How do the Pro's Trade

I have been wandering over the last week or so, do the "Professional" traders ( and by that i mean the people who put a suit on and go to someone elses office to trade ) trade the same way that we do ?????

The people i mean are the ones working for Barclays, Lloyds, Merryl Lynch and the such like, do they do technical Analysis and if so what methods do they use or do they rely on researchers anylising loads of fundimental information.

Is there anyone out there in that sort of position who would mind giving a sort of overview. Im not asking for any insider information or trade secrets, just an idea of how the "other side" works.

Has anyone else ever wandered this or is there some absolutely huge thread that i have somehow missed.

The reason i ask is this....

Apparently 95% of traders lose money at Forex, now either there must be a huge turnover of staff at the institutional houses with most traders being fired for poor performance, or, do the "Suits" make up the vast majority of the 5%.

This sticky in the broker section may start to answer some of your questions:
http://www.forexfactory.com/forexfor...9&page=1&pp=15

Mr Green

thanks, that is one great thread and its one i havnt read, thats the sort of info i was after but im going to have to read it a couple of times i think and i am going to chase this a little further, i may be wrong but i think this could be quite an important part of my education that i have previously overlooked.

Thanks again

Lyndon

I have had the luck of having several friends that work at the banks in Tokyo as traders- they use many methods to work the markets.

Yes they trade as we do- and all the differing ways as well, in fact some of the TA guys trade with the most basic systems, which would not even get a second look by most of us at the FF. From what i understand each dept will have traders that trade in differing ways weather it be FA, TA ,chartists ect.

There would seem to be in increase of programmers been taken on by the banks in recent times and some would say that the Traders numbers will drop greatly over the coming years as systems are developed....however many traders say and do out trade the systems.

These guys have a knowledge of the market or markets they trade and confidence of a large bank behind them.....but over all I think that many of the pros who you would find here at the FF have a greater knowledge of the markets and of trading in general.

I've heard, there are 1000nd Professional Traders in the UK / London and a 1Mil £££ bonus is expected for all of them this year, some upto 10mil.

We don't get stupidly huge bonus's, we also have to do this around our lives / other jobs, and it's alot easier to trade with someone elses number, bet it doesn't feel like money to them even.

There main bonus is, they likely work as a team with the ability to actually move markets, kinda cheating really.

98% of Forex / Traders in general lose money, 2% make, say 8% back approx, then the brokers scoop up the other 90% of losers.

ALL Broker companys make money therefore they must be taking money off us Retail guys, there is proberley 100mil Retails traders of different kinds all donating to the Pro's bonus's, some £200 ( Me ) some £10,000 yearly.

A bank or hedge fund employs different types of traders.

There are execution only traders that enter trades based upon complex algorithms designed by quantitative analysts and developers. These guys are not paid anywhere near as well as say the systematic or quantitative traders.

Algorithmic traders have strong quantitative skills and develop complex trading models. Man Financial is big on this at present.

Systematic traders are just as the name suggests - using different types of analysis.

Then you have the various different types of arbitrage traders but they are more common for trading equities and commodities.

One of the problems that bank traders face that your average retail trader does not is the search for liquidity - executing a $500million trade is not just a one click process. There are also a number of execution algorithms designed to cut large volume into small pieces and seek out liquidity across the market.

Monaco