Any traders here? (repost)

Does anyone here trade stocks/forex/index futures/commodities/fixed income/whatever else?

It would be cool to form a little community of traders and discuss potential moves and what not.

Hit me up through PM with your msn address or emails.

Thanks

Yeah, actually it's not a bad idea because trading (derivatives) is the one thing where committing fraud is not illegal thanks to Mr. Greenspan and bank lobbyists. BH investing time - let's start a hedge fund.

Otherwise, not really worth doing unless you have insider info. Forex is a joke in itself...it's more like online gambling than "investing". You'd probably get better returns with poker than forex.

I was looking into getting into Forex...is it really that bad?

If you understand how Forex works, you'll know why it's bad. There is no centrally regulated exchange for Forex as there is with stocks, so the prices you see for currencies are set by the company who you use for trading. For example, if you choose Oanda then you are not really seeing the forex market, you are seeing Oanda's version of the forex market - whatever Oanda wants you to see, and sometimes there can be big discrepancies in currency values among various forex trading services.

The way you make money is by going long or short in the hopes of gaining "pips", but since the market is controlled by Oanda (or whatever other provider you use; they're all the same) they can force you to "win" or "lose" trades however they see fit by forcing a momentary trigger on one of your stops.

So when you try the free demo, you will notice that you tend to win more than you lose...but as soon as you put real money in, almost all of your trades start to lose. They try to string you along just like online casinos do, but sooner or later the house wins and takes your money.

@Exxtra... Amen brother.

Been there done that.

**edit

damn double post!

But yea, been there done that.

Atlusphere said:

I was looking into getting into Forex...is it really that bad?

Click to expand...

Actually, FOREX, by itself, is like a one way bet. I tried the demo account before and I can't seem to make money with my trades. I think the proper way to do FOREX is to combine it with other financial instruments like stocks, bonds or commodities. Anyway, just my first impression.

But having said that, I still like the idea of FOREX trading. I'm just building up my trading capital and learning the ins and outs of the FOREX market. Now that micro-trading accounts are available, I may want to continue my FOREX education with some practicum or hands-on experience.

The road to learning how to trade is very long. You will think you have it "all figured out" a few times over the first couple years, but then you will realize that you actually didn't (and hopefully you only blew out demo accounts and not real accounts with real money in the meantime).

You will learn the indicators. You will learn they don't work.

You will program your own indicators. They will be better than the commercially available ones but they still won't work.

You'll learn programming and backtest 1,000s of strategies. None of them will be consistently profitable.

You'll get the bright idea to reverse the buy and sell signals in your losing strategy... after all, if you do the opposite of what caused you to lose money, you should make money... right?

...wrong. You will learn that the opposite of a losing strategy is still a losing strategy. It will take you a long time to wrap your head around the logic involved in this and truly accept it.

You will seek out indicators from vendors who sell them for a lot of money. Hopefully you won't buy any of them because they aren't consistently profitable.

You will meet trading "gurus" on the forums who use doublespeak and cult-leading mentalities to attract followers and make money, but if you are smart you will realize that they cannot actually trade and are just snakeoil salesmen. They will NEVER make live calls, but will post plenty of charts after the fact with perfect entires and exits.

You will go through these steps, and 1,000 others, and then maybe if you still stick with it you will actually learn to be profitable.

Good luck.

edit - One thing I can guarantee you: 99.9999999999999999% of people you meet online who claim to trade for a living do not actually trade for a living, at least not profitably.

Successful traders don't brag on forums. They don't sell courses, systems, instruction, or indicators. They don't. There are no exceptions to this rule. None. Not even one. The guy you meet who is a "successful trader" and wants to give you his inside secrets, he's lying. He's not a successful trader.

Let's see, what else. Forex robots don't work. None of them. Some of them are very profitable for a while but then they will eventually blow your account in one trade because they use some modified martingale variant.


