Sorry, I don't have answers for your questions. I never backtested my strategy and I am not using any technical indicators.
Sorry if I'm wrong, but didn't you already start a thread on this topic? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61418 I think you asked many of these same questions, no? You were already told how a bucket shop trades against its customers and that instead of trying to figure out how to avoid it, you should trade through a broker that is not bucketing your orders. I remember that in that thread, after getting your answers, you came back with a bunch of questions which indicated that you didn't want to believe what was being said. I even said so in a reply to you. You essentially asked 'How can this be true'? You seem to be asking the same questions here again. I don't mean to be harsh; I have tried to answer questions from newbies, and I think it's great to ask questions. I'm just wondering why it is that you keep asking these same questions. You have the information you need already.
I think several things are at work here as to why people repost with similar questions. 1) They don't know how to use the search tool and/or how to search through the results that do show up. I know that was hard for me at first. 2) They want to actually have a conversation with someone as opposed to reading an archived search post. That's just human nature, I suppose. 3) Haven't you ever asked someone something, received an answer, and then turned right around and asked a different person the same question? I know I have. Same thing here. 4) There is a general sense of "territorial snobbery" on this forum from the two or three dozen most active posters that I've witnessed time and again, and sometimes answers are not complete and include words/phrases the poster does not understand. I'ts almost like a "hazing" the newbie must endure in order to be considered worthy. Weird, for sure. Or maybe just more of that human nature. Having said that, I am not a FX trader, but I personally know of a gal who consistently makes good money on what she calls "swissy" and "cable", and she uses Interbank FX as her broker/market maker/bucket shop. Don-
Many deeply flawed speculation strategies consistently make good money, by taking excessive risks, until the excessive risks unexpectedly come to fruition, and your account is wiped out in one or more unusual deviations from normal market behaviour. The consistent good money, which is made until doomsday finally arrives, rewards the trader's reckless behaviour and conditions him or her to indulge his or her gambling fever. The irrational self-destructive process is self-reinforcing, and becomes so firmly entrenched, that nothing can stop it, until all of the money is lost. Please read one of the great classic trading books, "Fooled by Randomness", by Taleb, if you want to be a trader instead of a gambler. Never evaluate a trader's success on the basis of consistent returns. You must always evaluate a trader's success by comparing his returns to the level of risk he took. Consistent returns mean nothing, if they are made by using a strategy which will eventually bankrupt the trader. If you increase your returns by 50%, but you do so by also increasing your risk by 100%, then your actual performance is worse. You might calculate, for example, that your actual performance is 150% / 200% = 0.75, showing a 25% deterioration. Think about the idea of risk-adjusted return.
Lots of times. However, I have never asked someone something and then asked that same person the identical question again, unless I was really drunk at the time. I'm not sure who this is addressed to. If you had taken the time to read all the way through the other thread, you might have an idea why I posted as I did. I see people posting here every day asking questions that have already been answered, but I have never posted in their thread to that effect. In this case, the poster asked a bunch of valid questions, got the answers he sought, and then posted again asking 'how could it be??' I suggested that he apparently didn't want to believe what he was hearing and that he had probably already opened an account at a bucketshop and was worried about it. He confirmed this. Now he has started another thread asking the same questions, a few days later. He's asking the same person - the ET community. He could have just bumped the original thread saying 'Anyone else want to chime in here?' This is why I posted as I did. I am the last person to harangue newbs for posting here, whatever their questions. Anyway, carry on.
TraderNik understands Golflyer better than Golflyer understands himself. Diagnosis: gambling fever. Treatment: incurable and untreatable. Prognosis: negative.
Rocky- Thanks for all this, but I was just trying to point out that someone COULD make money trading FX using one of these bucket shops, that's all.
And I was just trying to point out that they COULD make money, but will ALMOST CERTAINLY lose their entire profit, and more, if they continue to trade long enough. Bucketshops are like casinos. Your win is their loss. Your loss is their win. If you win, then they want you to keep playing, because they know that the odds favor the house, and you will eventually lose everything if you keep playing long enough. The only exception is if you actually figure out a way to turn the odds in your favor, in which case they will kick you out of the casino (for example, card-counting in blackjack, or arbitrage between FX dealers).