Are Older Men in Thailand Trading Love for Financial Ruin

[djstan]

How do you invest in forex? Is it better to learn how to trade and start trading by your own or start trading by copying other traders like in service called zulutrade? I want to start with forex but i dont have the knowledge of a full time trader. Please advise if you know about this type of business.

[Time Traveller]

trading is not investing, it's more like gambling.

[SantiSuk]

trading is not investing, it's more like gambling.

Theres bound to be someone along who tells us they are minting it trading Forex. IMO as an investor for many decades its a past-time for greedy mugs. Friends and family who tried it all stopped within a couple of years nursing bruises. Better fun and same result at a casino.

Its boring unless you are an enthusiast, but buying a portfolio of pooled funds (OEICs, mutual funds, unit trusts, investment trusts) covering different geographies and sitting on them for a lifetime* is the third best way to have a happy retirement. Use up to 20% of your money to invest in specific companies if you fancy yourself as a stock-picker.

[second best way is to own your own business successfully and first is to marry a rich woman/man ]

*weed out any real dogs in their own sectors every year or so, but dont give up on a sector simply becasue it underperforms other sectors.

[jpinx]

Been there - tried it - waste of time. "Playing" Forex is a bit like investing in Thailand -- don't play with money you can't afford to lose

[chainarong]

Use your search engine put in "Price Action" take it from there, I am not promoting any one, I use this sort of trading technique, forget robots, indicators, they all lag , you will slowly loose your money, the word is, Priceaction , all big traders use this system. Use your demo for as long as you like, practice . Goodluck

[eeeya]

trading is not investing, it's more like gambling.

Theres bound to be someone along who tells us they are minting it trading Forex. IMO as an investor for many decades its a past-time for greedy mugs. Friends and family who tried it all stopped within a couple of years nursing bruises. Better fun and same result at a casino.

Its boring unless you are an enthusiast, but buying a portfolio of pooled funds (OEICs, mutual funds, unit trusts, investment trusts) covering different geographies and sitting on them for a lifetime* is the third best way to have a happy retirement. Use up to 20% of your money to invest in specific companies if you fancy yourself as a stock-picker.

[second best way is to own your own business successfully and first is to marry a rich woman/man ]

*weed out any real dogs in their own sectors every year or so, but dont give up on a sector simply becasue it underperforms other sectors.

I went out and bought everybook on trading, got an account, inserted money, traded and traded over and over for two years. Made big, lost big.. over and over..

Net result.. same position where I started.

Now I focus my spare time on things more inreresting and less stressful

[yoshiwara]

Several online companies providing forex services provide practice accounts where you can test their software and your expertise. There is no charge for these services.

etoro.com is just one website where you can read what others are doing and either run a practice or real account. http://www.etoro.com

[djstan]

Yoshiware thank you i will check this website you sent me. I understand that forex is risky and many are seeing this business close to gambling , i just feel that there must be some potential in copying other traders who know what they are doing. I would love to hear from people that have actually tried using zulutrade or something similar.

[yoshiwara]

Yoshiware thank you i will check this website you sent me. I understand that forex is risky and many are seeing this business close to gambling , i just feel that there must be some potential in copying other traders who know what they are doing. I would love to hear from people that have actually tried using zulutrade or something similar.

What you need to know about forex trading is that it is a zero-sum game. This means that for every trade there is one trader taking a position on one side and another trader doing the opposite.

The only ones making money all the time are the software providers who are collecting commission on each and every trade.

[chainarong]

Yoshiware thank you i will check this website you sent me. I understand that forex is risky and many are seeing this business close to gambling , i just feel that there must be some potential in copying other traders who know what they are doing. I would love to hear from people that have actually tried using zulutrade or something similar.

