How many traders lose?

Long, short, Bitcoin, forex - Plenty of alternate market disuccsion.
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marksmeets302
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Forget about the speed game; there are others that invest millions per month to have the fastest feeds available. You will never be able to compete.

Interactive Brokers (ibkr.com) offers an api to its platform, and their own software is quite good and complete as well. It has a ladder interface for instance. Their software is free but can only be used if you hold an account with them.
Trading stocks, bonds and futures typically means paying a small commission; every time you open or close a position it will cost you. These costs are usually very low unless you trade very small. When holding short stock positions overnight you will have to pay a bit of interest. This varies from product to product. For very liquid products it is usually around 4 to 5% per year so not that much. Harder to borrow stocks sometimes cost up to 50% per year in interest so be careful.
Be wary of brokers that charge 0% commissions. They sell your orders to dark pools. If somebody is willing to pay for your order you know you can get a better deal by doing it yourself.

A word of caution: instead of getting easy money from half drunk punters you're going up against the best professional traders. Getting an edge in short term trading will be incredibly difficult.
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ShaunWhite
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marksmeets302 wrote:
Mon Mar 30, 2020 3:44 pm
Forget about the speed game; there are others that invest millions per month to have the fastest feeds available. You will never be able to compete.
+1 when I left work we were trying to shave off milliseconds, and I hear from a friend who's still there that they're now looking at trimming nanoseconds. They've invested about 40grand just getting a clock accurate enough to measure it.
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Euler
Posts: 24676
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

I also agree. You end up in an arms race that you can't possibly win.

Somebody will always be slightly ahead of you.

For example, it's a rumoured that the first-ever Betfair millionaire was an actually an SIS engineer.

Some of the big syndicates are stuffed full of ex-Betfair guys, so you would think they know every trick in the book. That's possibly where they are making their money and possibly one of the reasons that the PC exists?

Skill is an underrated skill, people are always looking for a shortcut. As for timing in stock markets, your retail trader hasn't a chance.
sa7med
Posts: 800
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 8:01 am

marksmeets302 wrote:
Mon Mar 30, 2020 3:44 pm
Forget about the speed game; there are others that invest millions per month to have the fastest feeds available. You will never be able to compete.

Interactive Brokers (ibkr.com) offers an api to its platform, and their own software is quite good and complete as well. It has a ladder interface for instance. Their software is free but can only be used if you hold an account with them.
Trading stocks, bonds and futures typically means paying a small commission; every time you open or close a position it will cost you. These costs are usually very low unless you trade very small. When holding short stock positions overnight you will have to pay a bit of interest. This varies from product to product. For very liquid products it is usually around 4 to 5% per year so not that much. Harder to borrow stocks sometimes cost up to 50% per year in interest so be careful.
Be wary of brokers that charge 0% commissions. They sell your orders to dark pools. If somebody is willing to pay for your order you know you can get a better deal by doing it yourself.

A word of caution: instead of getting easy money from half drunk punters you're going up against the best professional traders. Getting an edge in short term trading will be incredibly difficult.
Do they supply depth of market/Level 2 historical data? Can't tell from their site. Pricing? I'm on the hunt for this data at a reasonable price. Perhaps some of us should pool our resources and purchase a package together? Would be fun to backtest some strategies.
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marksmeets302
Posts: 527
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sa7med wrote:
Tue Mar 31, 2020 10:08 am

Do they supply depth of market/Level 2 historical data? Can't tell from their site. Pricing? I'm on the hunt for this data at a reasonable price. Perhaps some of us should pool our resources and purchase a package together? Would be fun to backtest some strategies.
Have a look at https://www.ibkr.com/en/index.php?f=14193 and scan for L2. Depends on which market you select, but most aren't terribly expensive.

