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Trading vs gambling

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  • Post #1
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  • First Post: Dec 16, 2005 7:49am Dec 16, 2005 7:49am
  •  Blackship
  • | Joined Nov 2005 | Status: Member | 54 Posts
hi guys,

Can anyone tell me what's the differences btwn gambling and trading?
  • Post #2
  • Quote
  • Dec 16, 2005 8:36am Dec 16, 2005 8:36am
  •  fx-trader777
  • | Joined Aug 2005 | Status: steady and consistent | 977 Posts
Quoting Blackship
Disliked
hi guys,

Can anyone tell me what's the differences btwn gambling and trading?
Ignored
The main difference I see is you can stop losses. For example you are in Totalizator and place an order on Dallas to win at the same time you bought Dallas stocks, If Dallas begin to lose you cut losses and sell its stocks but you can nothing to do with totalizator.

But currencies are different, Actually we are trading emotions not currencies, and these amotions are manageble by such events as fundamental releases or technical signals.
kiss the trend
 
 
  • Post #3
  • Quote
  • Dec 16, 2005 9:58am Dec 16, 2005 9:58am
  •  hagadol
  • | Joined Sep 2005 | Status: Member | 376 Posts
In trading the markets have a memory, in gambling usually there is no memory.

The markets might have an increased probability on one direction at certain price levels, such as previous support and resistance levels, the memory of what happened at that level before.

In Blackjack and some other casino games, if you are able to play perfect basic strategy and card count, you can move the edge in your favour, though generally over a large sample, the edge is at least 4% in favour of the house, depending on the game.

If you gamble on the horses or dogs there is a memory, which is previous form, though the sports books odds will be in their favour.

Discover an edge and stick to trading.
 
 
  • Post #4
  • Quote
  • Dec 16, 2005 11:32am Dec 16, 2005 11:32am
  •  MrWhipple
  • | Joined Dec 2005 | Status: Self UNemployed Pipster | 378 Posts
My wife and I go round and round about this topic, so it is a favourite of mine. What we are doing is speculating. We are making an educated guess about where the market is going and backing up that guess with cash. To me it is no different than going out and buying a chunk of land or a house in hopes that the price will go up. Most people don't think of cash as a thing like bread or a car or labor, but we trade cash for all of those things all of the time. All we are doing is trading one kind of cash, say yen, for annother, say euro, in hopes that we are on the right side of the trade. We do it all the time so it seems regular to us, but from the outside it does look kinda wierd. If one can brodden the deffinition of gambling to include taking any kind of risk. Then I can brodden it even it even further to justfy not even getting up in the morning to avoid the risk of driving in to work.
Nolite dormiens pungere ursum. -- Latan Proverb.
 
 
  • Post #5
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  • Dec 16, 2005 4:03pm Dec 16, 2005 4:03pm
  •  hagadol
  • | Joined Sep 2005 | Status: Member | 376 Posts
God, thats great, goyna tell the wife that.
 
 
  • Post #6
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  • Dec 16, 2005 5:51pm Dec 16, 2005 5:51pm
  •  narafa
  • Joined Jan 2005 | Status: Keep Learning | 1,180 Posts
Quoting Blackship
Disliked
hi guys,

Can anyone tell me what's the differences btwn gambling and trading?
Ignored
In gambling:

- You can control your position size and control your risk only at the beginning of the game

In trading:

- You can control your position size and control your risk almost anytime. You can get our at anytime, and thus you have a stop which can't be applied to gambling


In gambling:

- You actually play a game that has nothing related to whatever happening in the world

In trading:

- You are playing a game which affects the lives of people all over the world and which is closely related to almost all the events in the world


In gambling:

- People see the whole thing as fun, they go there for entertainment, not a single gambler do it as a business

In trading:

- If you don't treat trading as a business, then you are in a gambling mood and you will lose in 99% of the cases


In gambling:

- People never ever think that casinos tweak the games in their favour, while actually they do. All gamblers are not convinced that conspiracies exist in casinos to increase their odds, while this is the real and actual case

In trading:

- People are almost certain that the markets are tweaked to the favour of certain people, market makers and brokers, and they strongly believe that the markets contain a very large and hidden conspiracy, while they actually don't


In gambling:

- People always think about probabilities, when they have a losing streak, they increase the bet size because they think that the odds now are in their favour more than before and they are having a better chance to get a win the next time. This of course has nothing to do with the laws of probability, because literally you can have a losing streak of 3, 5, 10, 25 or even a 100 losses..Yes to have a 100 consecutive losses can happen once in every 100 years, but it can happen

In trading:

- People rarely think of probabilities, and worse they tend to do the same as gamblers do, increase the position size after a losing streak. Many people can't just accept that they might have done everything correct and taken the trade at the exact correct price, and yet the market moves the other direction


In gambling:

- People never think of using a calculator

In trading:

- Everyone must use one


In gambling:

- People change the game they are playing because they think that the other one is better, yet they are all the same, they follow the laws of probability

In trading:

- People change the pair or the market they are trading because they think that they can do better in the new market, yet all markets are the same as well, they work the same way, supply and demand, and when you are speculating, all markets follow the rules of probability as well


In gambling:

- They offer many things for free

In trading:

- Almost nothing is free except charts, and they are not a great edge by themselves anyway


In gambling:

- People tend to get excited and happy when they get a win even if they are netting a loss

In trading:

- People tend to get frustrated after a win because they didn't catch the exact top or bottom and missed some handsome profit


In gambling:

- There is a limit for your profit for every bet you make, and this is known at the beginning of the bet

In trading:

- Profits are unlimited for every single trade, unless you are short and the instrument goes to zero value, which is the case in stocks, but not the case with futures and currencies



Gambling and trading are way 2 different things, but many people treat both the same way just because they have some similarities, it's exactly like you are treating your current wife the same way you was treating your ex just because you noticed many things in common between both of them, yet they are 2 completely different persons...


Thanks,

Nader
 
 
  • Post #7
  • Quote
  • Dec 16, 2005 6:59pm Dec 16, 2005 6:59pm
  •  howtotradeforex
  • | Joined Mar 2004 | Status: Member | 84 Posts
Very good job Nader,
Here's my look at it: I can walk up to a craps table, put $20.00 on the table and say, "Hard Eight!" In this scenario, I can't tell the dealer to give me back my $20.00, it has to stay on the table until the bet has finished. If the dice roll two fours, I get $180.00 plus my twenty back. If any other combination of eight appears, my $20.00 is gone. There's no way to protect that money.

When I trade, I make an educated guess based on information that I've learned how to use. If I go long the EUR/USD, I start out 3 pips negative. I can get out whenever I want, or stay in and see what happens. Once I recover my 3 pips and maybe a little profit, I can protect it.
Because helping each other is a good thing.
 
 
  • Post #8
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  • Dec 16, 2005 7:45pm Dec 16, 2005 7:45pm
  •  hagadol
  • | Joined Sep 2005 | Status: Member | 376 Posts
Nafara - I am going to tell the wife that too. Love it. She will have no arguement anymore !

Have a great weekend !

Hag.
 
 
  • Post #9
  • Quote
  • Dec 16, 2005 8:27pm Dec 16, 2005 8:27pm
  •  abobtrader
  • | Joined Nov 2005 | Status: Member | 353 Posts
For me, anything that isn't purely random falls in to the arena of trading. Its about risk as probability. In market trading, we believe we have some kind of edge that works in our favor, or that we can attain some kind of edge over time. When you roll dice, you can never attain an edge. I agree that everything is a trade, from the moment you wake up in the morning. Shall I cross that road? Its a risk-reward trade-off. Shall I wait in this queue or that one? Shall I buy this product or that one? Chance permeates our lives.

I trade with a clean conscience, but have never bought a lottery ticket in my life.

: )

PS - I think many people who have discussions on whether trading is gambling have different definitions of what gambling really is, so the debate becomes one of semantics.
"Always bet on black"
 
 
  • Post #10
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  • Dec 16, 2005 9:01pm Dec 16, 2005 9:01pm
  •  Mary
  • | Joined Nov 2005 | Status: Member | 35 Posts | Online Now
Quoting Blackship
Disliked
hi guys,

Can anyone tell me what's the differences btwn gambling and trading?
Ignored
I get the feeling that your asking because your wife views forex as gambling. However, my background is in poker (I play for a living) and as I learn forex, I feel it gives me a great advantage. Things I already do to protect my bankroll with money management and calculating risk easily translate to the markets.

Keeping your emotions in check and sticking with your strategy also translate since with poker, the decisions I make in the game are +EV and although I receive the occasional badbeat, I know I will make money in the long run. I've already conditioned myself to play with in my means (the 2% br rule is universal) and my tolerance of risk is high (there's a saying that scared money is dead money).

I'm not defending gambling or proclaiming one is better than the other, I'm just saying, in my experience, they are very similar. One thing I can say of both, and I see it all the time, if you don't know what your doing, you will lose a lot of money.

As you can see, this is my first post. I am new to the forex game and I am amazed at the wealth of information on this forum. I hope to switch over to trading forex full-time. One thing I can say, trading forex gets a lot more respect than playing poker in the public's image.
 
 
  • Post #11
  • Quote
  • Dec 17, 2005 6:06am Dec 17, 2005 6:06am
  •  narafa
  • Joined Jan 2005 | Status: Keep Learning | 1,180 Posts
Quoting hagadol
Disliked
Nafara - I am going to tell the wife that too. Love it. She will have no arguement anymore !

Have a great weekend !

Hag.
Ignored
Thank GOD I don't have a wife to convince...lol...


