hi gle101 - i can agree there to a degree, but on the other hand wherever you look and find information worth any weight, you will get it drummed in to you -trade demo until you have 3 winning months at least on the spin, don't backtest forward test with demo, ooh but then you need years of data of your trading plan under your belt before dipping your toes in as a few months could just be blip, ...i mean when do you finally take the plunge? who's to say playing live smalll stakes at 0.10p partial lot on a particular SB firm is going to mirror what will happen if you are successful and leap up to £5 lots? you'll be playing with profit by then i agree, but even so...
all i want is to trade my plan with the real risk of losing being me versus the market..not the middle man distorting the battle for scummy gains.. i pay someone for the use of their platform, the rent and their efforts... they get the commission/spread on my trades, i get decent data to make a possible living.. simple?!... why can't it purely work in that utopian manor?...surely there are ways for brokers/SB firms to make the bottom line better via alternative moral means other than sneeky and snidey theft? you know if it were to help, then why dont they apply a set 3-5% tax of their own for useage on executed trades like the Betfair model and leave the frigging data alone? yes they need to hedge but surely that doesnt mean stitching the clients up at all costs? DMA may well negate all this but i dont have the funds or knowledge to go there yet.. but that shouldn't mean i shouldn't have a fair chance of trading profitably until i am able to egt there should it?
having worked for an exchange data product provider, i understand that price data is not an exact science and errrors will occur, i should know i've fought some fires in a couple of the city's IT depts to keep data feeds alive, but there's genuine loss of data and genuine slippage (due to whatever - liquidity volume etc etc) and then there's sculdugery that the federal reserve and IMF would be proud of.
and just to assure SML - again i reiterrate that although this is on the SML thread i am in no way accusing them of such dealings.. i am just looking for some answers from them before/if i sign up.. but there are others who practise such despicable acts which not only makes me angry, but very nervous when searching for a broker. it's a little sad really.
ooh it gets me..
k