By Wanfeng Zhou

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. dollar rose against the Swiss franc Wednesday as traders reported the Swiss National Bank was intervening in the market by selling the Swiss currency for dollars and euros.

The dollar was the biggest beneficiary of the intervention reports; the SNB declined to comment.

Investors were beginning to turn their attention to the policy statement from the Federal Reserve due out at the close of the two-day meeting of its Federal Open Market Committee, at about 2:15 p.m. (1815 GMT).

“It has been a roller-coaster ride in the U.S. dollar this morning,” said Kathy Lien, director of currency research at GFT Forex in New York. “Everyone is going to be focused on the FOMC rate decision and how much the central bank talks about exit strategies.”

The Fed is widely expected to leave the benchmark federal funds rate at almost zero percent. Investors will focus on what the U.S. central bank says about the economic outlook and its debt-buying program.

The reported FX intervention by the Swiss National Bank drove both the Swiss franc and the euro lower earlier in the session, said Vassili Serebriakov, currency strategist at Wells Fargo ( WFC – news – people ) in New York.

“We do think that the Swiss National Bank will remain alert to those deflation risks in the near-term and are likely to maintain the current stance of preventing significant strength in the Swiss franc,” he said.

The dollar hit a session high of 1.0910 francs from around 1.0660 francs, before the intervention reports emerged on electronic trading platform EBS. In midday trading, the dollar was up 1.6 percent at 1.0841 francs.

Traders cited the SNB buying dollars around 1.0880 francs. Earlier, market players cited the Bank for International Settlements buying euros on behalf of the SNB around 1.5125 francs, after it had been seen in the market at around 1.5010/15 francs. The BIS declined to comment.

The euro rose as high as 1.5288 francs , its highest level in more than two months, from around 1.5010 francs before the intervention talk. It was last at 1.5210, up 1.3 percent.

U.S. data released on Wednesday painted a mixed picture of the economy. New orders for long-lasting manufactured goods jumped unexpectedly by 1.8 percent in May, providing further evidence that the battered U.S. economy was finding its feet.

A separate report, however, showed sales of new U.S. single-family homes slipped slightly in May, underscoring that conditions in the hard-hit housing market remain fragile.

The euro last traded down 0.4 percent at $1.4026, while the dollar was up 0.2 percent at 95.42 yen

The ICE Futures U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback versus a basket of major currencies, rose 0.2 percent to 79.995 .

The euro had earlier come under pressure after the ECB allotted a higher-than-expected 442 billion euros ($613 billion) in funds at a flat rate of 1 percent

“Today’s 12-month ECB auction further blurs the boundary between the ECB’s monetary expansion strategy and quantitative easing,” said Lena Komileva, head of G7 market economics at Tullett Prebon.

Despite modest gains in the dollar, Wells Fargo’s Serebriakov said sentiment on the greenback remains jittery ahead of the FOMC rate outcome.

“The risks are skewed towards the Fed making a stronger commitment to keep rates low for an extended period of time,” he said. “That makes the dollar vulnerable and we could see a weaker dollar should that scenario play out.” (Additional reporting by Jessica Mortimer in London and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Nick Olivari in New York; editing by Leslie Adler)

This means that Japan would be open when you’re in bed. Sometimes this can get confusing, but you should be able to figure this out.

Here are the open and close times in EST (Eastern Standard Time):

Tokyo: 7pm – 4am
London: 3am – 12pm
US: 8am – 5pm

I thought I’d just list the major ones because you should be able to recognize that the Canadian dollar would trade on the same time frame as the US dollar. You should also recognize that the Australian dollar trades somewhere around the Tokyo time. This makes it easier to recognize when to trade.

You’ll also take notice from this that there is over lapping times when currencies are open. Europe and Asia will over lap at a specific time, just as North American and Europe. These over laps are the busiest times because of volume. You’ll probably see more movement at these times.

Now that you know how to trade, you’ll know when to trade now. Good luck and I hope you make great profits.

As you can see here, this is a close up view of a red and green block on a candlestick graph and I have broke down exactly what each element means to you.

The body is signifies the difference between open and close. If it is green than it has gone up in value since the open and if it is red it has gone down in value. These are the two easiest things for people to understand, but everyone has an issue with the black thing sticking out of the top and bottom.

That black thing is known as the shadow. It is a way of signifying the activity of buyers and sellers of forex. Basically a long shadow shows that there was huge fluctuations in the price that was being offered in trades and a short signifies that things stuck mainly around the opening price.

