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

[Daring]

Quote from oldtime:

they pay you to make money

it is your job to understand what money is

somedays, you think you made money

and all that happened was the dollar went down

Not necessarily.

Say your holding currency is the USD and the USD went down .5% that day, yet you made 1% in your holding capital, you made money without trading currency pairs.

I understand what you say about the holding currency depreciation, but you can beat it without actually trading currency pairs, you just have to beat inflation and depreciation.

 

[oldtime]

Quote from Daring:

Not necessarily.

Say your holding currency is the USD and the USD went down .5% that day, yet you made 1% in your holding capital, you made money without trading currency pairs.

I understand what you say about the holding currency depreciation, but you can beat it without actually trading currency pairs, you just have to beat inflation and depreciation.

yes, but it is a currency component

you don't have to trade forex or own gold

 

[zbojnik]

Quote from wrbtrader:

The above is the original question. I myself don't trade FX full-time.

To the other 1/2 of the question, I gave a list in this thread of a few firms that have full-time pro FX traders. Yeah, they're employed (salary traders) but they exist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDDe3M24AFA

This guy Geoffrey Yu was a retail FX trader and he's now a Senior FX Strategist for UBS Investment Bank. He was a successful retail trader for about 2 - 3 years prior to being salary at the firm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsevRonTbMk

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000146198

I first heard about him via his technical analysis charts of several FX markets when he first started working at UBS and soon after I met him in person through a family friend (retail trader). Later, I saw him being interviewed at UBS (a different video) and I was able to clearly see all the traders in the background, their charts with "technical indicators" on the charts.

A few months ago, Bloomberg was interviewing a FX trader @ Barclays Capital and it looked like in the background there must have been about 100 traders sitting at trading desks with 2 - 3 monitors each. The traders closes to the trader being interviewed by bloomberg, I can clearly see their charts and what looked like price moving averages on price itself and indicators as subgraphs.

The guy mention big layoffs in the FX industry last year and commented that he knows several traders that have gone "retail".

Yes, full-time FX traders do exist...professional and retail. A google of bloomberg or CNBC video interviews of FX (foreign exchange) traders confirms such.

I think the issue for the thread starter and other traders is that there are a lot of retail traders (at home traders) without an in person social network involving other full-time traders (professional and retail). Thus, its easy for them to quickly develop doubts about the existence of full-time traders due to the lack of their own personal social network especially after the financial crisis (collapse) of 2008 and the continuing European crisis.

FX is a trillion dollar business being traded...surely someone must be trading and doing such full-time.

By the way, I'm still curious why I don't see North Americans winning those FX Dukascopy trader competitions...aren't there any FX traders in the U.S. or Canada.

You ain't gonna meet another trader in person if you're retail (at home) studying the charts every day...all day. You need to get outside, go places and meet people. This ain't rocket science and you don't need an IVY league network especially with the help of social media (e.g. facebook, twitter, stocktwits, linkedin, conventions, expos, trader tournaments and so).

Thanks!

 

[oldtime]

ha ha, bloomberg or cnbc bracket traders

they are on there all the time

their job is to sell fx

you will never see a track record from these fools

 

[oldtime]

ok, I'm bored with it

there is no cure for stupidity

it's just the way god made things

I guess for human survival to continue

95% must be incredibly gullible

 

[cornix]

Quote from nitro:

Yes, most definitely. For retail traders it is incredibly hard because the spreads are so enormous.

Keep an eye on the ECN model as that will change the game. There are firms out there working on leveling the playing field considerably, and they have an idealistic attitude of taking on the banks. Banks will be left behind as more enterprising market makers enter the game.

When it will happen I don't know, but imo Forex trading when that happens will be the most exciting trading game in the world for retail traders. The critical mass is no more than say 30 pippette (1 pippette for EUR/USD = .00001, in general the minimum tick fluctuation) spread on the EUR/USD, and so on for slightly wider (based on their tick size or "precision") on some progressive scale on the less liquid pairs.

Some ECN's with retail access already have average EURUSD spread like 0.4 pips.

 

[pikachu9]

Quote from oldtime:

and I suppose you have done a lot of research on "average retail traders"?

If you don't believe it, go ahead try it.
You open up a forex account, trade it, then report back with your results.

 

[maul3d]

Getting back to the question,

I trade full-time for 2 years now.. study for 5 years

average week for me for this year..

bucketshop metatrader 4 broker, using price action chart trading.

 

[oldtime]

Quote from pikachu9:

If you don't believe it, go ahead try it.
You open up a forex account, trade it, then report back with your results.

up something like 68% as of Dec31 2012

down something like 35 to 38 % 2013

usually on no more than 50% margin

and no, I don't believe you

just another goddamned liar shooting his mouth off on the internet

trying to pretend he knows something

go crawl back in your hole

because everytime you take your head out of your ass it starts stinking up the joint

otherwise, I will be anxiously awaiting your research results on retail traders

 

[atticus]

Quote from oldtime:

they pay you to make money

it is your job to understand what money is

somedays, you think you made money

and all that happened was the dollar went down

There is a distinction between hedging FX exposure and using FX as an asset class. Your contention is that managers who don't trade FX don't know what money is, but the guy trading in his living room does?

IMO, equities are far more exploitable that FX (breadth statistics) and far less crowded. That also goes for any curve trade (oil, FI). I personally wouldn't allocate to an FX manager.