He says it is totally possible…but extremely difficult. The book suggests that forex speculation is only for the experienced and sophisticated people who work in the financial industry and get better information. Like hedge fund and investment banks guys. Retail traders or ‘home traders’ stand no chance. It mentioned Long term directional betting would be the easiest, but there are few reasons why forex is hard and not worth it even betting on long term direction.
What does he define as “trading”? Most sources, especially in the US, regard trading as intra-day, probably on time horizons of minutes. On that basis, I would agree with the above.
But what does the book say about what trading is?
I think the difficulty of answering this question helpfully [U]to you[/U] is that from [U]your[/U] perspective, the [U]overall[/U] probability of success may not be relevant at all: what matters is [U]your[/U] probability of success; and without knowing anything about you, that’s close to impossible for anyone else to discern.
Again, for answers to help you, the question needs to be “Is it too difficult [U]for you[/U]?”, I think? Which we really can’t tell? 
That’s [I]clearly[/I] right - nobody (who understands anything about trading) is going to dispute that perspective. You need a lot more than just an edge, too, but certainly without a genuine, [I]proven[/I] edge, you have nothing.
It depends what you mean by “speculation”, perhaps. Taking it as just a vague, general word meaning nothing much more specific than “trading” (which I’m guessing is the context) I think the word “only” is a slight exaggeration. That said, I admit that [I]most[/I] of the long-term successful retail traders I know personally are ex-institutional traders (but it’s pretty difficult for me to know to what extent that’s just a comment on the people I specifically happen to know and/or to what extent it’s more generally representative of retail traders).
I won’t spent a minute on any forum if I’m making serious money from forex. The thing is that we retail traders are always on the hunt for a big win, so the reason for so many failing is this greedy attitude not the forex market itself.
I prefer Demo Trading than to read some books as it is the best way to get knowledge regarding the Forex Trading and that too without any risk of losing money.
Demo gives just idea how it technically forex, what you can do there but you will never know how to mentally handle trading
Retail traders can make money in forex trading however the failure ratio is higher which is the main cause of such perception that retail traders can’t do anything in forex. But if we trade wisely everyone of us can make money.
Where’s the money going to come from, if [I]everyone[/I] makes money?
Apart from commissions/fees, trading is a [U]zero sum activity[/U], Imi. Nobody makes money without someone else losing money. By definition, we can’t [I]all[/I] make money: that would be like “everyone being above average”.
Is this the same for the big boys?
no it isnt.
Not necessarily, Mom … but we’re talking in this forum about [I]retail spot forex trading through brokers[/I], and (apart from commissions/fees) that’s certainly a zero sum game.
I understand that successful traders are so few. Though there are thousands of people on this forum that trade on forex. Does someone of us know personally a trader that made millions of dollars by trading on forex market?
yes personaly several guys but not trading forex. i know noone who made millions trading forex.
What did they trade?
stocks of single companies. some traded indexes / commodities
here is the excerpt from book How to Quickly Lose a Lot :
[I]"There is a saying in banks’ dealing rooms that trading houses that entertain retail clients usually allow new clients’ positions to remain open, rather than close them on the market or hedge them. Their internal analytical tool shows them that average client loses his initial investment within three months. I personally did not see any such analytical paper from inside the bank. But, as I spoke with a lot of retail clients, I tend to believe it. Or better yet, with such a flow of information regarding clients’ behavior, you can easily adjust your bank trading strategy against the client. "[/I]
Well that’s alright then. I don’t recognise myself as one of these clients / traders.
When somebody says retail traders can’t make money, the first thing to ask is what do you mean by retail trader.
RE retail traders losing money, the best advice I can give is that since most retail traders lose money, [B]bet against them[/B]. Alpari, OANDA, DailyFX and a few other brokers / dealers publish retail sentiment for different currency pairs. If the majority of retail traders are long, consider going short. And vice versa.
I did a simple test a few years ago, counting how many pips you would’ve lost trading in favour of retail sentiment. Or conversely, how many pips you would’ve won trading against retail sentiment.
I feel as though it is so easy for someone to fool themselves into thinking what they want to think such that it makes it so it is nearly impossible to be successful trading Forex. I feel as though I did this for a long time. I personally doubt there are many bank traders who are doing anything other than day trading Forex. Understanding what is going on session to session in your pair can begin to make it much easier to trade Forex and allow you to cut risk. That means that you have to stay up all night in some parts of the world, and for someone with a full time job, that seems difficult. So, rather than face the realities, I think it is easy for someone to begin to think that they can’t do that, but they can work around it, and be successful some other way. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is possible to be successful trading solely off the daily or 4 hour charts. I just think it makes your life so much harder, from my perspective, and almost everyone fails at it. But, rather than contemplating trading off the shorter term charts, and more limiting your risk per trade, instead you opt for what you think is the easier route, and you try to trade the longer term charts solely, and then, you don’t have to stay up all night. What if, instead, you entered off a day trading system, and had limited risk per trade. Then, if you were in a good intermediate term trend, you let your trade run, and increased you risk to reward ratio consistently with your trades. A good risk to reward ratio, I believe, is the difference between those that succeed and those that fail in Forex trading. It does mean that you have to be able to take losses, however, losses become no big deal if you learn to trade a consistent system of trading that is giving you at least a 2 to 1 risk to reward ratio. What if you were able to get 10 to 1? Then, it becomes easy to make money. You lose most of the time. Also, it’s not hard to see that if you do this, you absolutely have to have limited risk, and a position size that limits your risk to, probably, 1 or 2 percent of your account size. Maybe less if you are only winning 10 or 15 percent with a 10 to 1 risk to reward. I always thought it was possible to be successful all the way up to 5 percent, but I have never risked more than 1 or 2 percent. When it comes to systems, think simple. London session breakout is a great and simple system. Integrate a consistent system of profit protection into your system. In other words, move your stop loss such that if a winning trade goes against you, you will not lose it all, or go into loss. Forex is too unpredictable not to protect your profits. Integrate into your thinking that a good risk to reward ratio is the most important thing to your success. Losing a single trade is meaningless. Practice thinking this all the time until it becomes a part of who you are. Forex may be the hardest thing you ever do, but you can be successful. Most people have lost too much money too fast, and they quit. So, limit risk, and when you first start trading in a real account, start out trading with a smaller percentage of risk to your account size, and unfortunately, you may start out losing. Most traders have lost some money before they make money. But, if you can keep from getting knocked out, and never give up, you can be successful. It took me a long time to start to make any money trading. But, I can tell you that it’s possible.
you must make spaces/breaks in your texts pleeaassee 