Forex - A negative sum game for losers

When I said "bad trading decisions", I was intentionally unspecific, these could be the result of many of the items I listed here, or possibly others. Whatever the reason for a decision, the resulting action is potentially reversible, e.g. leaving a position open instead of closing it (by "reversible" I didn't necessarily mean completely reversing a losing system).

HudithePfupf is a negative mindset loser.

Why the hell are we harping on a thread created in 2017?

True, true, true...


It is very easy to say which of the forum members are losing and almost certainly will continue to lose.

For every one that wants to become professional trader I will say this:

Stop moaning and start taking responsibility for your actions!

You and only you are the sole reason for your failure!

-Don`t use unregulated broker with bad reputations and bad trading conditions, only because they give you bonus
-Do your homework and don`t place your stops in the obvious levels for tests and retests.
-Don`t be greedy and always risk small % of your account on every trade
-Always use stops and never ever let any trade to slip out of control
-Focus on process not on outcome!

In 99% of the cases the reason for failure is your incompetence and bad decisions. Not the broker, not the spike, not the stop hunt, not the platform. The big payers want the money of the other big players, nobody in the big banks give a F*** for your 1 k account. In 99% of the cases your positions don`t even get to the real market and the big liquidity pools.

What have I done to become the successful FX trader that I am:

-Learned how the markets work (prop trading on NYSE with low liquidity instruments and Level II )
-Learned how to analyze (worked as a financial analyst)
-Learned how the brokers work (worked for a few)
-Learned how to program, test and optimize trading systems

Good to see some snake oilers in overdrive.....but please, don't mess up my thread with nonsense replys.

Thanks to everybody who explains rationally their way of thinking. Even if we disagree, I always can learn something out of it. Good examples are replies like the ones from hanover or copernicus... Thank you guys.

Now some good news: Tataratataaaa.....!

ESMA is finally jumping on my wagon. Thank you guys! Great job!

CH / FINMA: Hello Mark Branson, do you recognize what's happening around you, don't you? Wouldn't it be time to implement even stricter rules in Switzerland, since trading on lower leverage would be a real edge for all Swiss customers. Negative balance protection is a must anyway...because currently consumer protection laws are already violated based on the fact that a cfd trading retail forex customer can end up with a huge negative account balance and fall heavily in debt.

This fight will go over many more rounds. 30:1 is still far too high....but hey, it's a start and it moves in the right direction and suicide leverages like 100:1 - 2000:1 are history. One thing is clear to me, it will become much harder for you affiliate marketing snake oilers and shady retail bucket shop brokers......your business model starts to fall apart and will get crushed in the end.

Have you ever thought about what the ESMA rules mean to affiliate marketing guys like you that promote retail forex and binary options on plattforms like FF in camouflage within the EU, fishing for EU customers? Think you can hide much longer..... or will your marketing techniques soon be a reasonable target. Maybe that's the next thing ESMA should look into in greater detail.... I will help them understanding your role in this dirty game.....

So newbies, gambling addicits, hobby traders....., I highly recommand to read the ESMA paper attached. Hopefully you will come to the conclusion that retail forex isn't worth your time and your money... invest instead in your family, in education, in your job and in your hobbies. You will be far better off.

This is not fake news....this is a regulator finally acting on facts and protecting you from being ripped off by a rotten industry that deploys hundreds of millions of marketing money a year globally to sell you the illusion of becoming a successful retail forex trader. Propaganda works....sadly... so these rules are doing nothing else than minimizing the negative impact of massive propaganda from the retail forex industry.

I think you are paranoid and seeing things that are simply not there. Forex is a market where daily trillions are exchanged. Nobody cares about your few thousand or few ten thousand dollar and there is not one single entity that can control this market.

Why didn't they touch the rotten options and certificate market, which has the same amount of loosing positions? They are all issued by BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and so on .. so there is a lobby preventing any measures!

And what about bets on sports or casinos, where the losses are close to 100% as well? Exactly, the government is generating profit en mass here!

This whole decision is nothing but a hypocrite mess and there is nothing to celebrate here.

If you think it is reasonable to trade with a leverage >30 on major currency pairs I can't take you serious....sorry.
Even 30 is far beyond what is reasonable on a professional level...

I am 100% sure the day will come where you will understand what I try to explain in this thread. But till that enlightenment, retail forex will steal am awful lot of your time - your most valuable asset. You can short cut the way by studying the impact of leverage on the profitablity of retail traders.... it's all out there.

All these ESMA rules enhance the protection of retail forex traders - that are all non professionals. I bet that in countries with the strictest leverage rules, the retail traders as a group outperform the group in jurisdictions where there are significantly higher leverages allowed.

Outperform means for retail traders they lose less and survive longer.

^THIS^

In the form of arrogance you are presenting here you are not to take serious as well. I am not responsible for the trading career of others and do not need any lecture from self proclaimed mentors like you. I am profitable enough on a large scale regarding time and amount to support my argumentation.

