Forex Chart

A forex chart allows a trader to view historical currency exchange rates. Most forex brokers will provide free forex charting software for clients who have open and funded trading accounts. Forex charts, like those available for other securities, present information useful for the technical analysis of a currency pair.

Forex charts are essential tools for forex traders who wish to use technical analysis to determine where to invest their funds. Technical analysis is the review of past market prices and technical indicators to predict the future, short-term movements of an investment. These technicians believe that short-term price movements are the result of supply and demand forces in the market for a given security. Thus, for technicians, the fundamentals of the asset are less relevant than the current balance of buyers and sellers.

Forex charts will have customizable settings for technical indicators, such as price, volume, and open interest. Active traders commonly use these indicators since they are designed to analyze short-term price movements.

There are two basic types of technical indicators:

1. Overlays - These indicators do just what the name implies. They may use the same scale as prices and plot over the top of the prices on a stock chart. Examples include moving averages and Bollinger Bands®.
2. Oscillators - Technical indicators which oscillate, or change, between a local minimum and maximum, and will plot, or display, above or below a price chart. Examples include the MACD or RSI.

Most charting software will have many types of technical indicators from which to choose. So, with thousands of options, a trader must select the ones that work best for them. Also, these indicators can, in most cases, become part of an automated trading system.

Forex charting software may also be available from a broker through the use of a demo or trial account. It is advisable that new traders experiment with a couple of different brokers and chart offerings before deciding where to open their account.

Traders and investors have engaged in technical analysis of investments as long as there has been capitalism, but no person did more to popularize it than Charles Dow, the American journalist and founder of the Dow Jones Company, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Wall Street Journal.

Dow published hundreds of editorials in the Wall Street Journal, many of which espoused his theories on the technical analysis of equity price movements. Today, many forex traders follow his theories as they trade in the foreign exchange market (FX).

Dow theory, as codified by his successors at the Wall Street Journal, is composed of six tenets, which argue that asset prices move based on trends that result from the dissemination of new information. Dow theory values the study of trading volume in understanding the underlying dynamics of a market, and forex traders who heed its advice will usually discount changes in exchange rates that result from a low volume of trades.