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So there seems to be a lot of new people on this sub. And makes sense if you have questions a lot of time you'll turn to reddit for the answers (I know I do). Well here are some tips that I think would benefit new traders.
Don't trade ANY Euro pairs. Look I know it's the most traded pair it goes up and down really fast and there's so much potential for you to make money. Turns out there's even more for you to lose money. It's way too volatile specially if you don't know what you're doing. EUUSD is the worst offender.
Trade the Daily. Might think you're cool looking at charts every x amount of times during the day. You get to tell your friends and family that you trade all day and they might be impressed at what you're doing but unless you have some years under you stick to the daily. There's less noise. You can see clearer trends and when you don't stare at the screen all day you're less emotional therefore a more effective trader. I only look at the chart 15 minutes a day to either enter close or manage my trades. Whatever happens when I'm gone is what happens.
There is no holy grail indicator Look for it all you want. It doesn't exist. There are good indicators. There are bad indicators. There are some indicators that are so broken if you do the opposite of what they're intended for you'll actually make a profit. But the fact remains that there's no perfect one. Stop looking. What you should be looking for is an indicator that fits with your strategy.
What currencies to pick. I actually never see this brought up. The notion in forex is that all pairs can be traded equally. To a certain extent that's not false. But until you get the hang of it stick to a strict trading diet. Look for pairs that trend a lot. Duh look for the trend I can hear you say. When I say trend I don't mean a couple of days or weeks. I mean a couple of months. Half a year. Pairs that do that have a higher tendency to stick with one direction for a while. That's where you make your money. An easy way to identify those pairs as well is putting together a volatile currency (USD) with a less volatile one(JPY).
USE YOUR SL Trust me even if not putting a SL has netted you all kinds of gains eventually the market will turn around and bite you. With no safety net you'll lose most if not all your profit. The best offense is a good defense.
How to pick your TP and SL level. Most new traders care so much about that. I put it near the bottom because in my opinion you should know everything listed first. This is my opinion and I use it for my strategy I use the ATR(average true range) indicator. It's a really helpful tool that helps you identify the range at which the candles will either rise or fall. Obviously you want to set your TP inside of that range and your SL slightly outside of it.
Lot sizes. Everyone has a different story about how they pick their lot size. The general consensus is don't risk over 2% of your account. But I'm a simple man and I can't be bothered to figure out what my risk is every single time. So what I do is I put $0.10 for every $100 I have on the account. I then assign $300(minimum) to each pair. That's $0.30 per pair. It's easy to remember. 10 cent for every $100. If you're able to blow $100 with $0.10 then you probably shouldn't trade.
How to avoid reversals. Tbh you can't. There's no way to predict the future so eventually you'll get hit by one. What you can do however is minimize the blow. How I do it is for every pair I take two trades. If you remember in the previous tip is said I do about$0.30 per pair well I divide it 2:1. I take one trade with a TP(2) and one without (1). If my TP is hit I pocket that amount and if the trend keeps going in my direction I make even more. If the trend decides to end or reverses my losses are minimal because at least I kept half.
There is NO right way to trade. Stop listening to people telling the best way to trade is fundamentals or naked charts of to use some specific indicator. There are no right way to do this. It's as flexible and unlimited as your imagination. I personally use indicators but if that's not your thing do YOU! Just remember to manage your trades properly and be level headed when trading. Hell if your trading strategy is flipping a coin with proper trade management you'd probably make some money (don't quote me on that).
Trade money you're willing to lose Don't trade your rent money.
That's all I have for now. If anyone sees this and wants to add more feel free. Hope this helps someone.
Hi guys, I have been using reddit for years in my personal life (not trading!) and wanted to give something back in an area where i am an expert. I worked at an investment bank for seven years and joined them as a graduate FX trader so have lots of professional experience, by which i mean I was trained and paid by a big institution to trade on their behalf. This is very different to being a full-time home trader, although that is not to discredit those guys, who can accumulate a good amount of experience/wisdom through self learning. When I get time I'm going to write a mid-length posts on each topic for you guys along the lines of how i was trained. I guess there would be 15-20 topics in total so about 50-60 posts. Feel free to comment or ask questions. The first topic is Risk Management and we'll cover it in three parts Part I
Why it matters
Position sizing
Kelly
Using stops sensibly
Picking a clear level
Why it matters
The first rule of making money through trading is to ensure you do not lose money. Look at any serious hedge fund’s website and they’ll talk about their first priority being “preservation of investor capital.” You have to keep it before you grow it. Strangely, if you look at retail trading websites, for every one article on risk management there are probably fifty on trade selection. This is completely the wrong way around. The great news is that this stuff is pretty simple and process-driven. Anyone can learn and follow best practices. Seriously, avoiding mistakes is one of the most important things: there's not some holy grail system for finding winning trades, rather a routine and fairly boring set of processes that ensure that you are profitable, despite having plenty of losing trades alongside the winners.
