Posted in: Beginners

What is a forex signal?

 A forex signal is a trading recommendation. It gives the user specific details on a currency trade, which could include price, time and possibly stop loss levels. The signal could be computer generated, for example, from a software programme or a robot, or it could be generated by a human. The signal is sent to the user, usually via email, twitter, SMS or RSS.


These signal systems are used by traders all over the world, to help them with trading decisions. It is important to understand how these signals could assist you and their importance in trading. Let’s take a look at the two different types of foreign exchange signals:


Manual forex signals – A trader studies the market looking for buying and selling opportunities before taking a decision to buy or sell a particular currency. This is potentially very time consuming and can be very objective. However, as a positive, a human trader can pull out of trades if he considers that the market is showing signs of unpredictability or is behaving in an erratic fashion.


Automated forex signals – These are trading programmes which interpret market movements and say whether to buy or sell a particular currency accordingly. These programmes or robots as they are also called, can be quite reasonable accurate, if they have been created by a knowledgeable professional. The clear advantage of the automated forex signal provider, is that it can analyse a huge amount of data in comparison to a human trader. This means that you could receive signals for multiple currency pairs and across a 24-hour period, throughout the trading week. You are unlikely to miss an opportunity.


The most sensible strategy is to use a combination of both. Even if you use forex signal, it is important that you understand the basics of trading fx. This way you an understand what you are trading and the signal you are receiving. The majority of signal providers will allow you to have a trial period. In this period test the information you receive to check that it is of a high quality.


Whilst signals are never going to give you 100% profits, if you chose one carefully and use it wisely, then you have more chances of building a winning trading account.


Where can I trade signals?

Vantage FX is an award-winning ECN Forex Broker, based in Australia. They provide several high spec trading platforms including MetaTrader4 and a mobile app among others. Vantage FX offer transparency, true ECN spreads and unparalleled execution speed. To apply for an account visit the Vantage FX website:

Ico: news,analyses and trading tips

ICO News, Analysis and Trading tips

Welcome to our ICO news page. A short intro about ICO

An initial coin offering (ICO) is a form of crowdfunding that only uses cryptocurrency. They are used to give capital to growing startups. ICOs are created when a startup pre-allocates their own cryptocurrency (referred to as tokens) to investors. Investors can buy for the tokens with popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

You’ve probably heard the term before, but there are some ICOs within the few years that have gained popularity and have been used by investors worldwide. Ethereum is a prime example a popular ICO that’s been created. Back in 2014, it raised up to $18 million in BTC, which is about 40 cents per ether. After a growth spike, Ethereum now has a market capitalization of $63 billion and traded at a price of $660 per coin. One ICO gained $150 million in funding within three hours, and over $1.3 billion raised overall in this year alone. ICO sales have doubled from about 1.5 sales a week in 2016 to over 2.75 in 2017. You can find more about ICO here: ICO guide


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Trading Bitcoin: How to make money with trading bitcoin?

Trading Bitcoin Step 1: Awareness

At the moment trading bitcoin is a a bit of a hype. Many investors are seeing bitcoin as a way to get rich. Can’t blame them for seeing it as this way. I mean if you look at the graph below, you will see that Bitcoin has gone up crazy in value this year.

Trading Bitcoin

Trading Bitcoin

If you look at transaction of Bitcoins on thursday 23rd of November in the pic above. You will that at that time more than 349k transactions has been made. So people have buy and sold bitcoins to each other more than 349k times. That’s is phenomenal. As you can see there a lot of trades out there with Bitcoins. The second thing that you need to be aware off is high volatility. The price value of bitcoin is jumping up and down alot. Which is good news for us as traders. Because there is a lot of money that can be made off. As in basic thing before you start trading, the first thing that you need to know. Is there enough volatility? The higher the volatility there better it is. Because it means that price value changes a lot. And that there is a lot of people that are participating in the trade. So this way you can always buy or sell it to someone. In this case the bitcoin trading has a very high volatility.

