Forex folly: Why you shouldn’t be trading currencies | Analysis & Opinion |
Generally pretty damning stuff from the “zero-sum game” camp. Obviously most of you guys will agree that you have to be ultra-careful when you choose your broker etc., but what are your overall impressions about this article? In particular, the fact that it is not a warning but pretty much an OUTRIGHT discouragement against engaging in FX trading?
Your thoughts please!
The author claims that you cannot predict price movement - I would disagree with that strongly. He also claims that price often has no correlation with the big news headlines - I would say ‘so what’. If a Forex trading strategy were based solely on what was in the newspapers then sure, I guess one would find performance patchy at best, but that needn’t worry those of us who put rather more work and analysis in.
Reuters have recently allowed their journalists to use their blogs to write more personal opinion and analysis - this piece would never make it onto the regular Reuters newswire. This is the reason for the disclaimer under the journalist’s photo, ‘the views expressed are his own.’ The thinking was to add more colour to the general output and encourage the journalists to explore more thinkpieces, provoke debate etc. But the fact that they have a disclaimer on there, and that it appears in his blog, also shows that this is very much a personal opinion piece rather than a formal piece of Reuters journalism.
I personally don’t think that it is a well-written piece, but am not worried by the opinion of one individual, particularly one advancing such a slender argument. Some of the comments under the blog entry make a few of the counter-arguments.
There have always been people who claim that Forex trading does not work. Generally people who know someone who failed to make it work.
So basically there’s no point of trading?
Now you tell me…
I’m in total agreement with SimonTemplar, and wrote my own counter to the article last week. This is another example of someone thinking the forex market is fundamentally different than other markets - that it acts differently and is subject to scammers other markets aren’t subject to. Yeah, right.
well then i’m surprised reuters would write such dribble.
That’s a point I tried to make: Reuters did not write this, it was written by a Reuters journalist on his personal blog. It is his personal opinion, rather than the Reuters view. Hence the disclaimer under his photo on the right (although I agree with you in the sense that the disclaimer ought to be more prominent).
Well, Reuters should sack him!
That’s a bit harsh, he has just expressed his opinion - regardless of whether we agree with it, he has that right. I have, however, contacted a few friends at TR and said that the new blog policy might want adjustment - at the very least, the disclaimer needs to be made more prominent, as it reads as though this is a Reuters-endorsed piece, which it is not. They took the point.
Someone better tell TMoneyBags…lol
These statements from the article were offensive to me:
“And you’re no George Soros, although you’ll surely end up breaking something — your own bank account.”
"…this form of trading requires guessing…"
"…you will have no advantage over the biggest players. None whatsoever."
Very good counter arguments rhodytrader, enjoyed your article.
Quite, it’s a terrible article. But throughout my life, every time that a subject I know about gets into the Press - whether that is an aspect of my working life, a hobby, whatever - I immediately spot the mistakes in elements of the coverage. It is a common thing. That is not to say that I am a blanket critic of the Press, far from it, I know journalists personally, but there are always bad eggs. That this is just a personal blog rather than even being ‘official’ journalism means that it has probably barely even had to pass through editorial checks in the way that a regular piece would. It is a bad piece of writing - even setting aside the factual inaccuracies, it is poorly written - but that is nothing new, either. So he has done a bad job, has shown a few people who notice these things that he is reactionary rather than well-researched, but we should not mistake it for the majority view or get stressed about it. And even if it did represent the majority view - who cares? We know the secret, we make the coin, people like him wash over me when I look at the important things in life.
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Yes, quite, apologies, I would like to second that, meant to say so - thank you for the prompt, dusktrader!
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Didn’t find anything interesting in this article. The author pretended to be ironic but … nothing new. Just another article about forex.
Everyone knows that 95% of traders fail but everyone strives to enter that five-percent-group-of-winners