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LAST (Long term Analysis - Short term Trading) 158 replies

Short Term Vs. Long Term Trading 74 replies

Long term Vs Short Term Trading 72 replies

Short Term / Medium Term / Long Term? 3 replies

Poll to see Long term vs. Short term traders 9 replies

Why Trading Forex is So Difficult - Long Term vs. Short Term

Quoting NewstraderFX
I agree with what you've said. I would love to know the percentage of traders who do put the time in the learn TA and FA and who don't see forex as a get rich quick scheme that do become successful.

And just to clarify, I don't see any type of trading as "easy" even though it's easier to appreciate trends on a longer term basis. For example, if you do trade long term there inevitably will be times when much of your very nice profit will get wiped out and possibly turn into a loss. How do you deal with that? It isn't easy.

The next time your longer term position is in profit, you'll be tempted to take it. Then you'll start trading on shorter time frames and it becomes very hard again.
True. By the way, my usage of the term "easier" in relation to long-term trading wasn't meant to water-down how arduous it is.

The reason why I said what I said was primarly because the proportion of spread when scalping is relatively much higher than when trading say, the Daily.
I cant see the US dollar reversing the down trend too much.
Inflation is caused by high Oil and commodity prices rather than the US internal factors.
The dilemma the Fed has is about balance. They have an inflation problem yes but they need to spark up their economy so raising rates wont help.
I still think the U.S. is in deep sh*t.UK and EU as well.
Buy Yen, Swiss and AUD.
Quoting Rabid
There's a difference between financial institutions, traders at financial institutions and large institutional traders.

A) Financial institutions actually tend to lose money trading, they're only in the market because they have to be in order to facilitate their other business. International bank, liquidity providers, a handful of others. Most of these places hedge their positions. You can see them on the "commercial" side of the COT. A lot of your small trader profit will come from these pockets.

B) Most traders at most financial institutions actually lose money. In "The New Market Wizards" one of the interviewees pegs a high percentage of these traders as losers, but their business brings in other traders to the brokerage, which in turn makes it worth doing.

Large institutional traders tend to be slow traders, using low leverage and long time frames. Since C) their primary concern is the management fee they don't want large scary drawdowns. They aim for lower returns and tend to take trades that can be planned ahead in advance. Most are executed by traders, but managed by a manager that wants to spend all of 10 minutes a week verifying trades (scaled entries and exits). A lot of these institutions are "always in" the market, they're bad at predicting volatility so timing their entries is usually a losing strategy.

All of these classes have another thing in common: D) They aren't trading with their own money. That simple aspect adds a great deal of stress to trading.

Small traders are in a class all to their own. E) Most small traders can't use big trader strategies and actually make any money, so following them is pointless. A lot of that comes down to edge, either you have one or you don't.

F) Forex is "difficult" because of it's volatility. Price moves all the time, which means if you trade a slow strategy you're going to have to deal with a lot of drawdown potential. You need to make sure your approach matches the current volatility pace of the markets you're trading. It's perfectly possible that someone could make a fortune trading stocks and lose a fortune trading FX, so this market may not be right for you.

They like to say you can trade FX 24 hours a day, but that's not true.G) The 80/20 rule applies, 80% of the movement occurs in 20% of the time (it's called autoregressive conditional heteroskedasity, look it up). A 100 pip move can occur in 15 minutes, followed by 8 hours of tiny sideways grinding.

That means getting in on the best moves means usually getting in when the market sucks, that's an emotionally difficult thing to do. So, you've also got emotions to conquer that other professions don't, and H) large traders are far less concerned about (they're still getting their salary either way).

I am getting tired of this it seems getting a simple answer out you is impossible so let's get this over with. I have highlightened the the issues that I am going to address one by one. What I write is from a banks perspective but I see no reason it should not apply to other financial institutions as well.