Capital and position sizing
The first thing you have to know is how much capital you are working with. Let’s say you have $100,000 deposited. This is your maximum trading capital. Your trading capital is not the leveraged amount. It is the amount of money you have deposited and can withdraw or lose. Position sizing is what ensures that a losing streak does not take you out of the market. A rule of thumb is that one should risk no more than 2% of one’s account balance on an individual trade and no more than 8% of one’s account balance on a specific theme. We’ll look at why that’s a rule of thumb later. For now let’s just accept those numbers and look at examples. So we have $100,000 in our account. And we wish to buy EURUSD. We should therefore not be risking more than 2% which $2,000. We look at a technical chart and decide to leave a stop below the monthly low, which is 55 pips below market. We’ll come back to this in a bit. So what should our position size be? We go to the calculator page, select Position Size and enter our details. There are many such calculators online - just google "Pip calculator". https://preview.redd.it/y38zb666e5h51.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26e4fe569dc5c1f43ce4c746230c49b138691d14 So the appropriate size is a buy position of 363,636 EURUSD. If it reaches our stop level we know we’ll lose precisely $2,000 or 2% of our capital. You should be using this calculator (or something similar) on every single trade so that you know your risk. Now imagine that we have similar bets on EURJPY and EURGBP, which have also broken above moving averages. Clearly this EUR-momentum is a theme. If it works all three bets are likely to pay off. But if it goes wrong we are likely to lose on all three at once. We are going to look at this concept of correlation in more detail later. The total amount of risk in our portfolio - if all of the trades on this EUR-momentum theme were to hit their stops - should not exceed $8,000 or 8% of total capital. This allows us to go big on themes we like without going bust when the theme does not work. As we’ll see later, many traders only win on 40-60% of trades. So you have to accept losing trades will be common and ensure you size trades so they cannot ruin you. Similarly, like poker players, we should risk more on trades we feel confident about and less on trades that seem less compelling. However, this should always be subject to overall position sizing constraints. For example before you put on each trade you might rate the strength of your conviction in the trade and allocate a position size accordingly: https://preview.redd.it/q2ea6rgae5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=4332cb8d0bbbc3d8db972c1f28e8189105393e5b To keep yourself disciplined you should try to ensure that no more than one in twenty trades are graded exceptional and allocated 5% of account balance risk. It really should be a rare moment when all the stars align for you. Notice that the nice thing about dealing in percentages is that it scales. Say you start out with $100,000 but end the year up 50% at $150,000. Now a 1% bet will risk $1,500 rather than $1,000. That makes sense as your capital has grown. It is extremely common for retail accounts to blow-up by making only 4-5 losing trades because they are leveraged at 50:1 and have taken on far too large a position, relative to their account balance. Consider that GBPUSD tends to move 1% each day. If you have an account balance of $10k then it would be crazy to take a position of $500k (50:1 leveraged). A 1% move on $500k is $5k. Two perfectly regular down days in a row — or a single day’s move of 2% — and you will receive a margin call from the broker, have the account closed out, and have lost all your money. Do not let this happen to you. Use position sizing discipline to protect yourself.
