I was, while typing my last post in this thread, watching the movie "Casino". It was the scene where a Japanese businessman wins two million dollars of the Tangiers' money, and is in the process of returning to Japan. So Ace Rothstein, the character who runs the Tangiers for the mafia, instructs his security chief to tell the businessman that the private jet, provided free by the Tangiers, has a mechanical fault, so that the man's departure will be delayed. The man, while waiting, is eventually lured back onto the casino floor, where he not only loses back his two million dollar profit, he loses an additional million dollars of his own money. Ace Rothstein's narration explains:
I believe that roughly 99% of people who trade spot retail FX eventually give back all their profits. I think it extremely unlikely that somebody sophisticated enough to beat the odds, using technical or fundamental analysis, would be foolish enough to entrust funds to a bucketshop, when there are safer and more profitable ways to capitalize on their talents.
You're giving casinos a black-eye comparing them to fx retailers. The casinos I've been in have, to my knowledge, offered legit games with the house edge in plain view.
I'd like to apologize to anybody involved in the casino industry. Chood is correct. Casino games favor the house, but the casinos don't lie about the odds. The rules of casino games are fully disclosed. Bucketshops, on the other hand, use deception and lies to conceal the true rules determining trade prices, which ensure that the odds are against the customer. Casinos prey on human weakness, but they don't commit fraud. Bucketshops do commit fraud. I'd also like to acknowledge that there are some very rare exceptions to the rule that retail spot FX traders, doing business with bucketshops, eventually lose all their profits and trading capital. I don't think that these rare exceptions are any reason for anybody to do business with bucketshops, since there are safer and more profitable ways to make the same trades elsewhere.
No. I cannot agree with that statement. There are rarely absolutes in trading, or in life. What is the basis for your belief?
I believe that newbies lack the ability to protect their interests in the unregulated environment of the FX industry. I believe that they should begin developing their knowledge of trading in the regulated environment provided by the stock market. The stock market is far from perfect, but it is also a far better alternative, with far greater protection, than FX.