King of the microlot suspicions

http://forexforums.dailyfx.com/king-...er-3100-a.html

I have been following the winners making 3000$ or 3mil% or whatever from Fxcm. The problem is that as far as I know not a single of these traders who managed say 10trillion% gain from $500 to $5mil in one month has ever come and posted on Forex factory or any other forex forum.

Not one ..... unless I am mistaken. The onus is on FXCM to clarify this.

They now have another contest where live account holders get rewarded $25 for answering forex related trivia questions in a chat session held every week on friday at noon eastern time.

They don't show who is in the chat room, or what they're saying. They only show the message of the *first* person to supposedly answer a question correctly. This may seem reasonable at first, but if you think about it, it does look suspicious. They claim so many people give the correct answer that there are "runner ups."

They also claimed this week that they're going to be interviewing one of those king of the micro contest winners on the 17th of this month in the very same chat room they have this $25 weekly contest.

If you ask me, I don't believe any of it. The chat room is located here: http://forexforums.dailyfx.com/micro...lk-events.html

Meh, kind of doubt they are nickel and diming and trying to save 25 bucks. I think they make a ton of money regardless. And to the micro contest, I doubt there is wrong doing either. Think how many people actually trade. While this site usually fields 5k or so at a time, I'm guessing there are at least 100x as many traders, if not 1000, trading at that very instant. Also, I'm sure they make more money from people that sign up for their promotions, and aggresively trade and loose their 500, then they do from awarding prizes. Not to mention the PR it produces.

http://forexforums.dailyfx.com/king-...rns-833-a.html

Complete rubbish of course, none of these "winners" will post on forexfactory.com. The interviews are FXCM interviewing themselves, like a gambling house doing a PR stunt with the "winner" of $1mil. Pulls in all the gamblers, creates the illusion that somebody "out there" made something significant.

Only a stocktwits account live, with real-time trades will be convincing because one could setup hundreds of real accounts and then only selectively report on those that made a profit.

Hi,

I think this is real. BUT notice FXCM have over active 100.000 accounts. there is a good chunk of micro there. Imagine how many are having big DD, so you can find some doing so good. Notice second is a bit lower. Third may be lower %.

If I would run for such contest I will open many account & load minimal on each haha & over leveradge to death each to catch only 1 move! after some failure I will end up with a hudge gains on at least one account.


My 13 cents
13

man, that is some crazy crap.

This would be a reason for disqualification from the competition based on rule #1, but appreciate the creativity .

I can certainly respect the size and international breadth of the Forex Factory community, but if I had to guess I would say it contains a sliver of the total number of forex traders in the world. Plus, take a look at the nationality of winners through this year, the majority of winners are from countries where English is not the primary language.

The World Cup Futures Trading contest(google this) hosted by futures broker PFGbest(contact them for details, we aren't allowed to link to other commercial websites) list at number 1 their trading leader with a 160% gain.

On another website(not allowed to link) retail clients list their trading results, nobody generates returns above 30% . It is improbable that somebody could be making 800% from a single account. Their contest is audited by the NFA.

Ultimately we don't know, nobody from the outside has audited anything. The latest "winner" is from Canada, surely he can post on forex forum , but nobody has anywhere at any time on any forum that they won $40,000 for the first place. It is just a scam to get people to over trade and loose their money, as a market making bucketshop, this is how FXCM makes their money.


Gambling houses do the same, rig the machines so that the owners , brother's half sister "wins" a million dollars, draws in all the gamblers. The forex trading houses view their clients as naive simpletons for actually thinking they can beat the market. The lifespan of a retail forex trader like a gambler running through his last $50000 is around two years. During this time the increasingly frustrated trader attends Oliver Velez courses or listens to "legendary" trader Larry Williams who was fined by the NFA for fraudulent misrepresentation. He lost a couple of million in a fund he managed, which is why he turned to "teaching".

"...NFA fines Larry Williams for not reporting to potential clients that, while his personal account in a promotional 1987 contest was very profitable ( a gain of + $902,599 ), his managed accounts for clients lost substantial funds ( - $6,122,281 ). This constituted deceptive and unbalanced promotional material and disclosure statements. Details in William Gallacher's book Winner Take All.

