Quote:
Originally Posted by gary
As I am fond of reminding people, even if you could reliably predict any exchange rate fluctuation of even a single cent over a twenty-four hour period, day in, day out, you would rapidly become not only the richest man in the world, but the wealthiest individual in the history of civilization.  |
Someone I used to work with traded currency, but not as most people would imagine it. Most trades were purchased and resold within a matter of minutes, with the average time of currency ownership being about 2 minutes. They watched the currency rate change on a 1 second ticker! The 'scalping' was based on minute movements, and even a $0.005 profit on the exchange rate was good. Wether the currency was good or bad was irrelevant, infact, the volatility of the exchange rate was what he wanted (and there has been plenty of that lately). The purchases were leveraged at 100 to 1, although there are some currency traders out there leveraging at 1000 to 1. Alot of the currency fluctuation is due to automated trades by trading firms buying currency to settle the account differences on purchases made in the day (I think about 35% of all currency trades are based on this, and it is expected to rise to 50% within a few years), so when you have computers making purchases based on algorithms, I can see how a human can come in, and with some predictability and identifiable patterns in the exchange rate fluctuations, make some money.
Not my cup of tea, but if you want to read more check
this out.