Hello Everyone,
I am new to forex, and was looking around for different types of strategies, one of the most common one I come across is triangular arbitrage and that kept me wondering, with all the efficiency (because of electronic executions etc.) + broker fees. Is the the triangular arbitrage strategy profitable?
Anyone executing is these days, would like to hear from the experience folks.
Cheers!
As I believe arbitrage has always been one of the most profitable trading styles.
The original post is immediately odd because you say triangular arbitrage is common - it is not common: it has very little reputation as a strategy: it is not known as a highly profitable strategy for private retail forex traders: it is especially complex for a new trader.
Ignore this.
Where on earth did you look, then? “Triangular arbitrage” is an obscure rarity, and effectively inapplicable to retail traders. Especially beginners.
Again, this has almost nothing to do with CFD forex traders, and especially not beginners!
There are a few here, in spite of its being a beginners’ forum. @tommor who posted above is one. I hope and trust some others will soon confirm what he said, as there’s quite some misunderstanding in the thread at the moment! 
It nearly always has the same underlying cause: people imagine that retail forex traders are actually “trading” and that currencies are actually changing hands when they bet against their counterparty. This leads people to imagine that stuff they read on the internet about “trading” applies to what they’re trying to do, when it doesn’t at all.
That and the fact that there are 1,000 times as many profitable marketers as traders, anyway, and misinformation is everywhere online. 
But correcting all that is part of the great value of a forum like Babypips, so thanks to @tommor and yourself for that. 
why7 does it have to do anything with CFD trading?!
Because you’re talking about converting one currency into another, then that into another and then that back to the original, almost simultaneously, to generate a profit. Because the prices are slightly different for the round trip.
99% of people on here are betting against a broker, no money is ever being exchanged and you never receive anything other than a profit or loss as a result of opening and closing one position.
I’m not sure what you think triangular arbitrage is, or what the bitcoin chart has to do with it, but clearly you’re misunderstanding something.
eta, you can probably see how the only way for this strategy to have good returns is by doing it with huge amounts of money. The markets are efficient and controlled by algorithms nowadays. Any inefficiency like this is very small and short lived.
Anything can be profitable, as far as I know, as long as you have it customized.
Triangular arbitrage is profitable, but your broker will start limiting your order execution almost instantly. No broker will allow a customer to bleed them. I’ve seen size restrictions, order queue, lagging performance.
If you’ve ever tried to execute an order and the platform lags, or the internet connection goes out for a second, that’s your broker disabiling instant execution.
Exactly.
If a CFD broker suspects you of doing this, they have a really big range of options available to prevent it, and understandably enough, since they’re your counterparty and lose whenever you win, they don’t hesitate to use them.
Especially the poorly-regulated, higher-leverage ones where in practice the retail traders inexperienced enough to want to try this kind of trick are sadly all-too-likely to open accounts.
What it all boils down to, really, is that some people try to learn to trade safely while others would prefer to look for short-cuts and try to get around the system, but in reality, with CFDs that’s going to go really badly for them, because it’s a system of which they have, typically, a pretty poor understanding to start with (and even one which was actually specifically designed, for the most part, to try to fool them!).