A) If you want to understand banking better you should have a look at a banks income and balance statement. You do not have to be a number cruntcher to see how things are. It tells you 2 things, one the profit margin is slim and two which you can derive from the previous the margin of error is small. There are guidelines, procedures, instructions and even manuals for most issues. Not to mention the regulations that come from the government and financial administrators. After a while you beging to understand why things are done in certain ways, it is to control risk. A banks primary business still remains assepting deposits and lending, if you grasp this you can understand that a bank cannot take uncalculated risks. Few years ago the government made a change, no longer will it cover savings to the maximum, it set a limit. It brought a new group of people who keep an eye on the bank, those who deposit their savings or bring their business to the bank. Before customers could give less if the bank was on the verge of collapsing. Risk, risk, risk.

The second point I want to make concerns the laws that apply to banks. There is no law or clausul that obligates a bank to participate the foreign exchange markets.

The money the bank makes comes from fees, there a two kind. First is a fixed fee. From a customers perspective it is a sunk cost, you pay it weather like it or not. The second class of fees are performance fees, those are paid by the customer if a profit is made.

You tell me, is the bank going to participate the exchange market to make a loss?

B) Your statement is a generalization and as such incorrect. A traders compensation is formed of two parts, basic sallary and bonus. My basic sallary was better as a loans officer. Bonus is the incentive that everyone is after. On the average it brings anything from above 0 to 250% increase to your annual income. I heard of larger bonus but I cannot say for sure, the ones who might have known did not share. To have a bonus you must make a profit. Most of the years it evens out.

C) Mangement fee is not the primary consern. Management fee is to cover fixed expenses and from a customers view a sunk cost, weather he looses or wins he still pays it. From a traders point performance fee is th eprimary consern, this is where the bonus comes.

D) You have no clue how stressing it is to trade in a bank but after a while it changes as do you. You are missing the most important point, if you loose does not take it from your paycheck or sue you for every dime you have to cover. Such agreement where a trader comits to pay back the loses that incur is not written.

E) What is a big trader, define it. In this forum terms such as "big dog" or "big boy" are applied but I cannot remember that anyone who uses that term defines what he means by it. Before I came to this forum I never divided traders. My friend the same who I mentioned he works in a pension fund. I think he had 20 billion euros under his management. If I compare myself to him, the only difference is money. He is the only "big dog" I personally know.

F) This one made me laugh, maybe it slipped from you I give you the benefit of the doubt. Do you know what the opposite of volatility is, it is one price at all times. It is volatility that makes trading possible in the first place.
G) What was you point with this one? If you want to use it effectively, there are 24 hours in a day and 20% is 4.8 hours. Trade 2 hours from the london opening and 2 after New York opens.

F) The only thing large traders worry is the performance fee, without it they get the basic sallary. Basic sallary when you divide it with working hours, it is not so good. It ranges 60-80 hour weeks and not only as bank trader I see no reason why it would not apply to larger traders, they want just as much to earn a bonus.

If I went to the capital structure this would get too long. You should know that short term funds are traded diffently as long term, but there is always a but. Long term funds are traded by seniors and short term by junior like myself. Seniors trade long term capital both ways because they started with trading short term funds.

What I wrote here is not something you could not have figured out by yourself had you put the effort. People like you who drove me from here.
  • Post #64
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  • Edited at 12:55pm Aug 27, 2008 12:37pm | Edited at 12:55pm
Quoting Northernstar

E) What is a big trader, define it. In this forum terms such as "big dog" or "big boy" are applied but I cannot remember that anyone who uses that term defines what he means by it. Before I came to this forum I never divided traders. My friend the same who I mentioned he works in a pension fund. I think he had 20 billion euros under his management. If I compare myself to him, the only difference is money. He is the only "big dog" I personally know.

F
Great post How's your country's pension fund going ?

The Norwegian pension-funds yield have been debated strongly this last year. Can't expect more when they manage to lose 5.3 bln euros just from currency-speculation last year and even new bln's on the credit-crunch in the US lately. I read that they "finally" reduced their shares on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by a large amount. And this was in todays newspaper lol.
Measure twice, cut once
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A) If you want to understand banking better you should have a look at a banks income and balance statement.

Not concerned about banking really, concerned about trading.

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The second point I want to make concerns the laws that apply to banks. There is no law or clausul that obligates a bank to participate the foreign exchange markets.