Trading bitcoin step 2:

The second thing you need to know before trading bitcoin is that you need to know what kind of trend is bitcoin in? If you don’t know what I mean about trend then read this article: Trend

Trading Bitcoin

Trading Bitcoin

As you can see in the pair Bitcoin/British pound is in a bullish trend. It is going up. If this current trend continuous then you can make money by buying the bitcoin now and sell it later for a higher price. It’s the most basic and simple strategy. However you can also see that sometimes the value of the bitcoin goes down. So there is also a opportunity to make money when the bitcoin goes down in value. Plus500 is on of the few brokers that offers you the opportunity to make money when the bitcoin goes down in value.

For example you would have made money in the period of Sept. 1st till the 14th of Sept 2017 when the Bitcoin dropped in value from 3600 GBP to 2400 GBP.  The profit would have roughly been 1200 GBP for you. Remember alway use a stoploss when you are trading bitcoin. If you want to know more about buy and sell bitcoin on Plus500 then check out this Plus500 Tutorial: How to buy and sell bitcoin on Plus500

bitcoin $5000

Bitcoin $5000 USD This year??

Bitcoin $5000 valuation is coming!

Since my last post in January about the Bitcoin of how it would perform this year. I knew it was going to grow in value but to be honest I didn’t expect that it would grew in value this hard. At  the moment of writing this blog, Bitcoin is currently traded at 2395 USD.

So what has happend? Since the legalisation of Japan on Bitcoin and having more countries taking a interest in Bitcoin. The volume of demand for Bitcoin have increased rapidly. Like madness.  Here take a look at these graphs.

Why is the demand increasing? |  Bitcoin $5000

  • Central Banks are increasing interest rate again. When interest rate increased then it means you hard earned money will decrease in value as good and services are increasing in price. That is why clients of investment firms, hedgefunds, institutional investors are investing big in Bitcoins. They don’t want that their wealth be decreased in value just because the goverment messed things up like India last year.
  • Bitcoin is getting more and more accepted around the world. More merchants and consumers are starting use Bitcoin as way to buy things. Since the legalisation of Bitcoin in Japan, the trade volume in Bitcoin went sky high.
  • Because of Bitcoin price increase, investors are interest in investing in alt coins such as Ethereum. And for investors to invest in most of these alt coins they need Bitcoin. This way Bitcoins are still needed. In order to buy other crypto currencies you will need Bitcoins


This year there was a major growth in merchants that accepted Bitcoins as payment. Now why would they do that? For me it obvious that more and more customers are wanting to pay their products/ services in Bitcoin or any other crypto currency. Japan for example is going to have  more then 260.000 stores that are going to accept Bitcoins and Ethereum as payment this summer. The whole bitcoin fever is huge! South Korea, Russia, Thailand are all currently looking if they are going to legalize bitcoins or not.

So why is it so huge? Why are people using bitcoins instead of the old cash? People are using bitcoins for a lot of different reasons. We think that the number one reason that people are using Bitcoin or are investing in Bitcoin, is that they are fed up with politics and central banks for manipulating the currencies to their disadvantages.

Like for example in Europe. The ECB is doing their best to make the European economy better. With the tools they are using it has some side effect. One of the effect is a low interest rate. Some banks are struggling to make a decent profit. So they lower their cost by firing people and decrease the interest rate. Which means that people are getting less interest on their savings account.

For some people the interest rate that they used to receive for saving their money on the bank went negative. Which means that for every pound that you are saving. You will have to pay the bank to have your money at their bank.

Kinda weird though since most of these banks were saved by your tax money. The ECB is not the only one. Almost all central banks around the world are trying to boost their countries economy. With the side effect of making things more expensive for  the normal people while their money becomes less valuable. And the richer became richer and richer. It’s not fair right? To get justice for the normal hard working citizens, Bitcoin was brought to life. The same applies for other crypto currencies.

