How to Start Forex Trading in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

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Due to its strict confidentiality and tax laws, St. Vincent and Grenadines (SVG) can seem like an ideal place to trade the forex market. The country is known around the world as a beacon of confidentiality, and this includes the largely unregulated online forex brokers that do business within its borders. The Confidential Relationships Preservation (International Finance) Act of 1996 protects the financial and personal information of brokers. There are no restrictions on trading profits and no audit or record publication requirements, making Forex trading in St. Vincent and Grenadines desirable.

Also, nonresidents who operate businesses in SVG do not have to pay taxes there. However, this lax environment facilitated fraudulent activity on behalf of a number of unscrupulous forex brokers based there in the past, so you may be better off using a well-regulated forex broker based elsewhere to trade currencies.

If you are considering a forex broker based in SVG, be aware that the Financial Services Authority of St. Vincent and the Grenadines states specifically on its website that it does not “regulate, monitor, supervise or license” forex brokers. It does, however, issue alerts and guidance on possible frauds. It’s a good idea to trade cautiously with an SVG-based forex company.

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Disclosure: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

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Get Started with Forex in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

What Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lack in regulation, it makes up for in opportunity. No government regulation on trading activity means local brokers can offer high leverage in margin accounts which means you can make high-risk/high-reward trades in the forex market. You can also trade binary options from SVG. Follow the steps below to prepare yourself before you start trading forex.  

1. Make Sure You Have a Solid Internet Connection

Check that your connection has enough bandwidth to support your trading activities, including your broker’s website, trading platform, news feeds and charts.

2. Choose the Right Forex Broker

The SVG government does not regulate or license a forex brokerage in any way, shape or form. Any broker claiming a license from St. Vincent and the Grenadines is not to be trusted and therefore likely fraudulent, so avoid that entirely. Instead, find a foreign broker regulated by 1 or more reputable financial authorities to help protect your margin deposit from fraud.

3. Open a Trading Account

Most online brokers have a few account types with differing initial deposit requirements and trading perks provided. Choose an account type that makes the most sense for your needs and apply to open an account via the broker’s website.

4. Fund Your Account

Once you’ve found a reputable broker, you’ll tap into a variety of ways to fund a trading account. Use a debit card, bank account wire transfer or an electronic payment service like Skrill or PayPal.  

5. Choose a Trading Platform

Many forex brokers offer their proprietary trading platform or allow you to connect to a popular 3rd-party platform like MetaTrader or NinjaTrader. If you have no experience with trading platforms, most forex brokers let you open a demo account so you can evaluate their trading platform before funding a live account.

6. Make Your First Trade

After you’ve completed these steps and done some trading in your broker’s demo account, you’re ready to make a live forex trade. Read the next section to get a sense of what sort of trading strategy you will be using to make trading decisions. 

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Forex Trading Strategies

Learning to trade forex means taking a hard look at your trading personality and using a trading strategy best suited to it. Here are some of the more common trading strategy types that successful forex traders use. 

Day Traders

Day traders adhere to one basic rule: Close out all trading positions before the end of the trading session or “day.” Since the forex market operates 24 hours during the trading week, day traders generally pick a particular session for their “day.” Forex trading sessions consist of the New York, London and Tokyo sessions, which generally correspond to business hours within those major money centers that professional forex traders operate from. Day traders often watch for the latest news releases that pertain to a currency pair, as well as trading based on chart patterns and short-term technical indicators that signal when to initiate and close out positions.  

Swing Traders

Swing traders, also known as momentum traders, usually stay in trades from a few hours to several weeks, depending on the market, so they often take overnight positions. The swing trader aims to capture a significant move in a currency pair, whether with the prevailing trend or against it, by using momentum technical indicators that signal when a market is primed for a reversal. Swing traders’ positions can be affected by news and economic data releases, so swing traders may pay close attention to such fundamental factors that can move markets.

