test Lab where ForexRazor's money is used to test trading robots on live accounts as well as demo accounts, a sophisticated economic impact analyzer, forex industry user reviews, and forex trading contests with large cash prizes and real-time performance tracking.

Each and every trader can own a complete social profile with Facebook-style social wall and friend/group activity stream that includes robust privacy and sharing options, trader profile, images, linked trading accounts, friends and groups membership, and reputation systems including user 'Likes' and 'Points' to measure both participation levels and 'likeability'.

Equally, traders can open their own trading groups and become a moderator of their own group which includes open, closed or private membership, group discussion forums, linked trading accounts of group members and also a Facebook style wall and activity stream.

The ForexRazor article section includes unique articles written by our very own trading professionals, including a highly-successful retired veteran trader and our automated trading guru and EA developer who works full time in our forum, school, EA Test Lab and elsewhere throughout the site.

The trading tools section includes many useful tools such as various calculators and web charts, and a software repository to rate, download and comment on trading indicators, scripts and EA's.

The site layout is clean and easy to navigate, subscriptions and profile are easy to manage, and while there are a lot of features and many more sub-features we have found users are able to navigate effectively and features are intuitive. We have made up a list of website features, and while it doesn't detail every single feature, it will paint a solid picture of what the Forex Razor site has to offer. 

We do hope you enjoy, learn and share ForexRazor.com, and we are grateful for every feedback we receive, whether good or bad.  With such a multi-faceted system with many components and being so new, we certainly expect to uncover bugs but we are dedicated to quickly fixing any issues that are discovered.  We kindly ask that should you encounter any issue, or just have some feedback for us, click the link in the top right of the site 'Suggestions and Bugs' and leave us a forum post, or, contact us privately through the contact us link at the bottom of the website.  Thanks!