Thanks,

Nader
 
 
  • Post #12
  • Quote
  • Dec 17, 2005 6:41am Dec 17, 2005 6:41am
  •  diallist
  • Joined Sep 2004 | Status: Member | 1,464 Posts
Quoting Mary
Disliked
I get the feeling that your asking because your wife views forex as gambling. However, my background is in poker (I play for a living) and as I learn forex, I feel it gives me a great advantage. Things I already do to protect my bankroll with money management and calculating risk easily translate to the markets.

Keeping your emotions in check and sticking with your strategy also translate since with poker, the decisions I make in the game are +EV and although I receive the occasional badbeat, I know I will make money in the long run. I've already conditioned myself to play with in my means (the 2% br rule is universal) and my tolerance of risk is high (there's a saying that scared money is dead money).

I'm not defending gambling or proclaiming one is better than the other, I'm just saying, in my experience, they are very similar. One thing I can say of both, and I see it all the time, if you don't know what your doing, you will lose a lot of money.

As you can see, this is my first post. I am new to the forex game and I am amazed at the wealth of information on this forum. I hope to switch over to trading forex full-time. One thing I can say, trading forex gets a lot more respect than playing poker in the public's image.
Ignored
Hi Mary, and welcome to the factory family. Your first post was very interesting! I hope to hear more good things from you.

Dial
sxaxlxvxaxtxixoxnxbxyxgxrxaxcxexdxoxtxoxrxgx
 
 
  • Post #13
  • Quote
  • Dec 17, 2005 7:17am Dec 17, 2005 7:17am
  •  WTB
  • | Commercial Member | Joined Sep 2005 | 1,118 Posts
Hello Mary,

I am glad you have risen the poker subject, as I have had a little bit of experience in it. Definitely not anywhere near your expertise, but none the less here it goes:

I play poker often with my friends. Once every week or two we gather up at my place and play some poker for small money (50 bucks each or so, just for the fun of it). None of us is really an good player, just amaterurs actually, but I always come on top. Some weekends I earn more, some less, but at the end of the evening I am always over my initial 50 bucks mark.

My friends ask me how is it possible that I always beat them since I havent really played more than any of us throughout my life, and I have come to the conclusion that my trading background plays in my favor: I am a conservative trader by nature, and I have the concepts of "keep your emotions at bay", "dont aim for the home run in every hand" and "think in terms of slow but steady small wins when your hand is strong, pass when it's not" nailed down, whereas they dont as they dont use any of this in their respective professional careers.

So yes, I do tend to believe that there are some universal ideas that can be sucessfully applied by both traders and poker players.
 
 
  • Post #14
  • Quote
  • Dec 18, 2005 1:34pm Dec 18, 2005 1:34pm
  •  merlin
  • Joined Mar 2004 | Status: Magic Man | 3,220 Posts
if you are betting with an edge, then you are investing. if you are betting without an edge, you are gambling. thats how i always saw it...

so i dont consider playing poker gambling, because you can actaully have an edge. counting cards in blackjack is also not gambling, becuase again you can get an edge.
Relax and be happy.
 
 
  • Post #15
  • Quote
  • Dec 18, 2005 1:37pm Dec 18, 2005 1:37pm
  •  merlin
  • Joined Mar 2004 | Status: Magic Man | 3,220 Posts
Quoting ElectricSavant
Disliked
You can't calculate chance...only in BlackJack
Ignored
what do you mean? you can surely calculate the probabilities in any game (at a casino or otherwise). the probabilities may not be in your favor, but you still can calculate them.
Relax and be happy.
 
 
  • Post #16
  • Quote
  • Dec 18, 2005 3:07pm Dec 18, 2005 3:07pm
  •  Fanat
  • | Joined Nov 2005 | Status: Member | 40 Posts
Quoting narafa
Disliked
In gambling:

In trading:

- You are playing a game which affects the lives of people all over the world and which is closely related to almost all the events in the world
Ignored
Interesting... What about 9/11 and Katrina??? How many people has it affected??? Apparently FX thought otherwise...

Quote
Disliked
In trading:

- People are almost certain that the markets are tweaked to the favour of certain people, market makers and brokers, and they strongly believe that the markets contain a very large and hidden conspiracy, while they actually don't

I politely disagree... Forex IS tweaked against you, and it is a FACT. Spread is against you, slippage is against you, occasional strong move is against you... Leverage is another reason why the market has to play against you.
95%+ of people lose in order to make FX exist (and brokers paid).


And why does almost every book published on trading is 99% carbon copy of the other??? I have read DOZENS of books, articles, etc on trading. I have heard many lectures... Yet they all seem to be rehash and repeat of each other with the only difference is the style they are presented in...

And beleive me, you cannot control your risk.... I have backtested many strategies on TICK BY TICK basis and there were times when price has crashed 100-200+ pips and rather than having lets say 10 sl (I played with many variables), it was full 200.