Kelly Criterion
If you’re wondering - why “about 2%” per trade? - that’s a fair question. Why not 0.5% or 10% or any other number? The Kelly Criterion is a formula that was adapted for use in casinos. If you know the odds of winning and the expected pay-off, it tells you how much you should bet in each round. This is harder than it sounds. Let’s say you could bet on a weighted coin flip, where it lands on heads 60% of the time and tails 40% of the time. The payout is $2 per $1 bet. Well, absolutely you should bet. The odds are in your favour. But if you have, say, $100 it is less obvious how much you should bet to avoid ruin. Say you bet $50, the odds that it could land on tails twice in a row are 16%. You could easily be out after the first two flips. Equally, betting $1 is not going to maximise your advantage. The odds are 60/40 in your favour so only betting $1 is likely too conservative. The Kelly Criterion is a formula that produces the long-run optimal bet size, given the odds. Applying the formula to forex trading looks like this: Position size % = Winning trade % - ( (1- Winning trade %) / Risk-reward ratio If you have recorded hundreds of trades in your journal - see next chapter - you can calculate what this outputs for you specifically. If you don't have hundreds of trades then let’s assume some realistic defaults of Winning trade % being 30% and Risk-reward ratio being 3. The 3 implies your TP is 3x the distance of your stop from entry e.g. 300 pips take profit and 100 pips stop loss. So that’s 0.3 - (1 - 0.3) / 3 = 6.6%. Hold on a second. 6.6% of your account probably feels like a LOT to risk per trade.This is the main observation people have on Kelly: whilst it may optimise the long-run results it doesn’t take into account the pain of drawdowns. It is better thought of as the rational maximum limit. You needn’t go right up to the limit! With a 30% winning trade ratio, the odds of you losing on four trades in a row is nearly one in four. That would result in a drawdown of nearly a quarter of your starting account balance. Could you really stomach that and put on the fifth trade, cool as ice? Most of us could not. Accordingly people tend to reduce the bet size. For example, let’s say you know you would feel emotionally affected by losing 25% of your account. Well, the simplest way is to divide the Kelly output by four. You have effectively hidden 75% of your account balance from Kelly and it is now optimised to avoid a total wipeout of just the 25% it can see. This gives 6.6% / 4 = 1.65%. Of course different trading approaches and different risk appetites will provide different optimal bet sizes but as a rule of thumb something between 1-2% is appropriate for the style and risk appetite of most retail traders. Incidentally be very wary of systems or traders who claim high winning trade % like 80%. Invariably these don’t pass a basic sense-check:
How many live trades have you done? Often they’ll have done only a handful of real trades and the rest are simulated backtests, which are overfitted. The model will soon die.
What is your risk-reward ratio on each trade? If you have a take profit $3 away and a stop loss $100 away, of course most trades will be winners. You will not be making money, however! In general most traders should trade smaller position sizes and less frequently than they do. If you are going to bias one way or the other, far better to start off too small.
How to use stop losses sensibly
Stop losses have a bad reputation amongst the retail community but are absolutely essential to risk management. No serious discretionary trader can operate without them. A stop loss is a resting order, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price. For a recap on the various order types visit this chapter. The valid concern with stop losses is that disreputable brokers look for a concentration of stops and then, when the market is close, whipsaw the price through the stop levels so that the clients ‘stop out’ and sell to the broker at a low rate before the market naturally comes back higher. This is referred to as ‘stop hunting’. This would be extremely immoral behaviour and the way to guard against it is to use a highly reputable top-tier broker in a well regulated region such as the UK. Why are stop losses so important? Well, there is no other way to manage risk with certainty. You should always have a pre-determined stop loss before you put on a trade. Not having one is a recipe for disaster: you will find yourself emotionally attached to the trade as it goes against you and it will be extremely hard to cut the loss. This is a well known behavioural bias that we’ll explore in a later chapter. Learning to take a loss and move on rationally is a key lesson for new traders. A common mistake is to think of the market as a personal nemesis. The market, of course, is totally impersonal; it doesn’t care whether you make money or not. Bruce Kovner, founder of the hedge fund Caxton Associates There is an old saying amongst bank traders which is “losers average losers”. It is tempting, having bought EURUSD and seeing it go lower, to buy more. Your average price will improve if you keep buying as it goes lower. If it was cheap before it must be a bargain now, right? Wrong. Where does that end? Always have a pre-determined cut-off point which limits your risk. A level where you know the reason for the trade was proved ‘wrong’ ... and stick to it strictly. If you trade using discretion, use stops.
Picking a clear level
Where you leave your stop loss is key. Typically traders will leave them at big technical levels such as recent highs or lows. For example if EURUSD is trading at 1.1250 and the recent month’s low is 1.1205 then leaving it just below at 1.1200 seems sensible. If you were going long, just below the double bottom support zone seems like a sensible area to leave a stop You want to give it a bit of breathing room as we know support zones often get challenged before the price rallies. This is because lots of traders identify the same zones. You won’t be the only one selling around 1.1200. The “weak hands” who leave their sell stop order at exactly the level are likely to get taken out as the market tests the support. Those who leave it ten or fifteen pips below the level have more breathing room and will survive a quick test of the level before a resumed run-up. Your timeframe and trading style clearly play a part. Here’s a candlestick chart (one candle is one day) for GBPUSD. https://preview.redd.it/moyngdy4f5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=91af88da00dd3a09e202880d8029b0ddf04fb802 If you are putting on a trend-following trade you expect to hold for weeks then you need to have a stop loss that can withstand the daily noise. Look at the downtrend on the chart. There were plenty of days in which the price rallied 60 pips or more during the wider downtrend. So having a really tight stop of, say, 25 pips that gets chopped up in noisy short-term moves is not going to work for this kind of trade. You need to use a wider stop and take a smaller position size, determined by the stop level. There are several tools you can use to help you estimate what is a safe distance and we’ll look at those in the next section. There are of course exceptions. For example, if you are doing range-break style trading you might have a really tight stop, set just below the previous range high. https://preview.redd.it/ygy0tko7f5h51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=34af49da61c911befdc0db26af66f6c313556c81 Clearly then where you set stops will depend on your trading style as well as your holding horizons and the volatility of each instrument. Here are some guidelines that can help:
Use technical analysis to pick important levels (support, resistance, previous high/lows, moving averages etc.) as these provide clear exit and entry points on a trade.
