how do you cope when a winning position starts going south ??

[tomorton]

The CEO of one of the UK spreadbetting companies explained it on film years ago. He said the penalties for stop-hunting in the UK are just so high it isn't worth the effort. And that they could never keep it secret - he actually said as soon as the firm had its next round of redundancies, the fired staff would be straight round to the FCA office and the game's up. All sounds completely plausible.

Spreadbetting of course is a form of trading which has no direct relation to the buying and selling of currency. A spreadbet is a type of CFD and no matter how large the position or how long you hold onto it,. no currency changes hands. The SB firm adjust their spreads to take account of their exposure to the risk of clients winning, since they don't levy any charges, all their profit comes from the spread. The fact that they need to adjust spreads does actually imply that some clients are winning, else there would be zero risk to the SB firm and the SB firm that widened its spreads without reason would be undercut by their competitors.

I admit I know nothing about the SEC.

Manhattan was not what I had in mind as an island not to do business with....

 

[in4abuck]

The "penalties" for all unscrupulous activity by large firms is relatively low compared to the relative gains from those practices. MMs are never "hunting" stops exclusively, just spotting them as they go and taking advantage, so they easily blend into normal business, never worth the time of enforcers, since they are mixed in.

The idea that big money's decisions are ever affected by rules and laws on the books is not realistic. I know guys who have worked for decades in these companies and they laugh about the pathetic state of "enforcement" - it's just not possible to catch them all. Any fired guys who would "rat" on companies wouldn't be able to stay in the industry very long, word travels too fast, especially about rats, so I'd guess they were fired because they aren't good traders.

I just know too many big insiders who have confirmed many times all the tricks of the game, the SEC is a corrupt agency, all bought and paid for, so the big guys simply delight in breaking the rules to slaughter the "peasants," their nickname for self-employed traders.

It's a dirty business, trading is simply one guy trying to steal another guys' money. Dog eat dog, play that way, you can win, but never trust the "rules" are actually being enforced properly. They are only there for what? To keep public confidence in the market as not being fixed. It is rigged, 100% of the time, but without market confidence, they're out of business. They need dumb money, it's their bread and butter, with a glass of wine.

Happy trades!

 

[tomorton]

The "penalties" for all unscrupulous activity by large firms is relatively low compared to the relative gains from those practices. MMs are never "hunting" stops exclusively, just spotting them as they go and taking advantage, so they easily blend into normal business, never worth the time of enforcers, since they are mixed in.

The idea that big money's decisions are ever affected by rules and laws on the books is not realistic. I know guys who have worked for decades in these companies and they laugh about the pathetic state of "enforcement" - it's just not possible to catch them all. Any fired guys who would "rat" on companies wouldn't be able to stay in the industry very long, word travels too fast, especially about rats, so I'd guess they were fired because they aren't good traders.

I just know too many big insiders who have confirmed many times all the tricks of the game, the SEC is a corrupt agency, all bought and paid for, so the big guys simply delight in breaking the rules to slaughter the "peasants," their nickname for self-employed traders.

It's a dirty business, trading is simply one guy trying to steal another guys' money. Dog eat dog, play that way, you can win, but never trust the "rules" are actually being enforced properly. They are only there for what? To keep public confidence in the market as not being fixed. It is rigged, 100% of the time, but without market confidence, they're out of business. They need dumb money, it's their bread and butter, with a glass of wine.

Happy trades!

I suppose we've got to distinguish between two types of stop-hunting as an example of alleged behaviour which would clearly be illegal in the UK.

Firstly its possible the firm can "adjust" prices on my specific platform so that they trigger my personals stop. Nobody else would see this and unless the adjustment was gross it would be hard to show it even happened, maybe even hard to know it had happened.

But what is the firm going to get out of me from doing that? It probably wouldn't pay for an hour's work by one of their staff. And unless some individual is cheating every client on every trade it isn't worth the risk. Even without the regulator getting involved, he might be fired.

Secondly its possible the firm "adjusts" all its price quotes so they grab all the stops from all their clients within a certain range. This is major fraud and impossible to keep secret. In addition, if the firm pushes a price artificially low on a certain market, beyond their competitors, who are more closely tracking the underlying, they lay themselves open to a sudden influx of buy trades from aware traders who see the price skew and jump in at a discount. And those are the guys with the big accounts with multiple firms who would never miss such an opportunity. And so the opportunity is arbitraged out.

 

[in4abuck]

I never said anything about anyone "adjusting" your bids. They can, and do, however, skip filling you at the best available current price and fill you instead at your bid, selling you the spread of shares they own under that, and do this by simple in-house trading, so they control your order fills, which never hit the open market where they could be filled by a better price. This is legal and ALL major brokerages have large in-house trading teams.