Users| Bitcoin $5000

While more people are using Bitcoins to pay. The mainstream public are not using Bitcoins to pay right now at the moment. Because they don’t know what the real value of Bitcoin is.( Because all what the mainstream media does is informing how insane it is that Bitcoin and other crypto currencies became so much worth!). But we think that in time the mainstream public will slowly get to know about what the real value of crypto currencies are. We think that the majority that are using Bitcoins right now are merchants. Why? Because with Bitcoins merchants  can get more advantages if they play it smart. Because with Bitcoins you don’t need anyone to make a transaction. So this means that the merchants doesn’t to have pay a transaction fee to the banks or to any other middleman. This way it will save them money.

And another thing is that merchants have to worry less about the value of the other currencies if they are doing business international. Both parties can just agree upon a fixed Bitcoin price. So you don’t have to worry about that your profit might decrease because the GBP has become too expensive or too cheap in comparison with other currencies.

Bitcoin $5000 USD valuation this year?

With huge growth of start up companies that are active in the crypto currency world. Mainly in Bitcoin and Ethereum, it will be just a matter of time before the mainstream public will start to use Bitcoins and other crypto currencies types. On the short term there are countries like Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Australian, who are planning or looking into legalizing Bitcoin. And with gold rush that big investors and investment funds are having for crypto currencies, we think that there is a good chance that Bitcoin $5000 USD value will happen this year.

Trading Oil

Trading Oil: 3 simple steps to recognise a trading opportunity

Trading Oil

Trading Oil


Hi guys, welcome to today’s blog. In this blog we are going to talk about on how you can recognise a opportunity to  make money on trading oil

Trading Oil Step 1: Recognise the market condition

When you are trading as with many other traders, you would want to maximize your profit. For every dollar that you invest you want gain as much as possible right? In order to do this you will need a broker that gives you leverage or provide you tools such as options or CFDs. Many brokers like Plus500, Instaforex and gives you the opportunity to maximize your profit on every pound you invest. These brokers mentioned gives you the ability to make a trading in oil. Keep in mind that not all brokers gives you the ability to make a trade in oil. So now let’s go to oil.

When you look at the oil chart (above), the first thing you need to do is to determine the current trend of oil. There are three kinds of trends.

Up trend

Up trend is also often called Bullish trend. In a Up trend Oil price goes higher and higher after every small downgrade in prize. You can recognise a up trend by the following: each cycles their top goes higher then the previous cycle. And the bottom of each cycle goes up as well.

Sideways Trend

In this situation each prize cycle doesn’t show much of a price difference each cycle. Therefore its better not trade in this situation because the risk reward ratio is too small.

Down Trend

In a down trend the price cycle of for example oil is going lower after each cycle. For example oil price today is 48 usd. Yesterday it was 52 usd  and the day before yesterday oil price was 56 usd. The down trend is often called as bearish trend.

For more information on trends you can read here: Trend Lines


Trading Oil step 2

The next step in making money with trading oil is recognise a entry point to the trade. For most people this is difficult because they don’t determine the market condition first.  Once you have recognise the market trend. Its very easy to determine the price point for you to invest in the trade. All you need to do is buy at the point when you think the next cycle will start. Often the best point to buy is the ”corners” under normal market condition.

Trading Oil Step 3

In this final step you are going to determine what your exit point (selling pirce) is and decide if it is worth to make a trade. So how to determine your exit point of your trade? Just take a look at the market cycles. For me the best way to exit a trade is by taking my profits before the price reach to a next key turning point( corners). Because if I wait till after the “corner” point then there is a good chance that I will lose my profit because the price trend might change. There is a big chance that it goes into the opposite direction of what I wanted. Therefore it is better take my profit before the price at that key turning point price level.

When you have determine what you entry point ( investing price point level) and what your exit point is. That way you can see what your potential profit is. If the profit potential is too small then don’t trade. And if the potential profit is big then start a trade. Al right guys hope this have helped you a better understanding in trading. If there are any question please post it in the comment section. I will get too it as soon as possible. Have a series of successful trades ladies and gentlemen.



