Recent content by DallasSteve

Adam My college degree was in Accounting. I did that for 20 years then I programmed computers for 20 years. I wrote a program to back test trading systems with years of 5 minute quotes loaded into a database. I spent hundreds of hours trying different systems using different symbols and even...

Glegoo, thanks. I found CME options on TD Ameritrade, which is where I have my account. They only have FX options for EUR and GBP, but that was enough for my purposes. CME has other currency options, but TD Ameritrade doesn't offer them. They are actually options on currency futures, but...

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

I'm interested in buying options to hedge a position in forex. What products are available? The only thing I can think of are options on forex related ETFs. For example, if I want to hold a position in EUR/USD I think I could hedge (provide insurance) to that position by buying options on the...

But it's OK for the government to sell lottery tickets that are even a worse bet, with no limit to how much the foolish can waste on the tickets. And our US government places controls on Forex trading which have the effect of driving the small traders to brokers that charge a higher...

Doing some quick back testing there does appear to be an "edge" in this idea of reverting to the average. But the gains in my tests so far are in the range of 1 pip before spread, which means the broker would need to offer very low spreads and commissions. Generally that's not available to US...

You mention IB. I have traded with IB in the past and they were my favorite for low commissions and spreads on Forex. However, my understanding is now you must have more than $1 million to trade Forex with IB. Has that changed? I think that change was because Congress decided we needed to be...

NVP This is quite a thread. You've been running it for over 10 years. I've been interested in Forex correlation trading (I think) but never found a consistent pattern. I wonder if we're talking about the same thing. To me correlation is finding two Forex pairs like EUR/USD and GBP/USD that...

Mr. Money Maker I've never been able to buy at the bid or sell at the ask, but it's a nice dream to have. If you are able to do so I would like to hear about how you do it. As a rule of business a broker will only fill buys at the ask and sells at the bid. If you create a limit order to buy...

Disappointed I haven't been reading here lately and I received an email about this interview. Since Rob is a programmer (I am, too) I thought I might get some real insight about programming a winning system. I didn't. In the end it appears that Rob tried and couldn't make it work either. I...

lloydbee Thanks for the info. Steve

rsh01 Thanks. I think I understand the 20% now. The 20% appears to apply to the amount "in the money". So it's 10% of the strike price amount, or 20% of the in the money amount, whichever is greater. With the strike prices I'm studying it would usually be 10%. Edit - Maybe not. The...

OH! That makes sense. Maybe the paper trading account is not programmed correctly, and with my live trading account it would require a 20% margin. BTW, I checked and they still haven't responded to this question that I posted in my account's message center this morning at 9:20. Maybe they'll...

thunderstruck Thanks for the info. I'm still confused. When does the 20% come into play if you say the answer is actually 10%? It does appear in the paper account that it was 10%. Do I use the larger position (64,000) X 2 or were you just rounding? One side is 64,000 and one side 60,000 in...

Brumby My answer to you was going to be "Because it's very difficult to get answers from customer service at IB." But I decided to try. So I logged into my account. I waited for a chat window. I posted my question. I waited for a reply. All of that took 20 minutes. In the end they...