They basically buy at the lows (often in premarket, where walkdowns give them a lof of inventory), then sell them into the market, filling orders at open, both buy and sell orders, which is why you see the huge moves for the first 10 minutes of the open. It's called "meeting the market," where they basically take all the overnight orders for buys and sells at "best," and screw their clients by filling their buys and sells at the open in a flurry, where their order fill program robs their clients blind. Filling sell orders on the open downspike, then filling buy orders on the open upspike, in either order.

On the open, they can also SKIP filling STOP LOSSES and profit takes as part of the open flurry. If you have an overnight stop loss at $10 and it drops to $8 in the premarket, you won't get a stop exit fill in the premarket unless they choose to do so, but they're not required to fill it in the premarket, since the market is not officially open until RTH. On the open, you'd still have your shares, with the current Bid/Ask at $8, and no fill on your stop loss at $10.

Seems like you're defending the idea that the game is not a rigged game, which it is. The markets are 100% manipulated, 100% of the time. For every "safeguard," so to speak, there's a workaround to get past it.

Happy trades!

 

[tomorton]

I never said anything about anyone "adjusting" your bids. They can, and do, however, skip filling you at the best available current price and fill you instead at your bid, selling you the spread of shares they own under that, and do this by simple in-house trading, so they control your order fills, which never hit the open market where they could be filled by a better price. This is legal and ALL major brokerages have large in-house trading teams.

They basically buy at the lows (often in premarket, where walkdowns give them a lof of inventory), then sell them into the market, filling orders at open, both buy and sell orders, which is why you see the huge moves for the first 10 minutes of the open. It's called "meeting the market," where they basically take all the overnight orders for buys and sells at "best," and screw their clients by filling their buys and sells at the open in a flurry, where their order fill program robs their clients blind. Filling sell orders on the open downspike, then filling buy orders on the open upspike, in either order.

On the open, they can also SKIP filling STOP LOSSES and profit takes as part of the open flurry. If you have an overnight stop loss at $10 and it drops to $8 in the premarket, you won't get a stop exit fill in the premarket unless they choose to do so, but they're not required to fill it in the premarket, since the market is not officially open until RTH. On the open, you'd still have your shares, with the current Bid/Ask at $8, and no fill on your stop loss at $10.

Seems like you're defending the idea that the game is not a rigged game, which it is. The markets are 100% manipulated, 100% of the time. For every "safeguard," so to speak, there's a workaround to get past it.

Happy trades!

I spreadbet forex so I'm sure you know more about US share trading brokers than I do.

 

[in4abuck]

Happy to share anything I know, anytime, my head is like an encyclopedia on this stuff, especially how the inside works traders. Knowing how your opponent works is always key intel to a winning strategy. I prefer to see traders win rather than the brokerages.
Happy trades!

 

[J Livermore]

Happy to share anything I know, anytime, my head is like an encyclopedia on this stuff, especially how the inside works traders. Knowing how your opponent works is always key intel to a winning strategy. I prefer to see traders win rather than the brokerages.
Happy trades!

tomorton and in4abuck,

I’m not familiar with spread bettors in the UK or elsewhere but they sound similar to the bucket shops that the US used to have years before the SEC was a government agency.

What you two are discussing may be a little bit different than what I am thinking of. What I am thinking of is called gunning the market to deliberately set off stops where skilled, experienced traders expect stops are most likely to be. (without actually seeing the stops)

Back in the 90’s I had a friend who was a member of the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange and he told me that the Coffee crowd was one of the most corrupt futures crowds in New York. He informed me that the traders would instinctively know where the stops were, then without needing to agree with each other, they would start buying up Coffee futures near a market top, set off the buy stops, take the other side of the trades, then just buy the futures back after buying support dried up and the futures drifted lower again.

Near market bottoms they did the reverse. None of this could be punishable by the CFTC because there was no verbal collusion. Just an instinct that the traders acted upon based on their years of experience.

 

[in4abuck]

tomorton and in4abuck,

I’m not familiar with spread bettors in the UK or elsewhere but they sound similar to the bucket shops that the US used to have years before the SEC was a government agency.

What you two are discussing may be a little bit different than what I am thinking of. What I am thinking of is called gunning the market to deliberately set off stops where skilled, experienced traders expect stops are most likely to be. (without actually seeing the stops)

Back in the 90’s I had a friend who was a member of the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange and he told me that the Coffee crowd was one of the most corrupt futures crowds in New York. He informed me that the traders would instinctively know where the stops were, then without needing to agree with each other, they would start buying up Coffee futures near a market top, set off the buy stops, take the other side of the trades, then just buy the futures back after buying support dried up and the futures drifted lower again.

Near market bottoms they did the reverse. None of this could be punishable by the CFTC because there was no verbal collusion. Just an instinct that the traders acted upon based on their years of experience.

