betfair vs forex?

[Jimnz]

hi,
anyone traded forex before or currently? still trade both?
how do trading the two compare, better edges? liquidity? trading times.

ive traded fx (not very succesfuly) for 3 years and being disgruntled and always looking for the grail ended up here. im 1/2 way through "trading in the zone" so please no comments like " stop looking for the grail../ i know i know.

im in NZ so im finding liquidity a bit shit on AUS races (nz dont even look) and cant really trade UK as its 10-4 am..
tick stealing seems a bit easyer trading BF

thanks for thoughts

[Temujin]

Yeah well you have no margins here (PC excluded, many threads on that), so you can enter and exit the market as many times as you want and you only pay commission on your profits should you make any.
Not sure of the costs of forex, but if you lose 2% on every entry and exit point you have to average being 4-5% better just to break even.

There are pitfalls of course, and only really the principal is the same, buy low sell high and all, so as you know all that and the mechanics I guess you just have to now learn how to read the markets well.
But you can of course do that on the cheap here with little downside early on in your journey.

Good luck with it....

[eggman]

Tem - You can learn Forex on the cheap too - there are plenty of places that offer play money accounts (of course, they want to you to make millions in play money, get hooked and then blow all your real money!) You can also using tiny stakes (literally pennies).

If you’ve been trading unsuccessfully on FX do you know why? It seems a lot of new people to the world of FX jump and change from one indicator to the next, or from one scam to the next, without realising why it didn’t work before.

If you haven’t got the hang of FX, it may be tough for you to trade sports. I’m not sure of the percentage success rates, but is it even smaller for traders on Betfair than on FX?

I’ll give you a bit of advice if I may that has helped me in my trading. Before I start to trade I have to know why I will succeed. This is not for every particular trade, but the way I approach trading (knowledge I have, software I use, internet connection speed and so on). The most important part of this for me is to know my limitations. These can be psychological during the trading session, but here I mean the methodology. When approaching trading, it’s a fact that there are going to be other traders with better information than me, with more money than me, or, in sports, with faster pictures than me (better information). How is the approach I take going to succeed against these people? What am I doing to enable me to beat or avoid these traders in the scenarios in which I trade?

You have to know why you will succeed by understanding your limitations. This is part of what I call the ‘rules of engagement’.

[bazbaz]

Do you trade Forex yourself Eggman? If so whats your experience of it?

[shadowninja]

FX vs Betfair. Interesting. I am having on-going conversations with an FX trader about it. It's a funny thing, really. I've been trading FX ok for a few years now but profits don't flow as easily as with Betfair. Ignoring PC1 and PC2, as far as my BF trading to date has gone, it's like a money tree. I cannot say the same for FX. With BF, the opps are really obvious whether trading at half time or in-game, scalping in and out in seconds. With FX, I can only swing trade (holding trades for hours or days) and always fail in my attempts to scalp, hence profit is really slow to manifest. Also, the time element comes into it - with FX, you might have to sit here all bloody day to find there are no opps that you can take advantage of, whereas with football, I have a 10 minute slot at HT and there are often opps for the taking.

Where FX beats sports is in the liquidity. Whether spreadbetting, using CFDs or on Oanda or other broker, you can pretty much guarantee to exit when you want - on smaller football games, if you wanted to trade with £10k liability trades, you will have problems closing your trade or even getting fully filled; you put up £10k on the FX market and most decent brokers will accept it (and if they don't you just go the DMA route and can put millions on if you so wish). There is clearly a ceiling with BF. Also, the potential for bigger profits is there with leverage via spreadbetting and CFDs (and bigger losses but let's assume you have a clue about leverage and are not being a greedy twat about it).

Maybe my success in BF comes from years of practice in FX where the real game is the inner one. And when I'm up against other BF traders and bettors, the oppponent's skill level is really, really low because I suspect most of them are hopeful degens who cannot control themselves. I suppose it also helps that my "normal" work is in psychology.

[shadowninja]

Tem - You can learn Forex on the cheap too - there are plenty of places that offer play money accounts (of course, they want to you to make millions in play money, get hooked and then blow all your real money!) You can also using tiny stakes (literally pennies).

Yep, it's dirt cheap if you use Oanda or someone like Alpari.

[eggman]

Do you trade Forex yourself Eggman?

Yes, I do. It’s never really interested me as much as sport trading (watching and trading a tennis match - a sport I enjoy watching anyway - has always been more appealing than watching candlesticks move up and down) despite the fact that it’s potentially more profitable.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I’m looking at it and a few other things a bit more closely.