	Stats - Analyze and Share Trading Account Performance Metrics The 'Stats' system connects with servers hosted at your broker to download, analyze, and display your trading statistics at a much deeper level than provided by your trading platform.  Metrics are displayed in industry standard reporting format such as 'Time weighted return' and all statistics are calculated by comparing historical positions to historical quotes, thereby calculating historical and current equity and other metrics like maximum drawdown to a high degree of precision.  All you need to do to connect your own trading account is register a free ForexRazor account and add your trading account by choosing the broker and broker server you login to, and inputting your account number and read-only/investor password.  According to our extenstive research the Razor stats system is the most accurate and sophisticated of it's kind on the web today.  On the outside it looks like other statistical analyzers, but to achieve a high degree of accuracy the architecture is completely different.  As it is over a thousand times more processor intensive to calculate statistics for every moment of an account as compared to the simpler methodology other websites are using, you may have to wait up to 5 minutes for calculations to when you initially add your account. Other websites log equity every so often and calculate a single equity calculation at end of day, so any time before the system was added to the website entire days of equity activity is missing except for a single calculation at the end of the day, and even once the account is connected, all time between the intervals of equity logging is not accounted for thus spikes can easily occur that are not recorded as drawdown.  The system is also designed for a high degree of transparency, for instance, if the system does not have sufficient, high fidelity historical quotes data on a particular financial instrument users are alerted in a highly visible message box.  You have the option to keep your trading account information completely private, shared with your friends and/or group members, or completely public.  You can also use detail permission settings to hide and reveal only certain parts of your account.
	Performance Test Lab ForexRazor performs performance testing on commercial products like expert advisors using either demo accounts or live accounts with our own funds.
	Forex School One of the largest free forex educational resources on the web, the Razor Forex School consists of hundreds of pages of education from the most basic topics up to advanced topics like programming automated trading robots.
	Economic Calendar One of the fastest economic calendars on the web, utilizing http push technology to immediately push out economic data as it is received, without requiring action from the user.
	Economic Impact Analyzer Razor Economic Impact Analyzer provides traders with a fast and reliable method to research the impact a given economic event had on the market for each historical instance of the event.
	Trader Profile Trader profiles include connected trading accounts using the stats system, a Facebook  style wall and activity stream from your friends and fellow group members, full trader profile information and background, groups, friends, and photos.  Profiles and profile features have configurable privacy permissions.
	Groups Create and moderate your own trading group complete with Facebook style wall and activity stream, group discussion forum, images, group profile and news feed, and member management.  Groups may open, closed to require permission to join, or completely private and invisible to the community.
	Trading Contests Trading contests allow users to create a contest demo account automatically and compete for cash and other prizes.
	Editorials Razor authors produce completely unique and high-quality articles, ranging from daily analytics and occasional trade suggestions by professional and lifetime trader Ralph Shell, to EA reviews and write-ups by our very own EA developer and very active automated trader.
	Web Charts Web charting covering forex, commodities, and indices.  Forex charts have deep historical data and both bid and ask rates.
	Forex Industry User Reviews Every review is hand moderated and analyzed for suspicious activity.  All reviewers must be Razor members, thus the astute researcher will give more credit to reviews left by active community members than one-off reviewers.  Additionally, the review system offers a unique level of granularity.  Ratings can be applied on a per category basis.
	Calculators and Tools Advanced calculators such as our flexible pip calculator allowing many combinations of currency pairs along with output in many different currencies and historical pip rates.
	Forum The Razor forum is a community gathering place as well as a center for community feedback and suggestions.
	Forex Glossary Lookup forex terminology in the Razor fx glossary located at the Razor Forex School.
	Stats - Easily Add Your MT4 Trading Account There are no EA's to run, no hoops to jump through.  You may easily connect your MT4 trading account to our system by simply supplying the account number and investor password.  The investor password is read-only and does not allow trading thus you don't need to be worried about the security of your account.
	Stats Feature - EA/Robot Search When you add a stats account you may define trading robots that are used on the account.  When this is done, it creates a link that can then be clicked to search for all accounts in the system also using the same robot.  This is a great tool to assess the performance of a particular EA
	Stats Feature - Commercial Provider Friendly Commercial providers can list a price for their automated trading robots and input a link where other users can purchase their product or signup for a service.
	Stats Feature - Custom Widgets The custom widget allows you to choose from all available metrics and include the ones you choose on your widget, besides this a graph will be displayed and the size, colors, and title are completely customizable.  Once built, just copy the provided HTML code to display the widget on your blog or website.
	Stats Feature - Pre-Defined Widgets Choose from a variety of different widget types that allow you to copy the HTML code and use it to display the widget on your blog, website, forum signature, etc.
	Stats Feature - Trading Journals For each trading account you add to the stats system, you can keep a trading journal to record your psychology and strategy.  Keep your journal private or share it.
	Stats Feature - Files Upload files to your stats accounts and either keep them private or share them with the community.  A great way to provide demo EA's and freebies or open source code.
	Stats Feature - No More Timezone Confusion The timezones that brokers output trading records in can be confusing, so you can choose to display dates and times associated with your trading account records in either the broker's server timezone, or your own timezone according to your profile.
	Stats Feature - Privacy Choose from various privacy settings for each of your stats trading accounts.
	Stats - Individual Privacy Settings For those who wish to share their account performance with others but have certain things they don't want to share, for instance, open trades.
	Stats Feature - Delay Position Reporting For those who do want to share their open positions or pending orders with the community but would like it delayed rather than real- time.
	Stats Feature - Searchable Account List Search through all stats accounts added to the system that are not set to private.
	Stats Feature - Multiple Graphs The main graph that reports time weighted equity return low and high is very useful because it includes the full range of historical equity values as opposed to balance which can conceal risk trading and big drawdowns, but other graphs are provided for convenience including Balance, and Monthly P/L and %.
	Social Profile Privacy Choose from a variety of privacy settings for your trader profile.
	Social Sharing Privacy Choose who to share your posts with including uploaded files, links, status updates, etc.
	Social - Friends and Mail Add friends, accept or reject friend requests, and send messages to your friends.  Only friends may contact you so you don't have to worry about being spammed.
	Central Subscription Management Manage everything you have subscribed to in one place, including forum threads, newsletters, etc.  Each automated email receive from us has opt out links to unsubscribe from everything or manage your subscriptions individually, and you don't even have to be logged in!
	Site Search Search the entire site or choose to search only certain sections.