Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and internal chest wall), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity), the heart, the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart) or tunica vaginalis.
Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or they have been exposed to asbestos dust and fiber in other ways. It has also been suggested that washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos can put a person at risk for developing mesothelioma.Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking, but smoking greatly increases risk of other asbestos-induced cancer. Compensation via asbestos funds or lawsuits is an important issue in mesothelioma (see asbestos and the law).

The symptoms of mesothelioma include shortness of breath due to pleural effusion (fluid between the lung and the chest wall) or chest wall pain, and general symptoms such as weight loss. The diagnosis may be suspected with chest X-ray and CT scan, and is confirmed with a biopsy (tissue sample) and microscopic examination. A thoracoscopy (inserting a tube with a camera into the chest) can be used to take biopsies. It allows the introduction of substances such as talc to obliterate the pleural space (called pleurodesis), which prevents more fluid from accumulating and pressing on the lung. Despite treatment with chemotherapy, radiation therapy or sometimes surgery, the disease carries a poor prognosis. Research about screening tests for the early detection of mesothelioma is ongoing.

All the foreign exchange trading knowledge in the world is not going to help, unless you have the nerve to buy and sell currencies and put your money at risk. As with the lottery “You gotta be in it to win it”. Trust me when I say that the simple task of hitting the buy or sell key is extremely difficult to do when your own real money is put at risk.

You will feel anxiety, even fear. Here lies the moment of truth. Do you have the courage to be afraid and act anyway? When a fireman runs into a burning building I assume he is afraid but he does it anyway and achieves the desired result. Unless you can overcome or accept your fear and do it anyway, you will not be a successful trader.

However, once you learn to control your fear, it gets easier and easier and in time there is no fear. The opposite reaction can become an issue – you’re overconfident and not focused enough on the risk you're taking.

Both the inability to initiate a trade, or close a losing trade can create serious psychological issues for a trader going forward. By calling attention to these potential stumbling blocks beforehand, you can properly prepare prior to your first real trade and develop good trading habits from day one.

Start by analyzing yourself. Are you the type of person that can control their emotions and flawlessly execute trades, oftentimes under extremely stressful conditions? Are you the type of person who’s overconfident and prone to take more risk than they should? Before your first real trade you need to look inside yourself and get the answers. We can correct any deficiencies before they result in paralysis (not pulling the trigger) or a huge loss (overconfidence). A huge loss can prematurely end your trading career, or prolong your success until you can raise additional capital.

The difficulty doesn’t end with “pulling the trigger”. In fact what comes next is equally or perhaps more difficult. Once you are in the trade the next hurdle is staying in the trade. When trading foreign exchange you exit the trade as soon as possible after entry when it is not working. Most people who have been successful in non-trading ventures find this concept difficult to implement.

For example, real estate tycoons make their fortune riding out the bad times and selling during the boom periods. The problem with trying to adapt a 'hold on until it comes back' strategy in foreign exchange is that most of the time the currencies are in long-term persistent, directional trends and your equity will be wiped out before the currency comes back.

The other side of the coin is staying in a trade that is working. The most common pitfall is closing out a winning position without a valid reason. Once again, fear is the culprit. Your subconscious demons will be scaring you non-stop with questions like “what if news comes out and you wind up with a loss”. The reality is if news comes out in a currency that is going up, the news has a higher probability of being positive than negative (more on why that is so in a later article).

So your fear is just a baseless annoyance. Don’t try and fight the fear. Accept it. Have a laugh about it and then move on to the task at hand, which is determining an exit strategy based on actual price movement. As Garth says in Waynesworld “Live in the now man”. Worrying about what could be is irrational. Studying your chart and determining an objective exit point is reality based and rational.

Another common pitfall is closing a winning position because you are bored with it; its not moving. In Football, after a star running back breaks free for a 50-yard gain, he comes out of the game temporarily for a breather. When he reenters the game he is a serious threat to gain more yards – this is indisputable. So when your position takes a breather after a winning move, the next likely event is further gains – so why close it?

If you can be courageous under fire and strategically patient, foreign exchange trading may be for you. If you’re a natural gunslinger and reckless you will need to tone your act down a notch or two and we can help you make the necessary adjustments. If putting your money at risk makes you a nervous wreck its because you lack the knowledge base to be confident in your decision making.

Patience to Gain Knowledge through Study and Focus

Many new traders believe all you need to profitably trade foreign currencies are charts, technical indicators and a small bankroll. Most of them blow up (lose all their money) within a few weeks or months; some are initially successful and it takes as long as a year before they blow up. A tiny minority with good money management skills, patience, and a market niche go on to be successful traders. Armed with charts, technical indicators, and a small bankroll, the chance of succeeding is probably 500 to 1.

To increase your chances of success to near certainty requires knowledge; acquiring knowledge takes hard work, study, dedication and focus. Compile your knowledge base without taking any shortcuts, thereby assuring a solid foundation to build upon.

Trading successfully is by no means a plain matter. It requires time, market expertise and market understanding and a generous amount of self
restraint. FD does not manage accounts, nor does it give market advice, that is the job of money managers and introducing brokers.

