thanks for the reply!! I read your post on the topic, you are basically confirming something I have been recently starting to realize. but may I ask, if this is your true opinion , why are you still on this forum and haven’t ditched forex a long time ago?
at first I was pretty enthusiastic about fx but I am begging to think more and more that I won’t be spending a dime on this shit.
@alexslabu23… It’s 2.30am in my TZ atm… it’s a long answer… I’m making a profit week in week out these days… sometimes small other weeks very reasonable… but I have put in 100’s (maybe over 1000) of hours (really) of demoing, reading, watching and research so I can protect my positions or lower my losses with various risk management techniques…
If you read back through my activity…you’ll see that I’m as pessimistic about the whole box and dice of FX as you are and you haven’t even started…90% lose money in this game, and it is a game against your Broker, I would say the odds are even greater…
[quote=“alexslabu23, post:35, topic:136016”]
At first I was pretty enthusiastic about fx but I am begging to think more and more that I won’t be spending a dime on this shit….[/quote]
If you want real nightmares… watch the video below…
My suggestion… read up a lot more on Forex Trading, open a FREE demo and give it a try for yourself, it won’t cost you a cent and the only thing you will lose is time…then you will be able to make a more informed decision of whether it is worth pursuing or a waste of your time and possibly resources…
DON’T pay for any courses or trading education…you have the school here on Babypips, and 1000’s of useful demonstrations, lessons and ideas on Youtube…
The hard part starting out is sifting through what is of real value and what is just a sales pitch at you…
I hope this is of some help to you…
Edit: To answer your original question… yes, you are trading against your broker, not in the open market…
You never own the currencies, you are trading CFD’s (Contracts for Difference) which is effectively betting whether your trade (position) will go up or go down… that’s it.
TRUE ECN/STP isn’t even possible to do from a technical point of view…there are a few ways It can be implemented but they are theoretical and not at least slightly practical…well firstly…one problem is that you can’t conduct business by unilaterally closing and opening trades, only bilaterally witch is a bit complicated to implement!! for any transaction to be completed both parties have to give their confirmation !! either a open is paired up with a close (of the same currency) but it gets tricky because the system would have to get you a person at just about the exact same time you open or close to exchange the exact same value (but idenominated in opposite currencies) witch is further more made difficult by the fact that price has just fluctuated for both of you, so what are the odds of pairing up at the exact same TIME with somebody that has your exact same VALUE after price fluctuation… ALSO another problem arises, do you know how much it actually cost (not to mention how much time it takes ) to physically exchange money from a credit account to another? you also need either somebody to be sufficiently stupid to send their money first, and then the second …to probably a third party! further more if and only if all these eh just 3 things come togheter at the exact same time (more chances for all the planets aligning) + plus the other a few little inconvinieces of how the transaction from entity to entity is actually done…well as you see it’s too complicated and the odds of it happening are really slim!! it’s either this model of little odds syncronicity OR partially closed traids and dividing a bigger trade from a party into more little trades witch also has it’s problems, I won’t get into because the post is already going for too long…also if there really was the possibility to trade other people well if everybody is buying (based on a pattern) than who’s willing to sell? NOBODY…so where’s the liquidity? basically at one time the number number of buyer / total bought capital has to exceed the number of sellers and total sold capital (or the other way around)…so somebody has to get stuck !!!(id’s say probably a lot of people) all in all these things summed up and the fact that a lot of factors have to happen in sincronicity make true ecn/stp brokers impossible, and impractical…but hey we still have the bucket shops that spy on our trades and [Removed due to Forum policy]
yes but I guess demoing and going live are 2 different things (even if your starting in demo capital is equal to the starting capital in live ) because I guess the broker can rape you with different tweaks.
are you actually trading profitably ? because before you edited your post you said you were consistently profitable week in and week out…was that just demo?
I am wondering what do the so called ecn/stp brokers PRETEND they are giving you the opportunity of trading ?
Didn’t edit that part…?
Live…otherwise I would be wasting my time… for example this week the first 3 days,12 positions across the NZDUSD, USDJPY and USDCHF for over 100 pips…the US Dollar was strengthening (advised a member on this forum prior who didn’t take the advise) and I profited from it… Thursday - 26 pips… Friday + 17… I work on 2 - 4% per day…Compounding is a money management strategy on it’s own…
I was trialing a strategy via PM with another on this forum…
One of the best strategies can be found here… I trade a slight variation of this…it works…
thank you , i have a question …did you not point me toward another thread (a few posts above)? (it seems it has been modified to who is the counterparty in a exchange? ) …i was trying to read it (the original)
I put up a link to the ECN thread… but Forex.com posted the Counter Party thread which was a better quality thread, so I just added it to my post as well… nothing to hide, just answered your question better. See below…
i was looking for this particular part of one of your posts where you say suggest the brokers platform (algorithm) is tweaking certain parameters in your trade so that you lose the trade (and he profits)
“I now understand why once I open a position that it instantly goes against me. It’s my Brokers algorithm scrambling to flatten its risk by placing a trade(s) against my position. Some of the “FX Dreamers” on this site seem to think it’s an illusion.”
is this still your opinion ? if yes how to counter-act?
