Looks like the “anti” forex is gambling brigade are resorting to grasping at straws, how much longer is it going to be before they finaly admit they have been in denial all along lol
Those that are “wise” in your statement are deluding themselves.
Saying that a college standard dictionary meaning of a word is incomplete, is enough proof of that.
If there is a CHANCE you will lose a trade, and there is ALWAYS a chance you will lose a trade, it is a gamble.
Enjoy rambling amongst yourselves.
your post means nothing. we have better things to do. history tells us that wiser ppl are always lesser in numbers.
I’ve known people who have serious problems with gambling, and there’s always an element of self denial.
The reason some of us are trying to help is that in order to trade sucessfully, you have to have self honesty. If your religious beliefs are such that you feel gambling is wrong, then subconsiously you’ll sabotage your chances of success. Those with religious beliefs at least need to be aware of the issue.
If Tymen has an equity curve with a positive gradient, thats great, he’s been able to sucessfully deal with the issue in his own way, and if arguing on a public forum helps him reinforce and strengthen that that view, I’m happy for him to do so.
Some with religious beliefs will accept that they are gambling, but will argue that they are acting for the greater good, if they are able to donate substantial sums to chartity from their gambling, then thats beter than donating limited amounts if they where working a 9-5 job, or perhaps spending a few hours a day gambling rather than working and contributing to society free’s up time for them to spend helping others etc. Some just deny its gambling.
The key is that regardless of the mechanism you use to overcome the problem, at some point you have to confront the issue and work on it. The danger of doing that in a public forum is that you’ll be exposed to counter arguments that might make that process more difficult, and start to sow seeds of doubt.
Its not just those with religious beliefs, we all have similar sorts of issues that need to be adressed, and they dont get resolved by sticking your head in the sand and ignoring them.
You obviously did not have better things to do otherwise
- You would not have read it
- You would not have replied to it.
Conclusion
The fact that you did while claiming you have better things to do tells me,
You are not one of the lesser numbers.
The examples on the slot machine, the lottery card and batter trade of goods fail to prove that forex is gambling. I don’t think there exists ANY market for used lottery tickets, thus the notion fails at all angles of logic and practicality. It would be impossible to convince anyone to buy a used lottery ticket – in my city, we can make an exception for street cons walk up & manage to convince you they have the winning ticket, but no means even to retrieving it, please assist in any way. Hakuna matata. I cannot begin to consider a market for taking turns at a slot machine. And barter is strickly inconvenient and outdated at all corners of our wide world. In forex, there is near-perfect liquidity, just like the near-imperfect liquidity is natural in the real-estate market. It is because both commodities are money, in A/B if you’re long one you’re short the other. That’s the best thing about forex even above equities.
I believe by ‘forfeiting your money’ he means to explain that you are ready to either gain all or loose it all, with no other options in between like withdrawing just before the event hits or stoploss before the last chip is raked away. In other words, the risk exposure in a gambling wager is static or rigid (restricted to a number of outcomes like 2 or 52 options), while in forex it is dynamic and variable, just like in any market. Further, in a gamble one cannot say for certain that the event will happen, like sevens or heads & so it might be in forex, but in forex one can narrow it down to a few probabilities with equally desirable outcomes, nearing prediction. That means in forex one is in far greater control of the risk (risked amount) than in gambling. Hope it is understandable, I can always rephrase.
The housing market came up in the other thread. The prevailing view of the housing market is a no-go-zone with victims of the credit crunch feeling the pain. It is important to understand that buying a house through a mortgage makes one pay almost double or more (also for any hire-purchase, or school loan) though it saves on time for asset acuisition. Either way people took on houses some so as to make money off them later through rent or resale. The mistake they made was that they bought into an overbought market, into inflated pricing. According to basic economics, bubbles burst, not because the participants were waging a blind do or die (gambling) but they were looking for profit in a systematic way which went wrong, money like one goes to a day job. The rest got taken to the cleaners by the banks (and the government, please no pun intended) by getting a rotten end of the deal.
I assume that if guys have come as far as these forums searching then they have read R. Kiyosaki? The guy can sneeze finance and his key industry is real-estate, in a systematic way. He buys when prices are rock bottom & sells high. He holds atleast five years so as to cover the cost of acquisition (lawyer, survey, title, brokerage / agents, taxes). Its totally against common current, that will be 9% of market making it the rest get slaughtered. Wouldn’t know about the rest, but is he gambling? If I took twenty year housing data and analyze it to make better real-estate decisions (do its Elliot wave while at it), wouldn’t I manage the risks better than a do or die wager. Land is the ONLY real asset, doubt if dealing it can be classified as gambling.
Thanks a lot for the effort with the movie, I’ve heard about it but never watched. The old days of the pits have been replaced with charts, a progression which ensures they are here to stay. It must have been cumbersome channeling all those orders, up until electronic. That doesn’t change anything because the electronic system was made to fit the prevailing system (removing the gambling out of it - what with backtesting, indicators & pending / stop orders). The leverage I would say doesn’t change the fundamentals, it just amplifies the effect of market movement, to the detriment of the retail trader by the time its too high. Trading results made with that leverage are kept or lost by trader, same effect for the broker-bank, double edged sword. The same market price charts are used irrespective of leverage size. There is always the chance of a loss, just like death comes sometime. That doesn’t make life, or trading, a gamble. There has to be boundaries to the extent words define things. Not all risk is gambling risk. That’s why the fundamental difference lies in the type of risk undertaken, not in religion (discussion has grown past that already?) or in how it sounds compared to wild logic. Thanx y’all for hiding the guns.
A quick point about the lottery cards, I wasnt implying you could sell a [I][B]used [/B][/I]card
In fact I specifically stated that the value would decay as the time of the lottery draw approached.