Ensure that the stop gives your trade enough room to breathe and reflects your timeframe and typical volatility of each pair. See next section.
Always pick your stop level first. Then use a calculator to determine the appropriate lot size for the position, based on the % of your account balance you wish to risk on the trade.
So far we have talked about price-based stops. There is another sort which is more of a fundamental stop, used alongside - not instead of - price stops. If either breaks you’re out. For example if you stop understanding why a product is going up or down and your fundamental thesis has been confirmed wrong, get out. For example, if you are long because you think the central bank is turning hawkish and AUDUSD is going to play catch up with rates … then you hear dovish noises from the central bank and the bond yields retrace lower and back in line with the currency - close your AUDUSD position. You already know your thesis was wrong. No need to give away more money to the market.
Coming up in part II
EDIT: part II here Letting stops breathe When to change a stop Entering and exiting winning positions Risk:reward ratios Risk-adjusted returns
Coming up in part III
Squeezes and other risks Market positioning Bet correlation Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits *** Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
Real Supply & Demand in FOREX with Precision Part Two
So yesterday I created the first part to the 'post' Today I'll continue it. All markets, equities, cars, widgets, groceries, bonds and even forex are driven by volume. Without volume there is no movement as it's the market maker to entice the trader to aggressively buy or sell based upon their sentiments of direction. So let's first put into perspective market sentiment and what it is for this posts purpose. Sentiment is the psychological pressure of trader expectations in movement. It's visible through intermarket analysis and even some indexes when the indexes are properly cross referenced. But sentiment is visible even when candles stop their climb or when buying pressure supports the prices on an attempt to move lower. What comes after sentiment builds it's pressure is the path of least resistance and that's really what the markets are doing. Following the path of least resistance with volume as the rivers boundaries. Volume in foreign exchange is real. Retail traders think that because the market is decentralized that volume isn't available. Well, the broker you connect to, and the prime broker or bank that they connect to, they source their pricing with risk management modules by analyzing aggregated volume. Aggregation is a grouping of FX liquidity streams (that all include volume levels) into one hub of liquidity housed inside a limit order book. Volume is not made available to you though. It's the playground of the banks and if you're going to have access to a tool that allows the masses to dilute their returns do you think they would let you have it freely? Nope! They would though lobby for laws (Dodd-Frank, FIFO etc etc come to mind here) they all make it more difficult for you to trade!!!! Opacity!!! But volume is very real, it only needs proper aggregation! So how do we find valuable opportunities when studying the charts? First off, if you study the charts alone you're doing yourself a great disservice! EURUSD in any time frame is just a representation of a relationship between two currencies. You need to study the value of the underlying currencies! What that provides you is precision entries. Let's call the entry on Candle 12 (an arbitrary number). On candle 12 you see USDCHF spike higher, that would indicate that EURUSD is going to drop 96% of the time! Oh a little insight! So you take a position short EURUSD on candle 12 in expectation that the relationship between the two currencies is going to go lower because of the strength in the Dollar. But remember, exchange rate fluctuation is the path of least resistance. So at the point where you have found your entry short in EURUSD, there is the opposite consideration. What if I am wrong? What it if goes the other way? At what price would it show me the opposite direction and how long do I have to wait to confirm a reversal? Candle 12 is magical. It tells you what you need. You see, in ALL instances, extremes high or lows of charts are seen by changes in what's called bid/ask bounce. When bid ask bounce is breached it's giving you sentiment, volume and price all shifting directions. If candle 12 is the candle short, then the high immediately prior to candle 12 is your reversal point! I guarantee you this is the intersection of buyers and sellers, and when one defeats the other the market changes direction. This is true for all of the entries here, if price reversed before it reached a profitable exit then the reverse would in fact be at the opposite extreme prior to the entry candle. So we go back and visit the adage buy low/sell high but what happens in between? Proper analysis is an active participation. And just as your analysis says you should buy or sell, your analysis should also tell you how the market is reacting in the middle. If there's no change or breach in bid/ask bounce the trend is still moving. In the attached chart. When an entry signal is confirmed, the immediate high or low prior to that entry becomes the exact reversal point. (I have circled them in yellow) In most of the opportunities shown that stop loss is a mere 2.2 pips away from the entry price and there are no reversals that were required and all signals were profitably identified. No I did not trade them, this is live analysis that runs continually. Of all the signals there is ONE blue X in the center region of the chart that almost gave a sell signal but price pressures remained in tact and thus bullish. The