It is not my problem, if you are not able to expand your horizon and accept, that it is possible earning money on high leveraged accounts sustainable for years.

With respect, a "snake oiler" is somebody who is selling something fraudulently. Anybody who thinks that I'm selling forex related products, or even benefiting financially in any way by posting on trading forums, is a bloody fool.

At best -- IF markets are not a random walk** -- then it's possible to make a systematic income from trading
(**definitions and detailed explanation in post #113).

At worst -- IF markets are a random walk -- then trading is merely a form of gambling, where over a long enough period of time, every punter will eventually lose. Which makes it no worse then casinos, lotteries, or betting on horses or sports outcomes. All of these are likewise negative expectancy games, with the odds skewed firmly in favour of the game provider. The advertising used to promote casinos, lotteries, and sports betting is no less misleading then that used to promote forex, as Google reveals in the screenshots below:
Ultimately, leverage doesn't make this any different. I take $500 to the casino for an evening's entertainment, the most I can lose is $500. I put $500 in a trading account, the most I can lose is $500. In both situations, the punter is in control of his maximum risk. Moreover, used sensibly, leverage reduces risk. For example, 20:1 allows me to deposit only 5% of my trading capital with the broker, reducing potential loss in the event of broker insolvency (think Jan 2015!) or other mishap.

You want to see increased regulation. Fair enough, but I disagree with the general principle that the authorities should control how people are able to spend their own money. I believe in freedom of choice, and that individuals should be allowed to grow through the opportunity to exercise personal responsibility. If people lack the intelligence or self-discipline to manage their own money, that's not the fault of the game provider, just the same as if a person drives drunk and kills somebody, it's neither the fault of the car nor the liquor manufacturer. You're not looking to save people from the big bad game provider, regulation is ultimately about saving people from their own greed, laziness, and folly. Losers are always looking to blame somebody else for their own failures.

Let me ask you this.

Why are there traders on this forum who claim to make a living form forex ?

Many post here claim they have for over a decade. Some still post.

How can this be ?

What I do find similar, is you can find people on the internet who claim to make a living playing roulette.

There are roulette forums just like Forex factory

Today, on eurusd, in between 00:00 and 12:00 gmt, i have managed to collect more than 90 pips (zig zagging) in a range it was locked between 1.2420 to 1.2375. That is 45 pips range or so.

I stayed focused on catching pips, not making money. For now catching pips seems more important to me.

The bad news is, the spread on the cent account is about 2.2 pips. No commission. It just killed me! To collect a little over 90 pips I did over 20 entries. And it is quite exhausting pips fishing, btw. For my amazement, the net pips left at the end were less than 40. You cant imagine how disappointed I was. Screwed it! I stay focused on the gold for the rest of the day... All expences paid should go below 1 pip, in order to make sense. Hard to find a retail broker offering spread + full round below $10 per lot...

The game is far from being zero sum. The equlibrium they create with the almost perfect balance in between the buy and the sell movements/candles/pips, requires presence of tight and wide distances to cover. And there lays the small opportunity window... which turns the game into none zero sum game. But the broker costs for retail traders are really super high, unfortunately.

Hanover,

I didn't call you a snake oiler....I call those snake oilers that make unproven and unrealistic claims out of thin air, because they are affiliate marketing guys, work for shady brokers or try to fish for retail victims. You know this industry and you know exactly what I mean.

I even thanked you for your rational, well formulated responses and think you contribute value based on your experience.

I disagree with your explanations about the impact of leverage..... If you have reasons to believe your money is at risk at your broker your better off not to deposit even 5% and trade with 20 leverage. You have the experience to identify bucket shops. By the way, there are brokers where your equity is protected up to 100'000 CHF in case of a bankrupcy of the broker, at least here in Switzerland. Your trading money is in a seperate bank account.

You know that with CFD's you can lose far more money than your balance, especially if you apply high leverage. You mentioned Jan 2015. If you traded Swiss pairs on that day your trading plattform just freezed, you couldn't buy or sell for a long period of time and by the time the plattforms went online again you found your stopps have been slipped with a gap of approx 35%.... A leverage of 3 was enough to get your account margin called. A leverage of 10 would have resulted in negative balance of 250% of your initial equity, a leverage of 30 on a 20'000 USD account you have ment that you would have faced a negative balance of 190'000 USD..... so don't tell here you can't lose more than your balance trading CFD's.

Now to ESMA.... what they do is just bringing back some sanity into retail forex.
Negative balance protection..... tell me why this is bad for retailers.
A leverage reduction to 30 on major pairs...... well, now knowing what can happen isn't 30 still far too high?
How does anybody know when the next 35% gap will occur...... one thing is clear - it will, just a matter of time.

So knowing that such gaps have occured and will occur, what do think is the responsiblity of a regulator?
If a broker has to provide negative balance protection, do you think this is possible if he offer up to 200 leverage or even more? No, I wouldn't be and that's the reason why negative balance protection has to go hand in hand with a reduction in max leverage.