You need to know the importance of support and resistance , intermediate event area's or swing points, those indicators , robots and all the other gadgets only work off open and close positions, warning , there is no short cuts with forex, as some of the guy's have said it's boring , use set and forget method, risk /reward and as mentioned it is not an investment , anything to do with money is a gamble, including shares, some guys have used their demo over two years and still stuff up, your win ratio should be 7 wins 3 loss, if you get 7loss 3wins, invest in Yingluck's companies, for a tax free return

[yoshiwara]

It also worries me that those who wish to trade for the first time think it is primarily a game of technique. It isn't. It is a game of taking a position. Even this requires a number of skills which are never quite enough. One only has to consider the movements on the Euro over the last month to know that many 'experts' will have taken a bath. Following others is not going to help you day in and day out.

[djstan]

I understand that experts may not be right all the time on their trading , but compared to me they surely must know more things. My opinion about all this forex social thing is that it helps people who are not pro in forex to gain something from this business, if this whole idea was wrong from the beggining i doubt that companies like etoro and zulutrade would survive that long.

[yoshiwara]

I understand that experts may not be right all the time on their trading , but compared to me they surely must know more things. My opinion about all this forex social thing is that it helps people who are not pro in forex to gain something from this business, if this whole idea was wrong from the beggining i doubt that companies like etoro and zulutrade would survive that long.

The software companies make their money on the trading activity. You take a position on USDEUR, I take the other side of the trade and etoro take a cut on the two trades. It is the same with companies and banks who take a cut from stock trades which is called the spread, a buy price and a sell price. They take a cut whether the market is going up or down. Those who wish to follow an 'expert' will often spend hundreds of dollars on daily/monthly broker/tipster sheets. Well go ahead, but if you do add in trading costs and after that you need to commit a lot of money to trading in order to clear your costs and make a profit. Month in and month out. If you want to trust an expert rather than your own ability to study then invest in mutual funds because it is in mutual funds that you are buying expertise (hopefully). You think they are all successful because they are being managed by 'experts'?

[eToro Team]

Hi all,

Just wanted to put in my two cents on the topic. Yoshiwara is perfectly right, brokers such as eToro make money from the spread, the difference between the bid and ask prices of the currency pair, and so in fact they do take a cut from the trade. However, the concept of social trading is that you do not have to pay the expert traders or the broker, you simply copy the best performing traders on the network. On our part we reward the experts for helping out the entire community by giving them a cut of the spreads we collect from their copiers. This way the entire network trades better, which means they have more money to invest, which means we make more spreads. That is the business model, and it has proven to be extremely efficient. In fact our most recent statistics indicate that our social trading network's overall performance went up by 20% since we launched our CopyTrader technology, which is huge if you take into account that we have over 2 million members!

Yes, forex is a zero sum game, but remember that it's not the traders on the same network trading against each other, but every person or entity in the world which is exchanging currencies as well. When you compare retail traders to the big investment firms or banks, the volume of currency traded by individual traders is completely insignificant, so there is no reason to think of the forex market as a zero sum game, even though technically it is one.

Djstan, if you want to try out social trading for yourself to see how well you do, you can simply open a demo account at eToro and try copying our experts with demo money (on real market rates of course).

Happy trading everyone!

Andy, eToro Team

[barefoot1988]

whether are you doing a social trading or not, i think its essential to have some basic down, at the very least you should know why are you entering the trade.

im not sure about most but i see some traders with bad risk management and a bunch of indicators in their charts. i use a ecn broker, using just supply and demand zone and not risking more than 2% per trade. im not even making 10% return each month but till date no reds at the end of the month . its not that hard if you take it easy and not treat it like a sole source of income. i do have a scalping account that i blew once though

[cheeryble]

Stan

Before you venture into anything which essentially competes with others you'd better know precisely the advantage you bring to the table which makes you more likely to score than those who might be on the other side of the trade. Why are YOU better than people who've been at it for years and possibly have trading rooms with all their facilities behind them.

In all kindness Stan, you don't have the advantage now and you are very unlikely to develop it.

BTW you know what happens if you are one of the very few who survive? Your broker may choose to clip you I've seen it happen (they don't match your trade against an opposite trade but take bulk positions to cover all the small trades sent in, so if you win, your broker loses. He won't like that.)