Footnote -- In July 1988, the Larry Williams Financial Strategy Fund was launched, followed in March 1989 by the World Cup Championship Fund, managed by Larry Williams, Jake Bernstein and two others. The 1988 fund lost more than 50% of its clients' equity in barely one year, as reported in the October 1989 issue of Futures magazine. The 1989 fund also lost more than half of its original equity by May 1990. ..."

''Winner Take All: A Top Commodity Trader Tells It Like It is [Hardcover]''

With a penetrating intelligence and a sharp wit, Bill Gallacher dissects many of the industry's leading lights, exposing the frauds, deflating the pompous and poking fun at the seers who believe they can predict the future. Along the way, he demonstrates why most traders lose and, most importantly, what it takes to win.

Like me you might well be wondering why all these "competitive Retail Forex businesses" would want to get into the brokerage business in the first place. Helpfully Boston Technologies also provide an answer to that very question. If you download the "Detailed Business Plan Framework" from that page you will discover all sorts of interesting snippets of information about how forex brokers make money. Various business models are outlined. For "straight through processing" it seems as though:

Rule of thumb calculations show that if [a customer] deposits $10,000 then the broker will make about $1000 in profit over a month if he is active. For an inactive trader he will make $100. In the "closed loop dealing desk" model however, the broker takes on more risk, but makes bigger profits: Most small retail customers have no experience and 95% of them WILL lose money.
Here, most customers act like gamblers and your job is to act as the "house". This is a "non-recurring" customer model in that most customers lose their cash, and do not come back with additional investments. Ongoing customer acquisition is therefore very important. So there you have it. You now know how the over the counter brokers make their money from forex. The obvious question to ask next is how can you make money from forex?

Oliver Velez selectively picks only those stocks which so happen to match his trading theories, leaving out the losing trades. He is selling people a pipe dream and can't produce a real or demo trading statement from a reputable firm like mbtrading.com. Demo trading results are fine as long as the broker is reputable.

Then we have another set of vultures: Trading Psychologists. Imagine you are delusional thinking you are forex-wonderwomen and jump of your roof in red cape every morning , spraining your ankle. The more you trade , the more you lose. You can't sleep, your pulse racing. Trapped in your delusion you can't accept the obvious: The trading methods don't work. Like a Scientologist e-meter facilitator the "Trading Psychologist" swoops down on the hapless trader: "Stick to your methods!" Which is like a Psychologist telling somebody who thinks he is Harry Potter that he must twist his broom to the left a bit, maybe now you will get airborne. Everything but the truth is told, only 1% eventually make it in Forex and 99.99% of trading methods don't work as described in the thread "Technical analysis fallacy" on forexfactor.com. Fibonacci retracements, support and resistance lines, above 200ma or below, are all colorful hogwash on a chart.

Forex dealers are generating fake statements and using xxxxxxx.com as an advertising platform to generate profit hallucinations , like gambling houses create the illusion that you could also strike the bigtime. Fact is that the eurusd follows a random walk, there are only a few individuals in this universe who can trade forex.

Closer inspection of the Alpari account revealed that "Boris" and his brother "Boomer" weren't scalping, they made 10, 15pips consistently. Given that the chances are something like 1 out of 10bil somebody could actually make 220 winning trades out of 223, we can only conclude that some "Gremlin" got hold of Alpari's server.

(sorry if it seems a bit out of order, can't post links as per forexfact. policy)

I have both standard and micro accounts under FXCM. Overall, I am satisfied with the performance and service except that one person from FXCM Client Advocate which until now I haven't gotten any reply after a couple of follow up emails.

Now with the contest, yesterday I read the thread and decided to join the chat with the winner of the contest. The chat is moderated which means if you have a not so favorable message/comment to FXCM or to the winner they will not allow the message to be seen by others. The winner sounded like an ambassador of FXCM. Maybe he was just too happy and satisfied with FXCM. I don't know.

I believe in any public contest a government entity will supervise/regulate the process? Is this being done? I hope FXCM will make the contest more transparent to avoid suspicions.

I am not here to malign FXCM or fuel a debate, just my observations.

The whole thing is scripted. On the other site where you can upload your trading results the site owner allows you to openly and freely question the trading results because many Eastern European hackers are running 1000 EA's on cloud computers and telling us only about the 5 that made 500% and not about the other 95.

The market does indeed follow a random walk, out of 100 broker accounts and EA systems there will always be 1 that makes money during a brief period such as two months trading contest, but over a prolonged period the account will be blown.

