DugDug

Some obscure ones but very true "its easy making money, the hard part is hanging onto it" "Trading is simple its just not that easy" "those who pick bottoms get smelly fingers" the most expensive quote in the world "this time its different" lies, lies, lies, "90% of options expire out of the money" One I am sure every says.... "Doh"

i am pretty sure from memory OANDA have a demo trader that you can use indefinitely....

just in over the bloomberg website....Goldman Sachs report. The firm lost $3.6 billion in currency trading, more than double the $1.4 billion lost from that division in the second quarter.

My 2 cents Good risk management and trading - yes. Fraud - dont think so, depends on if numbers were fudged, lies told. Miss selling - definitely - this is where they will get done. morally or ethically dubious - no, just business and are they in the business of managing other peoples money? The real questions should be asked of the people who invested in the sub prime mortgages, such as - did they do their own due dilligence or rely on GS? Why did they feel they even needed to be invested in these? did they really understand what they were investing in? You can always revert back to Warren Buffet (i guess he knows a thing or two) paraphrasing - "if you dont understand it dont invest in it". Kiwi - agree on the Aust housing mkt, but its kind of been like that since the mid 1990s. (disclosure I own property there) and when it comes to housing you have to look at things such as 2nd home/holiday home ownership levels - as my belief is that if you dont own at least your own home you are short the market. owning at least one property means you are square - now when or what price you pay is a different matter. If what you believe is true re the Chinese then its commodities and the AUD that is the short.

had a quick look, out of interest but no real idea. Other possibilities - the reported prices were done at different times of the day when the price of the underlying moved. also American and European variations for options is not reliant on where they are traded. its to do with when they can be exercised. suggest the broker you use should be the best person to answer this - or possibly they are traded on different exchanges?

and another thing.... those stinking banks, who take our deposits at 0.0001% and lend us money at 5%. what about those insurance companies that insure our houses and make money out of it! I cant stand the corner store that charges me 70 c for a chocolate bar when i know i can get it from the supermarket for 50c. I think the point that someone is using 500 times leverage means that unless they really know what they are doing, very good, or just out and out plain lucky they will loose their money. A market makers job is to provide liquidity, for that they expect to make money. customers are free to choose where to go. (by the way I occasionally use them and have no problems with them, but am not associated with them)

Do forums make everybody act like someone with Asperger's syndrome? People with Asperger syndrome can find it harder to read the signals that most of us take for granted. This means they find it more difficult to communicate and interact with others which can lead to high levels of anxiety and confusion.

just to add a few points to think about in a slightly different slant. The idea of value is interesting - think about it in terms of option markets. Most market makers have their calculations of fair value. this is generally a price based around what the other players in the market were demanding or supplying. It is not necessarily based upon what value they think the fair value might be. They can skew their books in the manner in which they like based on views of volatility, but unless their pockets are very deep taking on the market regardless usually leads to problems. Now what happens when clients of the market makers start talking about fair value. It becomes interesting as fair value to a MM is about the fair value compared to other options they can spread off to taking a small clip - a vary different measure. Many clients want to trade at fair value - but what does that mean to them? example; fair value to a market maker is 25 - they make a market bid 24-offer 26. How many clients wish to trade at 25 their idea of fair value. No if the market maker moves the prices to 30-32, those same clients still wish to trade at 31. It just an interesting take on what people think is fair value. also - not to cause an argument - but do people really believe that the market is controlled by a few big players - if so they must be fabulously wealthy. I take the belief that the market is bigger than anyone player and there are plenty of times that it proves it to those who think they can tame the markets.

I remember reading about a very successful trader who used to print a chart out and pin it on the wall, if it looked like it was going up, then it was an uptrend, down a downtrend. Then the trick comes in being able to 1 - have a plan to trade it, 2 - position management 3 - be able to stand the mind games of trading. I have never seen a computer system that can help with these three things. Hard work is about all you need. There are plenty of trend trading sites around - google it.

all good points by the other traders.... Key to any trading system is that you always must keep in mind the risk of ruin. Portfolio management and position sizing is key if you want to remain around for the long run. There are plenty of traders who make money for years and then blow up. That in any measure is still bad, not just unlucky. I have never come close to blowing up, and hindsight tells me i wish i used more leverage/risk. But its not in my nature. I have seen plenty of others blowup and browns fan covered pretty much the reasons for them all. Trading is meant to be boring methodical and a business. Punting is what you should do for excitement at the bookie. If your account size is not big enough to successfully trade without continually risking a blow up then most people would suggest you should not be trading. But equally so, why ruin the dream:)

I have always had the belief that Markets/prices sometimes move for a very, very simple reason. That reason being that there is literally no one who is willing to take on the other side. While this is a bit broad..... think about it in terms of the recent global meltdown, the internet bubble and in market making situations. Recent meltdown - people just were not prepared to buy many assets. It did not mean that they were actually bad assets, though some were horrendous. If you had cash you just sat and waited.... hence the sellers rushing for the door found few buyers. I think definitely fundamentals win out in the long term, but in short term moves sometimes its the LACK of people willing to sell or buy. Think about the internet bubble. Everyone knew there were no fundamentals there, but few were prepared to short it, and those that did generally lost a lot a money. When this blew up, no one wanted to buy. market makers - if you have a pit with ten market makers your chances of getting a good, fair price ALL the time is greatly improved, but with only a few market makers, then clearly there will be times where the market makers will not wish to anticipate - regardless of the price. How this helps - well it generally means you have to ask the question of when entering a market are there going to be people who will follow me in here, or is there a better place for me to enter. It helps me by forcing a little bit of patience into the decision making.