Note that there is more market than you will see from level 2 data. If you put an order for decent size at the price between bid and ask chances are high you will get a fill; others are monitoring the market and shooting at prices that appear over or undervalued. The reason they aren't in the market with tight quotes themselves is that it takes time to update or cancel a quote and they might get caught if the rest of the market moves all of a sudden. Also sometimes there are iceberg orders: you will only see the first 100 or so shares of an order while the total order could be for thousands. Backtesting on level 2 data looking for an edge is kind of pointless in my opinion because you miss a lot of information.
sa7med
Posts: 800
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 8:01 am

marksmeets302 wrote:
Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:58 pm
sa7med wrote:
Tue Mar 31, 2020 10:08 am

Do they supply depth of market/Level 2 historical data? Can't tell from their site. Pricing? I'm on the hunt for this data at a reasonable price. Perhaps some of us should pool our resources and purchase a package together? Would be fun to backtest some strategies.
Have a look at https://www.ibkr.com/en/index.php?f=14193 and scan for L2. Depends on which market you select, but most aren't terribly expensive.
I thought those quotes are just for the feed (not historical)
marksmeets302 wrote:
Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:58 pm
Note that there is more market than you will see from level 2 data. If you put an order for decent size at the price between bid and ask chances are high you will get a fill; others are monitoring the market and shooting at prices that appear over or undervalued. The reason they aren't in the market with tight quotes themselves is that it takes time to update or cancel a quote and they might get caught if the rest of the market moves all of a sudden. Also sometimes there are iceberg orders: you will only see the first 100 or so shares of an order while the total order could be for thousands. Backtesting on level 2 data looking for an edge is kind of pointless in my opinion because you miss a lot of information.
Ah but should show volume traded and last traded price no? Do you do any backtesting yourself?
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ruthlessimon
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Euler wrote:
Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:09 am
Somebody will always be slightly ahead of you.
Yet there's always an offer!!

It does baffle me. Because in theory the price should gap on new information, but it doesn't
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ShaunWhite
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ruthlessimon wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 8:42 pm
Yet there's always an offer!!

And a queue. 2nd is 1st loser.
ruthlessimon wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 8:42 pm
It does baffle me. Because in theory the price should gap on new information, but it doesn't
Information provides clarity, that tightens the spread. It's why spreads narrow the closer you get to a event, either sporting or a capital event such as a distribution or rights issue etc.
Machibist
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2015 11:29 am

Healthy dose of caution is always a must but it is doable. First i would say that retail run to stocks and forex and that is a first fail instead choosing a futures product for example.
I would say that there would be much bigger % of success if people commit to what they are trying to do instead throwing darts and trying to make 1mil from 200$ trading JUST 15min a day, YOU CAN DO IT TO :D
Unfortunately most of things are against retail success even our damn nature so it is no surprise that most of them fail but i would say it is doable with A LOT of hard work. And of course in any job there we would be some % of people who are just unfit for it.
One example are tennis markets on betfair, no one in their right mind would stay on the ladder durign the point after 2013-2014 we can say it around those years maybe even earlier. unfortunately i started late 2013. I liked tennis decided that i would do it but every goddamn blog was saying no way, it is not possible courtsiders are destryoing every chance , no liquidity etc...i remember that guy Cassini he was vocal about it if i remember correct.
I will put long story short, quit my job at 2015. went full time , i admit i cleaned ITF markets for two years , there was no dedicated market maker until 2017 late 2016, easy money in the plain sight (talking about efficent market) and then got show stopper with ITF data and went off for a month.
Decided to make a try regular ATP tour 2017 , first two months was nightmare (had a help from a friend who showed me the technique, simple as fuck) but things got better when i learned the moves and how market breathes. It is just market making / directional hybrid, requires balls of steel cuz market making losses are not frequent but are big and courtsiders ocassinally will hit you. At the end of 2019. got close to super PC in earnings but this last change in delay from5 to 3 sec is show stopper and in January 2020. gave up and closed my bf adventure.
I lost my line of thoughts but just wanted to share that it is sometimes possible to do what everyone is saying that it is not, no way. But it requires to dig dip, there was horrible hard periods in which i just wanna gave up.
One more note is that when you stare at the market for months 15h a day watching every god damn point in a match you learn a lot about the market. There are times where market is completely out fo balance and you want to press it and times when you need to now your place in the food chain and wait. Also to note i used a bot to place and remove bets + manually adjusting and hedging during points. Point trigger was betfair API which is public, no speed advantage.
From few hundred € to near super PC in less than 5 years from one small room in south europe.
I am ranting a bit i know :lol: maybe just little bit sad that befair period is over and that they dont give a flying fuck about their customers (got hit few times with outages , they are very sorry but no refund even small some sign of recognition that you paid them tens of thousands in PC, asked about the change in delay but no avail; i had days in which i turned over half a million and played 20-30% of the market, providing liquidity when bigger guys bailed BPs and etc.).
They are trying to attract more recreational bettors with lower delay, hooray. But liquidity attracts liquidty and if most of parrticipants are not feeling safe and starts to back off eventually leaving who will stay? i guess that is too long term for their visions.
End of rant, sorry if i was tiring to read.
Best fo luck to all
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Morbius
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Euler wrote:
Fri Mar 20, 2020 7:30 pm
I'm sure that CFD's are to blame for a high % of those figures.
Very likely