[eggman]

Maybe my success in BF comes from years of practice in FX where the real game is the inner one. And when I'm up against other BF traders and bettors, the oppponent's skill level is really, really low because I suspect most of them are hopeful degens who cannot control themselves. I suppose it also helps that my "normal" work is in psychology.

This is a really good point ninja. FX is a world dominated by big players with big money. You have far less money and information than they do. This can make it tough as essentially you’re always playing against them. With sports trading, there are big players with big money, but there are plenty of other traders/bettors to trade against.

[shadowninja]

Yep, you know you get those little fish who swim alongside the sharks, cleaning the scraps of food off them? I think I'm like one of them.

Thing is, you can do the same in FX - don't think of yourself as trading against them but trade with them. This is why I swing trade.

[eggman]

To build on another point that shadowninja makes - it’s easier to build a bank with sports trading than with FX. A lot of sports trading is short term. If you’re trading horse racing pre-race, it’s only about 5 minutes worth of trading and you may do 5,10,15 or more trades in that time period. There’s little to no barrier to entry for your trades. You can put up offers where you want and have a good idea whether you’ll get matched or not, and not pay any privilege for doing so.

With FX, the spread is a massive barrier to entry. If you use someone like oanda, even a 0.9 spread can be a killer if you’re trading too much or looking to scalp (short term trades).

This is where a lot of new FX traders fail - they don’t have a large enough account size. If you’re going to trade FX, it’s safer to take a long-term view of the markets and occasionally take setups as they appear. If you’ve put £1000 into your new account, this isn’t going to make you very much money. So the tendency is to look to day trade and place many trades during the day, but this can lead to overtrading and many psychological hurdles to deal with. New traders will be trading far too much without sufficient knowledge or skill about what this involves and the problems associated with it (I’m not saying don’t do this, or that it’s not possible, it’s just hard to do consistently).

With sports trading, you can start off with a few hundred and grow the account reasonably quickly.

[eggman]

Thing is, you can do the same in FX - don't think of yourself as trading against them but trade with them.

Yes, this is very true - I agree with this. Maybe what I should have tried to say is: try and be aware of how the markets move and the underlying reasons for why it moves.

Funnily enough, when trading sports I saw myself as a medium fish. Swimming around eating smaller fish and trying to avoid the sharks (but occasionally being eaten myself!)

[Caan Berry]

enlightening, where would you suggest starting to 'learn' eggman? with somewhere to view the markets/software? getting an account? what do you use?

Chuck

[shadowninja]

https://www.babypips.com

www.alpari.co.uk or www.oanda.com

[eggman]

chuck - I’d recommend the sites ninja recommends. babypips is good and I think they have a course you can follow to get the basics. I’d also recommend forexfactory.com as a great source of information (their forums have shedloads of advice and opinions from traders and their calendar is great to see the times of news releases).

oanda is a good broker to start with. They’re a US company, but you can open an account in GBP and trade really small amounts or open a demo account. I actually really like their browser-based software, but some people may find it limiting (there’s a download version too, but it’s almost identical to the browser one). A lot of traders use software called metatrader. It has a lot of features and allows the programming of EA’s (Expert Advisors - automated trading). I don’t use this myself, however.

If you’re not too sure of Oanda, RBS offer the same Oanda software and are obviously UK based and regulated by the FSA. You can set up a demo account with them too at marketindex.rbs.com.

If you’re trading FX using a broker like Oanda or RBS, you would be liable to tax, whereas if you use a spread betting company you’re not liable (in the UK), so that’s something to keep in mind too. Oanda and RBS are good because you can demo trade or trade with pennies to get used to what you want to do.

[doubleback]

I have been trading Forex for a while now (spreadbetting). I use the same strategies on Forex as I do on the horses, using tight manual stops and charts.
I tend to just go for anywhere between 2 - 10 ticks and never leave a trade open for more than a few minutes, anymore than that and I just don't seem to do as well.
My strategy is simple, works for me and I tend to ignore market reports/world events as they tend to be meaningless being in a trade for such a small amount of time.
It is great that the markets are open 24/7 although different times of day have different dynamics and another bonus is that you aint gonna see a SUSPENDED sign and then go in play,
I view it as one long Pre-Race trading sesh!
I am trading Forex more and more, which hasn't been influenced by the current Betfair politics but can see myself switching totally to financials in the future.