Traders: Millions by the Minute

[timsk]

Haven't seen the programme. . .

Available on iPlayer if you're interested: Traders: Millions by the Minute (episode 1/2)

 

[Pat Riley]

Are you tryin to catch me out now Tim? You know it isn't technically legal for me to access iPlayer from the ROI. But I do know a man who does.

 

[Jack o'Clubs]

It was interesting that they didn't get any big boys to speak (albeit with a nod to HFT with the guy in Amsterdam - that would have been interesting if they'd developed it more). A couple of pit traders who were getting out as the pits are dying, the Amplify guys who would be at home on T2W and the hedge fund lady who at $200m is only just over the assets needed to make a fund viable after costs. It would have been interesting to hear a bit more from her on what she actually did (there was a suggestion of ' value' which would imply investing rather than trading, but still..). But scaled-up hedge funds and bank desks - omerta!

 

[NVP]

agreed............not exactly the crème de la crème really .........but with bbc budget cuts ......

 

[Pat Riley]

It was interesting that they didn't get any big boys to speak (albeit with a nod to HFT with the guy in Amsterdam - that would have been interesting if they'd developed it more). A couple of pit traders who were getting out as the pits are dying, the Amplify guys who would be at home on T2W and the hedge fund lady who at $200m is only just over the assets needed to make a fund viable after costs. It would have been interesting to hear a bit more from her on what she actually did (there was a suggestion of ' value' which would imply investing rather than trading, but still..). But scaled-up hedge funds and bank desks - omerta!

I'm speaking outta me derriere as I've not seen the programme, but if there was a dearth of big boys this was probably due to a number of factors, the most important one being that it probably wouldn't make for particularly riveting viewing. Joe Public has a conceptual view of what traders are and do and to show them anything else would not do much for the viewing figures. I'm guessing there were lots of screens, charts possibly, tables of numbers, flashing numbers on the screen, must have those and frantic telephone and conversational segments. Show I guy spending hours reading through piles of industry literature and corporate accounts, or having one of a hundred business lunches talking about this and that just to stay current and getting into incredibly complex derivative structures which are boring beyond belief except to those that love them, would be a televisual recipe for disaster.

Another factor is that there would be no benefit whatsoever for any of the big boys in getting exposure via mass media. None at all. Quite the reverse. And of course, the timescale in which the larger players work would seem like watching a snail walk across your TV screen. Boring as hell.

Some hedgies have, for reasons unknown to me cos I wouldn't, been selfless and generous with their time in providing interviews and inputs for scholarly and even some popular written pieces and these are well worth the time and effort involved to digest. By they're certainly not prime time TV.

 

[Mr. Charts]

Some of the people doing the Amplify course were outright beginners and some seemed to have a little bit of knowledge and experience, but it looked as if they were all given the same "training" regardless.
Teaching someone how to trade, at least face to face, requires individual attention in my experience if at all possible. I was surprised to see someone who was just left to do one trade in a week then forced to take a trade for no good reason other than for the sake of it.
The emphasis seemed to be on taking a trade purely on an individual's interpretation of economic news. I'm not surprised the results of amateurs AND so called "professionals" were so wildly inconsistent, that is exactly what you'd expect with such an approach; that's gambling, not trading as a probability business.
The rest of the show was moderately entertaining, but there was nothing but that for me personally.
Richard

 

[Forexmospherian]

Haven't seen the programme, but if this is what they were attempting to do then I totally agree with you. But I don't know any institutions who would ever even attempt to train ex-retail traders.


If that's been your personal experience then good on you for sticking with it. You obviously had the luxury of doing so. As an institutional trader, you will not be given a year and a half of trading days (15 hours/day 220 trading days/year) to prove your mettle or worth.

Hi Pat

Well these were ex institutional / commercial traders with their own company - training complete newbies - who fit the bill - ie had a brain and could pay the course fees etc

So for me that's like the one eyed man leading the blind down a road full of massive holes

Newbie retail traders need to be taught the skills by other experienced retail / home traders - who have at least 10 yrs behind them - and ideally made many thousands of live trades with a good record.

Trouble is - there is hardly any about - and then the newbies need to realise the course would be say 6 - 12 months full time ( costing what say $10 -50k ) or 3 yrs part time costing similar.

