Alternative way of trading forex and futures

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I assume most of us here are sophisticated traders, savvy and have big appetite, or else you would not have come to this futures forum. I would assume that some of you already have experience in leverage trading, either in forex or futures products (stock indicies or commodities).

In my previous job, I have the priviledge of being a futures broker. Maybe you would ask, is there any priviledge in being a future broker? Of course yes!

Being a futures broker, I can observe the trading style of a very broad group of traders. They come from various backgrounds: either retail or institutional, scalpers or position takers, high net worth individuals or small players, from China, Indonesia, Malaysia or Singapore. By observing their trading style, I can learn from their past mistakes.

I had seen scalpers winning small profit when their view is correct, and lose big time when their view is wrong. End of the day, their profits are not even enough to cover their losses.

I have seen position takers winning a lot of money in their open positions, suddenly their profits turn into losses due to an unexpected event (maybe sudden raise in interest rate or sudden implementation of government policies). Eventually suffers the fate which no trader ever want: margin call.

Many times, my readers had sent emails to me, asking me to introduce a low commission broker. Actually there is already an alternative way of trading, and it comes with zero commission. That is binary trading.


Binary trading:

Binary trading allows you to bet on discrete financial events that have only three mutually exclusive outcomes; Win, Loss or Draw.

Prices on such financial events are quoted in various Odds and are quoted during market trading hours of that financial instrument ("in-running").
You do not need to wait on the outcome of the financial event and can "close out" to take an early profit or cut loss if the events are going against the bet.

Using a real-life example (time is 18.26pm China time, date is 18 Apr 08):

At that time, spot price of AUD/USD is 0.9364. The binary odds for AUD/USD Daily bet, strike price 0.9373, odd for "over" is 0.43 and odd for "under" is 0.65.

Translate the above statement into simple words:
If you think AUD/USD will close at over 0.9373 by 5am (21:00 GMT), your binary odd is 0.43.
If you think AUD/USD will close below 0.9373 by 5am (21:00 GMT), your binary odd is 0.65.
Say you are placing a bet of US$100, a binary odd of 0.43 means that if you lose, you lose US$43 or 43% loss; When you win, you gain US$57 or 57% gain.
Compared to margin trading, to achieve a gain of 57% is so much tougher, and the risk level is so much higher.

In the above trade, you will know what is your maximum loss if your view is wrong, and what is your gain if your view is right. What's more, there is never any commission to pay: any profits you make are yours to keep in full.

Hence looking from a risk-management perspective, binary trading looks more favourable compared to conventional trading.


Events driven trading:

Every other day, there is at least one US economic data. And some of these data can move the market wildly. Some of the impactful data includes: Non-farm pay roll, FOMC interest rate decision, Jobless Claims, CPI, PPI, etc.

Say Non-farm payroll data is going to be announced at 11pm. A positive data may push USD higher, and a negative data will resulting in weaker USD. If you are negative on the data, you can place a hourly bet on the "over" trade. So if the data is indeed a bad data, EUR/USD is expected to rise higher, resulting your "over" trade to make money.


Discipline trading
Say your initial capital for today is USD300. Set yourself a target how much return you would like to achieve, say 50%. Place your bet on the 5 min game. Stop your betting once you gain 50% profit of your capital.


Other benefits:

a.Low capital outlay.
Unlike futures trading whereby a huge capital is required. You can place a bet for an amount as small as USD10.
b.Traders do not have to worry about margin call.
c.No interest charge.
d.Downside risk is capped, unlike leverage trading where you can lose more than you can afford.

I had written so much on binary trading, but I had barely touch the surface on binary trade. I will touch more on this topic in the near future.
 
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Current rate for EUR/USD is trading at 1.5608. I believe that EUR/USD is oversold, and due for a rebound by the end of US trading hours.

HK odd for EUR/USD Daily bet that rate will rise above 1.5633 is 2.45. Cutoff time for this trade is 5am China time.

I bet USD100. This means that if I lose, I lose USD100; and if I win, I get back USD245. Meaning my profit would be USD145.

EUR/USD chart and binary platform image can be found in my blog.
 
For binary trading, you can make directional bets: you can bet on OVER (means call option in finance terms) OR UNDER (means put option in finance terms).

For binary trading, you can also make volatility bet: you can bet IN (meaning you think the price will not go out of the range) or OUT (meaning you think the price will go out of the range, similar to Strangle strategy).

The EASIEST WAYto make money is to buy OUT on an important US data night. I do not know if the data will be good or bad, but I know market will be WILD on that day. So the chance for the price going out of the range is pretty high.
 