analysis identifies over 100 pips in movement within a range of 35 pips overall. And none of it with lagging analysis. With proper analysis, you can maximize your returns by comprehensively understanding all market conditions. You'll minimize your losing trades to negligible frequencies, your gains will be maximized and you'll see precisely how the market moves, turns, breathes and follows the path of least resistance. Now my purpose here is to develop market transparency for the little guy. Sure my posts attract trolls because the trolls have been burned by their own trading ignorance. So they attack those that strive for and deliver something better, in fact most of them don't know how to trade to save their life and that's their anger. I could show you a few of them who have had accounts with companies I advise or am principal of - but there are privacy rights to respect. Do I do this free? On here of course. Is it a business? I've spent over a million dollars in just research, but when I experienced how expensive it was to obtain true transparency I knew there were benefits to providing this information to retail traders. https://preview.redd.it/367rn2d6p3s51.jpg?width=1345&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e99e1604a078b6aa0916f32be91ce16bc5196320
Former investment bank FX trader: Risk management part 3/3
Welcome to the third and final part of this chapter. Thank you all for the 100s of comments and upvotes - maybe this post will take us above 1,000 for this topic! Keep any feedback or questions coming in the replies below. Before you read this note, please start with Part I and then Part II so it hangs together and makes sense. Part III
Squeezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits
Squeezes and other risks
We are going to cover three common risks that traders face: events; squeezes, asymmetric bets.
Events
Economic releases can cause large short-term volatility. The most famous is Non Farm Payrolls, which is the most widely watched measure of US employment levels and affects the price of many instruments.On an NFP announcement currencies like EURUSD might jump (or drop) 100 pips no problem. This is fine and there are trading strategies that one may employ around this but the key thing is to be aware of these releases.You can find economic calendars all over the internet - including on this site - and you need only check if there are any major releases each day or week. For example, if you are trading off some intraday chart and scalping a few pips here and there it would be highly sensible to go into a known data release flat as it is pure coin-toss and not the reason for your trading. It only takes five minutes each day to plan for the day ahead so do not get caught out by this. Many retail traders get stopped out on such events when price volatility is at its peak.
Squeezes
Short squeezes bring a lot of danger and perhaps some opportunity. The story of VW and Porsche is the best short squeeze ever. Throughout these articles we've used FX examples wherever possible but in this one instance the concept (which is also highly relevant in FX) is best illustrated with an historical lesson from a different asset class. A short squeeze is when a participant ends up in a short position they are forced to cover. Especially when the rest of the market knows that this participant can be bullied into stopping out at terrible levels, provided the market can briefly drive the price into their pain zone. There's a reason for the car, don't worry Hedge funds had been shorting VW stock. However the amount of VW stock available to buy in the open market was actually quite limited. The local government owned a chunk and Porsche itself had bought and locked away around 30%. Neither of these would sell to the hedge-funds so a good amount of the stock was un-buyable at any price. If you sell or short a stock you must be prepared to buy it back to go flat at some point. To cut a long story short, Porsche bought a lot of call options on VW stock. These options gave them the right to purchase VW stock from banks at slightly above market price. Eventually the banks who had sold these options realised there was no VW stock to go out and buy since the German government wouldn’t sell its allocation and Porsche wouldn’t either. If Porsche called in the options the banks were in trouble. Porsche called in the options which forced the shorts to buy stock - at whatever price they could get it. The price squeezed higher as those that were short got massively squeezed and stopped out. For one brief moment in 2008, VW was the world’s most valuable company. Shorts were burned hard. Incredible event Porsche apparently made $11.5 billion on the trade. The BBC described Porsche as “a hedge fund with a carmaker attached.” If this all seems exotic then know that the same thing happens in FX all the time. If everyone in the market is talking about a key level in EURUSD being 1.2050 then you can bet the market will try to push through 1.2050 just to take out any short stops at that level. Whether it then rallies higher or fails and trades back lower is a different matter entirely. This brings us on to the matter of crowded trades. We will look at positioning in more detail in the next section. Crowded trades are dangerous for PNL. If everyone believes EURUSD is going down and has already sold EURUSD then you run the risk of a short squeeze. For additional selling to take place you need a very good reason for people to add to their position whereas a move in the other direction could force mass buying to cover their shorts. A trading mentor when I worked at the investment bank once advised me: Always think about which move would cause the maximum people the maximum pain. That move is precisely what you should be watching out for at all times.
