Forex Trading in Lebanon

Lebanese authorities regulate the domestic forex market tightly. The Bank of Lebanon, also known as Banque Du Liban (BDL), works with religious authorities to provide Sharia-compliant forex brokers to appeal to its Muslim majority. The central bank offers protection only to investors working through this structure, creating a strong divide between the stateside and offshore forex structures. Financial institutions that offer foreign currencies can be helpful to investors, but how will you reconcile their offerings with the financial market in Lebanon?

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Disclosure: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 74% to 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. The products and services available to you at FOREX.com will depend on your location and on which of its regulated entities holds your account

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Attribution: Al Jazeera

Brokers who choose to be accredited through BDL regulation provide investors the leverage of a grievance system backed by the Lebanese legal system. BDL-regulated brokers must implement a complaints procedure and conduct business in Arabic. If you’re looking to trade forex in Lebanon safely, understanding the system of regulation in the country is vital. Foreign exchange trading, then, is more about doing the right thing instead of just finding foreign currencies that interest you.

Get Started with Forex in Lebanon

Success in the forex market starts with a strong connection to the market. From bank to broker, you must have a level of trust in every aspect of your digital financial infrastructure.

1. Web connection: When it is time to execute a strategy, you must have a latency-free connection to the internet. Timing in forex is essential, as is the connection you have to your banking institution and trading interface.
2. Broker connection: The BDL keeps official records of regulated brokers. Don’t take a broker’s word on accreditation. If a broker refuses to talk about which entity regulates it, either stateside or offshore, your best bet is to move to another broker immediately. Individual investors must be careful here.
3. Bank connection: Reputable brokers also have a good connection with regulated banking institutions. Connecting your bank to your broker should be a fairly straightforward process. Forex traders must be more concerned about security than normal simply because you will be trading online.
4. Funding connection: Fund your investment account through your bank-broker connection. Make sure that you choose a broker that provides easy access to your money when you are ready to withdraw.
5. Interface connection: Choose between the trading interface of your broker or industry-standard choices like MetaTrader. Make sure the interface does not add to the latency of your chain.
6. Beginning to invest. Now that you have your infrastructure in place, you are ready to begin investing safely in the forex market. Market participants should start slow and endeavor to create a trading strategy.

Lebanese Forex Trading Strategies

You can trade forex in a number of different ways. Successful investors match their strategies to their personalities. Currency prices are quite volatile, but a strategy helps you zero in on a method that suits your needs. 

Attribution: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Lebanese investors hope that Prime Minister Hassan Diab can lead the country away from its financial crises.

Scalping

Scalping means that you take a small bit of profit off of a very short trade. A scalper may hold a trade for less than 1 second or as long as a few minutes. They never hold trades from session to session, so even big news items don’t have a huge effect on the way that a scalper invests. Sophisticated scalpers may use bots to help them speed up the frequency of their trades because profitability using this technique is based on speed and trading volume.

Trend Investing

If you are interested in currency chart patterns, you may succeed in trend investing. Trends develop over the course of days or weeks and provide volatility that gives an opportunity to profit from small price inefficiencies. You will need to learn how to use trading indicators that sometimes mark the beginning or end of a trend.

Position Trading

Position traders pay close attention to large economic trends that come from economic and political policy between countries. These investors hold investments for months or even years because the movement based on large scale trends takes a long time to develop. Short-term volatility does not bother the position trader very much — these movements are usually small compared to the movements that occur over months or years.

Forex Trading Example in Lebanon

Imagine that the current LBP/USD exchange rate of 0.000660/0.000680 seems too low for you, so you want to buy LBP3,500,000. You will need to have $210.44 cash in your investment account for an LBP3,500,000 investment at a margin rate of 9.11%. 

After 11 hours, the LBP/USD price is 0.000720/0.000740, a 0.4 point move. Your total profit is $140 [(LBP3,500,000 x 0.000720) – (LBP3,500,000 x 0.000680)] if you sell at this point.

Making Money with Forex in Lebanon

Attribution: Executive Magazine

Now that you have your basic trading outline in place, you can begin to choose among the many financial vehicles to maximize your profitability. Here are a few of the most popular.

• Short selling: Selling a currency first then buying it back later for a lower price
• Contracts for difference (CFD): A financial instrument tracking the price of a currency without allowing an investor ownership of the underlying asset
• Binary options: A high-risk investment with a simple yes or no choice based on the price or other characteristic of a currency pair 

Best Online Forex Brokers in Lebanon

You can choose from many stateside or offshore forex brokers that do business in Lebanon. Be sure to check who regulates the broker you like, but remember that currency exchanges are all different. The exchange that’s right for you might not be right for others.

Forex Terminology

You will need to know basic forex terminology to compete in the market.

• Pip: Usually pinned at $0.0001, the smallest unit of movement in the forex market 
• Lot size: Usually at a default size of 100,000 currency units, the lot is the magnitude of the order
• Orders: Your investment instruction to your broker to be fulfilled in the market
• Calls: A contract that can be bought or sold that describes the control of a certain amount of currency until a specific date

Maintaining the Right Balance

The balance between opportunity and investor safety is a fragile one. You can freely move capital in Lebanon’s foreign exchange market, but not all of that movement is protected. In order to succeed in this environment, it is essential to know when to take advantage of government protections and how to work around them when necessary.

Bookmark our page for important information and strategies you can use in your forex investing.