Brexit: When to throw the towel in

Hi Guys

We,the traders here should have a sharper insight into currency movements and the fundamental factors that affect them than the general public.

I see that cable crashed some 2,000 pips from its high on the eve of the referendum result. With a PnL for a 1 pip move on 1 Lot being equal to circa £7.57.

If you didn’t cash in £500k or more on the Brexit result, I think we need to ask ourselves what the point of all this is.

So, how much did you make?

Thanks for the post, again as is quite commonly the case here egomaniacal armchair expertism takes over any rational or object look at some basic but fundamental questions that need to be answered.

To the point of my post, how many seasoned expert traders here cashed in on our equivalent of Black Wednesday. a simple hedged trade with stop loss both ways could have captured the upside or downside however the market reacted.

What is the point of investing so much time and energy coming to terms with the complexity of the currency markets if you miss something as fundamental as this. We should be quaffing champagne and patting each other on the back. Having had the last laugh afterall.

You can get champagne for a tenner (£10) at the supermarket, the point being you do not have to pin millionaire

dreams on a ‘once in a lifetime’ trade risking everything through crazy volatility where the only winners are generally

HFT/machines.

I ignored the whole panic, hedged my trades, added funds allocation, and survived: I continue to hold a Pound-long

view, and that has not changed. I see this as a flash in the pan, again HFTs create flash-crashes, so I stay away from

chasing those tsunamis and look for my edge to long-term trends. The long-term trend, in my analysis, is for Pound

strength.

I can’t speak for others, but I let my trades close in the lead up.
None of us, amateurs or experts, hobby traders or professionals, knew which way the vote would go, so suggesting we should all have profited is unrealistic. What market knowledge traders may have should have discouraged them from trading


Agreed :slight_smile:

I understand your point, but I think it is just making excuses. I don’t trend trade usually, but a simple EMA Cross to get in and cross to get out would have captured most of it. It is not unrealistic at all it was quite evidently there for the taking.

George Soros made a career and name out of the taking the downside last time something similar happened. Whatever the outcome was it was sure to create a decisive move in the pound;I didn’t get in for much the same reasons as you. I was wrong.

Next time I wont be so shy.

Your honesty is refershing, Ropunzel,

as a lot of people on forums brag about how they captured this and that great trade

but never talk about the ones they did not enter - or the ones they lost.

Of course, there is always risk in trusting one’s instincts, and for every market

winners who wins a big trade there will also be a loser who loses one…

:slight_smile:

Happy trading.

Sure, this is a valid question that maybe every trader needs to ask themselves, but if a trader missed this opportunity it does not follow that they are incompetent and should give up.

What is really important here is that a trader knows and follows their chosen trading style. If a trader is an opportunist and looks for these kinds of opportunities to make big money quickly then that trader may well be disappointed at missing out. Especially because this kind of move is rare and there are a lot of long and quiet periods in between such moves.

But some traders are more interested in long term steady income and for them taking chances on these kinds of opportunities is outside their scope and against their methodology. Sure, it is easy in hindsight to say that anyone could see this coming regardless of their normal trading style, but it is not correct to say that a deliberate decision by such traders to step aside, let it pass, and then continue business as usual should mean that they should pack up their kit and take up gardening.

What is important is to stay professional and that means doing what one has trained oneself for and built one’s plans around. This includes a clear policy towards risk and reward. If a trader decides that this kind of speculative trade does not fit their chosen trading profile, then regardless of the size of the lost opportunity that materialized, they have done the right thing by standing aside.

We have all dreamed of making that trade that brings in our first million, but in the final analysis, trading is about the long term stay rather than the short-term make it or break it. At least in my opinion! - But I may well be the minority about that, but if I am then at least I have been a minority for quite many years! :smiley:

Unfortunately it is not that easy.

I made a post somewhere on this forum 3 months ago where I described how UK is famous for making decisions that hurt themselves more then they know in first place. A swell knowing some sort of British “i’m against everything that I can be against”-additude, I was very sure for over 3 months that UK is going to vote for the Brexit.

In order to earn on this event I build up big positions in a combined number of €365/pip and a used margin of €68.000. One day upfront the event I was not sure about my direction any more. Some polls saying that Bremain will win, and the general attitude in the media (social as well as mass media) did not indicate any general public opinion which showed that the brext campaign is going to win.

Book keepers as well favoured a bremain by 70% -1 day before the actual referendum.

So one day before the referendum (Wednesday) I felt like I am on the wrong side of the actions.

My economical thinking is maybe a bit different. I knew that if bremain wins the markets are going to go up. But only a tiny bit up, simply because the bremain was anticipated by most of the participants. Anticipated events don’t shake markets (very important, remember that), only surprises shake markets (up and down, the direction is not important). So I felt i’m on the wrong side of the trade and my experience always tells me one thing: if you are not sure rather go out.

