What a day, 1000+ points has got to put the scare in people even if it came back to only 400 points down. That's huge, interesting times ahead. Side note, if I had stayed in my aud short positions like I had planned I would have been making out like a bandit but I kept waiting for the rebound to buy in. The low aussie is getting crazy, it's a shame because it would be good to buy some gold but at $1600? Ouch
Crazy day, I got in on the snap back in the aussie, though I'm surprised by it, I suppose the green everywhere in the region except China helps. It is a little crazy though, I sat in my bedroom pressing buttons and watching CNBC for about 2 hours and made a weeks pay. I didn't add any value, I produced nothing and I'm just some guy who's learning by doing and the CFD broker gives me 500 : 1 leverage. The money I made, most of it in an hour, is valued the same as some guy who worked 40 hours at a mine or in a factory, producing things and contributing to the economy. That doesn't seem right. It's nice when it works for you but it's not hard to see why people say that markets are completely disconnected from reality and the real economy. Can you imagine what teams of professional traders with the backing of giant trading banks were doing today? Or the high frequency trading teams that are in and out before you can blink that love volatility and make money regardless of the direction of market action? They would be pulling out many orders of magnitude more money than me, contributing nothing other than highly leveraged temporary liquidity to the market and their mornings work earns millions of dollars that are valued the same as potentially a century of man hours labour in Australia. In cheaper labour environments it could be as much as a thousand man years of work. It shouldn't be possible to bash at a keyboard for a few hours with nothing to show for it but some numbers on a screen and then to be able to take that money and buy 50,000oz of physical silver that has to be mined, refined and delivered or dozens of cars with their complex logistical and manufacturing processes or any other example of a thing with great material worth. There seems to be a fundamental economic imbalance there that can't be sustained and will shift the financial status quo in one direction or another.
Hell I'm not being a jelly baby, I had my best day ever, it's a red letter day for me, I just feel bad for the poor bastards who work for a living.
Not full time, but I'm a part time student at the moment so I can keep one eye on the financials while I study. I only started in earnest the last couple weeks. I just meant that the disparity between what I did in an hour and what someone else might have to do to earn that seems a little unfair. I'm only actually doing it a handful of hours a week when my time and health allow, but I watch what's going on in the world and China and the US in particular for uni anyway (I'm a news hound at the best of times) so if I can then I jump in when I see something interesting going on. I've had a pretty good run with the short term binaries that CFC offers (they call them countdowns), but more and more I'm doing conventional cfd forex trading. I seem to be good at recognising a good setup and how to manage risk and how long I should be comfortable sitting in a position, what I should look for to get out and my risk tolerance on these larger trades. Of course I'm still learning all the time but I'm doing less and less stupid things when I have a solid idea and strategy. However I need to limit my idiotic "on a whim" trades on thin evidence or no evidence that I tend to do if I've had a good day and feel like I've got a little to play with, they're only small but getting stopped out of a dozen trades a week that you shouldn't have gotten into in the first place adds up even if your SL is only $10 or $20, it's wasted money, stupid. I'm also starting to use it for longer term moves, a little wti, Ag and Au that I plan to hold for a while, just grab a little more every time it looks cheap. They can't go to zero and if I have to hold them for a year all I've lost is 2 point something percent interest and the opportunity cost of what I could have done with the margin money (at 1/500th the trade that's hardly much on 5oz of gold). Compared to almost any other trader, amateur or otherwise I'm sure I'm pathetically small position and profit wise, but if I can maintain this hit rate over time and keep getting better then all I should need to do is increase the stakes. I'm doing better than 2:1 in the binaries and doing pretty well with the regular forex CFD's. I've put all my initial capital back where it came from and I have a small (really) war chest to play with thats all cream. I just wish I wasn't losing days a week to my stupid shoulders (ongoing thing, waiting for another possible op, why I'm only part time), a few times now I've been pretty confident about things and not been able to do anything about it because I've been laid up. I also need to know when to stop and accept that there will always be more opportunities, checking my phone like I'm getting a stream of dirty texts from Scarlet Johansen in the middle of important uni meetings or Dr's appointments isn't great. I'm losing sleep too, every time I half wake up in the middle of the night I end up checking my phone instead of going back to sleep. You must face that? Getting up in the middle of the night, checking your phone because you can't help yourself and seeing something interesting, a chart or a headline and sleep goes out the window. In any case I wouldn't have jumped in at all if it wasn't for all of your patient question answering and help a few months ago, I feel a little like I should be kicking up to you. On the flip side I'll be after you when I've maxxed my credit cards to win back everything I've lost
It's still leveraged up to 500:1 but I tend to stick with 100:1 and change the size of the lots (number of contracts) depending how much I'm prepared to risk. I prefer using spot forex trading for currencies because it's more liquid than the futures market, the spreads tend to be narrower and the commission is paid for in the spread which if I'm trading something like the EUR/USD is only about 0.5 of a pip.
The other thing is that I can accumulate interest or have to pay it if I hold a position overnight. I don't do that often though, but when I do it's almost always when I'm accumulating interest.
I trade the spot forex with CFD's, they pay interest as well, don't think I've touched a forex future yet, gold yes though. So your trading spot forex on the actual market?
2008 was the flop, this is the river. In 2008 when the banks failed they had the fed to turn to for bailing out. But being a global financial system the river is a completely different situation.
Meh, If you are comparing this to a high stakes poker game they will just run it three times, five times etc...its not the end
I wonder how many jokers will still be advising to "buy the dip" at the end of this week.... I suspect not many.
If you are chipping away and buying a little of a quality dividend stock every time it drops you can do alright, at this stage they would want to be little chips though.
In a steady bull market with regular run-of-the-mill corrections, then sure.... ....but thats not what this is. Anybody who tries to buy these "dips" doesn't deserve to own money....