I am looking and forex charts and was guessing one candlestick should open where the other (prior) closes but it’s not like this. someone care to clarify?
Are you able to post an image of the chart in question…
It can happen during news releases or especially at Market open on a Monday…
Ok, I assume you are referring to the last three white candles…
At times price is moving quick enough that when one candle closes and the next one draws that it “gaps” up or down as the new candle is drawn… especially on short TF charts (like the 1min displayed) It’s just the price feed still flowing in the milliseconds the platform is generating the next candle…
On this particular example, it’s a very small amount, maybe ~0.3 - 1 pip while the new candle was drawing…
“Since so many traders watch these same levels (support, resistance, candlestick patterns, Fibonacci retracement etc) and place buy and sell orders on them to enter trades or place stops, the support and resistance levels tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
what I don’t understand is that (if using a ecn broker- if there even is such a thing as true ecn broker) and everybody is buying for example based on a signal or a combination of signals …and there are more buyers than sellers (thus the price going up because of the buying pressure and earning a potential profit for the buyers and loss for the sellers) who ( in ecn type broker trading) is stupid enough to take the other side of the trade and just throw you money?
also if there are more buyers and the price is going up…how can the software find enough sellers (witch are in the minority) in order to pay the buyers?
it doesn’t make sense
This is very true… we are all looking at the same price on roughly the same charts…even Indicators such as when the RSI crosses below 30 on the EURUSD possibly generates a flux of Buy orders…the same way when price hits the top Bollinger Band generates a flood of Sell orders into the market…but you’re referring to retail trading which is a mere “piss in the ocean” of volume when compared with funds that the interbank market moves through FX everyday…
True ECN (STP) is available… just large accounts (maybe ~100k+) are required to access directly to the market…[quote=“alexslabu23, post:48, topic:136016”]
what I don’t understand is that (if using a ecn broker- if there even is such a thing as true ecn broker) and everybody is buying for example based on a signal or a combination of signals …and there are more buyers than sellers (thus the price going up because of the buying pressure and earning a potential profit for the buyers and loss for the sellers) who ( in ecn type broker trading) is stupid enough to take the other side of the trade and just throw you money?
also if there are more buyers and the price is going up…how can the software find enough sellers (which are in the minority) in order to pay the buyers?
[/quote]
There are far more enlightened traders on this site than I that can explain the inner workings of price action… …
Two good recent articles that explain the questions you are asking… Hope this helps…
ok but I repeat my question…ifeverybody is trading based on a signal / multiple signals that show for example that you should BUY …who is dumb enough to take to opposite side of the trade? and how exactly is liquidity provided to all those winning trades?
there is also another thing that is bugging me…how are transactions realized taking into account the fact that price fluctuates and there is a very slim chance to find someone that pays you the exact same value but in opposite currency? because it’s not like price stays the same so that you can easily find someone with the same value in counter currecy…you have a few (or a few more) pips difference…so who pays that? It drops from the sky?
A couple if things;
Firstly, as a retail trader its a virtual certainty that your orders are not actually executed at all by your broker.
Secondly, the fxmarket is so big there is almost always a buyer/seller at every pip level, plus your brokers t&c’s probably state that they will open/close trades at the closest price they can obtain to the one you want, not the exact price
" Firstly, as a retail trader its a virtual certainty that your orders are not actually executed at all by your broker." that’s why I said true ecn broker ( if there really exists one)
“Secondly, the fxmarket is so big there is almost always a buyer/seller at every pip level,” what do you mean by pip level? you mean transactioned sum?
" plus your brokers t&c’s probably state that they will open/close trades at the closest price they can obtain to the one you want, not the exact price"
maybe…but that would mean there’s an aproximation going on for both participants of the trade
still if I for example buy 10 000 euros at 12 000 dollars…probably there will be someone else who sells the pair (and is buying 12 000 euros) but if the pair goes up 10 pips …than who is willing to buy 12010 dollars? …only someone who sells (at the exact same time) 9 . 991.3 euro! what are the odds of that …but what if the price fluctuated with 12 pips (for you)… or with 43 (for you)…54…13…35. do you mean forex is capable of pairing up all these very odd pairs of numbers based on the same difference in pips but on the opposing side (currency) ? what about if the other party has other pip difference? you must also take into account that generally the counter party of your open isn’t the counter party of your close…you may have the same open (on other sides) at the same time but not the same close…so the system has to pair you with somebody that has bought or sold at a different pip value for him and a different pip value for you! what about custom lots, that’s even trickier … do you understand what I am trying to say?
Hi Alexslabu.
True ecn brokers do exist, but they tend to require larger deposits than most retail traders can afford.
There are so many transactions in fx daily, that on the major pairs there will be buyers and sellers orders waiting to be triggered on almost every pip. During periods of low volatility there are fewer buyers/sellers or an imbalance of them, so spreads widen.
As different traders have different strategies and interpret the same chart differently, while you may see 12010 as a signal to sell, someone else may see a rise to that level as confirmation that price will rise further, so they will buy