So I went out. Why? Because I know when i’m not sure about my direction (especially in big positions) I have trouble sleeping, I am miserable, and I can not do my daily duties. So knowing this I choose to go flat on the market.

my new strategy was to wait for the bremain vote and see the markets go up a few hundret points and then to short them again knowing summer is comming soon. unfortunately this is not what happened and when i woke up the market alreasdy made the 1000 pips moves.

In hindsight it was the wrong decision. But… everyone is smarter in hindsight and no one ever earned money from history.

So being able to put your balls on the table and tell everyone “look, here, who bets against me?!?!” before and after a big event, and in hindsight telling people what to do- are two completely different things.

Am I fuzzed up about it? No, because I know that when i’m nervous I am much more prone to make stupid decisions and it probably would have ended in me “having the right direction but still loosing money”.

Its not that easy.

You’re right.It is not easy hindsight is 20:20. At the same time one should be hard on themselves when they miss something of this magnitude. I don’t believe the risk profile of a short was particularly high, even if the extent of the drop was in doubt.

A moment missed. I however feel, given the risk, money won and lost throughout ones trading history. One should have definitely rolled the dice on this. And it does affect my perception of my trading ability to have missed it, I know people that rarely trade that made significant sums on this.

It may be the case that we spend so much time convincing ourselves about the fallacy of the golden trade that on the occasion it actually arrives, we completely miss it.

thats the wrong attitude.

look at it like this:

trends are like trams. dont chase them when you missed one, the next comes sooner or later.

The so called experts where totally wrong on this whole mess,

The polling experts said the “stay” vote would win, they were wrong.

The stock market experts thought the stay vote would win and stocks would rally, they were wrong.

The currency experts thought the stay vote would win so they rallied the Pound to a yearly high against the US dollar, they were wrong.

Thank God I am not an expert, and I am very happy to have my FOREX trading account unaffected by last weeks events

My perceptions, also.

Nice picture. :cool:

“Ex” is something that has been, and “spurt” is a drip under pressure, as the saying goes.

yes nice picture. especially considering that the creator/artist was stupid enough to use a picture of the TITANIC as a symbol of the downfall of the EU.

am i the only one seeing the irony of this picture? :smiley:

the irony beeing first that the titanic is one of englands symbols which is associated with england and the empire that already sank after world war 2.

second that the artist who made that picture revealed how he is actually not using his head at all and revealing the “intelligence” of the average brexit voter.

LOL, you really do have a major bug up your arse don’t you Bogdan.
Chill out pal, give those tight shoulders a vigerous shake & then go sink a few beers….the sun will still rise in the morning & your beloved EU isn’t about to implode, well not this week anyhow :slight_smile:

Strictly speaking, the Titanic was built in Northern Ireland (Belfast, precisely)… but England is close enough :stuck_out_tongue:

No matter which side of the debate one is on,

one cannot help but have a bug up one’s…nose,

as it is a subject that raises temperatures and

heats up the temples, so nobody can be said to

be so exquisitely cool that with no personal gain

in mind will intervene in the discourse about the

European Union in absolute objectivity and

being impersonally detached…

Tight shoulders or loose tongue, or loose shoulders

and tight tongue: it means little to be either way

when one is vile, rude, or derogatory to others,

which many in these Eurosceptic days seem

to feel entitled to when encountering Europhiles.

A great debate turned to the most ignominious spectacle

broadcast to the world: a country of petty-minded squabblers

whose great Empire days give them agency to behave like

pariahs and denounce the European Court of Human Rights

or other august institutions in the EU as weak, wasteful, and dispensable.

Shame, shame, and more shame.

who is bogdan?

why are you so concerned about my arse? i know what youre thinking when you saw my picture but please be aware my arse is mine and wont be touched by you :wink:

why are you so upset about a comment i made that doesnt concern you? or did you do that titanic picture huh? its not my fault the average intelligence of the average voter is so clearly visible to those who keep eyes open to irony :wink:

why so upset? is something bothering you? i feel a lot of emotions and anger coming from your side. you unsatisfied with something? can i help you anyhow?

made under the company of the white star cruse lines in london a company located in england owning the titanic and lucitania two sister ships with identical blueprint build in belfast financed by UK and the white star cruse lines and run by brittish staff under brittish flag. beeing produced in ireland because ireland was the poorest country back then and labour was cheap (funny now that ireland joined the EU 39 years ago the average irish paycheck is 10% higher then the brittish average pay check. only a side note, not trying to indicate anything)

so yes youre right, as always, PHM! But its still closer to UK then ireland and whem you ask first assotiation to titanic, the first might be leonardo di cabrio but second will be england/london.