The impact of leverage on the profitablity of retail accounts has been studied and is published. You find that the accounts using less than 5 leverage are far more likely to be profitable than those using significantly higher leverages. And that shouldn't surprise you, if you understand the "gamblers ruin" effect.

Forex brokers do have an incentive to offer high leverage, because it will directly improve their earnings and since a broker is the counterparty of many small , undercaptialized, overleveraged retail traders, it will give them a huge advantage taking the other side of these retailers trades.

I agree that authorities shouldn't tell us how to spend our money. But I think that doesn't mean a company should be allowed to have a business modell that contributes zero value to society (aka retail forex trading) and serves no real purpose, that just takes money from their customers at a breath taking speed and that is sold based on a myths and lies..... I think the advertising of most retail brokers as you show it are scams - because they hide the facts and sell pure lies. You see the obvious lies behind it, but start to dig deeper and then you begin to understand the smart lies that are not obvious, but very efficitiv.

In regards to killing somebody by driving drunk, your right, it's not the cars maker oder the beverage companies fault. But you know the regulator protects you from this risk by making it illegal to drive drunk. If their wouldn't be such a law, the risk would be far bigger that you could be run over by a drunk driver.

As long as there is such a huge gap between how retail forex is sold to the public and what it actually is in reality....you can't expect an average retail trader to look through all the dirty trick forex brokers implement to get their money. That is the problem, and like drunk drivers, it has to be addressed by regulators till the rules are fair for all participants.

As a last point I would like to distingusih between losers that act outright stupid, naiv, greedy or lazy and burn their fingers. I agree, you can't protect them from being stupid....however, the retail forex industry offers a product that has a lot of factors built in that make sure most retailers will lose no matter what. Even regulated forex brokers use VDP's, are able to delay your price feed, are able to front run, are able to freeze your plattform etc. etc.

I think for real traders the ESMA rules will only have benefits and the gamblers are getting some protection not to completly ruin their lives or at least not so fast as today.

Am I wrong?

lol

"based on your experience"

This always amuses me, how many ass kissers are out to appease the Great Hanover...you do realize that he had his ass handed to him by market and hasn't traded for years, right?

LINK


The same bullshit keeps getting repeated and repeated in this and all other trader forums...not always Hanover, but if you want to figure out why you should never put your funds in market...keep listening to that guy.

I was always told, if you want to be successful, do what successful people do.
For case in point, we are at the absolute converse of this idea...

How the fuck can you be successful listening to this blather by somebody who doesn't trade and was never that good at it when he did?

Do you think all of this magical wisdom that he has is any help?

Seriously...look at the date on the post or the link.

If as near as 14 hours ago...he was still afraid to trade.

Why would you listen to him now?

Magix,

I kiss nobody’s ass..... but folks who are humble, rational and do have some experience, no matter if they are winning or losing money, have a far greater chance to provide something of value than does who just show off how great they are, without one single piece of evidence.

Do I agree with all what he says? Certainly not and you will find that I have no problems to clearly show him when I disagree.

But who on FF is honest and brave enough to openly state that he is still in the red after so many years? Close to zero traders here of FF. But for more than 98% this is the harsh truth.....and by ignoring that fact, they contribute to lure in new victims following their path doing the very same mistakes over and over again for the benefit of the retail forex industry.

You're fucking kidding me, right?

Is this how you select a doctor?
Contractor?
Lawyer?

Having rational and some experience is of ZERO value towards your bettered outcome.

It's not even entertaining...

Magix, I just glanced on your trade explorers to get an idea what you are up to....

You use kind of grid / soft martingale techique which depends on mean reversions
You average losers in hope to bring the back in the green
Your profit curves look great, but your list of open trades explains why and what will happen to this "demo accounts" in the long run
You have even some open long and short positions in the same currency pair - really?

You have open trades with absolutly no reason to keep them open other than luck and hope.

So forgive me if I think you are a hopium trader that loves to distort the real picture.
You create an temporay illusion of being profitable - willingly because you fish or unwillingly because you believe in what your are doing.
You will survive in ranging markets because your scale not aggressively but you likely get killed in strong trends.
I know this method can deliver very nice results in certain time periods, but it always blows spectacularly.

The current envoirement favors mean reversion strategies with enough room to breath.
So enjoy the luck - it is an essential ingredient for this trading style.

So anything that doesn't subscribe to your same rhetoric is doomed to fail?

This is the same shit that all of the forex losers keep espousing...rules and limits...all of which, you all keep spouting are destined to fail anyways...

No fucking imagination and no real idea of how market works.

Don't pretend to know what you see...you don't.

All that's clear from this...the only thing that separates you from being another fucking hanover is a decade of wasted time here at the factory!

Thanks for stopping by...we hope you enjoy your stay.

Oh...and check your PM box...prolly a love letter from Hanover in there.

He chooses not to go head to head with me anymore.

Last time we had words, he needed a 6-month hiatus from FF.