CFD's aren't to blame Pete, that's just a derivative of something else. Ignorance coupled with impatience to make money and couple that with leverage and the result is blow up. Personally I would want very high leverage if I traded but then again I learned a lot about leverage within Forex. Blowing up is avoidable with preparation.
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Morbius
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Euler wrote:
Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:09 am
I also agree. You end up in an arms race that you can't possibly win.

Somebody will always be slightly ahead of you.

For example, it's a rumoured that the first-ever Betfair millionaire was an actually an SIS engineer.

Some of the big syndicates are stuffed full of ex-Betfair guys, so you would think they know every trick in the book. That's possibly where they are making their money and possibly one of the reasons that the PC exists?

Skill is an underrated skill, people are always looking for a shortcut. As for timing in stock markets, your retail trader hasn't a chance.

I don't think there is any "possibly" about it Peter, I was one of the very first people to defend the PC when everyone was up in arms because what you can't have is large traders basically acting like huge black holes on an exchange eco-system given how illiquid it is compared to financial markets (the exchange is a financial market but you know what I mean). Have BF exploited that situation??? You will probably know that better than me.

If they hadn't brought it in, I think it could easily have died. Basically the evolution of Betfair has roughly mimicked the financial markets just further down the road. You are spot on with your "timing" comment...retail has to be non-directional to cope and trading further out than the spread given the co-location advantage they probably have and everything else.
smallplayer
Posts: 120
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2016 8:30 am

indigokid wrote:
Thu Mar 26, 2020 8:15 am
As the sports markets are down I'm starting to tinker with financial markets.

It's a bit of a jump. But very interesting none the less. As you've said above the CFDs seem to be the kiss of death. As an investment banker mate of mine says, "It's the brokers that make the money, no matter what".

So, with that in mind, and tapping into your experience as sports traders, are there any markets/platforms that lend themselves particularly well to our mindset/trading styles?

The ladder from Bet Angel would be nice too.

Cheers.

seen this..know nothing about it tbh..Adam Todd afaik
https://testnet.digitexfutures.com/futures/BTCUSD
eightbo
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Location: Malta / Australia

there's also various platforms providing 'DOM' ladders (Depth of Market) for markets
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Euler
Posts: 24676
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

There has been brief discussion on it before - viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15674

I don't know enough about it to comment on it, but I've generally avoided all unregulated bitcoin or similar things.
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firlandsfarm
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wearthefoxhat wrote:
Fri Mar 20, 2020 6:26 pm
I'm sure that CFD's are to blame for a high % of those figures.
And spread-betting.
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