How long does it take to double your $

thelearner · June 2, 2009, 7:13pm

R_Carter:

Learner, Dont know if I’m allowed to say this here, but see a banner add above on the same broker so assume its ok. FXCM is probably the best choice (personal obsevation). They offer tight spreads (that can add up over a year). Plus they have a real good platform. As you know you can execute a trade with one click of the mouse and have preset stop and limit set up with that one click. Plus you can manually move about the stop and limit on screen with the mouse pointer (good for the less mental arithmatic types). You could see a good entry point but by the time youve figured the stop and limit its passed you by

Only drawback I can see is their US based… the dreaded tax. There are one or two based in Switzerland and that equals banking secrecy laws. Dont matter what you earn they not about to tell. Did I just say that? :D:D

Well they’ve moved (or are moving) to the UK to work around the anti-hedging regulations that the NFA has made.

From what I understand in the taxes is that until its taken out of the forex market taxes are not taken into consideration. There are also short term (under a year) and long term (over a year) investment taxes. I’m not sure what the tax system would say forex, but I don’t think it would be much different then stock profit/losses.

Which ones are based in Switzerland…that has been my favorite EU country to visit so far

Also…here is an interesting article where the US government has sued the biggest (?) Swiss bank for disclosure of information: US sues Swiss bank to make it disclose secret accounts

thelearner · June 2, 2009, 8:07pm

R_Carter:

LEARNER youre well informed. Yep they have already set up in the UK. Anti hedging is a real pain! Some traders will make a long term position on say a 4h chart but look to the smaller time frames to hedge an obvious retrace whilst still keeping their 4h chart postion. On the face of it the powers that be say it makes no sense… simply close the 4h position right? But when you make a hedge it doesnt matter which way the market is moving your position is nuetral. If you get out and then get back in at the wrong time it can cost you. I know people out there will bang on about it makes no difference but if its what youre used too and it works why change it?

Best Swiss broker ACM hands down. Not as dynamic a platform but still very good. Plus just read their background info (all on site) Will not disclose account info despite the best efforts of US tax officials!

Now all I need is a Swiss bank account …maybe Credit Suisse since they have an office here in Wash DC

They have 4 platforms…one of which I’m really interested is that for mobile phones.

budisuharto · June 3, 2009, 1:27am

Greetings y�all
This is a great forum and it�s wonderful to see experienced fx traders giving their guidance to the young ones.

I bought some USD denominated stocks about 3 months ago and noticing the drop in the USD, I decided to open a fx trading account to hedge that risk. Soon, I got very interested and started to look at other currencies and trading them. I started to do more reading and research and came across this fabulous forum.

I made a gain of about 15% last month, which was pretty good by my standard. However, my trading style was pretty dangerous, no stop loss, no target profit, just basically monetizing my view on a particular currency.
Now, here comes the question. Say I have a view, that GBP is gonna rise and USD is collapsing, and I will go long on GBP/USD. Now, I know that some of the more experienced guys here can collect tenths or even hundreds of pips per week. I am wondering, which would be better, trading regularly and collecting those pips or to �invest� for a long time (say 1 year) and collect hundreds or even thousands of pips.

My point is, does frequent trading really beat long term investment? I have looked at my gain last month, and I realized that I could probably have made more had I just invested that amount (on leverage) instead of trading in and out of it. For example, if I have a view that GBP is gonna appreciate by 10% by next year, I could�ve applied 10x leverage and gain a 100% ROI by the end of next year. Would I be able to do the same if I were to trade in and out of it?

I would appreciate if you could share your view, on trading vs long term investing. Thank you. I seriously believe that this could be an avenue for supplemental income on a constant basis, however, my quick calculation last night on this made me a little doubtful. Please enlighten me!

s050399b · June 3, 2009, 2:05am

for long term, sell USD/AUD

TalonD · June 3, 2009, 7:17am

RCarter, I just sent you an email for the excel spreadsheet, thanks!

In an earlier post you mentioned taking college grads and putting them on the trading floor etc… Forex doesn’t have a centralised location so what did you mean by that?

Learner, I envy you, I was in your position about 10 yrs ago, wish I had known about forex back then! And just curious, with trades like you describe, are you trading trends on a 1day time frame?

TalonD · June 3, 2009, 7:21am

Does this mean the s/r on the short time frames are less reliable since the high volume smart money are causing s/r levels on a larger time frame.

TalonD · June 3, 2009, 8:37am

have fun on your day off!
thanks for the advice on the time frames, I was already getting into the habit of looking at a longer time frame for the overall trend. Still trading a demo acct. for now.

wrtm_19 · June 3, 2009, 12:08pm

I know this is a bit off topic, but talking about swiss brokers what do you think of Dukascopy, or ACM is better for you

Thanks for your answer!

thelearner · June 3, 2009, 12:42pm

Well I was trading based on daily/60 min time frames, but I’d let my positions sit for a good while. I’ve only been trading for about 2 weeks and 1 day with a bit of my I’m not too worried about.