Then I reckon instead of a 80 -95% retail failure rate - it might over the next 5 yrs drop to under 80% - but how many newbie traders are going to spend $10 - 50k to learn something many think takes 3 months - lol

With regards to bank traders - I reckon they need 2 yrs to get there - and even then even if they are Einstein - does not mean they will be any good with under $100k of their own money and a laptop

Worth watching Pat for the entertainment and next weeks should be good - ie the part time housewives ;-)

Regards


F

 

[Mr. Charts]

Trading profitably and consistently is not about taking a view and gambling on being right. If you are very good you might do ok in the long run provided your pockets are very deep.
If you want week to week, month to month, year to year profitability - earning a good living - then it's about understanding what works and why and what the probability of success is and then trading with tight stops for those occasions moves don't pan out as they usually do.

 

[Jack o'Clubs]

I'm speaking outta me derriere as I've not seen the programme, but if there was a dearth of big boys this was probably due to a number of factors, the most important one being that it probably wouldn't make for particularly riveting viewing. Joe Public has a conceptual view of what traders are and do and to show them anything else would not do much for the viewing figures. I'm guessing there were lots of screens, charts possibly, tables of numbers, flashing numbers on the screen, must have those and frantic telephone and conversational segments. Show I guy spending hours reading through piles of industry literature and corporate accounts, or having one of a hundred business lunches talking about this and that just to stay current and getting into incredibly complex derivative structures which are boring beyond belief except to those that love them, would be a televisual recipe for disaster.

Another factor is that there would be no benefit whatsoever for any of the big boys in getting exposure via mass media. None at all. Quite the reverse. And of course, the timescale in which the larger players work would seem like watching a snail walk across your TV screen. Boring as hell.

Some hedgies have, for reasons unknown to me cos I wouldn't, been selfless and generous with their time in providing interviews and inputs for scholarly and even some popular written pieces and these are well worth the time and effort involved to digest. By they're certainly not prime time TV.

Well, that was the thing, the producers obviously agreed. So you had a tiny bit of pit traders waving tickets and shouting at each other, a few shots of stressed men looking at screens full of flashing numbers, but rather than try and explain what was going on, they went for the easier sell of 'human interest'. So you got a lot of the rather charming ex-public school con talking about reinventing himself through good decision making etc. The hedge fund manager, who I thought potentially the most interesting, had her section cut back to seeing her have her makeup done prior to going on CNBC as a talking head, showing the viewer round her Manhattan apartment and explaining how she kept on top of work and four kids (answer - lots of paid help!), a few brief snatches of her explaining how good it felt when you were making money and how bad it was to lose it - but nothing about what she actually did. I thought it was a bit of a missed opportunity to be honest and a classic case of the BBC talking down to its viewers.

 

[Mr Fox]

Is T3 trading quite small in the respect of prop firms, as their head trader Scott Redler only makes $2,000/day. I must admit I thought the head traders would be making a lot more than that, or is $2,000/day the average of what most people earn at prop firms.

Best
John

 

[Pat Riley]

Worth watching Pat for the entertainment and next weeks should be good - ie the part time housewives ;-)

Part-time housewives. I think I saw the movie. Sub-titles. Danish.

On a serious note, what the hell are they doin deciding to go part time en all? They should be either at the sink, at the stove or minding the bairns. Part-time indeed. Whatever next.

 

[Pat Riley]

Is T3 trading quite small in the respect of prop firms, as their head trader Scott Redler only makes $2,000/day. I must admit I thought the head traders would be making a lot more than that, or is $2,000/day the average of what most people earn at prop firms.

Best
John

Maybe that's just what he puts on his 1040.

 

[DT]

It was a slightly better program than I was expecting. Interesting that the two people featured who had been in the business longest were also both looking to get out and do something else. I suppose we'll never know if the guy we see at the end setting up his 4 screens at home ever had success or not.

I'll take a wild stab in the dark but so far he's seemingly paid for a training course from a company that appears to have a business model built around selling training courses rather than actually trading...

now he's going to 'trade' a live account, from home... he was attempting to scalp S&P e-mini futures when they filmed him in the office - I'm suspecting that despite the expensive training he's received he's rather unlikely to have found an edge in that market, especially not one he can exploit from his home internet connection the other side of the atlantic... very few people would be successful doing that.

 

[DT]

Is T3 trading quite small in the respect of prop firms, as their head trader Scott Redler only makes $2,000/day. I must admit I thought the head traders would be making a lot more than that, or is $2,000/day the average of what most people earn at prop firms.

