Topic archive
Short answer: this ForexTradeLab archive collects 151 research pages on Education — education and broker mechanics, not live signals.
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A sourced test for people who intend to start forex and are thinking about resigning: what ESMA and AMF loss evidence implies for a salary, why a monthly percentage is not a paycheque, and what to keep in place before any notice letter.
Education 
Elena Vance 10 min reading
Six skills a person who intends to start forex should be able to do on a blank page before any live deposit: name the legal entity, value a pip, compare spread to the stop, size a 1% risk, name the session, and write a journal row.
Education 
Marcus Reed 12 min reading
A practical 2026 definition of forex risk capital for people who intend to start trading: how ‘money you can afford to lose’ differs from emergency funds and income, a separation checklist, sizing examples, and red flags that you are funding with the wrong money.
Education Elena Vance 9 min reading
What a forex/CFD broker appropriateness assessment is under FCA COBS 10 / MiFID-style rules: why you face a knowledge quiz before funding, what firms must check, what happens if you fail, and how intending traders should prepare honestly.
Trust Marcus Reed 10 min reading
The terminal prints profit in the deposit currency. The trade itself is settled in the quote currency first. That is why a pip calculator and the MetaTrader column disagree on USD/JPY, EUR/GBP and any account that is not US dollars.
Education Marcus Reed 11 min reading
Why funded traders fail prop firm challenges while still in profit: exact dollar math comparing Balance-Based vs Equity-Based Daily Drawdown, Static vs Intraday Trailing High-Water Mark (HWM) drawdown, and how holding floating profit across 00:00 server rollover can breach your account at breakeven.
Risk Management Elena Vance 12 min reading
A forensic guide to the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 Journal tab: how to read millisecond order-to-fill timestamps, what 'Off quotes', 'Requote', 'Invalid stops' (Error 130/10016), and 'Trade is disabled' actually mean, and how to prove whether an execution failure came from local network ping or the broker book.
Trading Platforms 
James Okonkwo 14 min reading
Why spot forex and XAU/USD charge three days of swap on Wednesday at 17:00 New York, why USD/CAD and USD/TRY roll on Thursday instead, how to verify 3-Days Swap in MT4/MT5 Contract Specifications, and how to avoid the 00:00 server rollover spread trap.
Education James Okonkwo 14 min reading
A practical 2026 guide to Stephen Jen and Fatih Yilmaz's dollar smile: why the US dollar can rise in a global funding squeeze and when the US is clearly leading, why the middle often softens it, and how retail traders should label the regime before they size a trade.
Education Marcus Reed 12 min reading
Official 2026 dollar pegs for the Saudi riyal, UAE dirham, Qatari riyal, Bahraini dinar and Omani rial, why the Kuwaiti dinar is a basket instead, and a worked example showing why a long gold CFD does not hedge a pegged Gulf salary.
Education Marcus Reed 15 min reading
A practical 2026 guide to pips, pipettes and MetaTrader points: why a spread of 12 is usually 1.2 pips, why a 20-point stop is only 2 pips on five-digit quotes, and how to set the distance you actually meant.
Education Elena Vance 12 min reading
A 2026 city clock for forex: convert the London–New York overlap into local time for Dubai, Riyadh, Lagos, Mumbai, Jakarta, Singapore, São Paulo and other major cities, including the October clock-change week.
Education Elena Vance 12 min reading
A 2026 one-page journal for FOMC and ECB days: write the priced path first, score action, path and risk-balance separately, and stop calling a modal hold an edge — with official June 2026 FOMC minutes and the September 2026 Fed and ECB teaching files.
Education Elena Vance 7 min reading
A 2026 guide to FOMC SEP fan charts: Table 2 RMSE bands, why plus-or-minus one error is about 70 percent coverage, why that band is not a take-profit, and how it differs from the dot-plot range — using the official 16 September 2026 tables.
Education Elena Vance 7 min reading
A 2026 field guide to the ECB’s three clocks: the 14:15 decision, the 14:45 press conference, and the later documents — what each object is, why Q&A can refuse a path the hike already printed, and how to read the 10 September 2026 package without treating the first EUR wick as a signal.
Education Elena Vance 8 min reading
A 2026 field guide to the FOMC dot plot: what one dot is, why the median is not a committee vote, how to read range versus central tendency, and how to diff the September 2026 SEP against June — with official Federal Reserve tables, not a USD trade.
Education Elena Vance 14 min reading
Adverts promise systems that watch the market around the clock, remove emotion and trade while you sleep. Some of that is true. This plain-English guide sets out what retail AI trading bots can and cannot do with your money, the cost lines that are easy to miss — spreads, overnight financing and slippage — and how to test one without putting more at risk than you intended. No provider is recommended.
Education Elena Vance 5 min reading
A 2026 field guide to hawkish versus dovish central-bank language: what the words actually signal, why a rate hold can still move FX, how to separate surprise from the decision, and a five-line statement checklist — with Fed, ECB and BIS sources.
Education Elena Vance 12 min reading
A 2026 working guide to Fibonacci retracement on forex majors: how the ratios are calculated, how to pick the swing, which levels traders actually watch, why most charts are cluttered, and why Fib is a confluence tool — not a law of price.
Education Elena Vance 9 min reading
A 2026 clock-change playbook for forex: 2026 US and UK DST dates, the March and October mismatch weeks, how London–New York overlap moves in UTC, why NFP’s local hour jumps, and a conversion checklist that stops last year’s screenshot from wrecking fills.
Education Elena Vance 10 min reading
A 2026 education guide to the London 16:00 UK WMR FX fix: the five-minute calculation window, why month-end and quarter-end flow concentrates there, how UK time maps to UTC, and why a spike on a retail chart is not a signal.
Education Marcus Reed 13 min reading
A 2026 working guide to Bollinger Bands on forex: the 20-period, 2-standard-deviation default, why tags are not signals, how BandWidth marks a squeeze, how price walks the band in a trend, and how to size risk when volatility expands.
Education Elena Vance 15 min reading
A 2026 decision guide to false breakouts in forex: why wicks through a level are not breakouts, why OTC markets have no exchange volume to ‘confirm’, how a held retest differs from a failed break, and how to size the fade without guessing.
Education Elena Vance 12 min reading
A diagnostic 2026 guide to stop-loss fills that miss your price: bid vs ask, gaps, news spread, stop-limit non-fills, stop-out versus SL, and Invalid Stops — with a bid/ask diagram and a five-cause checklist.
Risk Guide Elena Vance 7 min reading