I hardly can imagine how these results can be faked. Probably can be, but doubt it's worth that. What can be gained by posting faked statements there? Some ego boost? LOL Now as for bucket shops. Not all of those trade against their clients. As it comes from the name, they simply offset clients trades against each other, while grabbing the spread on every trade. Pretty simple and profitable business in my view. If they can't find enough to offset clients positions, they simply hedge it via some real FX liquidity pool. Can they also turn offsetting off and take the other side of losing clients? Definitely. Do they have to act this way in order to be profitable and carry risk of being shut down by FSA or CFTC? No, they don't. We are speaking about bucket shops registered in developed countries here, not some crap registered on Malta, Cyprus etc. P. S. As for top results, most systems are come and go one hit wonders. They have no idea what sane risk management etc. is. Same with Zulutrade and other similar platforms. So don't be excited by their returns, look at their win rate, max drawdown and other metrics. Chances are you'll find some sceleton in their closet. Seriously consistent traders are relatively rare. But they do exist.
Guys like I say I have tunnel vision about what I do and miss a lot of what goes on elsewhere. I've been thinking of getting the account linked to somewhere others can piggyback on. I know a little about Zulu but I don't know the positives Vs negatives and I don't know if there's a better way to do it. I'd appreciate any information and suggestions from anyone with real first hand experience. trade4you_brazi... the rookie is trading spot on IB and there are no lots there. From the get go I had planned in DD and even expected week 1 as a loss. Risk per trade is around 1% now. It just so happens there hasn't been a losing day since week 1 but that doesn't mean get reckless. I am very aware we live in the craziest trading environment ever when anything can happen so therefore imo something big sooner or later will black swan us. About the best we can do is have a tight server side stop as most shock moves have a minor wiggle before the crash and it's usually big enough to trigger the stop. If you are on top of it on a small time frame there is a decent chance of getting in, but not always.
I just opened an account with Oanda a few weeks ago, and I can't for the life me understand their margin requirements. I have it set for 50 to 1, but a mini lot require $563 maintenance margin. This doesn't make sense. What am I doing wrong???
Xspurt, Im really interested in how you trade. I think we approach the market from two totally different perspectives. I settled on trend-following ( pullback entries), but I suspect you're more a pin-point reversal guy, which is something I tried very hard, but never mastered. Those 2B's often were gobbled up by the trend on my screen, so i threw in the towel (can't beat them, join 'em..etc). If you have a blog or trading chat room, could i join?
If you insist............ 1. How do you map out the day ahead as you mentioned? 2. What makes a setup a "strong" setup? Averaging 40 pips a day doesn't sound too overwhelming until you take losing trades into account. If you start off the day with a couple bad trades & end up -30, then you have to make 70 pips to get back to the average. That sounds a little tougher especially if you combine it with a normal trader's mental issues after taking a couple losses. The rookie's strength must be in catching the bigger timeframe moves on a smaller timeframe chart. I find that tough to do for some reason, usually end up getting shaken out. I'm sure I'll figure it out any day now.
I tried MB... probably not bad broker, but their platform is truly scary and it crashed two times for me while demoing it. Since then, no thanks. IMO is one wants to trade FX in the US, currency futures @ CME are a way to go.
Well, it's not that out of the ordinary.... Woody gets 32 ticks a day, Nodoji around 40, Hershey is upwards of 100, etc Imagine what that comes out to if you trade 20,000 contracts at a time.