Library
55 explainers, organised by topic. Start with The Basics if you're new.
A forex signal is a trade suggestion: a currency pair, a direction, an entry price, and exit levels. What a signal looks like, who sends them, why people pay for them, and what regulators warn about.
Read the explainer →A line-by-line guide to reading a forex signal, with a worked example in pips and dollars, the effect of the spread, and the details signals usually leave out.
Read the explainer →How pip values work for major and yen pairs, what standard, mini and micro lots are, and how to convert any forex signal's stop loss into dollars and a position size.
Read the explainer →The difference between signals written by people and signals generated by software, and between alerts you act on and trades executed for you, with the costs, delays and legal lines involved.
Read the explainer →How free and paid forex signal services are funded, illustrative pricing ranges, the arithmetic of subscription fees against small accounts, and the hidden costs of free signals.
Read the explainer →How forex signal services earn: subscriptions, per-lot introducing-broker rebates and affiliate commissions, with worked numbers and what regulators say about the conflicts.
Read the explainer →Signals you act on vs copy-trading platforms that mirror another trader's positions: allocation methods, fees, worked numbers and how regulators classify each.
Read the explainer →How chart-based and news-based forex signals are produced, what the research says about each, a worked example of news risk, and the limits neither kind of signal can get around.
Read the explainer →What counts as evidence that a forex signal provider's results are real, what a 'verified' badge can and can't prove, and how deposits, demo accounts and multiple accounts distort a record.
Read the explainer →The warning signs regulators keep seeing in forex signal and trading schemes: promised returns, urgency, private chats, 'account managers', offshore platforms, crypto-only payment and recovery scams.
Read the explainer →A high win rate says nothing about profit on its own. How expectancy works, the break-even win rate for any risk-reward ratio, and why martingale systems win almost every time until they don't.
Read the explainer →What maximum drawdown measures, why a 50% loss needs a 100% gain to recover, how often losing streaks happen, and how position size drives the risk of ruin, with worked numbers.
Read the explainer →Why backtested forex results almost always beat live ones: overfitting, look-ahead bias, missing costs and demo fills, with the research and a worked example of costs flipping a result.
Read the explainer →Why the signal providers and copy-trading leaders you see are a filtered sample, what research on survivorship bias found, and a simulation of a zero-skill leaderboard.
Read the explainer →A practical checklist of questions to put to any forex signal seller, covering track record, risk, costs, conflicts, registration and execution, with what good and bad answers look like.
Read the explainer →How copy trading platforms mirror a leader's trades into your account, the three common allocation methods, what fees really cost, and why EU and UK regulators treat it as portfolio management.
Read the explainer →What a MetaTrader Expert Advisor is, how it reacts to ticks and sends orders, why it needs a running terminal or VPS, and the failure modes behind most EA losses, with worked numbers.
Read the explainer →A plain look at forex trading bots: what automation genuinely does well, the compounding math behind bot advertising, the CFTC cases built on fake bots, and how to test any bot claim.
Read the explainer →How forex signal groups on Telegram and Discord are structured, how admins earn from broker referrals rather than results, why posted results mislead, and the scams that run through these chats.
Read the explainer →Why copy-trading followers and signal subscribers fill at worse prices than the trader they copy, how latency turns into pips and dollars, and how much of a strategy's edge slippage can consume.
Read the explainer →What usually sits behind AI forex signals and bots, the SEC and CFTC AI-washing and fraud cases, what real machine learning in trading looks like, and how noise can pass for AI.
Read the explainer →The real risks of trading forex signals: leverage, price gaps, weekend risk, the provider you are trusting, and the broker on the other side of your trade, with worked numbers.
Read the explainer →How forex margin and leverage work, with worked examples of margin, margin calls and stop-outs, plus the US 50:1 and 20:1 limits and Canada's CIRO margin rates.
Read the explainer →What regulators' mandatory loss disclosures, US dealer data and academic research show about retail forex and CFD traders, and the mechanics behind the losses.
Read the explainer →How retail forex brokers handle your trades, what A-book and B-book mean, what public filings and a CFTC order reveal, and why a broker can profit from your losses.
Read the explainer →Real CFTC cases against forex signal sellers, Instagram traders, 'trading clubs' and forex pools: what they promised, what regulators found, and the outcomes.
Read the explainer →Most US forex signal sellers are not registered, and often don't have to be. How the CFTC, NFA, the publication exemption and Lowe v. SEC draw the line, and what still protects you.
Read the explainer →Who regulates forex in Canada: provincial securities commissions, CIRO, the National Registration Search, the general advice exemption for signal sellers, and offshore broker warnings.
