Fusion Markets

What is Ethereum?  

You may have heard of Ethereum being compared to Bitcoin, but Ethereum isn’t actually the digital currency itself. Instead, Ethereum is the technology that can run various financial services like payment systems, identity software, security programs, and of course, cryptocurrency trading.  

But how does this technology work?  

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum also uses blockchain technology, but there are quite a few differences on the deeper, more technical side. Blockchain technology is the foundation that supports all of Ethereum’s services.  

The biggest feature of Ethereum is that it is a programmable blockchain. This means that you’re free to use the technology according to your own needs. Whether you need it for payments, software, or even Bitcoin, you’re free to do that!  

Some of the world’s biggest companies are using blockchain in various ways, which shows how flexible the technology is. BMW, the renowned automaker, is using the Ethereum blockchain to track materials across its supply chain.  

De Beers, the biggest diamond mining company globally, is using the Ethereum blockchain to track diamonds from mining to selling. HSBC is also using the blockchain to conduct foreign exchange trades on its FX Everywhere platform.  

The blockchain can be used on just about any technology that requires information to be logged and verified.   

But if you’re here reading this article, you’re probably more interested in investing in cryptocurrency or buying cryptocurrencies. That would be ETH or Ether.  

What is the difference between Ether and Ethereum?  

If Ethereum is the technology, then Ether is the cryptocurrency that runs on that technology. However, for most people, “Ethereum” and “Ether” are used interchangeably to refer to the digital currency instead of the technology.  

The shorthand for Ether is ETH, and just like Bitcoin, ETH is a form of decentralised finance or “defi.”  

This means that the digital currency is not centrally regulated by one authority. Instead, all the computers on the blockchain do the work of validating each and every transaction on the network.  

Ether is up there with Bitcoin as one of the most highly traded cryptocurrencies globally, along with Ripple XRP and Litecoin and others available on Fusion Markets’ platforms.   

The benefits of trading Ethereum  

As with any digital currency, the biggest benefit of trading Ethereum is the lack of centralised regulation because of blockchain technology. This means that making fraudulent transactions on the network is extremely difficult and almost impossible.  

However, one thing that makes Ether different from Bitcoin is that the supply of Eth is limitless.  

Let’s break it down a little bit.  

The way Bitcoin works is people are constantly “mining” for Bitcoin. However, there is a predefined limit for the amount of Bitcoin that can ever be in circulation. Once all the available Bitcoin has been mined, that’s all the Bitcoin that will ever circulate.  

The Bitcoin mining rate slows down over time, so the prediction is that the last Bitcoin will be mined at around 2140. That’s over a hundred years from now, but it’s still a definite time that will arrive.  

For most people, the problem with the limited supply of Bitcoin is that it can create issues like high inflation levels in the future.  

The supply of Ether does not have the same limitations that Bitcoin has. Thus, it can be more stable in its fluctuations, and this effectively works as a hedge against extreme inflation.  

Ether is also less volatile, at least when compared to Bitcoin. So if you’re looking to invest or trade in cryptocurrencies, but you want to minimise the volatility, Ether may be right up your alley.  

Risk Management when it comes to Ethereum  

Despite the lower volatility levels of Ethereum, it is still a cryptocurrency. This means that unlike more traditional investments like stocks and forex, its price is still quite volatile in comparison.  

So, when trading or investing in Ethereum, it’s essential to employ risk management practices.  

First, only use as much money as you’re willing to lose. This is a basic precept for investing or trading in general, and it applies to Ethereum as well. The price of ETH in 2021 may be high, and it may look like it will continue to rise, but no one can really predict the next price movement.  

Second, diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you want to trade cryptocurrency, make sure to allocate your funds across multiple digital currencies. That way, if the price of one plummets, you still have your holdings in other cryptocurrencies to rely on.  

Third, do your own research. Don’t rely on social media gurus or finance forum posts that tell you when to buy or sell. Cryptocurrency is a fairly new concept, and it’s pretty much still in its infancy stages.   

If you’re investing in ETH, make sure that you understand it, how it works, and what the technology behind it is.  

A good investment is one where you believe in the product you’re investing in.   

While it’s true that no one can really predict how the price of the cryptocurrency will move, it’s much safer to put your money in investments that you’ve done research in instead of just blindly following what you see on social media.  

