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The Fast-growing Spreadbetting Market. Is All As It Seems?
By
curioustrader, in General Trading
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Almost everyone that I crossed paths with... When I traded foreign currencies ("forex" is even more obscure), I described what I did and then they were like, "You buy and sell money?" This led to me giving short speeches regarding fiat currencies, central bank interventions, and economic influences. Next question... "Do you make money doing it?" Me... "Yes." Next question... "Can I give you some money to make me money?" Then I said, "No," and I launched into my speech regarding SEC licensing and commodity pool operator registration (Conversation killed❌). Now that I trade futures in a widely known market, the convo is much shorter but ends the same way(❌). -
Do not focus on any individual trade entry nor exit. Develop a trading strategy that is black & white with no gray areas in between. This makes the strategy quantifiable, measurable, and backtestable using historic data. It can be manually done to some extent by way of visual indicators and horizontal levels on a chart. Of course, coding an auto-trading strategy takes it to a superior extent. The point of this is to focus 100% on following the rules of a tested profitable strategy instead on any particular trade. The ratio of winning trades to losing trades is irrelevant if the gross profit of all winners outruns the gross loss of all losers during the tested time period.
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I'm still a dove regarding crypto trading. Not because of the instruments traded, but because of the lack of market centralization. It reminds me of the early days of forex trading where no broker-dealers offered trade clearing via the interbank market. This is basically betting against "the house" which is its own captive market-maker, has its own one-off price feed, and has its own one-off trade execution policies. As a side note, I always opt out of broker-dealers' arbitration clauses within 30 days of account opening pursuant to the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act. Unscrupulous broker-dealers and platform sellers don't even provide opt-out terms in their trading/subscription agreements, but it still exists pursuant to federal statutes and federal court precedent. Sierra Chart also collects unspent platform subscription deposits from traders in their website's online "wallet." This subjects them not only to FINRA liability but CFPB liability as well. I figuratively atom bombed Sierra Chart with this info and they refunded all platform fees and data fees that I ever paid to them before I closed my Sierra Chart account. On a more general note, virtually all broker-dealers are either partnered with, or straight up are, Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds. These are the folks that refer to retail traders as "cannon fodder" and "fish food." To me, any broker-dealer is nothing more than a counterparty to a series of my transactions. If I find any reason not to trust a broker-dealer, I'm out. Crypto trading, as it presently exists, fits the bill. Crypto owning/investment might be a different story, but I'm strictly a trader.
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Consider this... While a human trader has emotions, a bot does not. All a human trader needs to do to code a statistically profitable strategy on a good emotional day. And it can be coded for any timeframe, intraday or overnights.
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Well said. Broker-dealers that aren't connected to centralized exchanges or the prime interbank exchanges are, in fact, casinos--where nothing extends beyond "the house."
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