My binary trade today:

Ever since AUD/USD broke 0.9500, I have been more bullish on AUD.

Currently AUD/USD is trading at 0.9596. Today I place a USD200 bet that AUD/USD will stay above 0.9584 by 5am China time. Odds is 0.64. If I win I win USD128, if I lose I lose USD200.
 
I don't think people who trade one day binary bets are generally that interested in what they're really trading, which is volatility. In case it helps somebody out, these can be modelled quite simply using standard option theory and a closed-formula solution in Excel.

Function binaryCashOrNothingCall(payoff, spot, strike, timeToMat, volatility, dividendRate, riskFreeRate)
d1Numerator = Log(spot / strike) + (riskFreeRate - dividendRate + (volatility ^ 2 / 2)) * timeToMat
d1Denominator = volatility * Sqr(timeToMat)
d1 = d1Numerator / d1Denominator
d2 = d1 - volatility * Sqr(timeToMat)
binaryCashOrNothingCall = payoff * Exp(-riskFreeRate * timeToMat) * SNorm(d2)
End Function

You'll also need an SNorm() function - that's just a cumulative standard normal distribution function. Lots of example Excel functions are freely available for that on the web.

For one day options, it's accurate enough to ignore the dividend rate and the risk free rate - just set them to zero. The other inputs are fairly straight forward - just make sure if you use a daily timeToMat you also use a daily volatility - ie annual volatility / sqrt(252).

So, if you believe the annualized AUD/USD volatility today is going to be 10% and there's 0.5 of the day left till expiry, the inputs for 123's example above will be =binaryCashOrNothingCall(1,0.9364,0.9373,0.5,0.10/SQRT(252),0,0) which gives a fair value price of 0.413.

Treating the bid and offer he quoted of 0.43 OVER/0.65 UNDER give a call equivalent price of 0.43 offered and (1 - 0.65) bid = 0.35 bid, which gives a bid implied vol of 5.6% and an offered implied vol of 12.5%. I've no idea what the realised vol on AUD/USD actually is, but that's a pretty wide spread so there's a good chance it's somewhere in the middle.

You can use this formula to work out how much added volatility the broker is pricing in for event risk.
 
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For the benefit of the interested reader, I thought it should be pointed out that there is a whole lot more to pricing daily (fx) options than outlined in a previous post. Firstly, the return distributions are far from normal. Secondly, the time-dependent nature of things plays a crucial role. And then there's a few more significant things to consider as well.

So if you figure out your pricing, you'll discover that there's plenty of serious mispricing by the bookies. Can be taken advantage of up to a point, i.e. until they discover your mischievous ways.
 
Are you trying to claim that the binary shops don't price the added volatility of event risk in? If you are claiming that I think you are seriously misleading people. Theses places simply spread around the market vol for a locked in profit.

Furthermore I suspect that you are here touting your own site.

Milsleading indeed - would imply that the odds are stacked in the favour of the punter. What bookie would do that?

Sounds very much like a marketing message...
 
Yes, indeed. The above is just a starting point.

No offense taken, I hope. Nothing personal at all, it's just that 123 is doing such a good job at making things sound simpler than they are so I thought a counter-weight was needed :sneaky:
 
No offense taken, I hope.
No, of course not. I think we're of much the same mind - I was hoping that providing a simple Excel function might give a starting point for someone vulnerable to 123's message. Or, more likely, put them off because they realise they don't really understand what they're being sold.
 
Are you trying to claim that the binary shops don't price the added volatility of event risk in? If you are claiming that I think you are seriously misleading people. Theses places simply spread around the market vol for a locked in profit.

Furthermore I suspect that you are here touting your own site.

Happy to be proved wrong on the latter, nothing you can say will convince me I'm wrong on the former.

GJ

I dont own this own. Creating the infrastructure of a trading platform takes millions of dollars to build, I wish this website is mine, I'm just a customer of the site, wanting to share about binary trading which most people do not understand. The owner of this website is Mansion, the sponsor for Tottenham Hotspur.

I'm not misleading people, from my observation, binary platform adds spreads 5min to 30 min before an important event, such as an economic data.Say an event is at 11am US time, but the daily bet closed at 5pm US time. Since you know the important economic data at 11am, place your bets a few hours before the data, you will not face the risk of taking a wider spread. I tried it so many times, all of my volatility bets are winning trades.

I used to trade conventional forex trading, my chance of winning is less than 20%. Then I switch to binary trading for forex, my chance of winning is more than 70%. I also place directional bet, such as OVER or UNDER.
 
Milsleading indeed - would imply that the odds are stacked in the favour of the punter. What bookie would do that?

Sounds very much like a marketing message...