Finally, make sure to monitor your own physical and mental health while trading cryptocurrency. The markets run 24/7, and you don’t want to be looking at charts all day while ignoring your own well-being.   

Taking care of your mind and body allows you to make better, more rational trading decisions, dramatically reducing the risk.  

Risk management is a fundamental skill that any reasonable investor or trader should have. There are plenty of risks when it comes to ETH and cryptocurrency in general. Risk is unavoidable, so the best thing we can do is to manage and minimize it.  

The Future of Ethereum  

Despite cryptocurrency being a new concept and Ethereum being fairly more recent than Bitcoin, its rise in the charts shows that it’s here to stay.  

The main selling point of Ethereum is how its blockchain technology compares to Bitcoin, and with the number of people investing in or trading ETH, it’s clear that there is widespread acceptance and trust for ETH.  

Will ETH keep its place as one of the top cryptocurrencies in the future? The truth is, nobody knows. Governments are still only beginning to recognise and regulate cryptocurrencies, so the future of ETH is, as a whole, uncertain.  

But for some people, that uncertainty is what makes ETH such a good investment. Hopefully, this article has helped get you started on the basics of trading ETH. 

“It takes 21 days to form a habit and 90 days to form a lifestyle”. 

Most of us have probably heard of that quote already. It sounds simple, right? Who would have thought that you only needed three weeks to build a habit? 

Imagine how much better our lives could be after a year with plenty of good habits that we want to adopt.  

Whether you want to improve your physical health or performance in the financial markets, adopting good habits is the way to achieve it. 

Unfortunately, we’ve all heard the not-so-successful stories. A New Year’s Resolution falls off after three days, leading to an initially motivated person being the same as he was a year ago. 

There are 52 weeks in a year. If it takes three weeks to build a habit, you should have formed 17 good habits by then. If only it was that easy! 

Why is it important to build habits? 

Your habits are your small, everyday actions and decisions, and the sum of your habits defines your life. 

Good habits form the foundation for a good lifestyle. For example, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep are good habits examples. Conversely, bad habits build up to form a bad lifestyle. Eating junk food every day is an example. 

Who you are and where you are right now is simply the outcome of all your habits. Your overall health is the result of your eating and exercise habits.  

Your trading mindset and your performance in the financial markets are the results of your trading habits. 

You’ll notice that the most successful traders don’t just make good trading decisions; they have good trading habits that form the foundation for their decisions.  
 
But when you’re starting out, we think one simple habit to instill in yourself is one associated with your identity.  

What are identity-based habits? 

Identity-based habits are habits that are based on who we are or who we want to be.  

Imagine a circle with two other circles inside it, like an onion with layers. In this case, we have three layers. 

The outermost circle are outcome-based habits. In this circle, we focus on the what. What do I want to do? What do I want to happen? For example, an outcome-based habit could be, “I want to lose 5kg this month.” 

The middle circle is performance-based habits. Here, we focus on the how. So in the same weight loss example, a performance-based habit could be changing your gym routine, your diet, or how often your workout.  

The inner circle, the most important circle, is where identity-based habits are. Here, we focus on the who. Who am I as a forex trader? Who do I want to be? These are purely intrinsically based.  

A person who wants to lose weight would adopt an identity of, “I am a person who moves more,” or “I am a person with a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle. This is what a healthy person does, so I will do this, too.” 

Identity-based habits go deeper than outcomes and involve your worldview, beliefs, and perception about yourself. 

All three kinds of habits are connected with one another. Your identity influences how you do things. This, in turn, affects what you achieve. 

The problem is, most of us are too concerned with outcomes. As a result, our habits fall off pretty quickly because we didn’t have the foundation. 

Remember the New Year’s resolution example? Those people don’t usually achieve their resolutions because they focus too much on the results when they should be focusing on their identity first. 

Identity goes far beyond just one’s lifestyle. Even politicians revolve their discussions around people’s identities (identity politics). 

Who you identify as affects not just what you do but what you believe in and how you see the world around you. 

How does having an identity benefit your trading? 

Having an identity forms a solid foundation for your actions and your habits. 

Imagine two forex traders with a fair amount of trading experience. For September, they set a target profit: $5,000. 

The first trader does not have an identity; he just cares about the outcome. He looks at the $5,000 profit goal and focuses only on that. He analyzes each trade carefully, but there is no real consistency to it.  