If you want to think of it another way, it signifies the battle between the sellers price and what buyers want to pay. Obviously there is a difference (if you follow markets), but sometimes the differences can create pretty wide spreads. Knowing about these spreads can be seen through a simple candlestick graph and you obviously need to know how to read it.

Try Things With Minimal Risk – Just To See

You’re going to have to try things (of course at minimal risk to your money) just to see what will happen. You’ll be surprised how you’ll get a bite of profit. I think this is the most logical thing you can do. If doing something leads to profit, than you should continue to do it. You have to do what works for you and that is how you lead to profits.

That’s why you try things out to end up learning what works. As you do this over time you’ll start to learn what works and what doesn’t. You’ll add more working strategies into your daily routine and you’ll continuously increase your over all profits.

Reevaluate, Ever So Often, How Things Are Working

There always needs to be some sort of measurement of what you’re doing. If your goal is to lose weight, but you never get on a scale or get out the measuring tape, than how do you know if you’re really doing the right thing. I know profits should be enough of a measurement, but they’re not always in this case.

Since there is many different things you can implement for profit you can get caught up in the total income you’re taking in. One method of profiting can pose a lot less risk and more money per hour, than another method. And I think that is what you need to realize.

Obviously you want to make the safest amount of profit for your time. The more time you have to invest and the amount of money you have to risk, should constitute toward something that might not be the best (even though you profit). Meaning, if you have to watch your trades like a hawk, invest a large sum of money and turn a small profit, than you should be evaluating whether this is good.

Stop Losses

This is important. Making money is one part of the equation, but how do you control yourself from losing all your money. If you make a trade that goes down in value, when you do you cut your losses or do you hold onto it until it goes back up. Most new players don’t understand this question.

Things are going to fluctuate and things won’t go the way you want them too. That’s life. I always set a stop loss point before I even make a trade. There is a point that everyone doesn’t want to loose anymore money. In the heat of the moment, you can’t make an objective decision, so make the decision before you make the trade. Always know how low it can go before you sell.

That’s a very important forex trading secret. It’s more important to learn how to protect your money, than increase it.

Make Moves

I get it. When you’re new, you want to take it slow. You want to analyze every little thing a hundred times until you know it’s a sure thing. Well, you can’t. There is risk involved and there is no guarantees that you’re going to get anywhere with a trade. You can analyze something to death, but eventually you’re going to have to make a move.

You need to be able to determine when you’re doing an analysis to find out if a trade is good, or if your analyzing for the sake of not making a move.

An important forex trading secret is to make a move, when you know there is a move to be made.

Trends are always good because it’s as easy as your job can get. It’s pretty easy to determine direction and what you need to do to profit. You just have to make sure that you break away from such traders before the trend ends.

Here is a simple rule that I follow, in a bullish market, I try to buy when the price reaches the ascending trend line. If the price actually breaks through the trend line, I will stop. It’s a really easy rule to follow and you get to make a relatively easy profit with it.

You’ll see more than one trend line on a graph. You’ll have the main one and you’ll also have secondary ones. Always look at the bigger graphs for the primary trends because looking at a graph for an hour isn’t going to tell you much. It’s going to be all over the place, but the trend is what will count.

Hope this helps.

I believe in doing this objectively for one reason – in the heat of the moment, it’s hard to be objective. There are people out there that will watch a trade like a hawk. When it gets down to a point where they should sell, they end up holding onto it because they feel it will go back up and they don’t have to lose quite as much. The idea is that they think the trade might have bottomed and it would be stupid to sell at that point.

It’s basically a rough road to go down because it’s hard to say. It’s really an unknown because you can’t guarantee any direction when it comes to Forex. When I’m about to make a trade, I decide right before I make the trade on a stop loss point. This is about objective as it can get. I don’t “own” the trade yet, so I have no reason to have a bias. This is the best way to do things.

I predict sometime in the mid-to-late 2009 that we’ll come out of this economic downturn and when that happens oil will spike again. It sort of sucks, but OPEC wants oil at around $100/barrel. I guess they get that number from political manipulations rather than smarts. I don’t think they understand that when gas is above $3 or $4/gallon it starts to get profitable for alternative forms of energy.

Anyway,

When the economy start making it’s rebound and places like China and India start heavily back into the oil, prices are going to sky rocket, and that means the Canadian dollar will be on a huge rise. Depending on where you’re money is at, that could mean earning 30-40% return.

Check it out here.

Well, maybe we’ll see some more fun from the Canadian dollar soon enough.