I just had an insanely amazing learning experience …it would leave some men crying probably…

tymen1 · June 3, 2009, 1:19pm

I understand that Tonymand, (Honorary FX Member) has an account with Dukascopy.

You could ask him for further details.

o990l6mh · June 3, 2009, 1:29pm

R_Carter:

WRTM Dukascopy is primarily an interbank provider. I understand their thinking of getting into retail or may have even started but even then its likely to be ‘white label’ products. If they have gone ahead with individual accounts they will probably require a high deposit and only offer $100 lot size and up. I’ve not used their platform but hear its good!

ACM on the other hand is retail and offers the usual accounts. Spreads wont be as good as Dukascopy.

My best guess would be if you have a $50k plus deposit, then go with Dukascopy. With this balance they will offer very tight spreads! If not ACM.

The primary reason I would look to a swiss broker is their banking laws. Swiss banks (and FX brokers) are nuetral about tax avoidance. Their statute law prohibits disclosure to third parties and boy does that p*ss off your and my governments!! :D:D:D

If you search for forex saviors thread here on BP, you’ll find strong reasons to be cautious of going with a Swiss broker.
I strongly suggest you read his thread!

Oskar · June 3, 2009, 2:54pm

Sorry to bust your secrets, but the swiss start to “share” the tax avoiders with IRS since the UBS disaster over there. So don’t count on there laws anymore. Hmmmmmmm I know something about that. Brrrrrrrrrrr:eek:

Actually I should have said “unfortunately” I know something about that.

wrtm_19 · June 3, 2009, 5:57pm

Thanks for the advise!

budisuharto · June 5, 2009, 12:54am

Hi Carter

Thanks very much for the response! Enlightening indeed!

R_Carter:

BUD great question and one thats not easy to answer! I guess it comes down to 1) How often can you/ want to trade and 2) How deep our your pockets. If you put up a bollinger on a 2 standard deviation on a range of time frames, say 4h, 1d, 1wk (but the same can be said on all time frames) you will see the market loves to trend. But that it tends to broadly bounce up and down within the bollingers on each time frame. So providing you set larger stops for longer time frames its a matter of personal choice.

It could be said that the more active trader will in the long term earn more pips. By active I mean not over trading thats a killer. I mean even on the 15m chart say no more than 2 or 3 trades a day. On a 4h chart it might be a well placed trade that lasts several days or even a week or more.

I would say its all about setting yourself a trading plan that achieves your objective and sticking to it. For instance some are happy to average a safe 20 pips a day on average by getting in on a good trade and out as soon as possible thereby exposing themselves to the minimal amount of risk. Others are more comfortable in a long term trade.

TalonD · June 5, 2009, 6:36am

R Carter
I sent you an email asking for the Excel spreadsheet. Just in case it dropped into a spam folder

I put spaces in there so it wouldnt show up here as a link.

Appreciate it !

long weekend vacation starting today.
good luck trading y’all

notice the ‘yall’ ? yep I’m a slow Georgia boy
lol

Oskar · June 5, 2009, 7:39am

Sorry to disagree, NOT ANYMORE, like I said, since the UBS disaster a few things changed over there. I had to found out the “hard way” (lucky me brrrrrrrrrrr) :eek:
And they are not even finished yet with changing the “sharing rules”.
Also a well known lawyer in florida had to find that out too.

Clint · June 5, 2009, 9:44am

Since this thread has evolved into a discussion of tax shelters and tax avoidance, you guys might want to read a couple of articles in Mark Nestmann’s Blog:

Asset Protection BLOG - Mark Nestmann ---- then scroll down to the entries for June 1, and May 14.

Personally, I can’t even discuss taxes without resorting to profanity — so, I’ll leave you guys to it.

Clint

SanMiguel · October 30, 2009, 5:30am

If we take an average stop of say 50pips, which is common on many of the 1hr/4hr strats, trading a 1% of account size trade size equates to about 5% risk doesn’t it?

Goblinlord · October 30, 2009, 5:58am

No… just posted something akin to this information a bit ago actually.

Click here to see my post.

Honestly, not sure why this type of info isn’t really in the babypips school. I don’t recall seeing it… but this type of question seems to be quite common. In fact, I actually had a similar question and had to come up with the formulas to figure it out my self. Though… I am sure if I looked hard enough someone has them posted somewhere… just felt it was quicker to come up with them my self at the time.

SanMiguel · October 30, 2009, 6:07am

These calculations may be wrong as I am a spread better but 16 lots equates to around 16 of your base currency. So isn’t 16lots at $160 per pip?

On your example over 40pips risk, that is a potential loss of $6400 on a 10k account.