Forex practice account offers so many benefits, but there are a few pitfalls too. In this article, we will discuss the advantages as well as the disadvantages you can get from using free forex practice account. The practice account enables you to practice trading in forex for free. If you are a new trader you are highly encouraged to take practice account or demo account so that you will have firsthand experience how it feels like trading in forex.

The advantages of foreign exchange practice account

It will not cost you anything. You just need to give your name, email address, and contact number.

You will be able to learn how to trade in real time and at the same time you will be able to familiarize yourself as to how the trading platform works.

You will be able to learn how to execute trades as well as learn skills on how to manage risk without really putting your money at stake.

You will be able to test various trading strategies under the real trading environment as well as market condition without compromising your capital.

Through forex demo account, you will familiarize yourself with the characteristics as well as the peculiarities of the forex market. Through it, you will also learn how to adapt various trading strategies.

The disadvantages of foreign exchange practice account

The forex demo account hardly helps you in honing skills particularly in money management skills. With the demo account, the practice amount would be $50,000 to $100,000, which is actually too big and unrealistic enough, especially if you are going to trade using micro account. With that amount, traders will be encouraged to take risk than they would normally do using real money. With that being said, traders can develop a habit that can be disastrous once traders go live.

With the free demo account, you will not experience the real gut feeling of creating trading decisions on the spot. If there is no real money at stake, the trader will have a limited knowledge and understanding in taking risk.

Are you planning to get a forex demo account? If yes, then you need to consider carefully the advantages as well as the disadvantages. Despite the disadvantages, still more and more people prefer to have forex demo account because it enables them to learn and understand the platform without really having the need to compromise their hard earned money.

Partial close is a type of exit strategy where the forex trader plan his trade exit in several increments as opposed to closing the entire position at once. Partial close method is performed by closing a portion of it’s overall trade size as the trade becomes profitable and continue to their profit target.

This technique allows traders to capture smaller profits faster while leaving the position open as the market moves farther in their favor.

One major drawback about the partial close method is an imbalance in risk versus reward. When a trader employs the partial close strategy, the amount of profit taken is rarely equal to the amount of risk assumed when the trade is opened.

This partial close method is commonly thought to reduce losses and increase profits, following the idea of banking your profits. However it has an unfortunate characteristic that has nasty effects on your profits.

Consider a trader who trades 10 currency lots at a time and a 40 pip stop loss. His total initial risk on the position is 400 pips. If the trader partial closes half of his positions out with a 50 pip profit, he will have covered 250 pips of the initial 400 pips. The remaining position must be closed out at a profit greater than 50 pips to maintain a risk to reward ratio of 1:1.

Traders usually exacerbate the problem by moving their stop loss to break even after partial close with profit. If their remaining position is closed out at break even, they have risked 400 pips to gain 250. If their next trade is stopped out for the full 400 pips, they have a deficit of 150 pips to overcome on their next trade, assuming they are still trading 10 lots per trade.

The imbalance in risk to reward requires the forex trader who partial close his trades to maintain a much higher success ratio than traders who do not, because just one losing trade can erase the profits from multiple winners. This imbalance ratio will force the forex trader employing this partial close strategy to achieve a high win rate otherwise he will have to a re- look at employing this method as part of his trading plan.

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