I also tested indicators... Funny thing that they failed BADLY, even if I reversed the entries....

Risk reward ratios also do not work well....
 
 
  • Post #17
  • Quote
  • Dec 18, 2005 8:18pm Dec 18, 2005 8:18pm
  •  narafa
  • Joined Jan 2005 | Status: Keep Learning | 1,180 Posts
Quoting Fanat
Disliked
Interesting... What about 9/11 and Katrina??? How many people has it affected??? Apparently FX thought otherwise...
Ignored
Sorry my friend but I think I can't understand what you are trying to say?? I was comparing that gambling is not affected or affecting almost anything in the world except the people inside the business and of course the players themselves...But gambling has nothing to do with the imports/exports, has nothing to do with huge companies hedging positions, has nothing to do with the real outer world...

Trading on the other hand has to do, if there is no one on the other side of a hedging trade, there won't be a hedge in the first place, and thus markets should be extremely illiquid...Even banks and large funds and money managers specualte in the FX market, thus taking the opposite position of a hedger who has no problem losing on the position, and sometimes might be happy to lose the hedge position, because this will benefit his business...

Quoting Fanat
Disliked
I politely disagree... Forex IS tweaked against you, and it is a FACT. Spread is against you, slippage is against you, occasional strong move is against you... Leverage is another reason why the market has to play against you.
95%+ of people lose in order to make FX exist (and brokers paid).
Ignored
It's my turn to politely disagree..

There is a difference between the rules of the game which everyone know and should take into consideration before actually being engaged in the game, and other hidden practices that can be made to make the percentage of winners a minimum...In trading, spread, slippage, strong moves, leverage and all other things are the rules of the game...If you accept them, then go ahead, play the game, if you don't accept them, just quit...

Why FX is not tweaked against traders..?? I will tell you why...Because no body can control this market to tweak it to his favor...Everyone is just a part of the whole big system, and really no one gives a shit who is on the other side of the trade...No body controls the market over the long term, on the short term, ya I might agree that the FX can be a little bit tweaked towards the favor of brokers and market makers, yet again, this is one of the rules of the game...Everyone know that the market is too big to be controlled by one single trader, but they know for sure that it can be controlled over the short term, or else, why do most traders avoid the asian session for example?? Because they know the volume is thin there and the possibility of manipulation is higher, so they simply avoid it, but you have 2 other sessions where the possibility of manipulation is at minimum....That's again one of the rules you get to know when you start trading the market, and many traders even know it from the very beginning...

In gambling, when you play a slot machine, you can calculate probabilities, but what you don't know, is that the machine itself is programmed to even reduce those probabilities below the random level...That's what people are not convinced of, and most of them won't even believe it...The roulette wheel is the same, it can be adjusted with many many methods to go against most gamblers everytime, and thus everyone loses and the bank wins almost in 97% of the time..

In gambling, every game you play has a random probability which can be calculated, if you played any game for a long time and wrote down the results and the outcomes, you will find that the results are very much beyond the random, it's being engineered to produce results against you all the time, no matter your position size is, no matter who you are, no matter when you play...

Take this as an example, a slot machine having 5 different shapes...What is the probability that you get 3 straight?? You have 125 different cases that can get out, in which only 5 of them can be 3 straights...So that's a 4% probability. 5 out of 125...Great...This means that for for every 100 times you play, eventually, you should get 3 straights 4 times, and 96 times mixed...If you actually went infront a slot machine like that, and sampled 1000 tries with a constant position size of 10 cents, which is just $100, and wrote down the results, you will find that you will find that this percentage is completely wrong, and that the real percent to get a 3 straights will be less than 1% in most of the cases, so out of the 1000 tries, you will only get 3 straights 10 times only...And since you are going to get only 1 straight out of every 100 tries, it's ok with me, as the machine engineer to give you 50 times your bet for each one, and more over, if you are betting with more than a certain amount, I will let the machine run in another mode which will even reduce this to 0.5%, so that you get only 3 straights just 1 time out of every 200 tries and I will increase your payoff to 100 times, just to let you feel more excited...Such a thing is not a rule of the game, because this is not a fixed rule, and people don't know it...What I expect to see is that I have a 4% probability to get 3 straights based on random, but the machine isn't working randomly....

See what's the great difference between the slot machine and the markets....The markets don't work as a slot machine, they might have a little tweak in the short term, but for sure they are not engineered over the long term, you can't engineer a trend like the one of the recent USD/JPY and sustain it for over 3 months, this simply can't work out even if you have the wealth of the top 10 on the forbes combined...