Right, but if you're doing business in multiple countries it's going to be a necessary evil. There are banks right now that need to supply GBP to their clients, despite the fact that holding it is a losing proposition.

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You tell me, is the bank going to participate the exchange market to make a loss?

To hedge it's risk to mitigate other losses. Or to facilitate other banking transactions.

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B) Your statement is a generalization and as such incorrect.

I'm referring to traders, not fund managers.

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A traders compensation is formed of two parts, basic sallary and bonus.

I never said there wasn't a bonus. Are you equating the stress of a bonus w/ trading for rent and food?

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D) You have no clue how stressing it is to trade in a bank but after a while it changes as do you. You are missing the most important point, if you loose does not take it from your paycheck or sue you for every dime you have to cover. Such agreement where a trader comits to pay back the loses that incur is not written.

Ok, this is a language barrier? I never said there was such an agreement. Are you saying you agreed you pay back every dollar you lost if you lose money? I know a few fund managers here that never made such a promise. The only downside to their drawdown is a loss of clientele. Now granted if it was due to negligence or some other pressing legal issue there might be a case... but that's a whole different story.

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What is a big trader, define it.

Fair enough, I'm thinking in terms of at least 100m in management. You're running the fund for fees, you aren't directly living off the proceeds. There is an enormous difference in technique, most funds can't take the trades that I (as an individual) would take, and I wouldn't be able to live off the techniques that (most of) these kind of funds use.

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This one made me laugh, maybe it slipped from you I give you the benefit of the doubt.

Volatility means price movement. Granted, a total lack of it would make it impossible to trade, but the changes in volatility are one of the things that make it difficult to trade. Anyone ever suggest you take things too literally? lol

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G) What was you point with this one? If you want to use it effectively, there are 24 hours in a day and 20% is 4.8 hours. Trade 2 hours from the london opening and 2 after New York opens

Hehe, good luck w/ that. Bulk of the cable's movement today happened at 11, exchanges open from 8 to 9:30, so depending on when you're "opening" you'd miss it. There've been a few after lunch breakouts recently too.

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If I went to the capital structure this would get too long. You should know that short term funds are traded diffently as long term, but there is always a but. Long term funds are traded by seniors and short term by junior like myself. Seniors trade long term capital both ways because they started with trading short term funds.

And this is where our experience starts to differ a lot. Back when I was working as a broker we had some funds in house, but they were all very long term funds. Most were value-based, some were technical but had a time horizon of 6 months or more. I can't name anyone, and I'm not sure I've met anyone, that's ever ran a short term fund (intra-day or intra-week) and worked in a bank. Sure I've known a few that run their own private funds, or that work in the pits, but we'd just refer them clients for a commission.

One of these managers I knew personally (we dated for a while), she was paid on salary with bonuses for performance, but the salary was quite handsome and the bonus mediocre at best (and didn't really match fund performance all that well).

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What I wrote here is not something you could not have figured out by yourself had you put the effort. People like you who drove me from here.

Have you ever just considered that maybe other people have had difference experiences than you, as opposed to assuming you're factually correct in all circumstances?

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The Norwegian pension-funds yield have been debated strongly this last year. Can't expect more when they manage to lose 5.3 bln euros just from currency-speculation last year and even new bln's on the credit-crunch in the US lately. I read that they "finally" reduced their shares on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by a large amount. And this was in todays newspaper lol

Ick. Who manages that fund? But of course large funds never lose money, eh?
Quoting NewstraderFX

All this being said, I really believe the long term trader has a much better chance of being profitable.
Basically I think the same, but imo it is not easier than short term trading. You can have very long lasting trends in daily or weekly time frame, and you always see when they are in place. But you never see when they start and how long they are going to last. And if there is no trend, you evtl. wait weeks for an entry point until a new trend builds up.
In addition, there are many sideway movements and - as with trends - you see them when they are there, but you never know when they start and how long they last (well, with a breakout it is likely that the sideway is over, but not guaranteed). As a trend follower you loose if you don't stay out. Or you know how to trade the range, which is more risky.

