Do full-time forex traders exist or is it just make believe?

SimpleTrades · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from sheda:

I simply bail when it looks like the action is up and look to repeat the process all over again..I will leave the absolute predictions to those who get off on that stuff...I have heard it works wonders on gold?

For the first time I actually agree with you. I use the same approach. However, I usally have to suffer through an extended period of loss as I am now before it fially goes positive.

cornix · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from sheda:

Why did I not proclaim todays moves in advance? A - Because I dont know how far its going to move B - Because I dont need to know ~

I need one bit of infomation Long/Short. I need two actions:

1> Enter
2> Set S/L at B/E...

I then need to make a cup of tea and observe in peace. I dont have profit targets, I simply bail when it looks like the action is up and look to repeat the process all over again..I will leave the absolute predictions to those who get off on that stuff...I have heard it works wonders on gold?

Right. Posting anything but a really long series of trades is useless. Nobody except people who absolutely don't understand trading cares of single trades.

You may have 5 losses in a row... so what. Only what matters is how your method performs in the long run.

Xspurt · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from achilles28:

Thanks for posting the info. Any live calls?

I have loads of live calls up to a week in advance posted on ET but this method is intense and often below the 1 min so there's no live calls. I don't have targets either as one time frame can trigger another so I go with the flow.

oldtime · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from SimpleTrades:

For the first time I actually agree with you. I use the same approach. However, I usally have to suffer through an extended period of loss as I am now before it fially goes positive.

well, there is something to be said for learning the art of trading, but don't ever forget, 10% of it that will turn you either profitable or loser is guessing what it is going to do.

wouldn't it be nice if we could all just put it in on with money management?

money management will keep you alive

but you need to be a good guesser to make money

and for me, that is why you always have to be talking and listening, and learning the art of bullshit, man, they don't give you anything, you have to take it

and I can't remember the last time I got a good guessing idea on ET

MattSF · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from Xspurt:

I have loads of live calls up to a week in advance posted on ET but this method is intense and often below the 1 min so there's no live calls. I don't have targets either as one time frame can trigger another so I go with the flow.

Loads of calls? Ha, how about linking one of those calls here. Just one. Yes intense. It's so intense that you can post 10x this morning with bull and ironically none of those posts are market calls.

Xspurt · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from MattSF:

Loads of calls? Ha, how about linking one of those calls here. Just one. Yes intense. It's so intense that you can post 10x this morning with bull and ironically none of those posts are market calls.

Silly boy. Your morning is my night, My day is over

Believe it of not London is well past closed and I've been in the Asian session, thru London and part of the US. Feet up time

Let me clarify what you are asking? Is it to link calls that I've made? If so why not do some reading?

Chop, Chop - get on with it and quit complaining in the back

MattSF · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from Xspurt:

Silly boy. Your morning is my night, My day is over Believe it of not London is well past closed and I've been in the Asian session, thru London and part of the US. Feet up time

Let me clarify what you are asking? Is it to link calls that I've made? If so why not do some reading?

Chop, Chop - get on with it and quit complaining in the back

Tough question? Yes, a link to any call you've made on this site with an entry and an exit. TIA.

Quote from Xspurt:

I have loads of live calls up to a week in advance posted on ET

You made the claim, not me. So it stands to reason that you would want to back up the stated claim. Where are these calls?

Pigsky · Apr 25, 2013

he never make a call with clear entry and exit that i have seen.....

here is example call: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3537217#post3537217

try and make sense of this? they are all like that one

there is no call.... just lots of talking and talking, covering all bases.... daily is bearish, weekly is bullish, monthly is bearish, and on and on about PIIGS, flash crashes, cockroaches.....

i try to make sense of this in past and eventually decide it makes no sense to me....... his claims are too good to be true and are bs

i think he is baiting for students here in forums

maybe he is confusing on purpose so to entice people to ask him questions at which time he suggest mentoring in pm????

zbojnik · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from SL321:

I've been reading some of the threads on this forum for a while, and as amused as I was reading some comments, I also felt sorry for the fact that so many people are misled and compelled to believe some lies and rumours that are spread around.
I will introduce myself, and hopefully what i will write in the next few lines will leave few of you doubtful about the answer to the question in this thread.
I trade for a living, it's what I do, I am a small time hedge fund and portfolio manager as well as an financial investment advisor, and when I say am small time, I mean that I don't reap in tens of millions a year like the big time players (some of the top dogs even make billions), but I do make enough to earn me a decent living, that being said, am still a beginner by wall street terms, still young with a growing business.
I trade stocks, bullion, Forex, commodities and bonds but what i will say may come as a shock to alot of you.
Giving that I trade for people who entrust me with their retirement funds or lifetime savings or just people who are actually looking to invest their money rather than gamble it away, I don't use much leverage, and by that I mean, that on the average day I trade with 0.5 or 1x leverage, I go in, I go out make couple of hundred pips, and am out, thing is most of the people whose portfolios I manage won't accept more than 5-10% risk max/year on their investments, so although i'm managing multimillion dollar accounts, I usually am trading a couple dozen lots not more.
These people expect to risk 5-10%/year of their investments in order to achieve 20-30% ROI, some can't even afford that, some people are satisfied with 7-10% ROI with minimum risk less than 2% risk.
Sure occasionally, i get a demand from one of my high rolling clients that will ask me to double his 100k investment in a month or two, but this is very rare, and these people accept the risks that accompany such a demand, they know that if I am to double their accounts within a month or two I'd be using high leverage and that there's a good 20% chance that their account gets blown. And these people will immediately withdraw the initial investment after the account has grown by a hundred percent.
I live and breathe economics, it's what I do, spending most of my days listening to the news and researching, on a bad week I average 500-600 pips/week , but 1000 pips ROI for me might be the equivalent of 50 pips ROI for you people with your overleveraging.
And this might come as a shock to many of you but the most popular way of trading Forex is through carry trades, and we've been blessed this year with the chance of being able to engage in some very profitable carry trades, carry trades are the only trades in which i may use the leverage option, sometimes up to 3x or 4x, what I do is catch the pair i wish to trade on a very very good breakout, and then hold the position for years while reaping the rollover profit, i've been longing the AUD/JPY and the NZD/JPY for a few months now, and although im already in about 2000 pips profit, i have no intention of closing my positions,at least not until a couple of years, as these kind of trades are the only trades in which i make use of the leverage option in order to secure a bigger investment and secure constant profits, It's the way people who invest their money want it, small risks, decent rewards.
With all that said, what i do is no easy business by any means, i have over 10 000$ in monthly subscription fees whether it being live up to the millisecond data feeds, data journals, analysis....
And even all this, while it does give me an edge over little retail traders, is nothing compared to the technology the big dogs have, you've recently seen the Dow take a 150 point dip within a matter of 3 minutes, this cost some 200 billion $ in money changing hands, well this was the work of some very highly sophisticated trading robots, these robots actually interpreted the news that was released on twitter on directly analyzed it and traded on it all within some milliseconds, this is the kind of technology the big boys have, they use it to beat everyone and trade the news, and compared to them am just a small time hedge fund manager, with high frequency trading like this the big boys have a huge edge over all of you, and my 10k/month data feed subscriptions and hard work that i put in everyday, does little to mitigate the advantage these people have with their dedicated teams of financial analysts and super computers.
At the end of the day, i do make a decent living out of this, but this is solely because i treat this as an investment, and rightfully so, and i guess i was also somewhat lucky to have had a chance to meet some fairly deep pocketed individuals that entrusted me and my financial advice, and trusted me with their investments.

NB: I laugh at these people that claim to trade one or 2 pairs exclusively, a real trader knows that the whole forex world is inter connected, and if you're really informed and know what you're doing you will know what crosses to trade at any given time, know what's the weakest and strongest base currency that it to be traded for maximum profits.
Hope my post was an informative one, and hopefully it answered the question.
Cheers, and good luck with your investments.

Finally something worth reading. :-)

Carry trading - Funny cause I just found out about it yesterday. Is there a way to collect the interest without having exchange rate risk? I'm guessing not, or else everyone would be doing it...

MattSF · Apr 25, 2013

Quote from SL321:

Sure occasionally, i get a demand from one of my high rolling clients that will ask me to double his 100k investment in a month or two, but this is very rare, and these people accept the risks that accompany such a demand, they know that if I am to double their accounts within a month or two I'd be using high leverage and that there's a good 20% chance that their account gets blown. And these people will immediately withdraw the initial investment after the account has grown by a hundred percent.

A high roller is defined as someone with $100k account? You can't be serious. Have you seen the JPY across pairs? You think the carry trade is the reason for the drop in the yen? Have you see the USD/JPY and EUR/JPY?

What atoll are you hiding on? The war is over.