Why Top Retail traders V Commercial Traders

[Forexmospherian]

No.

To which bit - and how in earths's name do you think you know better ????????

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Perhaps at this stage of the bun fight Forexmospherian, it would be wise for you to provide a relatively detailed review of your experience? Seems to me you're coming out with a load of . . . . well . . . . I'm sure you can fill in the dots.

Myself? (just to pre-empt your question) . . . best part of thirty years working on trading floors for most of the big IB's in London.

 

[Forexmospherian]

Perhaps at this stage of the bun fight Forexmospherian, it would be wise for you to provide a relatively detailed review of your experience? Seems to me you're coming out with a load of . . . . well . . . . I'm sure you can fill in the dots.

Myself? (just to pre-empt your question) . . . best part of thirty years working on trading floors for most of the big IB's in London.

Hi Dashing Blade

You have answered your own problem - and probably Shakone as done the same with his implications

You are commercial guys - taught by the commercial system in a totally different world.

Experience and time does matter - BUT - does not matter whether 20 - 30 -50 yrs in the commercial world - that's all old hat - ie like comparing a Ford Model T to a Bugatti Veyron - ie they are both cars and both have 4 wheels - so you think they are the same?

Tell me - the market in the last 15 yrs as seen the Internet and them more recently HFT make your world more like the Ford Model T to the "games" of today.

I am sorry I can only talk retail Forex trading. In just over 11 yrs and now over 13500 live trades - I can only talk about what I know and what I do ( 6 yrs full time working from various offices).

So if you commercial guys want to think retail traders have no chance on what you know etc - I am very sorry to inform you - wake up and smell the coffee.

PS - remember I am talking retail forex trading with accounts under $100k. You cannot do the same with 100 / 500 million Capital account - simply due to the limitations - and also the power of the market.

Regards

F

 

[forker]

11 years trading and you have only recently joined the site and racked up almost 3k posts which is an average of 32 every day. For a full-time trader you sure have heaps of time on your hands. This is daja vu

 

[Forexmospherian]

11 years trading and you have only recently joined the site and racked up almost 3k posts which is an average of 32 every day. For a full-time trader you sure have heaps of time on your hands. This is daja vu

Very easy answer there - nearly a third of those posts are connected with trades I am taking or have taken.

Every day I do between approx 10 -20 trades over a 10 hr "window" My thread is my diary as well on why I took them or why I ignored them

Does that not make sense at all ??

Surely after doing the thousands of trades I have done - it becomes pretty boring sitting there in front of screens - I need focus - but rarely sit there for more than a few hrs at a time and the majority of my trades are over under 30 mins - with some of the "free ones" on for several hrs

I really don't understand how you cannot see I am so obviously a full time retail forex trader ??

Its a shame the majority of traders here are part time - their jobs must pay well - or they must be still learning surely ??

Regards

F

 

[forker]

i wasn't referring to the legitimacy of you being full-time but it is interesting that your response assumed i was questioning it.

 

[random12345]

This pathetic charade has to be the longest in T2W history, certainly by volume.

Merry Xmas FXmo, you barmy old coot. How is your Sharpe ratio of 200 treating you...? Something entirely unheard of in the Prime Brokerage community of course... do you facilitate your own execution? That's how you keep it below radar huh, clever. Must have cost a pretty penny though... I heard those Equinix racks cost a few hundred grand a month.

And a Happy New Year.

 

[sonofcablemonster]

heard those Equinix racks cost a few hundred grand a month.

My wife managed to get a nice rack down Harley Street for 5k. Stitched up she was.

 

[JamesWright]

Morning!

I don't see the real point in this thread. "Retail investors can be successful, and likewise institutional traders can be successful" and "each has its own advantages and disadvantages" are non-statements. It's pretty obvious, and in the same way small businesses exist and large businesses exist; the smaller business can manoeuvre more easily whilst the large business benefits from economies of scale. It is more likely the smaller business will get a larger % return on investment, because each £ is worth a larger % point. Does that mean that it is run better? The same idea applies to trading.

I trade for an IB (hence why I'm up at this time about to go out and buy the christmas gifts that I have not had time to get yet!), but whilst at university I traded equities in my spare time. I can safely say that knowledge attained in commercial trading, and indeed quantitative university courses, can be reapplied to retail trading and in fact would argue would improve you as a trader. The idea that you should cast aside the knowledge needed for a professional level is preposterous.

