The real reason for the extreme tough trading in the FX?

cabletrader · Jun 28, 2009

Quote from milktruck:

well, the dealer knows the volume of stops at every price, you get enough individuals together and the dealer sees dollar signs. However, the "real market" stop hunts enough on its own in forex, plus 99% of traders are losers they dont bother to hedge anyways, so stop hunting would only slightly accelerate teh bottom line getting to where its going.

Sure, they'll shift quotes (within reason) to wherever is the most profitable and/or convenient for them according to their book, their liquidity providers quotes, and the underlying market, that's the nature of the bucketshop's game.

The idea that they quote individually or shift quotes to hunt one trader's stop is ridiculous though, it just doesn't happen.

T-Bone Trader · Jun 28, 2009

Quote from Exception:

when people call your story conspiracy theory, I often wonder how big of a numb loser do they have to be

unbelievable, most people on ET are seriously detached from reality

of course 99% are gonna lose, these poor fuks don't have a brain at all

There is definitely no proven correlation between brains and success in trading

The more probable personality trait for success is sixth sense for the markets - in other words, experience

I do agree that 99% will fail

But that's what we want! If no one failed, who would I be taking money from???

increasenow · Jun 30, 2009

this is awesome...just netted the largest pip trade of my life...exit my GBP/USD short @ 1.6415...got 50 pips...wow...I need to really 'do again and again' what I did right on this trade and reproduce 'over and over'...

just as a side note...this also was my first ever 'non manual' forex trade...meaning I entered and set my exit and 'went on to do normal life' stuff...just checked my account and YES...50 pip profit...this is awesome...beginnning to realise...you 'aint gonna' make any real cash $$ trying to scalp forex...anyone else ever realise this?

achilles28 · Jul 1, 2009

Congrats.

Real money is in bigger moves.

Scalping is indispensable for learning price action/patterns.

Once learned, best to apply on longer term charts (15 mins+) for more aggressive risk:reward.

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from achilles28:

Congrats.

Real money is in bigger moves.

Scalping is indispensable for learning price action/patterns.

Once learned, best to apply on longer term charts (15 mins+) for more aggressive risk:reward.

That sounds like fighting talk, I feel a wager coming on

Here achilles28, have you ever traded options?

achilles28 · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from cabletrader:

That sounds like fighting talk, I feel a wager coming on

Here achilles28, have you ever traded options?

LOL! Seems I can't get away with anything around here!!

Options? Can't say I have. Anything interesting??

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from achilles28:

LOL! Seems I can't get away with anything around here!!

Options? Can't say I have. Anything interesting??

I was chatting with a guy the other day who trades options, it was all new to me but it certainly sounded interesting. He was trading currency indexes by the sound of it, and gold I thnk he said.

I don't know anything about puts and calls but he gave me an example of a gold trade where the bet was that gold would not go above $2000 in the next 2 months (pretty much a no-brainer), and as long as it doesn't then he makes $1500. It sounded too easy to me.

That's probably an oversimplification because there were all sorts of things like spreads and 'time decay', but the idea seems interesting.

bpcnabe · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from cabletrader:

I was chatting with a guy the other day who trades options, it was all new to me but it certainly sounded interesting. He was trading currency indexes by the sound of it, and gold I thnk he said.

I don't know anything about puts and calls but he gave me an example of a gold trade where the bet was that gold would not go above $2000 in the next 2 months (pretty much a no-brainer), and as long as it doesn't then he makes $1500. It sounded too easy to me.

That's probably an oversimplification because there were all sorts of things like spreads and 'time decay', but the idea seems interesting.

By chance was this JohnG?

Big world and all, but JohnG was a regular poster over on DailyFx before it got polluted and what you said above was his approach to option trading the currencies and gold. He offered some great insight to trading the GBP pairs.

achilles28 · Jul 1, 2009

I only know the elementary stuff - calls, puts, writing. The "Greeks" are greek to me

Sounds like the dude was selling gold calls with a $2K 'strike'.

I've heard most options expire worthless, so the money is made (presumably) selling Deep-out-of-the-money options, long or short. And hope they don't get hit. Betting a catastrophic meltdown won't occur and collect modest premium, day-in, day-out, sold to buyers who want black swan insurance.

I think thats how Niederhoffer blew up. And Taleb took the other side (invested 10% in puts), which paid off during the crash.

atticus · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from cabletrader:

I was chatting with a guy the other day who trades options, it was all new to me but it certainly sounded interesting. He was trading currency indexes by the sound of it, and gold I thnk he said.

I don't know anything about puts and calls but he gave me an example of a gold trade where the bet was that gold would not go above $2000 in the next 2 months (pretty much a no-brainer), and as long as it doesn't then he makes $1500. It sounded too easy to me.

That's probably an oversimplification because there were all sorts of things like spreads and 'time decay', but the idea seems interesting.

The OTC 60-day 2000C would not find a bid over a penny. The Sep 1100C is trading at 2.00.