I also don't think that it is much of the fundamentals that make the movements. It's rather the movements that make the fundamentals (you just hear the ones that fit the movements).

In the end you need a strategy for any time frame you trade. And a working strategy in 1h time frame can be as profitable as a working strategy in 1d time frame. It's the profit factor that matters in the end.
However, trading in daily or weekly time frames has one big advantage: it doesn't take much time and is low stress . You just need to carve out some minutes once a day, to look after your positions...
I also think you have a much better chance of being profitable when you can recognize when no trend exists and I think at this time, there is no trend.

Ultimately, I believe the dollar will get stronger off the Treasury's plan, but I'm not sure when that will happen. I will start getting interested in a longer term bull dollar trend when I see price approaching the recent highs for the dollar.

Fundamentals move the price, not the other way around. The dollar got stronger when traders became enamored with the idea of an increase from the Fed. That will not be happening for a very long time although the Fed will not be reducing rates either.

Should the market start believing in a reduction from the ECB or BoE, the dollar will gain in a trend. IMO, the ECB will never cut interest rates however, the market may start to believe in this again.
Quoting NewstraderFX
Ultimately, I believe the dollar will get stronger off the Treasury's plan, but I'm not sure when that will happen.
Interesting, I'm of the opposite view. With the debt ceiling being increased to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this huge wave of bailouts, I don't see a strengthening dollar environment as a result. A deflationary credit spiral was good news to the USD, but it looks like that's now in the past, with the DX's kiss of 80 being the high of this cycle.

I'm curious to hear your views.
Quoting Trader KGB
Interesting, I'm of the opposite view. With the debt ceiling being increased to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this huge wave of bailouts, I don't see a strengthening dollar environment as a result. A deflationary credit spiral was good news to the USD, but it looks like that's now in the past, with the DX's kiss of 80 being the high of this cycle.

I'm curious to hear your views.
I think the same. The last big drop of EURUSD was a correction, now it might go up after the current sideway and the financial bailout is a good explanation.
Well, as long as the 1,39 support holds. If not, it could drop to 1,33 - in my view on the weekly chart. This is of course no recommendation .

As for the movements, I don't believe that they are made by fundamentals. Take as example last Thursdays US unemployment claims. The number was higher than expected and the result should have been a weaker USD, leading to an upmove of EURUSD. But it actually caused a downmove in exactly that hour when the number came out, confirming a stronger USD - and this was no bear trap. It is not the first time that I experienced this random behaviour and my conclusion is not to rely on the fundamentals too much.
Quoting tenantro
And since I mentioned this, for anyone else reading this and who might be interested in these things, I did a test between the returns of a few global indexes and the returns of various forex pairs, the returns of the forex pairs exhibit higher volatility clustering and fatter tails, so in theory this would translate into higher risk as compared to the instruments I benchmarked them against, the several global indexes I picked such as CAC 40 and so on...
Higher risk, by what margin?

In laymans terms please, lol.
Living the adventure in my head.
  • Post #71
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  • Edited at 3:13pm Dec 14, 2008 3:13pm | Edited at 3:13pm
Trading forex is easy, people make it difficult due to the wrong mental approach. Then once you have the right mental approach, you need a gameplan. Once you have your game plan, then you should know if it works or not, if it doesn't work then don't use it, if it does, then use it. This will help with patience and discipline.
This is interesting, subscribed
  • Post #73
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  • Edited at 12:08pm May 21, 2011 11:47am | Edited at 12:08pm
Quoting mphpopular
My trading methodology is built up by two part
1) short term (using 15m 5m chart) - trades open close within a day
2) long term (using h4 daily weekly chart) - trades open close within a month

For me, I will more prefer Long term since it is more profitable for me

As I always do some analysis back on my past records, I found that long term trade will gives out a higher posibility of winning rate for me, whereby it also offers a better risk reward ratio when I open the trade.

My Long term methodology is merely built up by price action, candlestick,...
Hi MPH,

What you experienced rang some bells. You see..I've tried day trade on 1min to 1 hour chart but it is more like gambling.