Quoting Fanat
Disliked
And why does almost every book published on trading is 99% carbon copy of the other??? I have read DOZENS of books, articles, etc on trading. I have heard many lectures... Yet they all seem to be rehash and repeat of each other with the only difference is the style they are presented in...
Ignored
Well, in my opinion, 99% of the books are the same because they tell traders and investors just what they want to know, not what is right for them to trade better...I also read a lot of books, they almost told the same things..I read about Technical Analysis, about 3 books, all were almost the same...I read about candlesticks, 1 book and a couple of websites, they all tell the same patterns and the same things, they are all telling what everyone wants to know, but this is not essentially correct...

Books that don't tell the same things as others are "Market Wizards" and "Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom"...Those 2 books are remarkeable...They are telling everyone what you need to know to correctly make it through in this type of business, they are not telling how, you have to discover yourself, because everyone has his own way of doing it, you can't be a grand master in chess unless you have your own unique strategies and methods...

The chess board is never just pieces alone, it's a complete strategy, attack, defense, maneuver, psychology, and many other things that you have to consider to consitently win and make it...It doesn't make you a great player to know how pieces can move on the board, everyone knows how to move pieces the correct way, it doesn't make you successful to implement a strategy that is not right to be used with your opponent or is not right for you, but it makes you successful to make innovative moves with harmony between your pieces and in context with the whole situation...It doesn't make you successful to ignore your strengths and weakneses, if you master playing the whole game with your queen alive, then you should do everything possible throughout the game to keep the queen alive, or else, you know you are in big trouble...

Quoting Fanat
Disliked
And beleive me, you cannot control your risk.... I have backtested many strategies on TICK BY TICK basis and there were times when price has crashed 100-200+ pips and rather than having lets say 10 sl (I played with many variables), it was full 200.

I also tested indicators... Funny thing that they failed BADLY, even if I reversed the entries....

Risk reward ratios also do not work well....
Ignored
Backtesting systems have in my opinion a major drawback, they don't factor in news and economic reports, you actually can't factor them....For example, the 1 Hour tunnel trading system avoids opening positions on the NFP day...If a position is open, it's left as it is, no problem, but if there were no position, and we are on the NFP day, no positions are allowed...That's a very imporant setup for the system, because if it is ignored, it can destroy the whole performance of the system...

Take for example, the Alba system which is being discussed over the Journal Factory Forum...It trades only during the US session, that's a time factor that should be taken into consideration...Also trades are not allowed before major news reports, so you might find that the system gave an actual real signal, but not taken, because a major economic report was on the way, this can't be factored into the tick by tick backtesting unless you either have a software which contains historic economic reports and can take them into consideration, or you do the backtesting manually, which I assume is not logical...

Events such as terrorist attacks, wars, assasination and all such events are totally random, and remember that they can work with your position or against you if they really affect the pair you are testing, so over the long run, they will probably cancel out each other, you will lose 200 pips in just 1 second on your order because of a major event, and on another occassion you will gain 200 pips in just 1 second for another major event..And mostly, I have noticed that major events like 9/11, London bombings and so on usually in 70% of the times work in the direction of the working trend...For example, the trend of the GBP/USD was down before the London attacks, so you would have probably been on the short side rather than on the long side...

During the London bombings, I was actually infront of my PC watching the market, specifically watching the USD/CHF pair...I was astonished that the pair dropped 120 pips in less than a minute and kept moving lower for another 150 pips as far as I remember...I don't think that you will get a lot of slippage in such a case if you were on the wrong side of the market, if your sl was initially at 25 pips loss, worst case scenario that you will get another 25 pips in slippage, and you get out..That's double your initial risk, not bad for a market condition like that, and this is to be expected every year or 2...Slippage is a part of the game...However, if you were on the right side of the market, it would have been even better, while I was watching the market that day, I was actually about to short the pair as it looked like it was a great short from a technical point of view...I knew nothing about the attacks, and even I didn't know why the market moved that crazy way untill 3 hours later when I knew the news from Bloomberg...Although I didn't make the move, but I wasn't going to be long the market at that time anyway, as it was already extended and making a base after a good advance...

Just to tell you something as well, I came up with a very simple trading system before, and formulated it, and one of the members here volunteered to backtest it for me in TradeStation...It was tested for the EUR/USD pair for the data of the past 2 years, tick by tick, this was in mid 2005, so the testing data was mid-2003 to mid-2005...Guess what, the system is profitable for those 2 years, long trades and short trades both returned a profit and I have the test results as a proof for that I can't remember more details about the results, but overall, the system was doing fine..So, there is actually profitable systems out there, everyone can find one to work with...

When you say that you tested indicators and they fail, this is normal, even if you reverse the entries, this is still logical...Because the issue is not the entries, it's the exits that make the difference...The Turtles, represent a clear and convincing model for system trading...They used to trade 20 day breakouts...If you backtest 20 day breakouts, they will probably fail, even they employed a well defined, and logical techniques for setups, entries, exits and position sizing...Not every single trade was made using the same position size, and not every trade was exited at the breakeven point...These are things that are usually missing when you backtest systems, even if you do it tick by tick...

Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to make my point of view as clear as possible...


Thanks,

Nader
 
 
  • Post #18
  • Quote
  • Dec 19, 2005 3:59am Dec 19, 2005 3:59am
  •  Fanat
  • | Joined Nov 2005 | Status: Member | 40 Posts
Quoting narafa
Disliked
Sorry my friend but I think I can't understand what you are trying to say?? I was comparing that gambling is not affected or affecting almost anything in the world except the people inside the business and of course the players themselves...But gambling has nothing to do with the imports/exports, has nothing to do with huge companies hedging positions, has nothing to do with the real outer world...
Ignored
What I've tried to say is that sometimes currency exchange rates seem as connected to the world as casinos... (Sometimes, not always). I mean during 9/11 currencies didn't move what they should have... Katrina didn't send USD trending down (infact very soon USD started to grow like crazy). There have been times when interest rates caused the currency to move hard in the OTHER direction, etc etc.

Quote
Disliked
Trading on the other hand has to do, if there is no one on the other side of a hedging trade, there won't be a hedge in the first place, and thus markets should be extremely illiquid...
Since 90+% of traders lose and their loses usually go to the brokers, I think that you will not find it difficult to know who wants to be on the other side (hey it is safe!!).

Quote
Disliked
It's my turn to politely disagree..
In disagreement we can arrive at the truth

Quote
Disliked
There is a difference between the rules of the game which everyone know and should take into consideration before actually being engaged in the game, and other hidden practices that can be made to make the percentage of winners a minimum...In trading, spread, slippage, strong moves, leverage and all other things are the rules of the game...If you accept them, then go ahead, play the game, if you don't accept them, just quit...
I am sorry I was not eloquent enough. When I was talking about rules, I was more talking about actual price mechanics and the theory behind the forex. I was not talking about commonly know and tought characteristics. I was talking about the purpose and how it can be made workable in the forex market for those who made it so.

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Why FX is not tweaked against traders..?? I will tell you why...Because no body can control this market to tweak it to his favor...
Could you please justify this? When you are trading equities or products such as soybeans, you have tangiable thing. You can eat soybeans. You can use gold... Can you eat exchange rates? It is just a bunch of abstract numbers!!!

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Everyone is just a part of the whole big system, and really no one gives a shit who is on the other side of the trade...No body controls the market over the long term, on the short term, ya I might agree that the FX can be a little bit tweaked towards the favor of brokers and market makers, yet again, this is one of the rules of the game...Everyone know that the market is too big to be controlled by one single trader, but they know for sure that it can be controlled over the short term, or else, why do most traders avoid the asian session for example?? Because they know the volume is thin there and the possibility of manipulation is higher, so they simply avoid it, but you have 2 other sessions where the possibility of manipulation is at minimum....That's again one of the rules you get to know when you start trading the market, and many traders even know it from the very beginning...
Since Forex is electronic market (not physical), since all brokers use about the same datafeed (it would be disadvantageous for them to stray too far off the price due to arbitrage opportunities), there is a central exchange rate. It doesn't take much to figure out that computer is programmed by people... It can be controled (it has too).

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In gambling, when you play a slot machine, you can calculate probabilities, but what you don't know, is that the machine itself is programmed to even reduce those probabilities below the random level...That's what people are not convinced of, and most of them won't even believe it...The roulette wheel is the same, it can be adjusted with many many methods to go against most gamblers everytime, and thus everyone loses and the bank wins almost in 97% of the time..
Spread in the forex....


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See what's the great difference between the slot machine and the markets....The markets don't work as a slot machine, they might have a little tweak in the short term, but for sure they are not engineered over the long term, you can't engineer a trend like the one of the recent USD/JPY and sustain it for over 3 months, this simply can't work out even if you have the wealth of the top 10 on the forbes combined...
Why does there have to be wealth???? Just tell the computer to quote lowering prices!!! Who is going to check how many flying ""virtual exchange rate contracts there is" ??!!!! Even top level economic statistics is falsified!!!



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Well, in my opinion, 99% of the books are the same because they tell traders and investors just what they want to know, not what is right for them to trade better...I also read a lot of books, they almost told the same things..I read about Technical Analysis, about 3 books, all were almost the same...I read about candlesticks, 1 book and a couple of websites, they all tell the same patterns and the same things, they are all telling what everyone wants to know, but this is not essentially correct...

The more people fail, the more money they will give away to the organizers.

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Books that don't tell the same things as others are "Market Wizards" and "Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom"...Those 2 books are remarkeable...They are telling everyone what you need to know to correctly make it through in this type of business, they are not telling how, you have to discover yourself, because everyone has his own way of doing it, you can't be a grand master in chess unless you have your own unique strategies and methods...
2 books out of HOW MANY TRADING BOOKS EVER PUBLISHED?

