Demo contests? Worth to try?
- Thread starter doggyfx
- Start date
I don't know what contests you're talking about, but there's always going to be a group of people who take the mindset of "go big, or go home" in these demo contests who find trades with extremely high reward potential, but very low probability of success. You have enough people trying these different strategies and someone is going to get lucky during the contest. That's not to say those strategies are good for the real world as the long term payoff on such a strategy may very well be negative, but it sure is good when you're using play money and need to post a high return to win a contest.
The underlying problem this creates is that if you only do a sane strategy in those contests you're almost guaranteed to lose to someone who did some ridiculous high risk / high reward trade.
So what you're asking is, "how do I game the game"? Well the answer is, you can't. I mean you find some really high reward trade, but low probability of success and you get lucky. The vast majority of people who try this are going to fail, but there will be a few who get lucky and they're the ones you notice with the high returns. Want to find the other people who tried the same strategy, but ultimately failed? Find the people with the worst returns / lost the most money. I'd bet the majority of those did the same, but weren't so lucky.
The underlying problem this creates is that if you only do a sane strategy in those contests you're almost guaranteed to lose to someone who did some ridiculous high risk / high reward trade.
So what you're asking is, "how do I game the game"? Well the answer is, you can't. I mean you find some really high reward trade, but low probability of success and you get lucky. The vast majority of people who try this are going to fail, but there will be a few who get lucky and they're the ones you notice with the high returns. Want to find the other people who tried the same strategy, but ultimately failed? Find the people with the worst returns / lost the most money. I'd bet the majority of those did the same, but weren't so lucky.
If I could develop method that makes 1000% a month, you think I would show it to anyone?
Absolutely not - definitely worth avoiding!
Achieving any success in demo contests (especially those sponsored by dodgy market-making forex brokers, who naturally love their customers to trade with those habits because their own business model requires an endless supply of losers!) requires prioritising profit-maximisation over risk management.
Any sensible, reasonable model of trading, and any experience that can actually help anyone to become a successful trader requires exactly the opposite: the prioritisation of risk management over profit-maximisation.
The two things couldn't possibly be more diametrically opposed!
That's why the kind of retail traders you see with lots and lots of demo competition experience have almost no chance at all of becoming successful traders: their dreadfully bad habits are really deeply ingrained. These are typically the type of "aspiring" traders who are permanently "aspiring" without ever making any real progress: they'll tell you that they have (for example) three years' experience, but what they really have is three months' bad experience repeated twelve times over. The two things, again, are pretty different.
Absolutely not - definitely worth avoiding!
Achieving any success in demo contests (especially those sponsored by dodgy market-making forex brokers, who naturally love their customers to trade with those habits because their own business model requires an endless supply of losers!) requires prioritising profit-maximisation over risk management.
Any sensible, reasonable model of trading, and any experience that can actually help anyone to become a successful trader requires exactly the opposite: the prioritisation of risk management over profit-maximisation.
The two things couldn't possibly be more diametrically opposed!
That's why the kind of retail traders you see with lots and lots of demo competition experience have almost no chance at all of becoming successful traders: their dreadfully bad habits are really deeply ingrained. These are typically the type of "aspiring" traders who are permanently "aspiring" without ever making any real progress: they'll tell you that they have (for example) three years' experience, but what they really have is three months' bad experience repeated twelve times over. The two things, again, are pretty different.
Yeah, what you said its true, but at least its an opportunity for those "aspiring" traders to find money to start live trading, you know its not hard to switch from profit-maximization to risk management as the rules are pretty easy - SL, TP, 1% risk from equity or something like that. Moreover I'm sure they use some tricky strategies to achieve 1000% ROI monthly and they realize its impossible to repeat the same on live account with same success.
Or its only my thoughts..
Glad we agree about that!
You say that almost as if you believe it's an advantage to them, but it really isn't, in any way worth talking about, because their chances of winning it are so very tiny, and given the way they trade and their belief-set about trading, their chances of ever actually withdrawing it and using it to improve their lives is even smaller. The scammy market-makers pretending to be "brokers" who offer these "prizes" know, from long experience, that they actually spend very little on them, realistically.
I completely disagree. I think the reality is that it's extremely difficult for people to do that.
The fact that you think it's as easy as that explains your perspective on this subject. I just strongly disagree with you about it. The difficulty in acquiring risk management skills, in my opinion, is the reason for the extremely high failure-rates in trading. And competitions and bonuses are among the reasons for it being even higher in the case of aspiring spot forex traders attracted to fake brokers.
Genuine brokers don't put on competitions like these, and there are reasons for that. But you don't really understand the difference between genuine brokers and scammy ones, and you don't appreciate its importance, because you look at everything trading-related in terms of profit-maximisation not in terms of risk-management.
That's why you have the problem: you only really want to hear opinions from people who agree with your naive perspectives of this subject.
Here's something for you to think about, and it's intended helpfully - indirectly, that's the reason you need to clutch at straws and try to win thousands in a competition. You think trading skills are relatively easy to acquire and risk management doesn't matter much. What you really need is a major and fundamental shift in attitude and beliefs, otherwise you'll still be here in 3 years' time asking the same questions and still not trading successfully. If I were you, I would start here and read it really slowly and carefully and think about it - it will help you FAR, FAR more than competitions!
I'm sorry if I sound rude and critical - that isn't my intention; I mean it all helpfully, believe it or not. It's just that I know that on your current path, you have no chance of becoming successful, and your questions reliably demonstrate that reality. Really sorry for being blunt, but that's the way it is.
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