Position Traders

The position or trend trader patiently waits for the right opportunity to enter a market showing a directional bias and may hold a position in a currency pair for months at a time. This type of trader has a keen sense of  the political and economic reasons behind a currency’s relative value and looks for long-term corrections on undervalued or overvalued currencies. The position trader may hold a position for as long as it takes for the long-term trend in the currency pair they’re trading to play out, and they often use trailing stops to protect their profits in case of a significant market reversal. 

Forex Trading Example in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Like several other Caribbean countries that are members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), St. Vincent and the Grenadines use the East Caribbean dollar (code XCD, symbol $). Still, forex traders in SVG will typically want to operate in pairs involving more actively traded currencies like the EUR, USD, JPY or GBP. 

As an example, the USD/JPY bid/ask spread is 106.12/15 at your online broker, and you expect the pair’s exchange rate to rise. You place an order to buy $100,000 versus the Japanese yen at 106.15. Your online broker allows you to use a leverage ratio of 100 to 1 in that currency pair, so you can control a $100,000 position with only $1,000 deposited in your margin account. 

After 10 hours, the USD/JPY exchange rate now trades at 106.30/33 and you decide to close out your position at 106.33 for 15 pips profit. That trade will net you ($100,000 x 0.15) or 15,000 JPY or $141.07.  Had the market instead fallen 15 pips, you would have lost the same amount of yen. 

Making Money with Forex in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Now that you have a better sense of what type of trading strategy type fits your personality best, you can decide what tools you want to use on a day-to-day basis in the forex market. Here are some of the important strategies and alternative forex trading vehicles you should know about:

• Going short: Whenever a trader takes a net position in the forex market, they are always going short either the base currency or the counter currency, while buying the other currency. For example, if you start without a position in the USD/JPY currency pair and you want to “go short” the U.S. dollar because you think it will decline in value relative to the Japanese yen, you would sell the dollar as the base currency and buy the Japanese yen as the counter currency. 
• CFDs: Contracts for difference allow a trader to take a position in a currency pair without trading in the underlying spot market. The exchange rate quoted on a currency pair CFD will generally mirror that prevailing in the spot market. Be sure to work with CFD forex brokers to trade this strategy.
• Binary options: These exotic derivatives give the holder a chance to win a specific payout from the seller when a certain market condition is met prior to or at expiration in return for paying a fixed upfront premium. If your view was right, then you get the predetermined payout from the binary. If not, then you lose the fixed amount you put up to hold it.  

Best Online Forex Brokers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Although FX brokers are not licensed directly through a regulator in SVG, there are plenty of online brokers based elsewhere that are willing to do business with forex traders residing in the country. Make sure you choose a well-regulated one to help protect your margin deposit from scams. 

Forex Terminology

Learning the short list of forex terms below will help you communicate more efficiently with other forex traders and understand strategies more deeply:

• Pip: “Percentage in point,” the pip is the minimum exchange rate movement for a particular currency pair, typically 0.0001 for most currency pairs. 
• Lot size: A standard trading amount. A regular forex lot at most online brokers consists of 100,000 base currency units, while a mini lot is 10,000 units and a micro lot is 1,000 base currency units. 
• Orders: Instructions you give to your broker that detail the trade you wish the broker to execute in the forex market for you. 
• Calls: An option contract that traders can buy giving them the right but not the obligation to purchase a certain amount of one currency against another at a particular exchange rate on or before a specific date.  

Trade Forex from St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Trading forex in St. Vincent and the Grenadines seems ideal for traders who want a tax haven and an unregulated forex market to operate in. Most traders will want to choose a regulated foreign broker to operate through to help protect their margin deposit from scams. 

Trading in the forex market requires discipline, knowing yourself, and above all, an easy-to-follow trading strategy. If you don’t have a trading plan or if you’ve had difficulty developing one, you can opt for a broker that offers a social trading network that lets you copy a successful trader’s trades into your own account.  

Success in forex trading comes from knowing the market and how to trade it profitably. News and information can protect you from losses and help you strategize a winning plan for your forex trading career.

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