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The chess board is never just pieces alone, it's a complete strategy, attack, defense, maneuver, psychology, and many other things that you have to consider to consitently win and make it...It doesn't make you a great player to know how pieces can move on the board, everyone knows how to move pieces the correct way, it doesn't make you successful to implement a strategy that is not right to be used with your opponent or is not right for you, but it makes you successful to make innovative moves with harmony between your pieces and in context with the whole situation...It doesn't make you successful to ignore your strengths and weakneses, if you master playing the whole game with your queen alive, then you should do everything possible throughout the game to keep the queen alive, or else, you know you are in big trouble...
That is what I was asking in this post. The pieces moving are indicators... The chessboard is forex, the player on the other side is/are..., and what are the rules???!!!!

You can't win chess by not knowing your opponents, their goals, and the rules of the game. Simple observation of how pieces move is not enough... You need solid theory behind pieces (such as indicators, leverages, etc).

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Backtesting systems have in my opinion a major drawback, they don't factor in news and economic reports, you actually can't factor them....For example, the 1 Hour tunnel trading system avoids opening positions on the NFP day...If a position is open, it's left as it is, no problem, but if there were no position, and we are on the NFP day, no positions are allowed...That's a very imporant setup for the system, because if it is ignored, it can destroy the whole performance of the system...
I was actually thinking about that too...




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Just to tell you something as well, I came up with a very simple trading system before, and formulated it, and one of the members here volunteered to backtest it for me in TradeStation...It was tested for the EUR/USD pair for the data of the past 2 years, tick by tick, this was in mid 2005, so the testing data was mid-2003 to mid-2005...Guess what, the system is profitable for those 2 years, long trades and short trades both returned a profit and I have the test results as a proof for that I can't remember more details about the results, but overall, the system was doing fine..So, there is actually profitable systems out there, everyone can find one to work with...
What about testing on out of sample data?

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When you say that you tested indicators and they fail, this is normal, even if you reverse the entries, this is still logical...Because the issue is not the entries, it's the exits that make the difference...
I agree 100% that exits are important. But what I was testing was that after an indicator gave a signal, how likely will it be to move 20,50 (and so on) pips in that direction vs in the opposite direction and triggering stop loss. The idea is that if the indicator is good, then it should signal before strong movement occurs (or atleast finishes).


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Thanks,

Nader

You are welcomed!
 
 
  • Post #19
  • Quote
  • Dec 19, 2005 6:23am Dec 19, 2005 6:23am
  •  narafa
  • Joined Jan 2005 | Status: Keep Learning | 1,180 Posts
Quoting Fanat
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What I've tried to say is that sometimes currency exchange rates seem as connected to the world as casinos... (Sometimes, not always). I mean during 9/11 currencies didn't move what they should have... Katrina didn't send USD trending down (infact very soon USD started to grow like crazy). There have been times when interest rates caused the currency to move hard in the OTHER direction, etc etc.
Ignored
I assume that the USD fell sharply just after the 9/11, but went back to pre-9/11 levels quickly...The USD was in a downtrend anyway at that time, and the interest rate was going down anyway with a slowing economy...

The times you are referring to when currencies tend to move the other direction against interest rates is because of over extension in my opinion...For example, the USD with rates at 1.5% at the beginning of the year, can move sharply up because expectations are high that we are going to arrive at 4% by the year end, but with rates at 4.25% today, the USD can move sharply lower in reaction to any further rate hike, because we all know that the demand driver is coming to an end, and thus we don't want to own something which is having a declining demand factor...

Quoting Fanat
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Since 90+% of traders lose and their loses usually go to the brokers, I think that you will not find it difficult to know who wants to be on the other side (hey it is safe!!).
Ignored
Keep in mind that we are talking about 90%+ of retail traders...We don't know the precentage of hedge funds, money management funds, pension funds and the big guys..If we agree that it's a probability game, then it's a 50/50 game, or merely a little bit variable, let's say 46/54 game...

Quoting Fanat
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In disagreement we can arrive at the truth
Ignored
I totally agree

Quoting Fanat
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I am sorry I was not eloquent enough. When I was talking about rules, I was more talking about actual price mechanics and the theory behind the forex. I was not talking about commonly know and tought characteristics. I was talking about the purpose and how it can be made workable in the forex market for those who made it so.
Ignored
Well, probably, it's a big market, and spreads and commissions can get brokers, banks and market makers a hell lot of money because of the large volume everyday, so the purpose is to provide further liquidity and creating a new industry called the retail forex market...The theory itself is the World Trade for sure, this is where the real big money is, and this where the power of nations comes from, currencies are just a tool for the World Trade in the first place...

I assume that you are talking about the thread you started named "Forex as a system...Who benefits? What internal rules exist in FX?"...I agree with you that there must be some internal forces ruling the market and act as some rules of the game...One of these rules in my opinion is for sure the supply and demand for currencies...