I do find that for me to day trade and to keep to 1:2 risk/reward is quite difficult. It is always 1:1 or less if I want to lock in the profit before it start to reverse on me before the day ends.

So how you trade Day and Swing now since the last post?
Quoting jerryyap
Hi MPH,

What you experienced rang some bells. You see..I've tried day trade on 1min to 1 hour chart but it is more like gambling.

I do find that for me to day trade and to keep to 1:2 risk/reward is quite difficult. It is always 1:1 or less if I want to lock in the profit before it start to reverse on me before the day ends.

So how you trade Day and Swing now since the last post?
So true!!

Just thought that I would reply to your particular post but in actual fact this is also some advice for all the newbies out there - especially those who maybe have blown 1 or 2 trading accounts already!This from someone who has learned forex trading at the very best school (the "School of hard knocks"!!)

Here is an important point about different trading time zone platforms. Especially if you are trading the higher time frames (4h chart) you really must be looking the same time zone platform as the "market movers" (big European banks, etc)! No good looking at a US timezone platform if you're trading the european session. I have 2 or 3 different time zone platforms and I mainly use the CET (central european time zone) platform when I'm trading the 4 HR because generally I find that the PRECEDING 4 hr candle is far more reliable. Ideally you need to have a EET (eastern european time zone) platform (4hr candles opening and closing an hour earlier) which can really help to cement your trading decision.

The main thing is that you DO (this especially applies to newbies) trade the higher time frames. I try to exclusively stick to the 4 hr charts. Only looking at lower time frames (mainly the 1 hr or 30m charts) to cement a trading decision. Once you've entered your trade you need to AT LEAST wait until the 4 hr candle is complete. If it's a "follow on" candle I even wait at least an hour into the new candle before checking on my trade to maybe close it.

Lastly, I believe that there are 3 "golden rules" in this game. Here they are:

1/ DO NOT OVERTRADE
2/ DO NOT OVERTRADE
3/ DO NOT OVERTRADE

Ever been to Las Vegas? If you have, you will totally understand those 3 golden rules. Believe me,if there is one BIG thing that I've learned the hard way it's that you need to spend at least 95% - 99% of your time checking out the market, making totally sure of the trend direction and the other 1% - 5% entering a winning trade. Remember, if you're trading the 4 hr charts and you only trade 1 - 3 times a week, you're looking at 150 pips on average. If you are trading a full lot - that's not too bad a weekly income for most of us!!

rgds to all

Jerry
Quoting NewstraderFX
I agree with what you've said. I would love to know the percentage of traders who do put the time in the learn TA and FA and who don't see forex as a get rich quick scheme that do become successful.

And just to clarify, I don't see any type of trading as "easy" even though it's easier to appreciate trends on a longer term basis. For example, if you do trade long term there inevitably will be times when much of your very nice profit will get wiped out and possibly turn into a loss. How do you deal with that? It isn't easy.

The next time your...

Longer term traders are a different breed and different mindset, but if you do the math you can see very easily they could make more playing the smaller sides all the way to their long term plotted destination.

Say they have their sight on a 1,000 pip move. The pair (whichever doesn't really matter) will not move 1,000 pips all at once or at least not often enough to think this way. It will move 100 pips up, 50 pips back, 150 pips up, 85 pips back, 250 pips up, 300 pips back, 250 pip back up and so on.

So with that said just going for the 1,000 pips in one move sounds like someone missed 1st grade math if you catch my drift.

But ya know many of these types claim to be over paying in spread by closing and reopening trades. (rolleyes) To each their own I guess. lol
Hey guys and gals, stop for a moment.

Is it sure we are not confusing big swing trading with long-term trading?

When we say long-term, does it mean lenght of time or price level at both top and bottom extremes?

Market can move 700 pips in one signle day but it can also remain water logged in 200 pip range for months.

Someone kindly explain to me what I just wrote.
The Thief of Wall Street
Quoting Chicky
Hey guys and gals, stop for a moment.

Is it sure we are not confusing big swing trading with long-term trading?