This is why PFGbest hosts their trading contest over 12months and the NFA audits the results. Being futures every single trade has an audit trale. With FXCM making a market there is no way to prove or disprove anything. They can concoct the most elaborate trading hallucinations , how could anybody prove that it wasn't so?

http://www.fxclub.com/weekend-contest-en/ is another site with bogus "competitions" . Nobody from fxclub who "won" a contest has posted on any forex forum anywhere. Fxclub are market makers, there is no audit, they like FXCM are fabricating "winners" giving the illusion that somebody made 300% , 400% or whatever . Very few are making such returns on forex.

I have returned hundreds of % on the king of the micro before and have placed on their winners list a couple of times. I come and read parts of this forum from time to time when i am bored. I have read some of the comments about this before but just laughed and clicked away without commenting. What is there to say? Are winners supposed to come in here bragging or something? Why am i not a trillionaire? Really, losing $500 in one month trying to quadruple it is no big deal. But losing a $200,000 account in one month trying to do that same thing is just stupidity wouldnt you think? You have to think of the risk involved in every trade. Losers will complain and make excuses. Winners will keep pushing forward no matter what the obstacle.....

What utter rubbish, just because you can't doesn't mean that nobody else can. You yourself are the only person standing in the way of any succes in trading FX. So don't belittle the results others are getting based on your incompetence and inability.

If the market was so random as you say then nobody would ever make any money consistently and sorry to say but history has proven otherwise plenty of times. Why don't you pull up the results of the top 100 CTA's in the last 10 years and have a look for yourself.

Where can I find it?

Plenty of rankings services available, HFI and Eurohedge are 2 good ones. Most commercial banks offer the same service, Barclays Capital and UBS are 2 good ones. I use all 4 of them, among others.

Surprising as it may sound not every trader reads and/or posts on FF, I expect the majority either don't know about it or don't care!


I think that's unlikely but let's suppose for a minute that it's true. So what? Reckless gamblers will always find somewhere to lose their money, may as well be in the markets as anywhere else! I'm not sure many people are gullible enough to believe everything they read though are they?

As for spectacular returns, I'm sure they're perfectly achievable in the short-term with a few hundred dollars starting capital. But like mofuniverse said, there's no comparison between risking a few hundred and risking a few hundred thousand!

http://www.myfxbook.com/community/tr...test-2/57580,1

The fxopen contest is another fabrication in the same spirit as with FXCM.

FXCM are continuing their practice of talking to themselves here with their latest fictional ''winner'' who made 1000% in a month

King of the Micro Trading Survey, trade report with the ''winner'' April 2011
1. How long have you been trading?
I’ve been trading for 2 years.
2. How did you start trading?
Reading news papers I started interesting in macroeconomics and pairs, 2 years ago I just saw forex advertisers and I decided to try trading with small amounts.
3. What are your favorite sources for news and/or your favorite technical indicators?
I usually read Italian news paper and I have created personal indicators .
4. What pair do you prefer to trade?
EUR/USD
5. How long do you typically hold your trades?
I have no rules about that but I usually hold my trades one or a little few days.

How much time do you spend trading every day?
Less than 2 hours.
6. What was your most successful or memorable trade, and what was your most unsuccessful trade?
My most successful trade was buying massive eur/usd at 1.3600 in February and selling at 1.4650. The most unsuccesfull was buying and buying EUR/CHF in April 2010, when the pair was collapsing.
7. What do you think your greatest weakness is as a trader?
The greatest weakness is to lack system.
8. What one thing did you do or learn that pushed you over the top?
I have a strict system and I never disobey to my personal rules. Then I am in the habit of writing a lot, observations, notes that I think could help me in the future.
9. What kind of personality do you think you need to trade forex successfully?
You should have motivation, will of observing patiently, studying a one’s own system and get order..
10. What do you think about forex vs. equities? Have you traded equities? Why do you trade forex?
Forex 10 times better, i tried to trade equities but with no guaratee stop (gaps not only for trades overnight but also in fast intraday moves) it is very dangerous.

11. How has trading changed your life?
I have fun trading. I am studying economics and management at the university at the moment and I’am not thinking to trading as a job but as a demanding hobby. It’s a personal challenge first of all, the success of a trade make me satisfy and it doesn’t depend only on the money I get.

12. What advice would you give to a new trader?
I would like to advice him to start with the greatest caution, with small amounts and without the will of earn money immediately.