Quoting Fanat
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Could you please justify this? When you are trading equities or products such as soybeans, you have tangiable thing. You can eat soybeans. You can use gold... Can you eat exchange rates? It is just a bunch of abstract numbers!!!
Ignored
Well, can't you buy everything using those numbers?? How much does the busshel of soybeans cost?? You can't eat them if you don't buy them...How much an ounce of glod?? How much is anything tangeable anyway?? Further more, how much is anything tangeable in USD and how much is it in Euros??

Those numbers my friend are what make the tangeable things really eatable or usable..

Quoting Fanat
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Since Forex is electronic market (not physical), since all brokers use about the same datafeed (it would be disadvantageous for them to stray too far off the price due to arbitrage opportunities), there is a central exchange rate. It doesn't take much to figure out that computer is programmed by people... It can be controled (it has too).
Ignored
Sure, but can't be controlled to manipulate the data feed everyday you sit infront of your computer for 3 months..Because of broker arbitrage, your broker is following other feeds to be inline with rather than running after your order in the long run, he can chase you for a day, but not for a month, he has much more serious issues to chase, and he will HAVE to leave you and get lost to protect himself...

Quoting Fanat
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Spread in the forex....
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Spread in forex is the cost of the transaction, or the initial profit of the market maker...What does that have to do with the probability of a slot machine being tweaked or not??

Quoting Fanat
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Why does there have to be wealth???? Just tell the computer to quote lowering prices!!! Who is going to check how many flying ""virtual exchange rate contracts there is" ??!!!! Even top level economic statistics is falsified!!!
Ignored
If it's virtual, then you can't trade them...If you are well capitalized, you can trap your broker through such an action...Suppose you have a $100,000 account, in which your MM approves you a leverage of 100:1, you open 1 std lot long, and wait, you see prices going down, and assumed that they are artificial from your MM, after 20 pips down, you buy another 1 std lot, how long can your broker need to go down to force you to close the position??? Literally, If your broker reduced your feed only by 100 pips, you would have 5 std lots opened, using 5% of your equity, and down about another 5% of your account value at most...If you are not using a fixed stop order, your broker never knows where are you going to stop and can't play around with you, and further more, you are buying from him at fake prices, much lower than the rest of the market, assumed that you are not watching other feeds, he is killing himself and not doing a business..

Quoting Fanat
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The more people fail, the more money they will give away to the organizers.
Ignored
Exactly...I totally agree....

Quoting Fanat
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2 books out of HOW MANY TRADING BOOKS EVER PUBLISHED?
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Many of them, but Quality things are usually rare...Remember these 2 books are what I read, there must probably be more good ones out there too which I haven't read...

Quoting Fanat
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That is what I was asking in this post. The pieces moving are indicators... The chessboard is forex, the player on the other side is/are..., and what are the rules???!!!!
Ignored
If we play it as if many opponents are on the other side, then it would be reasonable...Other traders sit on the other side, Market Makers, Brokers, Banks, Central Banks, Companies and so on, all sit on the other sides, sometimes they all play against us and we will have to defend, and sometimes we will find that some of them is actually playing in our favor, and we have to attack...

Quoting Fanat
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I was actually thinking about that too...
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I haven't found a solution for that either, unless the system is truely simple to be tested manualy, we should wait for TradeStation or any other company to solve this problem for us...

Quoting Fanat
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What about testing on out of sample data?
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What do you exactly mean?? I don't get it...?!

Quoting Fanat
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I agree 100% that exits are important. But what I was testing was that after an indicator gave a signal, how likely will it be to move 20,50 (and so on) pips in that direction vs in the opposite direction and triggering stop loss. The idea is that if the indicator is good, then it should signal before strong movement occurs (or atleast finishes).
Ignored
Please take some time to see the study in the attached pdf, I think you will find it very interesting...


Thanks,

Nader
Attached File(s)
File Type: pdf databriefnovember2004.pdf   642 KB | 2,137 downloads
 
 
  • Post #20
  • Quote
  • Dec 19, 2005 6:35am Dec 19, 2005 6:35am
  •  abobtrader
  • | Joined Nov 2005 | Status: Member | 353 Posts
Quoting merlin
Disliked
if you are betting with an edge, then you are investing. if you are betting without an edge, you are gambling. thats how i always saw it...

so i dont consider playing poker gambling, because you can actaully have an edge. counting cards in blackjack is also not gambling, becuase again you can get an edge.
Ignored
that's exactly how I see it as well. But this opens up an interesting can of worms. I have never bought a lottery ticket because there is no edge, and i don't gamble on religious grounds (and its probably a good thing if you are a trader). But, thinking about it from a more abstract perspective I am sure there are decision and actions I take on a day-to-day basis where there is no edge (and its pretty much 50-50). I am talking not about financial transactions but about general decisions in the routine of life. Think about it, a lot of life is random.

...No I must stop now, before I go mad !
"Always bet on black"
 
 
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