Forex is NOT about traders

“So why trade like every other schlub that is losing money?”

Most aspiring traders fail because of a lack of true understanding of the markets, due to the fact that most aspiring traders attempt to gain knowledge from the same places that feed on their wallets.

“Forex is primarily about goverments, banks, and businesses.”

This quote I would agree with.

“Many of you trade as if every move made by the market happened in a deliberate fashion; as if everything happened for a reason. Many of you trade as if technical analysis and indicators move the markets. Many of you fail. Coincidence? Likely not.”

I would agree with this statement to for the most part.

“Yet retail transaction volume comprises only 5% of the market. What percentage of the non-retail trading volume is placed in a non-speculative fashion, but simply occurs as a result of foreign exchange? That percentage could be seen as the randomness of the market. Clearly it varies on any given day.”

I assume you’re referring to mandatory fills. These happen throughout the day at specific times. There are trading systems built just around them. An example would be 10 to 1030 New York Time. You often see the market changed directions due to mandatory order fills coming in. Sometimes this is called housekeeping.

Something I was surprised that you left out was the bots. Bots comprise the majority of the actual trading in the Forex market. As a price action trader one of the things I look for is to try to figure out the pattern of the active bot is currently manipulating the market. Once I see the pattern created by the bot that I can trade with it and make money as it drives the market. Probably one of the easiest to spot is the Fib Bots. These can be seen easily using the MT4 program. (Not going to delve into how as this is your blog and I’m not going to corrupt it). By bot I mean algorithm for those of you in Rio Linda California Good trading to all Allen

Forex trading is a good and very flexible business. Forex is very popular in the world and people can make good amount of money.To trade successfully every trader should learn the basics of Forex.

On the contrary, I probably wouldn’t trade if the market wasn’t manipulated. LOL

The fact that the market is manipulated means that there is no longer any randomness to an extent and that means as traders we can pick up on the patterns of those ‘manipulators’ and therefore make money consistently.

But to be honest, I’m not even sure what you mean by manipulated. If someone or some large entity, with a ton of money behind them, made a large buy trade which absorbed the selling and prevented the market from going lower, is that manipulation? Not really, it is just someone with a lot of money trading.

Anyway, a huge market like the FX market can never be manipulated by any entity in the long term. Short term maybe.

Ignorance is Bliss!

I totally agree.

lets hope you still have this opinion in 3 years or so.

I’m seriously biting my tongue on this one… It took me about 7-8 years to get to a point where I left my 9-5 and started trading for a living. It only took 3-4 months to see how one rookie mistake can blow your account so bad, you need to go find a job again.

Trying to find the rocky yellow brick road again… it ain’t easy to make green!

Hello ‘Keydcuk’,

when you read an article like this Low volatility: Calm before the market storm? | News | Fundweb

you realise that the ability for these markets to develop long-lasting trends is more and more difficult,

with HFT machines squeezing every pip out of micro-movement before you have even had a chance to

click your buys or sells manually… The ‘buy and hold’ or ‘sell and hold’ do still work, but it is not easy

to see which way the currency market is going… Even the stuff of textbook economics, e.g. 'safe haven

currencies and equities move in opposite directions’ (e.g. USD versus S&P500), has stopped behaving

like it should… How the hell is anyone supposed to make money out of this mess, and with such low

volatility?

No, I will keep my day job! Some skilled speculators CAN make money but they are also sufficiently

capitalised… Trying to leverage your 500 Pound/Dollar/Euro account to make 100% profits from

the word go, in order to pay off your rent/mortgage/food/socialising, is a very risky and not very

sensible decision…

I hope you will get your break… But thumbs up to you for taking the leap of faith into becoming

a full-time trader…

Jesse Livermore, to take but one, only ever lived through trading his own money… And he did go

through times of losing everything and borrowing money from friends… But trading was all he did…

However, trying to live off Forex with the current levels of volatility is very hard… Unless you can grin

and bear it, waiting for that killer trade that makes up for a slow couple of days (or sometimes more)…

Cheers

Thanks for the comments. Something to think about before I ever decide to leap again. You’re right about needing big trades to make up for the ones with little movement. I’ve been holding a trade for a week now, only to have it go my way now. My SL was never hit and I am benefiting from positive swap on the TRY/JPY. Looks like I might be able to finally close this one this week.