Hi Tams, thankyou for this. (I figure you would be the one who would answer - thanks for all the great feedback you offer to everyone) But the problem still remains for what I am after. I was really needing something that links directly to excel, and could be used real time, not just EOD, and not where I have to then get excel to read from text files. I will continue to muck around with a solution using MC when I have the time. (all I really need is to be able to cut and paste something such as the scan page data (not a screen shot) from MC - if this was the case, then problem solved.) As a side note MC have said that they will instigate something in the program that will allow it to interact with excel at some stage in the near future. This is think will be a great attribute for MC to have.

Interesting as I have been struggling with trying to more automate my trading.... Me - I have traded for many years, and combine both systems and intuition. I use the systems to give me triggers, and to position size. That way everything becomes consistent. But I use intuition to avoid certain trades that just dont fit into the "context" that a binary fully automated system would probably take. Otherwise I try to keep to my rules as much as possible. While I would like to more automate the trading as i would like to spend more time away from the computer, currently my intuition reduces my PL volatility as I avoid certain losses and hence generally means I make more money. A few points i would like to add. Intuition is only really relevant if you have experience....otherwise its just guess work. plus i think a lot of the intuition people talk about is actually the media/blogs/other peoples ideas, that cloud their thinking. Before allowing intuition into the mix i think traders should first be able to define their rules, have a plan and ONLY then use intuition to enable them to add to the trading. Even the most discretionary traders have a plan or strategy..... I am sure its not completely random.

Hello, does anyone know of a system (eg; esignal, MC etc;) that will allow me to mass export values on indicators (eg; Moving Avg, Donchian channels) into excel. It seems that all allow you to export the OHLC data, but none allow for the actual indicator values to be exported easily. There are some work arounds in a few of these systems - these get slow and cumbersome, but what I am looking for is something that I could have either; - a watch list with columns such as codes, MA values, OHLC, that I could just cut and paste into an excel sheet Or - dde links or equivalent. This also needs to be for possibly 1000 instruments..... hence most work arounds become cumbersome as you generally require the charts to be open. The only alternative is to type these values in....not a good working alternative. The reason i use excel is that it is completely flexible and means its not reliant on the limitations of any one particular system. Thanks for any advice or ideas.

yes....sorry about the ridiculous advice....I was not specific enough. While I may take two thirds off and run the last third, it still carries a stop as well. Its just that it does not have a take profit level. If you view that there are generally three levels/ways to exit, a stop with a loss, a stop with a profit, and a take profit level. I may enter a trade - use a take profit for two thirds of my position, and let the last third run until it is stopped out, by a trailing stop. For me this actually has noting to do with risk management - thats factored in with the actual reason for taking a trade, the position sizing and stop settings etc; This is more a physc thing that works for me, and works for when I believe the trade can be a real trender. It allows me to combine both short term trading and longer term trend trades. Given the thread is about measuring the strength of the move, I hope it would add to the discussion.... basically in that by letting the move occur and me being a part of it without me trying to measure it or judge it allows me to stay on some big moves. I just let the stop take me out, not a profit target.

Good questions and answers. After trading and seeing many styles I think you nailed it when you said "While the exit holy grail probably doesn't exist, sometimes I need to get a thread like this going to reinforce what I've been doing is not half bad." All I would add is that..... what ever you do is if it works for you, be consistent. match the exits and entry's with the system; ie; dont match short term entries with long term exits. and lastly and from what i have seen and done over many years, is it never hurts to give yourself the opportunity to participate in the bigger moves. For me that means I will exit two thirds of my position and let the other third run, and run, and run....

just as something to think about re your thesis if you have not already done so.... - distinguish between day trading, and longer term position trading. Some things a re profitable but not scalable. - a lot of money is made by some mechanical systems as its the portfolio approach that is required to be profitable. - position sizing and portfolio analysis may be the key to these bigger systems.

Hi, I can tell you from direct experience in talking to many, many people over 15-16 years that the answer to your question depends on who you are talking to....unfortunately. They measure it differently, they talk about it differently.....i dont think there is a universal language.eg; is 100% leverage = 1:1 or 2:1... HOWEVER.....when talking to someone the best thing to do is differentiate between exposure and leverage, and talk about GROSS verses NET exposure and or leverage. eg; long 100, short 100 gives gross exposure of 200, net exposure =0. Or something along those lines. We encountered this problem when talking to clients especially when it came time to talk about options and delta exposures, leverage and risk....(but thats a whole other story)