When we say long-term, does it mean lenght of time or price level at both top and bottom extremes?

Market can move 700 pips in one signle day but it can also remain water logged in 200 pip range for months.

Someone kindly explain to me what I just wrote.
long-"term" and short-"term". The word "term" is here obviously used for describing the length of time, and not the amount of pips.
Quoting Chicky
Hey guys and gals, stop for a moment.

Is it sure we are not confusing big swing trading with long-term trading?

When we say long-term, does it mean lenght of time or price level at both top and bottom extremes?

Market can move 700 pips in one signle day but it can also remain water logged in 200 pip range for months.

Someone kindly explain to me what I just wrote.

Opinions will vary so you likely won't get a concrete answer.

To me long term is longer than one week for the simple reason sometimes you can have a pair with a solid run up or down for a week. It's rare to see this type of move last longer than a week and normally by the second week it comes under pressure to retrace.

Sure you can get a 700 pip run in a day... anything is possible but highly unlikely you would catch a move like that, because it is not the norm and more often than not it will catch you by surprise going the wrong way....

On the flip side long term could easily be a month or longer. It depends what glasses you are wearing in the moment.

Long term or short term can have more than one definition. Usually any trade you take you have a target / number of pips you are looking for.... the bigger the target the longer the trade, but length of time is a random event and unknown. Most pros will divulge a time table of a couple of days to couple of weeks or whatever.... meaning they don't know how long it will take.

The main purpose in my previous comment on the previous page is that the more sure you are of your desired target it will pay you more to take multiple positions and close them periodically.

Doing that does a couple of things.... reduces your risk, makes you more profitable... 2 very important things when you think about it.
Quoting jmtini
So true!!

Here is an important point about different trading time zone platforms. Especially if you are trading the higher time frames (4h chart) you really must be looking the same time zone platform as the "market movers" (big European banks, etc)! No good looking at a US timezone platform if you're trading the european session. I have 2 or 3 different time zone platforms and I mainly use the CET (central european time zone) platform when I'm trading the 4 HR because generally I find that the PRECEDING 4 hr candle is far more reliable. Ideally...
How you set it in your MT4? I thought all the candles will look exactly the same even if we switch from say EST to GMT. It is only the lower x-axis showing different time.


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The main thing is that you DO (this especially applies to newbies) trade the higher time frames. I try to exclusively stick to the 4 hr charts. Only looking at lower time frames (mainly the 1 hr or 30m charts) to cement a trading decision.

I have heard from few people that are successful, they trade 4 hour. But I have one very important question I hope you can answer. If the 30min chart are not in synergy with 4hour, do you wait? Secondly do you execute your trade (pre-order your trade) on Opening of next 4hour candle or 30min candle?


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Once you've entered your trade you need to AT LEAST wait until the 4 hr candle is complete. If it's a "follow on" candle I even wait at least an hour into the new candle before checking on my trade to maybe close it.

Same this as entry, do you exit based on 4hr or 30min trend? On opening of next candle or market exit?


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Lastly, I believe that there are 3 "golden rules" in this game. Here they are:

1/ DO NOT OVERTRADE
2/ DO NOT OVERTRADE
3/ DO NOT OVERTRADE

How true! Most newbies thought the more trades the more opportunities to profit. But most mistakes are during off-peak hours where market will not behave the way we predicted regardless whether we are using price action or a bunch of indicators.

When is the best time to trade during the larger financial centres open in London/Europe? The action is only the first 2 hours when Europe/US market overlapped - but what time in GMT?

Anyone have indicator for the peak trading hours zoning on our MT4 chart?


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Remember, if you're trading the 4 hr charts and you only trade 1 - 3 times a week, you're looking at 150 pips on average. If you are trading a full lot - that's not too bad a weekly income for most of us!!

What is your thought of trading 30min and 1 hour chart?
you need to use the currency indices offered by liteforex's sigtrader.

If you pick a currency that is going up (gaining strength) with a currency that is going down (losing strength) then you will have a trending pair.

liteforex is the only broker I know of that has these indices.

Cheers
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