Stop Hunting

[MickMason]

Originally posted by currencia
Ah, I see, your message fortells that you feel gilted or wilted because you are a scalper

You assume too much friend. I do however respect consistently profitable traders and whatever methods they employ even if they contradict my own trading beliefs.

I think it accurate and fair to say that most new traders are scalpers and over 95% lose substantially all soon. So there appears to be some kind of linkage, however I have not seen detailed statistics of it.

95% don't lose simply because they are scalpers, really currencia, I expected better from you at least, you sound like you've been around long enough to understand why the majority lose, maybe you haven't, I don't know.

I duly noted that your only enumerated alternative to 30 second scalping was "long term positional trading". And, on that basis, it is obvious you who has the narrow mind and the desire to obscure what really goes on in a tradebox operator's operation.

I used two extremes. I have no need to obscure what goes on behind the brokers' doors, it's there for all to see, all anyone has to do is look and have an open mind to understand.

Nothing more constructive to be added and this thread has quickly moved too far towards attacking the messenger. So I bid you ado and you can continue to blast away on your own.

When the going gets tough....yeah huh

Have a great week whether you scalp or swing.

You too

Mick

[MickMason]

Originally posted by novice


Most institutions scalp the difference between the bid and the ask as their prefered method of trading.

Do you think if is harder to scalp since you are competing against the institutions for the same business?

The longer the timeframe the less competition you have from the institutions.

Yes institutions take position trades, but their main activity is scalping (e.g. market making banks, floor traders etc).

Competing against institutions? The majority of trades rarely see the light of day, the competition ends at the brokers platform against other traders with accounts at the same firm. Institutional scalpers who move markets are my allies not my enemies, I would need them to be able to scalp.

Mick

[MickMason]

Originally posted by currencia


Some day the light will go on for some. Otherwise the light will go out and back to the salt mines..

Fumbling around in the dark unable to find the light switch and then blaming one's own inadequacies on some implausible 'light-switch-moving' conspiracy theory simply to preserve precious ego can only result in one thing

Don't blame the ingredients, blame the chef.....

So long, have fun!

Mick

[Gamma_Jammer]

Phew - took a while to get to the end of this particular bunfight.

I'd be interested to know how many people actually have more than one online price source when they trade (not a tradeable source, just a second independant price feed to enable them to spot these alleged mishits).

The reason I'm wondering about this is that I am assuming most of the people subscribing nto this site are trading with basically the same ideas (give or take a bit) as many of the larger (especially model based) customers of the banks.

As information becomes more readily available to every customer, from small margin accounts through corporates to the large CTA's, there is, in my opinion a tendancy for the stops to be placed in fairly predictable spots.

Thus, if a small private individual has put his stop just through, say a 200 day moving average, theres a decent chance that he/she wont be alone. And with the 'conventional' interbank market (i.e. EBS / Reuters and the few remaining voice brokers) getting thinner and thinner in the last couple of years, many bank traders are finding that if they dont ram the market through their own stops, buying / selling ahead for the majority of the amount) then someone else's flow will inevitably do it for them. In the first scenario the trader breaks even or makes money, in the second they probably wear a loss. What would YOU do? :-)

I have seen it in the interbank market time and time again (USD/CAD is one of the worst culprits) and while the trade boxes have a slightly different dynamic, I'm sure this thinness impacts on them.

If you have an independant feed, look and see next time your stop gets triggered what the price action is on both feeds. If you still don't like the you're treated change accounts.

As to the debate about scalping vs longER timeframe trading I have to say that I have at times used both. The average spot FXv trader at a bank will not for example buy USD/JPY at a given level and say 'that's it, its not going a bean lower'. They will maybe buy a few bucks worth, wait till it gets to a small resistance level, sell maybe half ths position out, wait till it retraces a bit, buy some back etc. Hopefully in the end you end up with a position you're happy with at an average thats below your stop level.

And I'm not too proud to try and grab a few pips here and there without any firm view on a curency if it's there to be grabbed.

We're all here to make money right?

Happy trading.

[MickMason]

Originally posted by Gamma Jammer

I'd be interested to know how many people actually have more than one online price source when they trade (not a tradeable source, just a second independant price feed to enable them to spot these alleged mishits).

I've usually got three or even four on occasions. Broker feed, 2 independent chart feeds, and Reuters. Apart from Reuters the others remain fairly synchronised, very rarely will I see a spike on one and when it does happen it's usually the result of a lost connection with a server as opposed to my broker hunting my mental stops.

We're all here to make money right?

That's the plan

Mick