Best
John

I don't think it is a prop firm... its a day trading firm, those guys are day traders risking their own cash not company funds... its going to provide them with additional leverage perhaps, maybe some better infrastructure, faster connection, lower fees... but what they appear to be doing isn't much different from what a retail trader at home would be doing if trading intraday.

 

[counter_violent]

Sigh

 

[marketsstudent]

and the training appeared to be sitting waiting for big economic announcements and then jabbing the buy or sell button ?

really ?

really ?

N

Yes, for example if an Amplify type trader was listening to Mario Draghi's speech on 8th May 2014 you would have heard him use the words 'the governing council is comfortable with acting next time' (reference to some kind of loosening monetary policy). It would not have taken a genius to short EUR/USD futures at this point. This would be a textbook example and it doesn't always work out. But during a game changing announcement like this you do just click the relevant button and hopefully watch a very nice trade unfold in front of you . Having too many technical indicators to watch for example would just slow your decision making process and overcomplicate something which is actually relatively simple.

 

[Pat Riley]

Yes, for example if an Amplify type trader was listening to Mario Draghi's speech on 8th May 2014 you would have heard him use the words 'the governing council is comfortable with acting next time' (reference to some kind of loosening monetary policy). It would not have taken a genius to short EUR/USD futures at this point. This would be a textbook example and it doesn't always work out. But during a game changing announcement like this you do just click the relevant button and hopefully watch a very nice trade unfold in front of you . Having too many technical indicators to watch for example would just slow your decision making process and overcomplicate something which is actually relatively simple.

Sorry chap, is it NEVER that simple. If you got it right that time, well done you.

You have no idea just what was already expected, factored in, already known in some cases, days in advance. No news is ever empirically good news or bad news. It's always with respect to what was expected/known prior.

No disrespect to you, but you don't want to be letting your good fortune in a one off event go to your head or more importantly to the heads of those that have yet to learn the harsh realities of news driven events.

If you feel I'm bein harsh with you then simply set out your plan for tomorrow at 09:30 BST on any sterling forex pair. You can't wait for the news or you're spreaded out of contention (and out of profit) - you need to be in the trade ahead of it and to pretend you can simply hit buy/sell with a 30 pip spread oat or just after the news is nonsense.

What are you specific intentions with regard to the 09:30 GBP data event tomorrow? How will you be positioned?

 

[12WBT]

Thanks CV

Don't tell the UK tax payer.

 

[marketsstudent]

Sorry chap, is it NEVER that simple. If you got it right that time, well done you.

You have no idea just what was already expected, factored in, already known in some cases, days in advance. No news is ever empirically good news or bad news. It's always with respect to what was expected/known prior.

No disrespect to you, but you don't want to be letting your good fortune in a one off event go to your head or more importantly to the heads of those that have yet to learn the harsh realities of news driven events.

If you feel I'm bein harsh with you then simply set out your plan for tomorrow at 09:30 BST on any sterling forex pair. You can't wait for the news or you're spreaded out of contention (and out of profit) - you need to be in the trade ahead of it and to pretend you can simply hit buy/sell with a 30 pip spread oat or just after the news is nonsense.

What are you specific intentions with regard to the 09:30 GBP data event tomorrow? How will you be positioned?

Hi Pat, thanks for such a polite message. I agree with a lot of what you are saying, in particular the very important point about taking into account the fact markets price on expectations. In the example I mentioned, I would say this was a surprise to the broader market and hence warranted a quick 'jab' of the mouse.

If trading EUR/USD futures, the spread is usually 1 tick in my limited experience. I have seen it widen from that but very very rarely and I don't think the spread was an issue during that Draghi press conference. I am not sure but I think the spread at such times is more of an issue with spread betting companies? Apologies if I have misunderstood your point.

Wow, being called out on this forum....this really is a compete cop out but I don't have time right now to post a trade idea, although I really should! I was just replying to another post on this thread tbh. All I would say is that the best opportunity of the week might be after the referendum result is released. Sorry for the cop out and feel free to knock me down because this is off the top of my head. I will definitely post a trade idea in the future however.

 

[aag100]

It was a slightly better program than I was expecting. Interesting that the two people featured who had been in the business longest were also both looking to get out and do something else. I suppose we'll never know if the guy we see at the end setting up his 4 screens at home ever had success or not.

not enough.needs atleast 8