Conclusions — So, if you’re ever asked why retail traders lose, the accurate answer is they trade with low risk: high reward until frustration or greed gets the better of them, then they scale up and let their losers run. They trade the least ...

Strategy of losers

5) And the rest… — I can prove all of the above, but there are a few more parts of a losing strategy that I can’t prove because I don’t have the data, so take these with a pinch of salt: Retailers I believe vastly underestimate the impact of ...

Strategy of losers

4) Retailers love ranges and don’t trend trade — This may seem to fly in the face of the fact that AUDUSD is the highest profitability and was in a clear trend but it fits in perfectly. AUDUSD was only 15% profitable – that’s 85% of the time ...

Strategy of losers

3) Retail entries/exits are largely made from time & price alone This might seem like a pretty bland observation, but to my mind it’s the most important. I’d go further and say most entries/exits are made from chart patterns. As with all of these ...

Strategy of losers

Really appreciate the feedback from all of you here, thank you. I didn’t mean to leave this thread dangling for quite so long – I was in darkest Cornwall without broadband. Still, I got a 4-hour train journey to write up the rest, so I’ll finish off ...

Strategy of losers

2) The most and least profitable pairs — You won’t find this advertised by your broker. What percentage of time do you think retailers (en masse) are winning more than they’re losing? Would you expect it to be similar across different pairs? ...

Strategy of losers

1) The disposition effect — 1) Inverse disposition at normal leverage, disposition and increased position size after sequences of 2+ wins/losses The disposition effect is the tendency for punters to hold on to losing trades for longer than ...

Strategy of losers

Thanks for the support guys! I won’t string this out too much so let’s crack on. Pricey – we can come back to it later but my experiment was based on ensuring there was a 50:50 chance of a win (ensuring spread is accounted for), like a coin toss. ...

Strategy of losers

The best traders in the world All this may sound negative – it’s not supposed to. Most retail traders don’t have a clue what they’re up against, statistically and the people on the other side of their trades. Not only do they have to contend with ...

Strategy of losers

Believe and you still probably won’t achieve “It’s the trader not the system” “Most systems are successful it’s the trader that lacks self-belief” “Look in the mirror, the holy grail is you” Run come save me. It’s the Mark Douglas effect, who ...

Strategy of losers

The mythical 95% We’ve all heard it, suspect it’s true, but no-one’s ever confirmed. I’ve heard the futures market is closer to 80% losers. And in FX, the closest I got to confirmation was meeting a UK bucketshop broker who reckoned it was about 80% ...

Strategy of losers

Hanover, sometimes I read your posts and shake my head in disbelief, because there's not a lot to say afterwards... Myths abound, the real question (another thread?) are what are the absolute truths in fx? - Price can only go up/down/sideways - ...

Myth Busters the Forex Edition

Good call Bill. I'd go one further. The second most pervasive myth - which should be self-evident, but clearly it isn't - is that self-belief will turn a losing system into a good one. It really can't. Define your edge or you'll be defined by ...

Myth Busters the Forex Edition

Spot on Dr G. Maths is fine to implement trading systems - simple volatility breakout ones are nothing but dumb equations and HFT systems appear to be based on Brownian motion algorithms (at least that what their job ads say they are looking for). ...

Greenspan and Currencies - Delusional?

Sorry, I should be clear that I'm not looking for an answer because for me the question's already been answered a long time ago. And maths is the wrong tool for this as well, because there's an assumption that non-random = profitable. But sticking ...

Greenspan and Currencies - Delusional?

Petra, what would constitute evidence of non-random behaviour?

Greenspan and Currencies - Delusional?

Tdion, has Germany robbed you of an open mind? The technical vs fundamental reminds me of the sales tactic of saying do you want the cheaper or more expensive car, which pre-supposes there are only two options. Information flow, sentiment, quant, ...

trading with fundamentals is the only way to go

Great resource, thanks Kenz

Importing FF news into Excel

Lol, obviously! Thanks Hanover. Now, anyone got experience of passing through variables using Excel web queries?

Importing FF news into Excel