Charting, Indicators and Anyone with a large sum of cash!!!

The title is a little strange but hopefully caught some peoples attention. Firstly im just curious about charting as a 'skill', what does it entail other than the knowledge that comes with familiarity and repetition of seeing charts move, does charting include statistical analysis and what value can that have?

Secondly im completely new to indicators, I understand moving averages and RSI but thats about it. There are so many that i dont know where to begin, so any pointers would be greatly appreciated. (I've built a custom indicator that draws lines of regression for a any number of bars, it also gives the angles and the cross over, if there is one, which i find to be much more useful than moving averages)

Finally for anyone with a large sum of cash, is it not impossible to lose? If you take currency trading down to the bare bones and have time on your hands you can simply 'literally' buy when the price is at a low, wait and wait and wait and then exchange back the currencies. I mean using the forex you obviously get better rates but if you simply had 1m in £,$ and € and you exchanged them around when one was particularly low and repeat its a sure fire thing.

Although i do have to question the strength of the dollar, even though america has done 4 sets of quantitative easing (giving rise to inflation and i would presume therefor a weaker currency?) I know like 80% of exchanges are done in dollars which obviously drives supply and demand; is there any other reason why the dollar seems to be consistently strong? (as in long term). And in regards to the strength of the dollar is it possible there are other forces at play? For example the collapse of the ruble and not long after the stock market crash in Shanghai. It almost seems like an economic proxy war, as if somehow the dollar is a mechanism for power.
SORRY about the rant, i do understand there are far more economic factors at play than just my algorithmic trading conspiracy.
(however the chinese were apparently threatened with sanctions for trying to hack american trade secrets, so there is some legitimacy)

Anyway any information pertaining to the above would be greatly appreciated.

Forget about the indicators, they might have been relevant at a pre-computanial time. I don't think anyone (anyone who is making real money that is) really uses them anymore in a computational age of data. And the markets are so heavily and so openly manipulated that the guy with the biggest pockets pretty much wins the day. There's no point in prediction unless you're using computational methods to discover direction. And that's very complex to do.

I make no trading decisions based on any form of charting or prediction. All my trading decisions are based on the state of my portfolio, not on directional calls.

The strong dollar is a technical move, all those printed dollars most likely went to emerging markets, and to trade those you have to sell dollars to buy local currency. So if the dollars starts going against you, you are then forced to liquidate as your profits on that market is not enough to cover your gains on the equities, and buy back the dollars.

And that's most likely what you're seeing now, a massive QE driven short dollar squeeze.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10972348/Fed-kicks-off-global-dollar-squeeze-as-Janet-Yellen-turns-hawkish.html

Look, you will never know what's really behind the moves. But you don't really need to know either. It's all just a best guess scenario.

Lastly, big money helps, it helps a lot. You can drop your margin usage to 0% or 10% as the case may be and wait. Then there is almost no risk in fx. Fx just doesn't move a lot and is bi-directional, so if you can afford to wait then a profit is almost guaranteed. Lets say you have $10 mil and make 15% for the year, well that's still $1.5 mil, buys quite a few beers.

The guy with a $10 000 account has to chase massive gains to get to that figure, so he has to take much larger risks for the same gain. That's why so many people wipe out in fx. Leverage.

Hope that helps.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-13/now-what-how-should-one-trade-world-where-most-indicators-have-lost-their-informatio

Thanks you for your reply, in regards to indicators i need to use them as buy or sell triggers in my programs, i can use other logic but indicators are largely statistical based which is the main form of mathematics used to analyse the markets??

They don't work.

Anything with volume data in it is out anyway as there are no accurate volumes in fx, all the volumes you get is your brokers tick counts. On that technicality alone half of them will give you the wrong information.

Find another way. I did.

theHand posted:
Forget about the indicators, they might have been relevant at a pre-computanial time. I don't think anyone (anyone who is making real money that is) really uses them anymore in a computational age of data. And the markets are so heavily and so openly manipulated that the guy with the biggest pockets pretty much wins the day. There's no point in prediction unless you're using computational methods to discover direction. And that's very complex to do.

I make no trading decisions based on any form of charting or prediction. All my trading decisions are based on the state of my portfolio, not on directional calls.

The strong dollar is a technical move, all those printed dollars most likely went to emerging markets, and to trade those you have to sell dollars to buy local currency. So if the dollars starts going against you, you are then forced to liquidate as your profits on that market is not enough to cover your gains on the equities, and buy back the dollars.

And that's most likely what you're seeing now, a massive QE driven short dollar squeeze.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10972348/Fed-kicks-off-global-dollar-squeeze-as-Janet-Yellen-turns-hawkish.html

Look, you will never know what's really behind the moves. But you don't really need to know either. It's all just a best guess scenario.

Lastly, big money helps, it helps a lot. You can drop your margin usage to 0% or 10% as the case may be and wait. Then there is almost no risk in fx. Fx just doesn't move a lot and is bi-directional, so if you can afford to wait then a profit is almost guaranteed. Lets say you have $10 mil and make 15% for the year, well that's still $1.5 mil, buys quite a few beers.

The guy with a $10 000 account has to chase massive gains to get to that figure, so he has to take much larger risks for the same gain. That's why so many people wipe out in fx. Leverage.

Hope that helps.

This is dumb to think this! Not only is it covering up what the move really is based on with guesses, it is just plain wrong! US index going from 80 to 100 in a straight line is not a technical move. You have tounderstand, the US economy has been showing modest growth numbers recently, not super strong but relatively speaking it beats other economies. The fact that it rallied as it did is based on monetary policy divergence between banks. This is a very bullish move, when a bank plans to have a 2% FED funds target and planning subsequent rate hikes when other economies are launching QE and slashing their rates. You are not trading what is right now. you need to stop listening to the perma bears and formulate your own opinion based on real data that is the most current and relevant as it will help a lot. This will help you know what is truly behind the moves as it is possible to know, maybe not immediately at face value, but you will know.
 

You need to learn how market micro structure works from a dealer perspective. I have so much I can say but I don't have the patience or compassion to type it all out here so I will keep this very short and say, it takes 10000 hours before you become a pro at anything.

The Telegraph seems to disagree with you, and so does a host of other market commentators, but that is what makes a market, different opinions. Most likely were both wrong. And that's why I said it doesn't really matter.

And I've been at this 14 years. I don't know how many hours that is, but I think it should cover it.

You might also want to consider the US is in fact going to negative rates like the rest of the world. There's going to be no rate hike, in my humble opinion, quite the contrary.

theHand posted:
The Telegraph seems to disagree with you, and so does a host of other market commentators, but that is what makes a market, different opinions. Most likely were both wrong. And that's why I said it doesn't really matter.

And I've been at this 14 years. I don't know how many hours that is, but I think it should cover it.

You might also want to consider the US is in fact going to negative rates like the rest of the world. There's going to be no rate hike, in my humble opinion, quite the contrary.

Well its all relative, great, you have some experience wonderful. And yes! eventually the US system will fail and rates will go down. But I am simply referring to 2014-2015 what has happened and still the trend that us FX traders have bought onto against most other currency pairs. Commentator have different objective than a trader of FX, don't forget that friend.

We saw this in 2008. Oil crash followed by dollar strength followed by....oh dear...

To me this looks just like 2008. Either way doesn't matter. We don't really have to know what's driving the moves to trade them.

theHand posted:
We saw this in 2008. Oil crash followed by dollar strength followed by....oh dear...

To me this looks just like 2008. Either way doesn't matter. We don't really have to know what's driving the moves to trade them.

This is true, the great thing is we can put our money where our mouth is.