Ethereum: What is it? And why is it getting more popular?



The month June 2017 has been a crazy month for crypto currencies. The ETH went crazy, going in prize massive as Bitcoin did. If you have been watching Ether  for the last few weeks. Then you would have spotted a few really good trading opportunities that would give you a huge profit. So in this blog we are going take a look at Ethereum and Ether. What is Ethereum and why is it getting more popular?

What is Ethereum?

When you look at indices and the main stream news about the Ethereum, you might think that Ethereum is just another alternative crypto currency of Bitcoin. But if you do some more research on Ethereum, you will find out that it is not true. Ethereum is more then just a crypto currency. It is a very big highly advanced innovative platform for programmers and developers. On this platform you can build all kinds of apps such as games, financial app, social networks, basically everything you can imagine off. What makes Ethereum so special is that the platform is build on a decentralize system. Which means that there is no Authority that is holding all the information that is been used to create those apps. This platform was created with the intent that people can build programs that we may or are using every day. So this way there no middle man, and no central server to house that information. Without a central server, there is no main authority to change or shut down these programs without the entire community knowing about it.

Because of this advantage many programmers are hyped to build their apps on Ethereum platform. In order to program apps and run it smootly,you willl need Ether. Ether is like gas for car. Without ether, your app  can not function basically. There is only two ways of getting Ether. One is through mining and the other one is through buying ether on the market.So when you see Ethereum price quote on the markets it is really Ether actually. As the platform can’t be bought.

For a better understanding of Ethereum please watch this video of Vitalik Buterin (inventor of Ethereum) below.


How can I start in Trading Ether?

Speculation on the short term

Right now there is a lot of movement in the price of Ether. If you want to take make a profit on all those price movement. There is a option to speculate on the price of Ether. Ethereum coins are very volatile at the moment. As a trader you can take advantage of that. When the price of Ether goes up then you will automatically make a profit. But did you know that you can also make a profit when the price of Ether goes down? Because this happens all the time. You can make money by going short on Ether with a good online broker. This way you can earn a good profit too.

A really good online broker that gives you the opportunity to trade in Ether is Plus500. At Plus500 you can open a practise account for free in a very simple way. You can use this practise account to explore the opportunities in trading Ether. With the Plus500 software you can invest/trade in Ether with one mouse click. Because of this you can easily take advantage of all kinds of price movement of Ether. Click here to try out trading Ether at Plus500 for free.

Why is Ethereum getting more and more popular?

One of things that I like about the platform is that it gives you the possibility to create your own crypto currency. But there are many other advantages that Ethereum offers to programmers. That’s why this innovative platform is getting more and more popular. Because it is unique in his own kind. The more and more programmers that are choosing Ethereum to build their apps, the more ether will be needed. As the ether mining takes a long time and you need to know the right knowledge. So I think that on the short term the supply of  ether will be smaller then the demand for ether. Which will probably result into a higher  price value for Ether. But in all honesty I think that the recent rally of Ether was because of Bitcoin. Bitcoin went crazy in price value this month. Which surely took many other crypto currency including ether into a up trend at a higher speed. Because many investors doesn’t want to miss their chance like they had on Bitcoin. That’s why many jumped in the other alternative crypto currencies.


After taking a look at Ethereum. I am confident that Ethereum can stay for a very long time. I am not sure if the value of Ether will surpass the value of a Bitcoin. Because you can produce ether unlimited while Bitcoin is limited. However if more and more programmers and developers are going to use this platform then the demand for ether will increase. As you all know if the demand is higher then the supply then price will increase. In this case the price of ether will increase as long the demand is higher then the supply. As far as I know that it takes on average a month to mine 5 ether. Right Bitcoin and Ether are trade and invested in high volumes. If you don’t have the stomach for the dailey huge changes in prices then don’t trade but invest for long term. Keep an eye on our website because from now we will keep an track on Bitcoin and Ether.


making money on stock market

3 Methods for making money on the stock market

Ever wanted to make money whenever and wherever you want? Start trading now and receive a 25 dollar welcome bonus

making money on stock market

Today i am going to share with you my knowledge on making money on stock market.

