The forex trader's arsenal contains several different weapons and one of the most basic and most important is the forex chart. Put simply, a forex chart is a graph of the performance of a chosen currency pair over a set period of time. Reading forex charts is critical to any trader’s business and so it is extremely important to be able to read them and to understand precisely what they mean.

A forex chart is plotted for a single currency pair such as the EUR/USD or GBP/CAD and shows the movement of the two currencies concerned against each other over a period of time. A EUR/USD chart, for example, tells you how the US dollar and Euro have moved against each other during the period of time for which the chart is drawn.

Across the bottom of the chart you have the timeline that can for example be divided into 15 minute, one hour, one day, one week, or longer time periods. Then going up the right-hand side of the chart are incremental amounts that are generally fixed to run from a bit below to a bit above the lowest and highest prices attained during the time period in question. For example, for the EUR/USD chart the amounts might run from 1.2537 at the bottom to 1.2571 at the top.

Forex charts are valuable because they paint a very clear and easy to read picture of just how a currency pair is doing and you are able to see at a glance if a currency is strengthening or weakening so that you can take action accordingly. The selection of the time frame for a chart is also important as a short time scale can help you identify very minor trends while a long time scale can help you to identify longer term trends.

Free forex charts are available all over the Internet on various different websites and many of these sites will even allow you to put charts on your own websites. These charts are alright for glancing at trends from time to time but serious traders will need to have access to far more detailed charts that are continuously being updated in real time. In essence this entails having access to suitable trading software that is operated on a broadband internet connection so that you are always connected. Anything less than twenty four hour access to the most up-to-date charts across a broad range of different currencies will make life very difficult for the serious trader.

With dozens of world currencies being traded every day there are far too many possible currency pairs for anyone to track of them all mentally and the beauty of the correct forex software is that it allows you to look at multiple forex charts to show at a glance just what your favorite currency pairs are up to. Naturally you will want to keep an eye on those charts displaying currencies in which you have invested, but you will also want to keep track of other currency pairings which you may want to invest in if they move in the right direction.

The ability to easily and quickly follow the progress of a wide variety of currency pairings means that you are far less likely to miss trading opportunities that could easily pass you by without access to the correct forex charting software.

LearningForexTradingOnline.com provides information on forex currency trading and also includes details of forex charting software