He gets frustrated every time forex trading results in a loss because it makes it harder to achieve his desired outcome. 

On the other hand, the second trader has an identity. He identifies as a good forex trader. The $5,000 goal profit is not the real goal because he knows that it’s something that good forex traders have. 

Instead, he focuses on being a good forex trader. He asks himself, “I am a good forex trader, and what does a good forex trader practice?” 

From here, he studies not just the financial markets but also the best traders. He adopts a good trading mindset and trading psychology and starts to build trading habits. He does this not because he wants to earn a $5,000 profit but because he wants to identify with what a ‘good’ forex trader does, he thinks more in terms of systems than outcomes.  

Who do you think will be more likely to reach their target? 

Of course, it’s trader #2. He goes beyond focusing on the outcomes. He actually lays the foundation by building good habits and adopting the proper trading mindset. He does all this because he has an identity, something which trader #1 does not have. 

Building identity-based habits for traders 

To build identity-based habits, the first thing you should do is look inward. Don’t worry about outcomes just yet. 

Instead of asking yourself, “What do I want?” You should ask yourself, “Who am I?” or “Who do I want to be?” 

Instead of focusing on a target profit, start with your identity. 

Do you want to be a successful forex trader? What do these people do that you can? 

Successful forex traders usually keep a journal to track their successes and failures. They also keep a balanced lifestyle, are aware of their biases, get enough sleep, and adapt to change. There are plenty of other habits, but these examples are good for a start. 

The best thing you could do if you’re starting out as a forex trader and reading this is to constantly ask yourself “What would a good forex trader do right now”? Would they be learning more about the markets or practicing on a demo or would they be watching Netflix? Simple questions to ask but the power of your life is determined by the power of the questions you ask yourself.  

It would be good to adapt all these too, but remember you’re not adopting these habits because of what you want. You’re adapting these habits because of who you are. 

Identity-based habits last longer and lead to more success because they involve a deeper part of you.  

When you inevitably encounter setbacks and make mistakes, you won’t get too frustrated with yourself and make emotional, impulsive decisions because you know that your habits are in the right place. 

Anyone who’s into forex trading will undoubtedly have heard of MT4, which stands for MetaTrader 4. It’s the most popular forex trading platform out there, and for good reason. 

Unusually for a technology platform, it is 16 years old and continues to stand the test of time with users around the world and with all sorts of different experience levels. In today’s article, we wanted to provide our thoughts on the reason it’s still so popular 

MT4 was developed and released by MetaQuotes Software in 2005. Throughout its years of existence, it has since grown and made a name for itself as the leading platform in retail forex trading. Nowadays, millions of forex traders around the world use it regularly. 

Foreign exchange brokers like Fusion Markets are also licensed to provide MT4 for their clients. 

While primarily used for forex trading, it also lets a broker easily plug-in the ability to trade indices, cryptocurrency, and other asset classes such as commodities. Brokers like Fusion are offering over 120+ products on MT4.  It’s more than just your everyday exchange platform, though. It’s got excellent built-in charts for those who use technical analysis and its secret weapon, expert advisors are the most popular feature.

Expert Advisors are 3rd party automated trading systems. Something close to 70% of trades executed on MT4 are automated trades and their popularity continues to grow. Add in mobile apps for all platforms, in-built news (or trade ideas like Fusion offers), trading signals and much more, all of this works together to give you a more holistic look into the market to make well-informed trading decisions.

 Here are just a few reasons MT4 continues to remain as popular as ever.

When people think of trading in the financial markets, most people tend to picture sitting around and watching the screen all day.  

Forex is different in that it runs 24/5.  If there is one thing that keeps traders from switching to other trading platforms, it’s the availability of self-developed or 3rd party robots and expert advisors, essentially algorithms that run trading strategies around the clock. This means that forex traders can use programming to automatically execute deals for them when certain conditions are present. Let’s explain a little bit.

Technical analysis of forex trading is a deep topic. There are many methods of analyzing whether a particular currency is worth buying or selling. Among these include moving averages, convergences, and chart patterns. We won’t go into technical analysis in this article but suffice to say that there’s a lot to consider if we want to confirm if a trade should be taken or not. Monitoring different currencies using multiple methods can be exhausting in the forex market, where global currencies are traded 24/5.

