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

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from bpcnabe:

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.

It was RayT, the guy saw my contact details on another forum and wanted to know about FX.

I think he's been doing this for a while and seems to do ok but he wanted more action!

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from achilles28:

selling Deep-out-of-the-money options, long or short.

Quote from atticus:

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

You two guys have totally lost me, guess I probably need to stick to what I know, there's obviously tricks of the trade so to speak and I don't think I (or my bank balance) could go through the learning curve again!

lol, that was lucky, while I was typing that I got an order filled that I had forgotten to cancel, and it took profit. Sheesh, I'm getting too old for this game....

atticus · Jul 1, 2009

Well, RayT isn't selling 60-day 2000-strike calls. There would be no bid. I would like to know where he traded the 60-day 2000 strike, if it's not too much trouble.

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from atticus:

Well, RayT isn't selling 60-day 2000-strike calls. There would be no bid. I would like to know where he traded the 60-day 2000 strike, if it's not too much trouble.

Sorry no, this was an old trade he was talking about, he's (selling?) Yen to not go over 122, against what I'm not sure, is that an index?

I can still find out the name of his broker if you like, I think he's now paying an extra $7 for full service.

atticus · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from cabletrader:

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.

I am a bit confused. Was this hypothetical or a trade he entered in the Gold 2000-strike?

atticus · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from cabletrader:

Sorry no, this was an old trade he was talking about, he's (selling?) Yen to not go over 122, against what I'm not sure, is that an index?

I assume he means USDJPY in this case. All of the other major yen crosses are above 122.

Begs the question; there is no interest in 2-month dollar-yen calls at 122 spot. That strike is >2500 pips OTM.

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from atticus:

I am a bit confused. Was this hypothetical or a trade he entered in the Gold 2000-strike?

Apparantly a trade he made, but like I say he was just describing an old trade. Maybe I misunderstood and it was just hypothetical as a demonstration, it was on Skype which is crap at the best of times!

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from atticus:

I assume he means USDJPY in this case. All of the other major yen crosses are above 122.

Begs the question; there is no interest in 2-month dollar-yen calls at 122 spot. That strike is >2500 pips OTM.

No I asked him what he was trading it against and he said that's not the way it's done, it isn't against anything, it sounded to me like a Yen index or something.

I could be totally wrong about all this as I don't understand the market (nothing like stating the patently obvious!)

atticus · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from cabletrader:

Apparantly a trade he made, but like I say he was just describing an old trade. Maybe I misunderstood and it was just hypothetical as a demonstration, it was on Skype which is crap at the best of times!

Yeah, no problem. The trade as outlined was/is impossible.

cabletrader · Jul 1, 2009

Quote from atticus:

Yeah, no problem. The trade as outlined was/is impossible.

Right, sorry about that.

So in your opinion are options a whole new ball game or is it something that a spot fx trader could pick up fairly easily? I think I remember you saying you take advantage of spread differentials between brokers (or something similar, it had something to do with exploiting mispricing), that obviously comes with experience, but is that the icing on the cake or the bread and butter?