Ask him about his last two mini Dow (YM) trades and his current Crude Oil (CL) trade. That'll take the wind out of his sails.
To suck at trading is one thing, that's typical, to claim no retail can be successful at it using TA, that's just pure idiocy.
Good points. I would venture to "guess" that only 15% of at home traders are sufficiently profitable - in the sense that it allows them to pay their bills etc. And most of the unprofitable ones sooner or later are forced to go get a job. There are a handful who are consistent - and here I differ from you a bit. Some of them hit huge percentage returns - like >100-200% per year on small capital base (talking 50k range here). These guys do exist but are very rare. Can you please post the link of the other forum on entrepreneurship career etc.? I would like to take a look. This is conventional wisdom among financial industry folks.
Let me be more specific-- I don't believe there are any full time, at home, retail FX traders making a decent, consistent living from trading FX. If there are any full time retail FX traders they have other incomes, wealth or family money that allow for the hobby. I don't think anyone, who didn't come from or has wealth or other income, can make a decent living tradign retail at home FX. While there may be some characters who make a subsistence type scratch eeking out a living in retail at home FX they are exceedingly rare. I'll be happy to recant if you can produce any evidence to the contrary. regards, surf
Define succesful as making a decent living with ONLY the income earned from at home, retail FX trading. And I am not talking about some guy living in a trailer down at the swamp who can live on $800 per month. surf
Supporting a family, kids, private schools, good medical, decent lifestyle, no debt, savings, solely from trading. That's my definition.
Agree, mine also. However, I would add with ZERO other income from any source. Does it exist in retail Forex? I highly doubt it. surf
It is becoming an academic question with this qualifier of ZERO other income. Lets make it real here. If we remove this qualifier, then a better question to ask would be - do at home FX traders exist and in what kind of numbers who make at least 70% of their income from FX trading. Or maybe ask this - do at home FX traders exist who make at least 100k from FX. I think it is a good strategy for an at home independent trader to look to diversify his income sources. An independent trader already takes a huge career risk. It makes sense for him to mitigate that risk to some extent by having diversified earning sources.
It can be done. Consistency is subjective and like any business having cash reserves is necessary imo.
I can maybe except that Forex is a different game if I was to accept that stocks are more controlled. Maybe the prints or level 2 in stocks can be used to get an edge, also you can get ECN rebates. These reason I am open to. But to site leverage as the issue is not fare. To say that more retraces is a bad thing is just plain wrong. You can range trade. I use a forex account, I was focused on gold but started using currency as a means to hedge. Now I find I am more and more in to the currency's. The issue with leverage and the idea of forex traders adding to their account may be not seen correctly. When you trade stocks you start with funds in the account and watch it dwindle. Each trade has a stop loss. With forex you do not need to dump in 10,000 you can just dump in 100. wait till you loose it all and then add money in and start over. in this case your stop is going bust. But going bust is no big deal as you only put in 100$ It is actually the same thing in that respect. at least the Forex trader has built in stop loss and instead of messing with it he tries to keep his trading in a certain range and control it. If you guys are looking down on forex traders cause they keep loosing and adding money in it is not right. The non leveraged player does the same. It does not seem so as the non leveraged trader starts with all of his funds in the account so the need to reload is not as often. Unless you are referring to the market actually being different (level 2+, time and sales, market maker tracking, people participating for the sole purpose to gain profit (forex has built in trades from business and travelers that convert with out even thinking of timing), then you may have a point. But if you say forex traders are bad cause they seem to keep adding and blowing accounts then you are not fare. Where you have a 100$ stop loss, the Forex trader has 100$ balance in his account. Your trade goes the wrong way you loose 100$ and have to revert to your balance which you keep with the broker. Its the same thing. Atleast the forex guy has his trading money in one place and his trading balance in another place.x If your broker goes bust you loose your trades, your stop loss and your balance. For the leveraged trader it is just a bad trade. Please explain where the disadvantage is if any, and if the impression is based on stories (which are incorrectly valued) or if it is more about the actual dynamics of the market.