Manually monitoring multiple charts is also slow and cumbersome because humans have a limit on how fast they can read and analyze data. That’s where MT4’s automated trading comes in. Using predefined lines of code, the trading robots can scan thousands, of forex markets and check to see if the forex trader’s predefined buy or sell conditions are met. Bridgewater, one of the world’s largest hedge funds uses over 100 million data points. Good luck trying to beat that with just your brain alone. With automated systems like EAs, while those off the shelf are unlikely to have as many data points as Bridgewater, these will still be faster than any human could be.

In forex trading, prices can change in the blink of an eye. Thus, the traders who can execute a deal as fast as possible protect themselves from market fluctuations. Those who prefer to just rely on the wisdom and experience of the more seasoned forex traders can use MT4’s signal trading feature, which basically lets them copy all or some of someone else’s trading moves on the platform. It does this automatically.

Alternatively, you can utilise Fusion’s own copy trading platform, Fusion+. By using MT4’s trading robots, forex traders can just input their commands and let the algorithms/EAs do the heavy lifting.  

Humans are innately social creatures. We want to do what others do, and we want what others have. It’s a convenient way to make ourselves feel secure and validated. If everyone uses a particular forex trading software, others will soon hop in. Network effects refer to technology platforms and refer to the concept that the more users that are on the platform, the stronger the platform becomes. Think about it. No one wants to use Facebook if there are no friends you know on there. Therefore, the more people that use MT4, the more trading groups, videos and resources there will be, the more robots that developers will build for the platform and so on.

According to MetaQuotes, the developer of MT4, the platform now has millions of users and continues to grow. A large part of this is thanks to existing network effects which can be difficult for other platforms to overcome. There are thousands of brokers out there offering MT4 to their clients. Again, the more brokers that offer it, the more newly established forex brokers feel like they have to. For any new broker looking to come into the business, MT4 is the first service they think of because the rest of the business uses it too. Even ‘legacy’ brokers from the 1970’s such as IG have launched a version of MT4. Basically, if a forex trader is not using MT4, they will at least have heard of it. This increases the chances that they will eventually use the platform themselves if speaking to other traders they know.

The whole platform ecosystem becomes like a flywheel and makes it hard for other platforms serving the same market to compete with. 

Despite being a forex trading platform, MT4 does a splendid job at making things simple and easy to learn for its users. Remember the trading robots we talked about? They can all be purchased in MT4’s own Market. Users don’t have to scour the Internet looking for the best trading robot because MT4 has thousands of available ones in their selection.

MT4 also offers many trading tools, like market orders, pending orders, and stop orders, which any trader can appreciate. The platform offers 23 analytical objects and 30 technical indicators, along with interactive charts and timeframes to give forex traders all the information that they’ll need right at their fingertips. There’s also mobile trading with MT4. By now, we already know that the forex market runs 24/5, but not all of us are in front of our computers all the time. When we’re out doing something else, the only “computer” we really have is our phone.

Finally, MT4 also gives users relevant alerts and financial news to prepare for unexpected price movements. Developing a platform can take years of hard work, mistakes along the way and more. With MT4 you get reliability more than anything else. The bugs have been ironed out and while

we know it’s not the best-looking platform on the market, it is rock-solid and runs on almost every device such as Windows, Mac, iOS, Androids and tablets.  

With Fusion, we have always tried to use the best from day one.  

We are obsessed with making your trading experience better than any other MT4 broker out there.  
 
We launched with strong liquidity providers to undercut our competition and provide a lower cost of trade than other brokers before us. We built tools to help manage your account easily and with a simple interface. For example, we spend a lot of our resources on building tools to make your trading life easier and provide a unique trading experience. Things like the ‘my performance’ feature, Fusion+ copy trading and more.   

Summing it up 

In essence, MT4 is like an all-in-one platform for accessing the world’s largest markets. Those interested in the markets can choose a low-cost broker with no minimum deposit like Fusion and be up and running within five minutes. Not sure how, what or when to trade? You can trade with robots and EAs, follow other successful traders via Fusion+, or if you’re keen to learn yourself, then gain access to more resources like videos and trading communities than any other platform available today.  

It’s no wonder that MT4 has reached the level of popularity it currently has. Fast, reliable, filled and filled with something for everyone, it’s no surprise so many people around the world are using it. It’s also hard to see when it might be knocked off the top spot.