Thanks TradeSA, How long does your short term trades last? Do you trade like 2 to 3 times per day? Do you have to be physically at the bank to trade? Can you set stop levels for your longer term trades and go for a round of golf?? And do banks train you or do they only take in traders who they think will be profitable? If only 20% or so are consistently profitable, does that mean that there will be frequent firings at the forex department? How many traders are there currently at the bank you are trading? Thanks
hi, yes you can leave stops with your own bank and go and play some golf. yes 2/3 trades a day so not scalping. yes i have to be at the bank to trade. all calls are recorded so i have to use an office phone to put my trades that go outside the bank. banks sometimes take in a junior trader from another department (back-office) and then train them up. usually they just poach someone from another institution. the bank will usually give you 2 years without making money and then you will know your number is up. you will usually leave before being fired...we have about 6 pure forex traders and many many dealers to handle all our clients. i am the only trader in our regional offices and place all my trades using the phone so it can be a problem trading intraday (slippage). yes the bank also have brokers but you have to phone physically to get a quote. its not as "computerised" as the internet brokers i have read about on this forum. we also have a feed where we can see where actual interbank trades have been made and i have also meta.t.r.a.d.e.r forex charts and a well known "internet broker feed" and their software. the difference between "internet broker prices" and where the real market is, is sometimes frightening. i know there is questions about whether the brokers run stops etc. from looking at these different feeds i can tell you that all of them at some time must be doing it. of course they will argue that some of their clients have orders there so there is a market at that price. of course they can also take those orders directly to the banks and "prove" that a price was made there. it just doesn't make sense that the actual banks trading price stays constant (no tics) for 5 minutes on a single quote while the internet brokers show like 100 tics coming through in the same time. thats one of the reasons why its so funny to read things like - "wait until it breaks the high by 1 pip" its your broker breaking that high by 1 pip not the market. if for example you look at todays euro at 6-615 london time (15minute charts) you will see in metat.r.a.d.e.r (demo server) a high of 36 low of 29 the interbank was at high 36 low 34. so clearly the brokers took it lower by 5pips than the banks did. i have previously made some trades against these brokers when i see them differ from the market by more than 15pips. easy money. i really think some brokers are rip-offs. there is in my opinion two forex markets out there - the real market and the one created by the internet "prices". THATS the reason long termers will easier survive than short-termers in the forex market - less manipulation by the broker (if you go for 400 pips instead of 40 they will not be able to run your orders (either way)). ok enough of that before some broker sends a death squad for scaring people away from them. i have named no one broker here (metatrader is a demo server) so hopefully i will still be able to sleep tonight.