The irony, however, is that there are no shortcuts. You MUST go through all the stages I mentioned here. You can't just jump to the end. You'll be searching for the holy grail indicator for a while. Maybe just one more. Maybe it's this next one. Hey, here's a new one... maybe this is it. Then you'll try to design your own. You'll get so close but it still won't work. You'll spend sleepless months working on this. You won't succeed, but it will help you get to the next stage in your training. It's like you have to realize yourself that there is no holy grail, and the only way to realize is it to methodically try every possible permutation you can think of in order to logically convince yourself that there really is nothing else you haven't tried.

playing with stocks on and off. divided between available cash for investment, long in tech,defense and financial. Day / short trade in pharma and high risk-high return speculative , love the adrenaline rush

Pretty sure if you're trading for the adrenaline rush you will eventually blow your account. Hope you're using small lot sizes

Day trading should be boring rather than an adrenaline rush. You do the same thing over and over and over and hopefully you realize that over time the statistics are in your favor. Sometimes you take losses but you don't care because you know that with your system you will win over time. There's no rush. There's no real excitement. If you're feeling a rush you're probably trading with far too big of a lot size for the size of your account. Otherwise it's basically just gambling.

yes mollah, I agree- the stock market should be approached with proper research,analysis and less emotions. My approach in IM as well as stock market is using profits for more risky stuff. I have portion of the account set aside for risky trades,. portion of the account for risky stuff is from profits earned and I can afford to loose. About third is set in solid long term investments,some boring stuff but good yield and low downside. Another third is just cash set aside in case I spot an opportunity and want to make quick trade.
Besides, there are tools to be used against loss. Considering stocks will always be dynamic I set sell price at 15% below what I bought it for, worst case I loose 15% (or little more as trades are not 100% accurate). So far I have been getting good returns. No huge amounts.

When it comes to trading securities - consistency in earnings is always better than a series of losses followed by one big win...but I think a lot of people who get started in trading hear tales of Wall St traders making it big with bets on an IPO and expect to turn $5K into $2MM in a matter of months. When that doesn't happen, they lose their money and say the stock market doesn't work.

Trading is very easy and difficult at the same time. I found the simpler you keep things the easier trading is. When you have too many indicators and other "noise" it is easy to make mistakes.

The hardest part is the mental games the market plays on you. Unless you have a set of rules you can follow no matter what, you will fail. You will over leverage your account, cut winning trades early, and hang on to losers. I had personally lost over $100,000 in the market, before I learned to get my own emotions under control. I now can trade consistently and profitably every day. My market of choice is the futures market.

I trade stinky pinkies at that level its not much better then going to the casino but the possible payoff is freaking huge. I dont invest more then I cant afford to loose its alot of fun. Buy alot of sub penny stocks mostly all of them will wash out my investment but 1:50 will get back close to a dollar with in a few years 250,000 on a 1000 dollar investment worth the risk if you get lucky in my book.

I am a forex trader, this industry is the largest industry in the world, hands down, with a daily turnover of 3.7 trillion (yes, I said trillion) dollars a day, now, the vast majority of that is being traded by the big boys, such as the Dutche Bank etc, but still leaving a large amount of that being traded by investment firms, and retail traders.

Serious trading (for a living) requires a massive amount of discipline, is not for the weak at heart. Forex has a huge payoff, IF you can figure it out.

To the OP, a forex community, there are many of these around, forexpeacearmy for one, forexfactory for two, they have a huge faithful userbase.

Hi,

Yeah I trade forex every day. Have done so for a very long time. Worked as a trader for an investment bank for almost 20 years. Then I retired and trade for myself and help out some other people if I can...It's not easy and the learning curve is steep. Although with some patience, reading and studying a lot you will get there. The problem nowadays is that 90% of all people is only interested in the money it could generate, Really, in order to become a winner you must be passionate about trading, interested in its mechanics, interested in the world around you such as Finance, Politics , Society and all other factors that influence human behavior as they affect the markets. You have to "live" trading. You must be persistent, not a quitter and above all, I repeat, very patient. If you think you meet those and a few other requirements you will get there and the money will come to you. Fact is also, nowadays, that when people want to construct a house they want to start with the roof! I see that a lot in forex. They do not understand the basic math but start talking about sophisticated indicators rite away, because they think, that is were the quick money is. You really should start with building a solid base on which you build slowly your kowledge. There is no hurry. The markets won't run away! If however, you are only interested in a quick buck and not truly in love with the markets Forex is not for you!