By now, you should have your demo account from North Finance up and running. If not, review the article “Nuts & Bolts – Getting Started” and that will bring you up to speed quickly.

This program is so phenomenal that I barely know where to get started. This is a fully professional charting program with real-time data feed and it is for our use absolutely free.

When you first bring it up, it is set in a default mode but it can be customized in many different ways. So let’s take a look at the program as it appears when you first bring it up…

There is much detail here that we do not need to go into until later. First, let’s take a look at the major components that you will start out with.

In the chart field, you will see four charts: The Euro (EURUSD) on the top left, the British Pound (GBPUSD) on the top right, the Swiss Franc (USDCHF) on the bottom left, and the Japanese Yen (USDJPY) on the bottom right. These are real time charts that are showing you exactly what is happening in the market at all times during the trading week which extends from roughly 2pmET on Sunday to 5pmET on Friday. These charts will be moving during that period 24 hours a day.

These charts have been set up by MT4 to show you different functions and capabilities. But they can be personalized in many different ways. For example, these charts all show green figures on a black background but I do not favor this arrangement because if you want to print out the charts, the black background eats up a tremendous amount of ink. I set my charts up with a white background and use red and blue figures. I find this much more pleasant to view and a lot less expensive to print out. And I will show you how to change the color of the charts and the figures later on.

The time period each of these four charts is set to is four hours. That means that each bar or figure on the chart represents four hours of trading activities. Up at the top where it says “Time Periods for Charts”, you will see the various time periods we can set these charts to. We can look at 1 minute periods, 5 minute periods, 15 minute periods, 30 minute periods, 1 hour periods, 4 hour periods, Daily charts, Weekly Charts and Monthly Charts. All the fee-based charting programs offer many different time periods than these, such as 10 minute, 90 minute, 120 minute, etc. But these basic time periods are perfectly sufficient…and you can’t beat the price.

Now the Euro on the top left is set up to show you what a “candlestick” chart looks like. This is a wonderful method of representing trading action that originated in Japan around the 17^th Century and was introduced to the west by Mr. Steve Nison more than 30 years ago and since then has become the favorite charting set-up of most traders.

The British Pound on the top right is set up to show you a form of charting that originally was the most popular before candlesticks took the charting world by storm. These stick figures use much less space than candlesticks; but they both contain the same information. However, the virtue of candlesticks is not only how attractive and easy to read they are but also that various formations of the candlesticks convey important clues as to what the charts may do in the future. Each method of charting has its virtues and we can toggle between one and the other with the click of a mouse. But what both candles and these stick figures convey to us is the Open Price for the time period the figure represents, the Closing Price for the time period the figure represents and the High and Low Prices for the time period the figure represents. Therefore, these line figures have come to be known as “OHLC” charts, standing for “Open High Low Close.” We don’t call them “line charts” because there is another form of charting that is for advanced traders and analysts called “Line Charts” and these are composed simply of lines that connect the closing prices for each of the periods involved.

On the bottom left, we see an OHLC chart for the Swiss Franc with an example of a basic indicator many traders use and that we have in this program if we want to put it on our charts and that is called MACD which stands for “Moving Average Convergence Divergence.”

On the bottom right, we see the Japanese Yen chart set up as a candlestick chart with another basic indicator many traders use called CCI which stands for Commodity Channel Index.

The box on the top left is called “Marketwatch” and this gives us the list of all the currency pairs we can trade with this program and their present “Bid” and “Asked” prices. We will explain this at a future time. Note the little “x” in the right corner of this box. When you click on that, you will close this box and thus leave more room for your charts. When you want to put it back on your screen, you retrieve it from the “View” submenu on your menu choices up at the top.

The box on the bottom left is called “Navigator” and this shows you what account you are currently logged into and gives you access to advanced features of the program. It too has a little “x” in the right corner. I mention this because I am going to have you close these boxes so we can work with the charts directly. We will bring them up again later but right now, it’s the charts we need to concentrate on. Therefore, when you have clicked on the little “x” in the corner of each of these boxes, the Marketwatch and the Navigator, they will go away and your screen will look like this:

But you will notice that the charts are not taking full advantage of the space we have cleared for them. In order to cause the charts to fill the screen properly, you will go up to the menu on the top and click on the “Window” sub-menu and when it comes up, you will click on the choice “Tile Vertically” and when you do, your charts will now look like this:

Incidentally, do you see that beautiful move on the chart on the upper right corner, the British Pound, GBPUSD? That move began on October 22, 2007 and is continuing right through the date of this drafting, November 6, 2007. Remember, these are four hour charts, so each figure represents four hours of trading activity. That move so far is worth 594 pips. That works out to $5,940 return on an initial investment that at 100:1 leverage will be slightly more than $1,000. But if you are trading at 200:1 leverage, your investment would be only slightly more than $500. That works out to a return on investment of between 500% and 1,000% in just about two weeks. 1000% on your money in two weeks! That’s the Forex. You can’t make money like this in any other market in the world. Believe me.

HOMEWORK: Now we are going to take full advantage of the free resources available to us on the net. I see no point in “re-inventing the wheel” and covering here what is brilliantly covered elsewhere. (See the previous article: “Free Resources for Traders.”) Therefore, between now and next week, I want you to go to www.investopedia.com and put the following terms into their search engine: “Candlestick Charts” and “Technical Analysis” and I want you to read all the articles there that interest you. They will explain fully what candlestick charts are, what their uses are, how you read them, and you will get a basic grounding in the art and science of “technical analysis,” in other words, how we analyze charts. I particularly reference to you their four part series, “The Art of Candlestick Charting” done by the Investopedia staff Check it out right here, http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/02/121702.asp. I want you to learn how to educate yourself because if you get serious about trading, you will be educating yourself for the rest of your trading career.

In the next article, we will customize these charts. Do not forget you are working with a fully professional charting program which in my humble opinion, with the real-time data included, is worth at a minimum $200/month if it is worth a dime. But it’s free to us so let’s take full advantage of it.

Now go to work.