As an analogy; a league 2 football team should not mimic Barcelona and expect to be successful, but that's not to say that those teams would not to gain from the 'broad strokes' of their operation. Tactical awareness, organisation, ways those players 'do things better' etc. can be reapplied in a different context and bring them 'up a level'.

Why should trading be seen any differently?

Equally, commercial traders could learn from the retail side also.

 

[NVP]

Hi N

I have attached another traders stats - this guy as a 91% success win ratio on nearly 400 trades - yes impressive ...... BUT...

He lets himself down with having massive wide stops - or none at all I reckon - BAD

So he gets loads of small wins - and then one bad trade can wipe out 5 - 20 good trades depending when he bails ;-((


F

just a couple of points f

1) where are these stats coming from again ?..........are these guys not perhaps carryin a lot of unclosed / open trades ?

2) reminds me of arbitrage trading on soccer, Horseracing and also to a degree Baccarat ......in the early days of Betfair.............you used to kid yourself you could chase the many small lay bets and that small percentage chance of being hit by the tsunami loss was always impossible....which is wasnt ......

N

 

[NVP]

Hi Splitlink

Cutting to the chase - First Part -

Most of the commercial Finance trading world are a bunch of deceiving, unscrupulous, too clever for their own good, parasites - and bar stewards as well

Why anyone would want to take advice or try to follow their ways - I just don't know why - they have caused more inexperienced traders to lose their money by misleading them and if they could they would sell your daughter and your grandmother and then charge you for doing it .

Yes - that bad - worse than lawyers, double glazing salesmen and card sharks ;-)

My aim is too give them the "discredit" they deserve and then try and screw more money back off them after losing a lot in the 2008/9 Lehmans crash.

F

no arguments here...........the concept of professional is a much overused word these days.........my experiences in life have sadly proved that there is no profession that has yielded consistent and valuable advice and help to me over the years

so yes ....take every piece of advice you receive (and pay) for with a pincjh of salt .....doctors , hospitals , solicitors , Accountants (hahahaha)....financial advisors (even more hahahaha)......

the irony is I have met more moraly compassed and straight talking Gamblers (that i trust) in my life than I have ever met in the more noble professions .........

the list is endless..............chose your advisers well and believe about 50% of what they say ..........assuming you can figure out what 50% that is

N :smart:

 

[Forexmospherian]

This pathetic charade has to be the longest in T2W history, certainly by volume.

Merry Xmas FXmo, you barmy old coot. How is your Sharpe ratio of 200 treating you...? Something entirely unheard of in the Prime Brokerage community of course... do you facilitate your own execution? That's how you keep it below radar huh, clever. Must have cost a pretty penny though... I heard those Equinix racks cost a few hundred grand a month.

And a Happy New Year.

A Happy New Year and a successful one to you Random, Shakone and all the other traders here who have provided me with great entertainment ;-)

I will continue providing you with facts that you will not be able to disprove along with some more live true accounts verified by Ernst & Young ( Sorry NVP - you are correct another top accountancy firm who's professionalism can easily be questioned ;-) - I suppose that means they surely could be false lol )

None of you are questioning the mathematics here and not understanding that although trading is not a science - the market will always allow "performance anomalies" which just cannot be replicated with very large accounts .

For example I can take a scalp this morning with say 5 full lots or even 20 full lots - but if I tried that scalp with 2000 full lots ( with a multi mill live capital account) - it would not be executed at all in the same manner - and by the time it was all in the market - i would have missed my scalp as it would be finished.

After all retail traders are basically trading for the "scraps" in terms of money size - ie I am sure the majority of retailers would count a $5 or $10k single win as large - whereas - it would not even hits Barclay's Capital or Deutsche banks "loose change counter lol

Everything is so different and I therefore I have a job showing all you ex commercial guys what is possible.