Making money on stock market: Method 1

The first method on making money on stock market is to invest in stocks for the long term.  like Warren Buffet. Look for a good company and invest for long term. Every time a company performs well and the results are better than expected then the value of the stock of that company will increase. So you will have to do a good research on that the company and the market that they are active in.

When you do a research you have to look at the potential of what a company can be. After all investors invest because they believe they will make a good profit in the future. So when you invest in a company make sure you know exactly what the potential of the company is and know if the current CEO and his/her management team can make this potential come true. As you all probably know, a company can only grow if they have a good CEO with his/her management team.

How to recognise a good management team?

One of the best way to know if the management team  is good, is to check the company’s quarterly results and see if the management team of that company  have achieved their goal or  did they do better than what wall street analyst had  expected. Most companies have we website with a section investor relations. You can find the quarterly results on the investor relations section. Or just google for it.

Now a example of a company that has a clear potential is Starbucks. Starbucks potential is that they can open thousands of store in the future where consumers can enjoy their Starbucks products. So it is easy to understand that the more stores they open, the more money they can make. And thus the value will go up in the future.

A example of a company that doesn’t have a clear potential is Twitter. For me I don’t see or understand what the potential of twitter is. Like all social media, their revenue is relied on ad revenue. To earn more ad revenue, twitter needs more unique users. At this moment I don’t see how twitter is going to create a large base of unique users compare to Facebook and snapchat.


Making money on stock market: Method 2

When you buy a stock, you can buy a dividend stock. A dividend stock gives investors a piece of the company’s profit. In the video How make to make a passive income with dividend, i explain more about this subject.  

Making money on stock market: Method 3

The third method on how to make money stocks is by going short. You probably have heard the term of going short on the market. This one of the few ways of making money when the stock market goes down. Meaning that you can earn a profit when the stock price value goes down.

So how does this work? When you are going short, you are making a deal on contract with a buyer. In this contract you have a deal that the buyer will buy the stocks of you for the current stock price where you have just gone short. So if the price dropped in the future then you are making money. However if the price goes up then you will be losing money. Because when you go short , your broker buys the current stock and hold it for you. So when the stock price goes up , you will have to pay the difference to your broker. This procedure is called margin call.  Each broker have their own margin call policies. In  margin call you have a deal with your broker , that if price goes over % of the stock price value of your short position. Then you have to pay for the difference.

So guys these are the three methods were professional traders, investors make money on the stock market. If you have any questions or remarks, please put it in the comments section. We will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading and good luck with making money on the stock market.

Read more about CFD Trading: How to make money with CFD Trading

2017 stock market

2017 stock market: New hope, New beginning

Start trading now to receive a 25 dollar welcome bonus

2017 stock market

In a few weeks it will be Christmas and after that we will have a new years eve. If we look back at 2016 a lot have happened. But 2017 stock market will be the year that will bring us a lot of new hope. And for some a new beginning (US ,UK, EU). In 2017 there are a lot of elections in Europe. Countries such as the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy will choose their new presidents or prime ministers. These elections might give fear to investors, which will lead the European stock market into a bearish trend.


2017 stock market: Brexit

The prime minister Theresa May is aiming to start article 50 by the end of March 2017. By triggering this Article 50, the Uk can start the procedure and negotiation talks to leave the EU union.

When the Brexit was voted, Juncker was eager to start the negotiation talks as soon as possible. Seemed he was well prepared for that. But I think times have turn a bit to the Uk advantage. Because the UK has already a few companies, that promised to stay after the Brexit. And a few companies like Apple promised to keep on investing and creating jobs in the UK.

The Brexit negotiations talks will have an effect on the European stock markets for sure. Whether it will be negative or positive it is hard to tell. But one thing will be sure is that both parties will do their best to create the best environment for business to go or stay at their place. So in the end the Brexit thing might be the best thing that has happened for businesses.

