A guide to help Forex traders find the best currency strength indicator for their trading needs
A guide to help Forex traders find the best currency strength indicator for their trading needs
Accustrength by Tom Yeomans
Accustrength is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to currency strength meters. This is a quality currency strength meter that has been used by many professional forex traders since it was released back in 2008.
Background
Accustrength was created by Tom Yeomans, who is well known in the online forex trading community. Tom used to run an online chat forex trading service back in 2005-2007. His primary strategy back then was trading economic news events, mostly using fundamental news event data and currency strength measurements to guide his trading decisions.
His early currency strength meter was a very basic spreadsheet that linked to an MT4 terminal. Since then he has greatly refined his strategy, and used his extensive experience to create a standalone Windows PC application called Accustrength.
Built-In Data Feed
Accustrength connects to it’s own dedicated currency strength data server, which provides real-time and historical currency strength data. This is different to many currency strength meter products that use a MT4 trading terminal as their data feed.
The advantages of having a dedicated data feed:
- No need to have an MT4 trading terminal running at the same time.
- A dedicated data feed is generally more reliable and stable than MT4 broker data feeds, especially MT4 demo accounts which are notoriously unreliable.
- Faster data updates and with less latency
Highly Accurate Currency Strength Meter Data
Accustrength connects to it’s own dedicated currency strength data server, which provides real-time and historical currency strength data. This is different to many currency strength meter products that use a MT4 trading terminal as their data feed.
Without accurate data, a currency strength meter is pretty much useless.
Accustrength is one of the most accurate currency strength meters on the market. It’s considered by many traders as the gold standard in regards to accuracy. No doubt Tom’s experience has helped here.
Simple, clean User Interface
Accustrength is a Windows PC application. While the user interface is simple, it’s design does have a “trader focus”. By that we mean there aren’t many distracting, superfluous features.
10 Currencies
Most currency strength meters support the 8 majors (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD, CHF and NZD). Accustregth covers those plus 2 extra – HKD and MXN.
Charting
Currency strength is displayed on a line chart. The vertical axis displays currency strength on a scale from 0 (weak) to 10 (strong). The chart can be easily customized to display any combination of the 10 currencies. You can also draw trendlines on the chart.
8 Time-Frames
Accustrength supports 8 different time-frames, ranging from 1-Hourly (H1) to 2-Daily (D2). The “Time-Frame” refers to the measurement interval for the currency strength calculation. So a H1 time-frame will measure currency strength over the previous 60 minutes. In practise you’ll find time-frames lower than the 4-Hourly (H4) time-frame a bit noisy just because price moves over shorter time-intervals can be erratic.
Refresh Rate
This is one area that’s a little disappointing. Refresh rate refers to how quickly the currency strength data updates occur. We measured Accustrength’s refresh rate at 3-4 seconds which is a little on the slow side. By contrast the Forex Strength Meter (Desktop Edition), was updating data at an average 0.5 second or less during peak times
Alarm Feature
This allows an audible or email alert to be generated when a pre-defined Currency Strength level is reached.
Cost
Accustrength is a subscription based product. The base price is $129.95 USD per 90 days, which works out to be about $43 per month. The monthly cost is even lower with longer subscription periods i.e. a 6 month plan is $189 USD, and a yearly plan for $329 USD
Support
Email support is provided.
Free Upgrades
This product is being continually upgraded, and all upgrades are free.
7 Day Free Trial
You can try the product for up to 7 days for free to work out whether it’s right for you
Bonus material
When you purchased this product, you’ll get a copy of Tom’s “Forex Grail Trading” ebook, as well as access to his video tutorial library.
Mac OSX
Even though this is a Windows PC application, Accustrength will run fine on Apple OSX computers using a Windows emulator such as Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion.
Summary
Accustrength is renowned as one of the highest quality currency strength meter’s on the market. It’s a highly refined product. It was first released over 7 years ago, and has undergone continual refinement over that period.
It’s currency strength data is very accurate. Accustrength uses it’s own data server, so there’s no need to access data from a trading terminal
The main negative for some would be the price. But if you’re trading more than a few mini lots, $43 per month (or less with a 6 or 12 month subscription), isn’t that much of an expense. You also need to consider the trading benefits of having better quality product like this one.