Very good. The point-by-point specifics aren't as important as understanding how the same techniques are applied to various aspects of the market every way, shape and form. It's not a clean game, never was, never will be. It's the same tricks, over and over, like a Swiss Army knife, you just creatively find a way to shake people out of their shares at a loss, pocket the resulting spread. Same principles apply across the board, on all markets.

Accepting that "oversight" is simply just "public window dressing" is important, as there is a way around every single regulation on the books, to bend rules, or to do it in a way that takes too much work to track it down. Then rinse and repeat. It's a drity game, "regulatory agencies" are part of the charade, their primary function is to sell market confidence to traders, not insiders, so insiders can milk them.

Play the game that way, always expect and respect the cleverness that's used, put it in your pocket as good intel, it will make you more (by saving you more) than any sense of "fair play" ever will. Trading is simply one guy trying to take another guy's money. I'm a huge fan of how they run all these scams, it teaches you how to read "the game behind the game," which makes my personal trading much stronger. Martin Cole, a former market maker, wrote a terrific book on this, "How the Market Makers Extract Millions of Dollars a Day & How to Grab Your Share" - - best $20 I ever spent! Pure gold...

Happy Trades!

 

[tomorton]

tomorton and in4abuck,

I’m not familiar with spread bettors in the UK or elsewhere but they sound similar to the bucket shops that the US used to have years before the SEC was a government agency.

What you two are discussing may be a little bit different than what I am thinking of. What I am thinking of is called gunning the market to deliberately set off stops where skilled, experienced traders expect stops are most likely to be. (without actually seeing the stops)

Back in the 90’s I had a friend who was a member of the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange and he told me that the Coffee crowd was one of the most corrupt futures crowds in New York. He informed me that the traders would instinctively know where the stops were, then without needing to agree with each other, they would start buying up Coffee futures near a market top, set off the buy stops, take the other side of the trades, then just buy the futures back after buying support dried up and the futures drifted lower again.

Near market bottoms they did the reverse. None of this could be punishable by the CFTC because there was no verbal collusion. Just an instinct that the traders acted upon based on their years of experience.

I'm sure you're right. But I can absolutely live with gunning the market - it shows up in the charts. Which we can all see. If a private retail trader is using a system but with inadequate back-testing and they haven't seen the way price is printing through the trade situations they're proposing to use, then they don't deserve any sympathy from me. By the same token, nor do the pros who did the gunning.

As long as its visible, all is fair.

 

[tomorton]

tomorton and in4abuck,

I’m not familiar with spread bettors in the UK or elsewhere but they sound similar to the bucket shops that the US used to have years before the SEC was a government agency.

What you two are discussing may be a little bit different than what I am thinking of. What I am thinking of is called gunning the market to deliberately set off stops where skilled, experienced traders expect stops are most likely to be. (without actually seeing the stops)

Back in the 90’s I had a friend who was a member of the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange and he told me that the Coffee crowd was one of the most corrupt futures crowds in New York. He informed me that the traders would instinctively know where the stops were, then without needing to agree with each other, they would start buying up Coffee futures near a market top, set off the buy stops, take the other side of the trades, then just buy the futures back after buying support dried up and the futures drifted lower again.

Near market bottoms they did the reverse. None of this could be punishable by the CFTC because there was no verbal collusion. Just an instinct that the traders acted upon based on their years of experience.

UK spreadbetting firms aren't bucket shops, they're just derivatives brokerages. They can set their own prices but they dare not drift their quotes far from the underlying or they'd be arbitraged out of business.

UK regulations on SB firms are same as applied to stockbrokers. But SB profits here are tax-free, without limit.

Of course in the US, financial speadbetting is not permitted, which isn't exactly an argument that the SEC is a weak regulator. And surely, a vast volume of private retail trading is actually derivatives trading anyway?

 

[andrewborund597]

Try to use the best risk management strategies. But it doesn't work, exit your trades immediately.

 

[Attila the trader]

why is this suddenly getting replies after beings dead for months , lol

 

[1nvest]

why is this suddenly getting replies after beings dead for months , lol

well, generally it happens when someone posts something, then gets lots of replies and the person who originally posted couldn't even be bothered to respond..therefore one would naturally assume the answers weren't addressing the original question. but hey, start another thread instead...oh you have

 

[rickhobbsonce]

For most traders, it is an everyday affair. If they keep thinking about the lost money, they may not be able to find ways to make more money. You never know if you will recover your lost money through your profits. A trader is needed to keep moving to find another trading opportunity.

 

[TrendingMkts]

To answer the op - you close your position - that is the market telling you that it is time to get out. There is no other answer for an investor or a trader.

You date shares, you don't marry them. Never fall in love with a stock.

Never, ever, ever let a gain turn into a loss.