Read the explainer →How the IRS taxes retail forex: Section 988 ordinary treatment, the capital gain election and its same-day timing, Section 1256 60/40, Form 6781, and worked examples for 2026.
Read the explainer →How the CRA taxes forex trading: capital vs business income, IT-95R and the speculator position, converting US-dollar results, the $200 rule, Quebec, and worked examples.
Read the explainer →Why forex signal groups steer US and Canadian traders to offshore brokers, what the leverage and bonuses really cost, and which protections you lose by leaving a registered dealer.
Read the explainer →How to test whether a signal provider's results reflect skill or luck, using t-statistics, the Sharpe ratio standard error from Lo (2002), and worked numbers.
Read the explainer →How fixed fractional sizing and the Kelly criterion work, what Kelly, Thorp and MacLean, Thorp and Ziemba proved, and simulations of full vs half Kelly growth and drawdowns.
Read the explainer →How Monte Carlo resampling of a trade record works, shuffle vs bootstrap vs block bootstrap, and a worked 20,000-path simulation of drawdowns, losing streaks and loss odds.
Read the explainer →Why the best of many backtests looks skilled by chance, how White's Reality Check, Harvey and Liu's haircuts and the Deflated Sharpe Ratio correct for it, with worked simulations.
Read the explainer →The maths of doubling-down and grid trading in forex: why the expected value is zero before costs, how margin limits and spreads change it, and simulations of ruin.
Read the explainer →How retail forex costs are built, what the research says about them, and a worked example showing why a high-frequency signal can lose more than the account to costs in a year.
Read the explainer →How the currency carry trade earns the interest gap between currencies, what Brunnermeier, Lustig, Burnside and others found, and a worked crash scenario on Fed data.
Read the explainer →What the academic record says about moving-average and filter rules in currencies, why their profits faded after 1990, and a net-of-cost test on Federal Reserve H.10 data.
Read the explainer →How the $9.5 trillion-a-day FX market is organised: dealer banks, EBS and LSEG Matching, multi-dealer platforms, internalisation, prime brokerage, and where retail flow sits, from BIS data.
Read the explainer →What last look is, why FX liquidity providers use it, what Principle 17 of the FX Global Code requires, how the NYDFS Barclays case defined abuse, and what a hold time costs.
Read the explainer →How bank traders used chat rooms to move the WM/Reuters 4pm fix, what the FCA, CFTC, DOJ and Fed found in 2014 and 2015, the fines, the trials, and the benchmark reforms that followed.
Read the explainer →How retail FX and CFD brokers manage client risk: natural offsetting, external hedging and net exposure, what IG, CMC, Plus500 and GAIN disclose, regulators' findings, and a worked P&L model.
Read the explainer →How the SNB's removal of the EUR/CHF 1.20 floor on January 15, 2015 gapped through stop losses, left FXCM clients owing $275 million, sank Alpari UK, and changed margin rules.
Read the explainer →Who writes bank FX research, how it is paid for after MiFID II unbundling, which US conflict rules apply, how forecasts compare with forwards, and why a bank trade idea is not a signal.
Read the explainer →How FX prime brokers lend their name and credit so clients can trade with many dealers, how give-ups and designation limits work, the credit arithmetic, and the 2015 retreat to prime-of-prime.
Read the explainer →How institutions execute large currency orders: risk transfer vs algorithms vs fixing orders, the execution trilemma, TCA benchmarks, the 4pm fix window, and FX Global Code disclosure rules.
Read the explainer →Drawdown is the fall in an account's value from a peak to a later low. How to calculate maximum drawdown, why recovery takes a bigger gain, and what it says about a signal service.
Read the explainer →Lot size is the amount of currency in a forex trade: standard (100,000), mini (10,000) or micro (1,000) units. How lot size sets your pip value, margin and dollar risk.
Read the explainer →A pip is the standard unit for measuring a currency price move, usually 0.0001, or 0.01 for yen pairs. How pips work, what one is worth in dollars, and why signals quote them.
Read the explainer →Slippage is the difference between the price you expected and the price your order filled at. Why it happens, what it costs on a stop loss, and why signal followers often get more of it.
Read the explainer →The spread is the gap between the bid and ask price of a currency pair, and the main cost of most retail forex trades. How to measure it, what it costs, and when it widens.
Read the explainer →The risk-reward ratio compares how much a trade risks with how much it aims to make. How to calculate it, the win rate each ratio needs to break even, and its limits.
Read the explainer →A stop loss is an order that closes a trade once the price moves a set distance against you. How it works in a forex signal, how to size around it, and why it can fill worse.
Read the explainer →A take profit is an order that closes a trade automatically once it reaches a set gain. How take-profit levels work in forex signals and why the target affects your win rate.
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