As a thought I think when the start of the Brexit negotiations talks begins that the markets will react for a short period of time. Because I think that both parties will try the calm down the markets. After all a crashing financial markets looks bad for politicians. And the ECB and BOE won’t stand on the sideline either.


2017 stock market: Donald Trump

On one of my youtube videos, I had predicted that Donald Trump would win the election. Since the win of Trump the stock market has been hitting new all time high records. We are currently in a bullish trend.As long Donald can make his promise come true about the tax reduction and getting rid of some regulations rules for businesses in the current positive economic growth of US, then I don’t see a reason yet of why the bullish trend of the 2017 stock market has to stop.

However the markets will go down as soon Donald’s China teasing takes a serious form. Right now I think that Donald is testing the waters with China to negotiate a better trade deal.


Other things to keep a eye on in 2017 stock market

A few other things to keep an eye on are the Russian 2017 stock market and its currency Russian Rubble. I think both of them will go higher in value in 2017. I think that Putin will succeed in persuading US and Japan in cancelling their economic sanctions against Russia. And more importantly I think that Oil prize will stabilise. Both of these factors will benefit Russia well.

Bitcoin will continue to go in price as well, the reason for this is mainly China. China will continue to face challenges to stabilise their currency Yuan against the US dollar.

facebook stock

Facebook stock is moving into a Bullish Trend

Facebook stock

Hi guys,

Today we are going to take a look on Facebook stock. We are going to look at three things.


Number one:  Facebook stock performance


Number two: How is the company doing in term of business


Number three: How to make money on Facebook stock


Facebook Stock Performance

Facebook stock screen-shot-2016-09-06-at-15-33-49



Facebook stocks have been doing good this year, in comparison to  the general stock market is facing challenges during the year. Facebook stocks remained steadily in a bullish trend. How ever if you look at the table.

You will see that FB stocks are currently moving in range of 123 usd and 126 usd. Which is a pretty small price range movement. And with this movement it indicates that we are in a sideway trend.


How is Facbook doing in term of business?

Facebook mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. So far Facebook has been doing really well to executing that mission. If you take a look at the table then you will that they are succeeding in getting  new people to use their social network platform and getting more people to stay engage and being active on their platform.

Facebook stock active users screen-shot-2016-09-06-at-15-42-29

For example in June their daily active users rose to 1.13 billion active users. That is pretty impressive. If you compare that to the competition like twitter, who are struggling on getting more daily active users.

For Facebook business it’s that the more active users they have , the more advertisers are willing to spend. The more profit can be made which leads into a increasing value of the Facebook stock.

And Facebook is trying to get more users all over the globe and building his presence in the 3th world countries. So that as soon as people have internet they can open a Facebook account. And they are  doing that by offering free internet in those countries.

Recently a rocket exploded at SpaceX. That rocket was supposed to launch a new satellite for Facebook. That satellite was suppose to give internet to area’s where it is difficult to get internet. With this rocket explosion it will probably cause a delay in the plans of Mark Zuckerberg  to get new users for his platforms.

Back the business side. Fb is has increased his revenue in the 2nd quarter with 68%. And if you continue to look at the table then you will see that in overall they increase their revenue and profit.

Facebook stock balance screen-shot-2016-09-06-at-15-42-02



Speculation on the Facebook stock price


Currently Facbook is still in the sideway trend but is slowly moving into a bullish trend. Facebook was moving in the price range of of 123 USD and 126 USD. But recently is has breakthrough the resistance level of 126 USD. But it doesn’t to be a strong push. So let see if Facebook is going towards the close of above 127 USD. Before we can confirm that it is in  a bullish trend. So for right now I am staying on sideline for a bit or i might buy  few CFD’s on Facebook shares. Because those Facebook CFD’s shares gives me a higher profit then with the normal Facebook stocks. For more info trading Facebook CFD’s share click here: Plus500 stocks CFDs. And if you want to know more about Plus500 then check our brokers review.