You will probably say now - no we don't bother with taking any trade that does not make us $50K - and there lies part of the problem ;-)

In between some more christmas shopping will now see if I can take some scalps -

Have a good un

Regards

F

 

[Forexmospherian]

no arguments here...........the concept of professional is a much overused word these days.........my experiences in life have sadly proved that there is no profession that has yielded consistent and valuable advice and help to me over the years

so yes ....take every piece of advice you receive (and pay) for with a pincjh of salt .....doctors , hospitals , solicitors , Accountants (hahahaha)....financial advisors (even more hahahaha)......

the irony is I have met more moraly compassed and straight talking Gamblers (that i trust) in my life than I have ever met in the more noble professions .........

the list is endless..............chose your advisers well and believe about 50% of what they say ..........assuming you can figure out what 50% that is

N :smart:

Morning NVP

I would totally agree with you.

i do always cross check on the open trades scenario with these accounts - but have quite a few verified by Ernst and Young from Iron FX competitions including the one by a Malaysian Lady who put over 3000% increase on a live account ( live not demo) in approx 6 weeks.

No way could she do that with a multi million account - as we all know - but with a $500 or $5k - its a different ball game - that the commercial guys find difficult to take on board ;-)

Merry Christmas and a very profitable trading 2014

Regards

F

 

[Forexmospherian]

Morning!

I don't see the real point in this thread. "Retail investors can be successful, and likewise institutional traders can be successful" and "each has its own advantages and disadvantages" are non-statements. It's pretty obvious, and in the same way small businesses exist and large businesses exist; the smaller business can manoeuvre more easily whilst the large business benefits from economies of scale. It is more likely the smaller business will get a larger % return on investment, because each £ is worth a larger % point. Does that mean that it is run better? The same idea applies to trading.

I trade for an IB (hence why I'm up at this time about to go out and buy the christmas gifts that I have not had time to get yet!), but whilst at university I traded equities in my spare time. I can safely say that knowledge attained in commercial trading, and indeed quantitative university causes, can be reapplied to retail trading and in fact would argue would improve you as a trader. The idea that you should cast aside the knowledge needed for a professional level is preposterous.

As an analogy; a league 2 football team should not mimic Barcelona and expect to be successful, but that's not to say that those teams would not to gain from the 'broad strokes' of their operation. Tactical awareness, organisation, ways those players 'do things better' etc. can be reapplied in a different context and bring them 'up a level'.

Why should trading be seen any differently?

Equally, commercial traders could learn from the retail side also.

Hi James

Thank you for your post and I agree with many of your points.

Yes both commercial and retail traders can both learn from each other - but the ways you are leaning in your your commercial life is unfortunately not necessary the best way.

It really is a totally different ballgame to trading with $1-100K - especially in the retail Forex world - and win ratios and % increases on accounts are so much different to what you will be doing on behalf of your employers

I am pleased you have an open mind and realise that the profession you are involved in are far from being efficient - although I do appreciate they do work to an entirely different performance criteria due to the massive amounts of monies they are managing

Regards

F

 

[Liquid validity]

F, nobody is saying those kinds of returns aren't possible, simple fact is they are:
http://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-williams-trader-father-2011-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_R._Williams
http://www.dailyfx.com/forex/fxcm_n...ns_25K_in_Monthly_Forex_Trading_Contest_.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/worlds-top-retail-fx-trader-151940984.html
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/first-steps/120412-55000-one-month.html

The fact remains that they are usually high risk using demo or low stakes.
Either way, its possible no doubt.
Its also beyond most people, due to the high costs factor of each trade (spreads).

Instead of taking my usual approach of pointing out the reasons you still get flak,
just consider these perfectly reasonable points:

From what I can see on your thread you are still not posting exact entries.
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/dis...pert-retail-forex-trader-632.html#post2247872

The above post is a case in point.
EU 3690 is a good shout regarding price observation for shorts.
It is not however a live call, if you come back and say you entered a short
on EU after 0800, what is to say you didn't enter just before one of the two
pullbacks so far (both of which would have easily knocked a 5 point stop).

The point is, unless you post exact entries and exits its largely pointless.
Posting an entry only means typing 2 or 3 numbers if using whole or tenth points.
The rest of the call can be a wordpad template, for example you would only
have needed to type 87 and hit submit at time of trade (timestamp), the rest of the call text would already
be in an open posting window:

SHORT
EU
3687
5 point SL

Until that happens, can you really blame anyone for questioning the
validity of your calls?
This is a perfectly reasonable and factual point, as I'm sure your reply will be

 

[Forexmospherian]

F, nobody is saying those kinds of returns aren't possible, simple fact is they are:
http://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-williams-trader-father-2011-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_R._Williams
http://www.dailyfx.com/forex/fxcm_n...ns_25K_in_Monthly_Forex_Trading_Contest_.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/worlds-top-retail-fx-trader-151940984.html
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/first-steps/120412-55000-one-month.html

The fact remains that they are usually high risk using demo or low stakes.
Either way, its possible no doubt.
Its also beyond most people, due to the high costs factor of each trade (spreads).

