I am just curious... How many days of straight profitability does it take the broker to tag your account and keep an eye on it. Or maybe even try to reverse engineer your method?
It shouldn't matter if you are at a big firm, and are trading stocks etc etc.. But, when you are trading one instrument at the usual small brokerage, this should be an issue everyone should keep in mind.
Your joking. Right? On my top 10 list of things I worry about trading, my broker piggybacking or copying my trading methodolgy is oooh about 32nd. Tell ya what, how about throwing a couple of REALLY big losing days at 'em, that should throw them off the trail.
LOL. Good idea. Actually I dont see where piggybacking would hurt you but overall I dont think that would work for intraday trading, at least. Things happen too fast.
Maybe the using "number of days of consistent profitability" isn't the right measuring stick. It should be what if you take huge, and consistent profits out of the market?? would they keep an eye on your account? I know I don't have to worry about this, and most likely most on here would be excluded in terms of profitablity. Different methods can also be exluded such as scalping etc where you are in and out and all over the places. But, what if you took out huge amount of cash from the markets, and your strategy is predictable, and easily figured out.
Exactly. Things move too fast often times, especially in the futs. Not to mention that even if my broker is piggybacking my trades, that means I am already in the trade by the time the gets knowledge of it. Hey, if he wants to help push the market my way by going with my order flow, I say "come on" I can use all the help I can get.
Interesting question, I think poster Brent Hyll (?) alluded to something of the sort when he said maybe ticket or routing numbers (or whatever) were being watched closely of the big players, enabling as a kind of identification tag. Who watches those things and acts on it, I don't know. I certainly don't have to worry about it.
I can see the possibility of a firm tagging along the trades of a client that's consistently profitable and making big money. However, I can't imagine how they can figure out the details of your method via your trade entries/exits unless you call them up or send them a written letter with all the details to your methodology. In fact, you should do a test about the above. Post the price and times of your entries and exits for one week as a challenge and nothing more and see which ET member can figure out the details of your methodology. Of course it would have to be trades via a method that you have not previously discussed here at ET. I've seen the above challenge many times before at different forums and not once was someone able to determine a traders method via just the entry/exit prices and entry/exit times without any other key information. However, if your broker were to call you up out of the blue for no apparent reason and starts chit chating via questions about your method... That may be a red flag someone is watching and wants more information. Out of curiousity...if such were to occur...I wonder what type of brokers would tend be interested in this (forex, futures, stocks or what)??? Mark