Plus500 Tutorial - How to use the CFD broker Plus500

Plus500 Tutorial: How to open and close a trade in Plus500


Plus500 Tutorial: How to open and close a trade in Plus500

Opening and closing a trade is simple in Plus500. A trader with a Plus500 account can trade CFDs on Forex, Stocks, Commodities , Options and Indices.

Below I will explain to you how to do this and what the options mean that you see during opening a position.


  1. Finding an instrument that you want to invest in
  2. Difference between short and buy
  3. Stock information screen explained
  4. Short and buy screen explained

Finding an instrument that you want to invest in

  1. Login to your Plus500 account via the webtrader. Create an new account if you haven’t done it yet.
  2. Click on ‘Real Money’.
  3. Login and in the menu at the left side of the page, click on ‘Trade’. Here a list of all tradeable instruments can be seen. Now Plus500 is one of the few online CFD brokers who has that many instruments, so you can trade stocks, commodities, indices and forex from all across the world.
  4. Now for the sake of learning, let’s say you want to trade in the USA stocks  of Apple (iPhone, iPads anyone?). You now go to: Trade -> Shares -> USA -> AN-AW and find Apple in the list. You could also just search for ‘Apple’ in the search field at the top left corner, next to the Plus 500 logo.
  5. Openandclose1When you click on the Apple row, information about that specific stock is displayed on the right. In the next section I will explain to you what this all means.
  6. For now, important to know is what the difference between short and buy is.

Difference between short and buy

In the screenshot above you must have noticed two options: short and buy. For the people who know a bit more about trading, simply put this is the same as going bear and bull. Whereas short is the same as going bear and buy is the same as going bull.

For the people who don’t know what I’m talking about:

Going short means you anticipate that the stock will go down. Let’s say you short a stock at £20 and tomorrow the stock value becomes £15. You will have made a profit of £5.

Buying a stock means you anticipate the exact opposite. You think the stock is going well, so the stock will increase. Let’s say you buy a stock at £20 and tomorrow the stock value becomes £25. Your profit is £5.

Of course these are just examples, if you are using Plus500 you’ll also get leverage and your profit (or loss) will most likely be a lot more.

Stock information screen explained

When you click on an instrument in Plus500 you will be displayed a screen with information about that instrument. Let’s take Apple for example again. Look at the screenshot below. I clicked on Apple and information about that stock is displayed on the right now. Plus500 gives a couple of important information here, which I will explain in detail below.


The first thing you see is the title: Apple (AAPL) this is the stock you selected. Between the brackets the stock symbol is shown. This is the stock acronym that is used worldwide to identify that stock. Sometimes a stock name can be a lot a like, looking for that stock with the unique symbol makes it a lot easier to find that stock.

Next you’ll see pricing information of this stock. The current high and low values are shown here. This is taken right out of the Yahoo! Finance page. You can also see how much the price has changed in percentage in comparison with the opening value of that day. When the stock market is closed, you’ll see the line ‘Trading is closed’.

The line ‘Traded at the Nasdaq Yahoo! Finance’ just tells you where the stock belongs and where you can find it on Yahoo! Finance. Nasdaq the second-largest American stock exchange, usually consists of a lot of technical companies.

Next there are two buttons available. Short and buy and below this the value of the stock that you will short or buy. You see a little difference here. This is called the spread, the spread is what you pay to the broker as a commission. This usually is not a lot, depending on the stock’s popularity and value. Be careful with this, because to profit you need to make more money than you pay in the spread. When opening a stock I suggest you to try it in demo mode, to see how much the spread is exactly.