Do you ignore Martingale ? This is well-known maths which demonstrate in theory that you can always beat the casino … until you are wiped out cause probability law will hit you one day or another because in practice you don’t have unlimited fund.
So… In fact, for housing market participants, there was risk.
So, if you and I happen to wind up on opposing E/U trades, you buy, I sell, and price goes up, did I just get a rotten end of the deal by chance? Or did I get a rotten deal because you took me to the cleaners? Or maybe I get a rotten deal because at that moment because George Soros sold a billion USD short?
If you profited, are you prophetic? Or did you just HAPPEN to be in the trade the right way at the time?
If Mr. Kiyosaki bought anything 5 years ago, was he at rock bottom? Or is he buying now trying to average up a bad open trade on those houses?
Just because land is an asset doesn’t mean it can’t be used as a speculative vehicle. It is used as such all the time.
DO NOT confuse games of chance such as slot machines, keno, the lottery or any other random number generator type, with games in which one can manage risk, or size of wager.
Games such as craps, roulette,poker, horse racing, sports betting, or any other activity that log results, can be proven winners if one follows money management, and plays odds and probabilities.
Real estate investments, equities, commodities, and forex, as well as any other business ventures fall under that criteria.
For instance, if you have 100K to open a restaurant, and you have a number of tables, and a menu, with hard costs planned, you can reasonably project earnings.
The only thing you can’t project, is how the food will be accepted, and how many customers will walk through the door daily.
Hence the risk factor.
The cold hard truth is, the words risk, speculation, and gamble are interchangeable, from a monetary standpoint. You are using money for no other reason than to turn a profit.
Use whichever one allows you to sleep best a night.
I think I know a little about Martingale.
And yes, I ignore it.
So does my friend.
i have come to a conclusion that most people on this forum who are tading forex are gamblers or have a gambling history
You are all missing the point, the one thing you have all failed to take into account is what exactly happens in a forex trade.
The reason you are missing the point is because the forex trade as a whole consists of multiple bets.
Let me explain.
When you open a Buy position, for example, trading 1 standard lot trading $10per pip, the moment you open that trade you have staked $10 of your account on the next price quote being higher than the current one.
If that price quote is higher you win $10 plus your stake, the bet ends there.
If that price quote is lower you lose your $10 stake, the bet ends there.
Your account equity and free margin are recalculated at this point and any profit or loss you made from that bet is added or removed.
The forex trade as a whole when you open that buy position gives the instruction to your broker to continue betting $10 on each and every new price quote untill one of the following occurs
- You tell him to stop buy sending a close order.
- Your take profit level automaticaly tells him to stop.
- Your stop loss automatically tells him to stop.
- You lost so many consecutive bets that you no longer have enough credit for him to continue so he stops for you. This is also known as a margin call.
So obviously you DO forfeit your stake if the bet loses, the stake is governed by your lot size. You bet this stake on each new price quote. You just wouldnt notice it if you only look at your account statistics at the end of this run of multiple bets known as a forex trade.
if you watch your account stats during the trade you will see how it is made up of these multiple bets, and how your account stats are recalculated after each one.
At the end of this run of bets your total profit and loss (stored temporarily during the run of bets as account equity ) is settled up and the total profit and loss is added or removed from your account balance, in the same way as when you have finished your run of bets at the casino you cash in your chips.
Well done, you are getting there. If they are trading, then by definition they are gambling.
Its not [I][B]most[/B][/I] people, its [I][B]everyone[/B][/I]
i didn’t mean that. who likes gamblers?. sorry to they but they are employing their dirty gambling tricks on forex
What dirty tricks ?, actually understanding the concept of an edge ?, developing an edge ? undertanding probabilities and money management ?, developing self awareness and disipline ?
Those are not dirty tricks, those are the skills that gamblers use to take money away from market participants who are stupid enough to play a game they have no understanding of.
You wont make money gambling over the long term without those skills. Noone is stopping you from learning the same “dirty tricks” other than yourself.
the people who are using these tricks are not called gamblers, they are called traders, if you are using these tricks and calling yourself a gambler then you are wrong and doing yourself a disservice
No, I am being brutally honest with myself.
Thats the point that some of us are trying to make. There are very serious psychological problems that will arise unless you can be 100% honest with yourself and admit that that you are gambling.
My edge is based on a sound fundemental principles that appears to apply to all markets over decades of data. I have data from hundreds of thousands of back tested trades, I have tens of thousands of live trades over a period of around 8 years. I know the magnitude of the edge, I know the varience in that edge, I have mountains of statistical data, I know when my edge is working above or below its average, I know the point exactly when I’ll deem that the edge isnt working and stop trading.
Despite all of that, I have no idea if my edge will continue to hold, or if it fails, if I’ll be able to develop a replacement. On a trade by trade basis I am gambling because the outcome of each trade is uncertain.
On a medium term basis I am gambling because my edge may produce returns either above or below average. An element of my costs are fixed, and its entirely possible that I could experience a year where profits failed to cover costs.
On a long term basis I am gambling because I have no idea if my edge will hold over the long term.
Once you are honest enough to admit these things, everything becomes much easier to manage.
Would you call someone who studies the form of horses, the jockeys, the condition of the race course, the weather, etc and then places bets on that race, a trader too ?
It seems to me this thread and the other thread is answering an age old question, why do most forex traders lose all their money, it is because they are stupid.
If so many are unable to understand the obvious fact it is gambling, no matter how many times it is explained to them they still continue to quote false examples to try and contradict this fact even though their examples do not even stand up to 5th grade scrutiny.
All the examples we have given to explain why forex IS gambling are irrefutable we still have all these people who still dont get it.