When you come across people maybe here Thailand trading it doesn't mean they have the ability to perform consistently. It means they have happened to survive this far. You never hear about the guys who didn't even make it past the first hurdle trying to get out of Flint Michigan. They're in the car plant trying to earn back the stake they lost.

[SantiSuk]

Yoshiware thank you i will check this website you sent me. I understand that forex is risky and many are seeing this business close to gambling , i just feel that there must be some potential in copying other traders who know what they are doing. I would love to hear from people that have actually tried using zulutrade or something similar.

You need to know the importance of support and resistance , intermediate event area's or swing points, those indicators , robots and all the other gadgets only work off open and close positions, warning , there is no short cuts with forex, as some of the guy's have said it's boring , use set and forget method, risk /reward and as mentioned it is not an investment , anything to do with money is a gamble, including shares, some guys have used their demo over two years and still stuff up, your win ratio should be 7 wins 3 loss, if you get 7loss 3wins, invest in Yingluck's companies, for a tax free return

Shares are not a gamble, compared to Forex. A properly structured portfolio of equities invested over the long term is an investment in the future of mankinds endeavour*.

Over the long term a countrys currency can and often does stay below the counterparty currency for a lifetime.

Sorry to be pointed (nothing personal) but throw-away remarks show little understanding of the nature of investment and merely reinforce the get rich/famous quick mentality of the current generation.

*If you believe the world is going to explode then sure equities are a gamble - so, invest your money in burying large stocks of gold, fuel and weapons at a number of locations close to your home and far away and buy a comfortable bunker:-)

[yoshiwara]

Yoshiware thank you i will check this website you sent me. I understand that forex is risky and many are seeing this business close to gambling , i just feel that there must be some potential in copying other traders who know what they are doing. I would love to hear from people that have actually tried using zulutrade or something similar.

You need to know the importance of support and resistance , intermediate event area's or swing points, those indicators , robots and all the other gadgets only work off open and close positions, warning , there is no short cuts with forex, as some of the guy's have said it's boring , use set and forget method, risk /reward and as mentioned it is not an investment , anything to do with money is a gamble, including shares, some guys have used their demo over two years and still stuff up, your win ratio should be 7 wins 3 loss, if you get 7loss 3wins, invest in Yingluck's companies, for a tax free return

Shares are not a gamble, compared to Forex. A properly structured portfolio of equities invested over the long term is an investment in the future of mankinds endeavour*.

Over the long term a countrys currency can and often does stay below the counterparty currency for a lifetime.

Sorry to be pointed (nothing personal) but throw-away remarks show little understanding of the nature of investment and merely reinforce the get rich/famous quick mentality of the current generation.

*If you believe the world is going to explode then sure equities are a gamble - so, invest your money in burying large stocks of gold, fuel and weapons at a number of locations close to your home and far away and buy a comfortable bunker:-)

Shares, forex, structured portfolios are all subject to risk. And the events of 2008 showed that a portfolio of assets was no guarantee against a loss of capital value.

I don't think it can be proven that shares are less of a gamble. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. All are subject to volatility.

[yoshiwara]

Stan

Before you venture into anything which essentially competes with others you'd better know precisely the advantage you bring to the table which makes you more likely to score than those who might be on the other side of the trade. Why are YOU better than people who've been at it for years and possibly have trading rooms with all their facilities behind them.

In all kindness Stan, you don't have the advantage now and you are very unlikely to develop it.

BTW you know what happens if you are one of the very few who survive? Your broker may choose to clip you I've seen it happen (they don't match your trade against an opposite trade but take bulk positions to cover all the small trades sent in, so if you win, your broker loses. He won't like that.)

When you come across people maybe here Thailand trading it doesn't mean they have the ability to perform consistently. It means they have happened to survive this far. You never hear about the guys who didn't even make it past the first hurdle trying to get out of Flint Michigan. They're in the car plant trying to earn back the stake they lost.

I agree with a lot of this re hitching a ride on others' trades, but one can certainly learn from how others are trading. Applying a formula of just following the winners might work and might not work. One thing is for sure. But there is no one way bet to cover yourself.