In the last section there is some more information available. If you don’t see it, click on ‘Info’ to uncollapse this information. I will explain to you the most important information:

Leverage: this is not the same everywhere. Sometimes it is 1:10, but the maximum leverage is 1:30. Leverage is a way to make your money worth more than it is. Let’s say you want to use £100. A leverage of 1:10 means your £100 is worth £100 * 10 = £1000. This means with only £100, you can buy stocks that is worth a £1000. Yes, this means you can make 10 times more profit, but this also means you could lose 10 times faster. This last thing sounds scary, but Plus500 gives us a negative balance protection. This means you cannot lose more than your deposit. This means that if you deposited £100, you can profit from £1 to £99999 (infinite) and only lose a maximum of your deposit £100! In my opinion this is awesome.

A more detailed explanation about CFD stocks and leverage can be found here.

Premium: If you keep a position open overnight, a night premium is added or substracted from your position. This means you pay a small amount of money overnight (or you gain it). This is very low usually, so I don’t pay much attention to it. As you can see Apple’s overnight buy premium is -0.0093% of your position.

Premium time: This is the time that the premium is done. I almost always keep my position open for a night and I have never really noticed premium much.

Maintenance margin: This is important information, because if your position goes below this margin your position will be automatically closed. So to keep your positon open, your current account balance needs to exceed this margin. Thankfully, this isn’t much either. I usually deposit £100 and use that £100 completely in a position and this position can be kept overnight without it autoclosing on me. If you open a position, this margin will also be automatically calculated for you in the top header (look for M. Margin) – so you don’t even have to calculate this yourself.

Expires daily/expiry date: I have never noticed this much. I don’t think this applies to stock, but might apply to something else. Just make sure to check if this is ‘No’.

Trading hours: This is important to know. Plus500 automatically changes this time to your timezone. An American stock is usually open from 9.30 am to 4 pm American time, but the time shown here is in your own time. Which is great and makes it so much easier to time your trades well.

Now you understand the information screen. The next screen to explain is the screen when you want to open a position.

Short and buy screen explained

Now let’s say you want to buy Apple. Click on the Buy button. This is what you will see now:


The short screen has the same information, so I will explain this only once.

The Plus500 short and buy screen is very nicely done with the user in mind. It gives great information and makes it easy to open a trade. The first thing you see is the stock name and symbol. The current value and the percentage of movement since the opening time.

Now to open a position you need to decide how many shares you want to buy. Let’s say here youw ant to buy 5 shares. The value of this 522 dollar, which is the same as 488,59 euro. Plus500 automatically takes the foreign exchange price of your currency and the one the stock is using, which usually are dollars. This is great, you don’t really have to pay much attention to this. Also, because Plus500 is giving you leverage of 1:10 of this stock, you only need 55 dollar to buy 5 shares that is valued 522 dollar. Amazing right?

So really you only need to pay attention to the ‘Required Margin’. This is the amount that will be substracted from your account to use in the position. So not the value, but the required margin. This is important.

Next you have ‘Close at profit’ and ‘Close at loss’. These options give you the ability to let Plus500 automatically close your position when the stock value reaches a certain value that you set. This is great if you don’t have the time to close it yourself and want to let it happen. Also, if you are losing this guarantees a certain loss. So instead of losing your whole position, you only lose what you want. Or the opposite: profit what you want.

Guaranteed stop sets an absolute limit on your potential loss. The position will be closed at the value you specified, even if the market gaps suddenly, your position will be closed at the value you specified.

The advanced section I will explain in a later article.

Below this section, the information I explained earlier is displayed again for your convenience.

When you are ready, just click on the big blue button ‘Buy’ and your position will be opened. This position will be shown in the left menu at ‘Open positions’. Or in the stock list, under the stock itself.

Don’t forget, to truly learn how to trade, you need to try it yourself for a couple of times to be able to get the hang of it. Try it out with small amounts of real money first to feel how you react to profits or losses. This is important to know of yourself prior to trading.

*How to buy and sell bitcoin on Plus500*

*How to buy and sell Ethereum on PLus500*

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The topics below are coming soon:

  • Plus500 trading methods and tactics
  • What are the benefits and disadvantages of Plus500?
  • Important things to know when trading with Plus500