Instead of taking my usual approach of pointing out the reasons you still get flak,
just consider these perfectly reasonable points:

From what I can see on your thread you are still not posting exact entries.
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/dis...pert-retail-forex-trader-632.html#post2247872

The above post is a case in point.
EU 3690 is a good shout regarding price observation for shorts.
It is not however a live call, if you come back and say you entered a short
on EU after 0800, what is to say you didn't enter just before one of the two
pullbacks so far (both of which would have easily knocked a 5 point stop).

The point is, unless you post exact entries and exits its largely pointless.
Posting an entry only means typing 2 or 3 numbers if using whole or tenth points.
The rest of the call can be a wordpad template, for example you would only
have needed to type 87 and hit submit, the rest of the call text would already
be in an open posting window:

SHORT
EU
3687
5 point SL

Until that happens, can you really blame anyone for questioning the
validity of your calls?
This is a perfectly reasonable and factual point, as I'm sure your reply will be

Hi LV

Thank you for an excellent comment and one I will treat with full respect.

I suppose I don't really want to provide a "trade alert" service via my thread.

The example you have given is a very valid one - as I have not confirmed i took the scalp sell under 3690 and then I did not confirm whether I would be holding it for a lower price or not.

Close followers of my thread would have seen that at 7.51 am this morning UK time we had a LH at 36895 and I actually entered at 36882.

9 minutes to the start of an hr or half hr frame change is an important time for me as its the start of my "time window".

Over my 3000+ post - i have mentioned time windows several hundreds or might even be a 1000 times and so a few of my followers here would know exactly what I was doing ;-)

Anyone new - i agree would not know - unless they had taken time to go back over the 6 -7 weeks to understand my methodology and also the fact that if I cannot take a trades with a stop under 7 pips - ideally 5 pips or less - I will not take it.

If you looked back last week - you will see some excellent calls in advance - when I say those words like - scalp buy at 3658 and hold above say 66 etc etc

Some of the calls are still live over an hr or two later and normal followers will know - i am in a "free trade" with 30% locked in with a stop in profit.

I really don't want to appeal to brand new fx retail traders - instead ideally guys who have a few years of experience - and so am reluctant to be to A - B - C - D in my total approach

I really do take on board you comment - and thank you for it

I will experiment further - but will repeat - this thread is really for me to look back later today or at the end of the week - and see what I was thinking and why in some cases did I not take all my own scalp forecasts

Meanwhile Merry Christmas and a very successful 2014

Regards

F

 

[NVP]

i'm not questioning the validity of F's calls ..............sure i was sceptical early on as we all are .....and I challenge anyone to call them live whilst having to keep their head in the zone

i cant do it ........unless I could perhaps be posting using some dictaphone conversion style software that posted what i was talking ........(minus the curses ?)

i'm just interested in the discussions as I am going to take the xmas break to decide if I finally go pro next year.....I have redundancy looming and may well finally decide to do something that I have had a lifetime passion for and finally not have corporate faceless bosses......

you only get 1 life ...........and I figure better to have tried than looked back at not trying it ........

N

 

[NVP]

Second Part -

Prove to the traders who are not really there - or have been happy on small moderate returns on day trading - what they are missing. I can explain it with having to charge or sell anything as well - totally Free

Regards

F

that would be interesting............verrrry interesting

N

 

[NVP]

I really don't want to appeal to brand new fx retail traders - instead ideally guys who have a few years of experience - and so am reluctant to be to A - B - C - D in my total approach

F

and in truth thats a good way of putting it ...........I could never walk away and totally rebuild my own system as its as part of me as my right arm........but as you are implying its the mindset, attitude and many other things that are infinitely useful to me if I want to finally go pro next year.......

N:smart:

 

[NVP]

However as long as price in Forex moves more than 10 pips - any way - at various times without continual spikes for over 12 hrs a day - it can be traded using probability theory - TA and of course advanced MM.

As long as you do enough trades - then you should end up with retail results far better than 10% per month ongoing without out having to risk over 1% of your capital per trade

Regards

F

agreed .........