You should try it yourself. Open the account, place a USD10 bet to try. You will know that I'm not misleading.
 
You should try it yourself. Open the account, place a USD10 bet to try. You will know that I'm not misleading.

Thanks. Believe it or not, but I have 'tried'. And, would you know, I did quite well at it. Or were your suggestion to open an account specific to your favourite site? ;)

Never ever would I believe that bookies price the odds in the punters' favour. Mispricings do exist, but will be tightened up eventually. More importantly, nobody would let you win thousands a day, day after day, from bets they can't or don't hedge. Suggesting anything else is seriously misleading.

You may not own the site you are referring to, but you may still have an economic interest by click-throughs, referrals, or otherwise. And you may have an interest in google-ad income from your own sites.

I find binaries interesting, and I hear through the grapevine here in London that some big names are interested in part of the retail space. It would be interesting to discuss, but please can we keep the discussion above messages such as "I used to be a loser, but now with binary bets I'm a winner. You should try it too by opening an account with my bookie."
 
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Thanks. Believe it or not, but I have 'tried'. And, would you know, I did quite well at it. Or were your suggestion to open an account specific to your favourite site? ;)

Never ever would I believe that bookies price the odds in the punters' favour. Mispricings do exist, but will be tightened up eventually. More importantly, nobody would let you win thousands a day, day after day, from bets they can't or don't hedge. Suggesting anything else is seriously misleading.

You may not own the site you are referring to, but you may still have an economic interest by click-throughs, referrals, or otherwise. And you may have an interest in google-ad income from your own sites.

I find binaries interesting, and I hear through the grapevine here in London that some big names are interested in part of the retail space. It would be interesting to discuss, but please can we keep the discussion above messages such as "I used to be a loser, but now with binary bets I'm a winner. You should try it too by opening an account with my bookie."

First I do not own the website.
Second when people open account, they don't go to my blog, they go straight to MANSION118 to open account.
Third when people opens account, they don't quote my name, how am I going to get referral fees? By telling them that this guy 123 recommends the site to them?

This is an example of my trade yesterday: Binary Trading: AUD/USD "OUT" trade wins!

I bet that AUD/USD will stay above 0.9584 by 5am China time. I place the bet only when I agree with the odds. I win when AUD/USD closed above 0.9584 by the stated time, if AUD/USD closed below 0.9584 I'll lose.

AUD/USD eventually closed at 0.9587, so I win, but its a CLOSE win.

I do not see anything wrong with binary trading, its a fair bet.

If I had traded conventional forex, and the rate goes against me when I'm sleeping at night, my loss can be very SUBSTANTIAL. With binary trading, I do not have this worry, I'll not lose more than my bet amount.

Its just an alternative and safer way of trading forex and indicies. :whistling
 
It's safe in the way that playing roulette is safe - sure, you know what your maximum loss is on any one trade, but there's a decent house edge and in the long run it's GUARANTEED that this will keep chipping away and chipping away at your account. UNLESS you have some sort of edge (which isn't say that doesn't exist, I just don't see it from you).

I'm talking either arbing, or good flow info, or something structural, to let you take advantage of times when the vanilla pricing solution these people emply will not quite be up to the task.

But just saying every time there's a 'market event' you effectively buy vol from them is definitely not an edge. It's playing right into their hands unless it's combined with something else.

Just my $0.02

GJ


He even thinks it is a 'fair bet'. lol.
 
Who cares? As long as I agree with the odds before I place my bet, and eventually I win.

What I want is to earn money in a safe way.

My "OUT" trade last night was a winning trade again, see details here:Binary Trading: GBP/USD "OUT" trade wins!

The odds was expensive, but I'm willing to take the bet.

As I said previously, I have been losing in conventional leverage forex trading, you may say this is a fair way to trade. But if I keep losing money, I DON'T CARE if its fair or not, I just want to win.

My success rate in binary is much HIGHER compared to conventional trading, that's all it matters to me.
 
What people do care about is that you are claiming that binary betting in the way that YOU are doing it is anything more than gambling. And the house DOES have an edge, and I absolutely guarantee you that all you're doing is just losing your money a bit slower. But they will get it in the end. And that's fine for you, but we're trying to keep other people from following you because you're clearly a financial lemming. And we know what happens to lemmings don't we boys and girls?.......... ;)

So best you jog on now imho unless you actually have something to add on the subject that is demonstrably about actually finding an EDGE in binary betting.

Last chance, then I bet someone will set the mods on you.

Best wishes

GJ

I'll certainly lose faster and lose more if I had continued trading conventional forex.
Maybe you are right, but overall, I'll still winning.
 
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