This will also determine what chart period you're looking at. If you trade many times a day, there's no point basing your technical analysis on a daily
graph, you'll probably famine to analyse 30 minute or hour graphs. Additionally it is valuable to know the atypical time periods as various financial
centers enter and exit the market as this creates more or less volatility and liquidity and can influence market engagements.

Time your trade:
You can be appropriate about a potential market movement but be too early or too late when you enter the trade. Timing considerations are twofold, a
predictable market stature like CPI, retail sales or a federal reserve decision can consolidate a movement that's already underway. Timing your move
means knowing what's estimated and taking into account all considerations previous to trading. Technical analysis can help you identify when and at
what price a move could occur. We will look at technical analysis in more detail later.

If in doubt, stay out:
If you're unsure about a trade and find you're hesitating, stay on the sidelines.
Trade rational transaction sizes:
Margin trading allows the fx trader a very large amount of leverage, trading at full margin faculty can make for some very large profits or losses on an
account. Scaling your trades so that you may re-enter the market or make transactions on other currencies is commonly wiser. In short, don't trade
amounts that can potentially wipe you out and don't put all your eggs in one basket. ACM offers the same rates regardless of transaction sizes so a
customer has nothing to lose by opening small.

Gauge market sentiment:
Market sentiment is what the majority of the market is perceived to be feeling about the market and therefore what it is doing or will do. This is
basically about trend. You may have heard the term 'the trend is your friend', this basically means that if you're in the right direction with a great trend
you will make thriving trades. This of course is very simplistic, a trend is competent of setback at any time. Technical and fundamental data can
indicate however if the trend has begun long ago and if it is strong or weak.

Market expectation:
Market expectation relates to what most people are expecting as far as imminent news is concerned. If people are expecting an interest rate to rise
and it does, then there usually will not be much of a movement as the information will already have been 'discounted' by the market, then again if the
adverse happens, markets will mostly react violently.
Aid what other traders use:

In a textbook world, every trader would be looking at a 14 day RSI and making trading decisions based on that. If that was the case, when RSI would
go under the 30 level, all would buy and by consequence the price would rise. Needless to say, the world is not exact and not all market participants
stay on the same technical indicators, draw the same trend lines and identify the same support & resistance levels. The splendid diversity of opinions
and techniques used translates frankly into price diversity. Traders however have a tendency to use a limited variety of technical tools. The most
common are 9 and 14 day RSI, obvious trend lines and support levels, fibonnacci retracement, MACD and 9, 20 & 40 day exponential moving
averages. The closer you dig up to what most traders are looking at, the more precise your estimations will be. The logic for this is simple arithmetic,
larger numbers of buyers than sellers at a particular price will move the market up from that price and vice-versa.

Information, charts or examples contained in this lesson are for illustration and educational purposes only. It should not be considered as advice or a
recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial instrument. We do not and cannot offer investment advice.

Trading successfully is by no means a plain matter. It requires time, market expertise and market understanding and a generous amount of self restraint. FD does not manage accounts, nor does it give market advice, that is the job of money managers and introducing brokers.

As market professionals, we can however point the novice in the exact direction and indicate what are correct trading tactics and considerations and what is total nonsense.

Anybody who says you can consistently make money in foreign exchange markets is being misleading.

Foreign exchange by nature, is a unstable market. The practice of trading it by way of margin increases that volatility exponentially. We are therefore chatting about a very 'fast market' which is genuinely inconsistent. Following that instruction, it is logical to say that in order to make a thriving trade, a trader has to take into account technical and fundamental data and make an informed decision based on his perception of market sentiment and market expectation. Timing a trade accurately is probably the most important alterable in trading successfully but habitually there will be times where a traders' timing will be off. Don't expect to generate returns on every trade.

Let's enumerate what a trader needs to do in order to put the best odds for profitable trades on his side:

Trade with money you can afford to lose:
Trading forex markets is speculative and can result in loss, it is also exciting, exhilarating and can be addictive. The further you are 'involved with your money' the harder it is to make a clear-headed decision. Money you have earned is precious, but money you need to stay alive should never be traded.

Identify the state of the market:
What is the market doing? Is it trending upwards, downwards, is it in a trading range. Is the trend fervent or weak, did it begin long ago or does it look like a new trend that's forming. Getting a clear picture of the market circumstances is laying the foundation for a thriving trade.

Determine what time frame you're trading on:
Many traders get in the market devoid of thinking when they would like to get out, after all the goal is to make money. This is true but when trading, one must extrapolate in his mind's eye the movement that one expects to take place. Inside this extrapolation, resides a price evolution during a clear period of time. Attached to this is the idea of exit price. The meaning of this is to mentally put your trade in perspective and although it is undoubtedly impossible to know exactly when you will exit the market, it is valuable to define from the outset if you'll be 'scalping' (trying to get a few points off the market) trading intra-day, or going longer period.

Information, charts or examples contained in this lesson are for illustration and educational purposes only. It should not be considered as advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial instrument. We do not and cannot offer investment advice.