Signal Services

Many new (and experienced) traders want to know whether signals services are worth the price tag. Services can just be information based in nature, or they can give you clear buy and sell directives, some of which could even be programmed into your broker of choice with a trading robot. There are a lot of possibilities, and in the end you should be using these as a tool to boost profits, not hamper them. But first,you need to know whether you should spend significant cash on a service.

The easy answer is: it depends.

That might seem confusing, but the truth is that not all signals services do the same thing or fulfill the same purpose. They don’t even all have a high degree of accuracy. Therefore, a degree of discernment is needed when selecting a service, and only those that will actually give you the results that you are expecting should be chosen. Even a free service is going to be harmful to you if it is going to give you poor results when it comes to the info you are receiving.

The major problem that you might not be aware of is that even an accurate service can be hurtful to you if you are not focusing on the same end result.

Focus on your style of trading and find a signals service that caters to it.

This is easy to say in theory, but not quite as easy to implement in practice. Unfortunately, not a lot of traders are fully aware of what the key components of their style actually are. Here are a few key points to examine from your trading so that you can see what needs to be applied while looking for a signals service.
Trade Using Signals

Timeliness

Your service needs to let you know what asset to look at and what to look for with it before it comes to fruition. There’s no point in getting an email a few minutes after the trade you’ve been alerted about has already become a moot point. If you’re being told that when the EUR/USD pair reaches 1.2500 you should go short, but that happened before you were able to read the email on a mobile, it was pointless to receive it. It doesn’t matter on whose side the error has occurred, it just matters that you’re behind and the info doesn’t matter anymore. Either find a service that can get their act together and get you info faster, or find an alternative way to get the service, such as with a streaming feed or on your smartphone.

Timeframe

Trades are not equal. Some are meant to last a few minutes, some are meant to last a few days. Find a service that applies to the length of time that your trades will be open. Going with a timeframe that doesn’t fit with your actual trades will just skew the hoped for result and lead to losses. And because it’s your money, you will be losing out on the price of your service, plus the money you are putting at risk. In other words, you need to be doubly cautious so you don’t lose out on all fronts here.

Trading Type

If you trade stocks, you want a service that caters to stocks. It’s the same with Forex trading; find a service that looks at currency pairs. But if you trade binary options, what kind of service should you be looking at? This is a tough question that a lot of market analysts have tried to answer, but without a clear consensus. Weighing in on this issue, it seems like a binary service in your area of expertise will be best for your style, but these are very rare to find. You can trade well with a good Forex service and trade currencies within the binary market, but you just need to keep an eye on the timeframe you’re trading, and not get distracted by the traditional broker specific items. As long as the info you are being given through the signals service is correct, you should be able to apply it correctly if they have information on timeframes available.