Hi all,
I have been a part time forex trader for 2 years without success. i am a avid reader and I recent find this book: dumb forex money why retail traders are seriously disadvantaged.
This book is basically saying:
Retail traders do not have edge compare to the very advanced institutional traders who have better information
Technical analysis do not work, or have very limited uses.
Retail traders should stop dreaming and give up
I have complicated feeling after reading this book. I do not want to quit trading, but at the same time, some of the point in the book is quite convincing(although some part is a bit unclear). It makes me doubt if it is possible for me, as an average guy with no special skill or bsckground, to succeed in trading,
Do you guys personally know any retail traders who is successful in forex trading? Who earn consistent profit
For years
Thanks.
Don’t panic. Remember, the author has only one absolute rule he must obey, and that is to sell his book. Doing great research and being right are not absolute rules for writers.
Of course, most retail traders don’t make money, but that’s likely because they are self-taught, over-leveraged and undisciplined. They would mostly fail whatever approach they follow so the book has nothing to illuminate here.
Plus, we each know very few traders compared to the total field buying and selling out there. I’m guessing most consistently successful traders are not very visible - how much time would you or I spend on a forum if we were making serious money?
I’ve been trading for 18 months now, 6 months intensive learning, youtube videos, reading books etc - 6 months trading from home without any success - and now I have joined a spread bet room and trade alongside 20 year professional city traders.
I’m not saying it’s easy but I am now moderately successful as I have a professional setup and have help from these professional traders.
What timeframes and markets are you trading?
These forums are brilliant, you need to immerse yourself in the trading world and try to surround yourself around like minded traders.
I do … but it’s fair to say that they’re a [I]very[/I] small minority.
It is possible, although difficult … if you’re willing to do what’s necessary to [B][U]acquire[/U][/B] the necessary education and skills.
It’s when people try to achieve it by shortcuts (i.e. [B][U]without[/U][/B] acquiring the necessary education and skills) that all the “accidents” typically and very repeatedly happen.
If it helps, I firmly believe that these are the five classic mistakes that you - and everyone else - needs to avoid, in order to be able to trade profitably.
Thanks all, I am mainly trading eur/usd and use/jpy. I understand it is possible to profit in forex, as the book agreed. But I do not know if it is worth for me to spend time and energy to continue learning. What is the probability of success? Is it too difficult? The book suggest that retail traders are disadvantaged because of poor information, no experience and connection in finance industry(like hedge fund and investment bank). All in all, it suggests that trading is about edge. No edge no win. And I do not have any edge against the market. The first rule of the five classic mistakes, is having edge.
This is pretty discouraging. I have two choice, one is quit and pursue for easier life, one is get an edge, although I have idea
Its almost impossible to make a serious amount of money daytrading in forex. Go longer-term, and follow trends - the market then has no option but to pay you.
I work in an spread bet trading room, we are ALL day traders and we all make money, this is my full time job.
You just need to work on strategies and when you find something that works, stick with it, improve on it, and be prepared to change / abandon it if market conditions change.
If you can work in a trading room you get the benefit of the fast news services etc which can also help you get out of losing trades and even profit from fundementals. Alternatively you can try and get a good sqwark service from home and some other good rolling news.
To be a day trader though you need to be on the ball and in touch with the markets in this way.
Regarding trading long term, this is always a good idea but you don’t ‘have’ to trade with trends, it can be quite demoralising to trade trends and only get a 30% win ratio. You can go against trends or range trade with simple suport and resistance.
You’ve now mentioned this specifically in [I]almost every post[/I] you’ve made in this forum, Mark (as well as registering under the username SpreadBetHub).
Are you trying to promote it, here, or what? You certainly give the appearance of posting only where you feel you can specifically mention it. What’s that all about?? :33:
There are traders who are consistently profitable. That said, those traders are few and far between. Reaching the stage where you can profit in that manner takes years of work, pracise, study, stress, losses, and so on and so forth. Many people simply give up before they get to that point.
One should never go into this business with the idea that today they’ll start learning and in a few weeks, or even a few months they’ll be rich. That’s unrealistic at best.
Hi Lexys, I ‘[I]work in a spread bet room[/I]’ I don’t own one! I wish I owned one
I just know that for a past struggling trader myself, it was the best thing I ever did to improve my trading and so YES I do recommend it to any struggling traders.
Most people I am chatting with here are from all parts of the UK or even overseas so I don’t really understand what you think I could achieve if I owned a local business?
I was “wondering”, Mark. I thought it looked like “promotional intent”, having noticed the same thing repeatedly in your posts, seen that an Administrator had visited your profile, and that one of your posts had been removed, and so on. Good to know that I was mistaken and that you have no promotional intent, here.
I read book Forex: How To Quickly Lose a Lot, where author described how it is impossible for retail trader to profit in long term, one information put there was that retail brokers do not close positions of retail traders, but wait and play against them as statistics show them that newbies lose their money in 3 months in average …
So the author says its impossible in all jurisdictions, with all means of market access, with all trading styles, with all starting capitals, all return horizons and with all analyses fundamental or technical?
Surely he just means “difficult”? So how’s that different to any other job?
Most retail traders fail. But most of us start this very complex job without training, with insufficient capital, no experience, with no mentor, no plan, very little knowledge of forex, and all too exposed to the tricky advertising ploys and get rich quick schemes of clever greedy people. Its no surprise most traders fail. Most people starting up a restaurant on the same basis would also fail. To say most will fail is right, but to say its impossible is just wrong - but it really makes people buy the book and that’s his aim.
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.
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 wish I owned one