Asymmetric losses
Also known as picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. This risk has caught out many a retail trader. Sometimes it is referred to as a "negative skew" strategy. Ideally what you are looking for is asymmetric risk trade set-ups: that is where the downside is clearly defined and smaller than the upside. What you want to avoid is the opposite. A famous example of this going wrong was the Swiss National Bank de-peg in 2012. The Swiss National Bank had said they would defend the price of EURCHF so that it did not go below 1.2. Many people believed it could never go below 1.2 due to this. Many retail traders therefore opted for a strategy that some describe as ‘picking up pennies in front of a steam-roller’. They would would buy EURCHF above the peg level and hope for a tiny rally of several pips before selling them back and keep doing this repeatedly. Often they were highly leveraged at 100:1 so that they could amplify the profit of the tiny 5-10 pip rally. Then this happened. Something that changed FX markets forever The SNB suddenly did the unthinkable. They stopped defending the price. CHF jumped and so EURCHF (the number of CHF per 1 EUR) dropped to new lows very fast. Clearly, this trade had horrific risk : reward asymmetry: you risked 30% to make 0.05%. Other strategies like naively selling options have the same result. You win a small amount of money each day and then spectacularly blow up at some point down the line.
Market positioning
We have talked about short squeezes. But how do you know what the market position is? And should you care? Let’s start with the first. You should definitely care. Let’s imagine the entire market is exceptionally long EURUSD and positioning reaches extreme levels. This makes EURUSD very vulnerable. To keep the price going higher EURUSD needs to attract fresh buy orders. If everyone is already long and has no room to add, what can incentivise people to keep buying? The news flow might be good. They may believe EURUSD goes higher. But they have already bought and have their maximum position on. On the flip side, if there’s an unexpected event and EURUSD gaps lower you will have the entire market trying to exit the position at the same time. Like a herd of cows running through a single doorway. Messy. We are going to look at this in more detail in a later chapter, where we discuss ‘carry’ trades. For now this TRYJPY chart might provide some idea of what a rush to the exits of a crowded position looks like. A carry trade position clear-out in action Knowing if the market is currently at extreme levels of long or short can therefore be helpful. The CFTC makes available a weekly report, which details the overall positions of speculative traders “Non Commercial Traders” in some of the major futures products. This includes futures tied to deliverable FX pairs such as EURUSD as well as products such as gold. The report is called “CFTC Commitments of Traders” ("COT"). This is a great benchmark. It is far more representative of the overall market than the proprietary ones offered by retail brokers as it covers a far larger cross-section of the institutional market. Generally market participants will not pay a lot of attention to commercial hedgers, which are also detailed in the report. This data is worth tracking but these folks are simply hedging real-world transactions rather than speculating so their activity is far less revealing and far more noisy. You can find the data online for free and download it directly here. Raw format is kinda hard to work with However, many websites will chart this for you free of charge and you may find it more convenient to look at it that way. Just google “CFTC positioning charts”. But you can easily get visualisations You can visually spot extreme positioning. It is extremely powerful. Bear in mind the reports come out Friday afternoon US time and the report is a snapshot up to the prior Tuesday. That means it is a lagged report - by the time it is released it is a few days out of date. For longer term trades where you hold positions for weeks this is of course still pretty helpful information. As well as the absolute level (is the speculative market net long or short) you can also use this to pick up on changes in positioning. For example if bad news comes out how much does the net short increase? If good news comes out, the market may remain net short but how much did they buy back? A lot of traders ask themselves “Does the market have this trade on?” The positioning data is a good method for answering this. It provides a good finger on the pulse of the wider market sentiment and activity. For example you might say: “There was lots of noise about the good employment numbers in the US. However, there wasn’t actually a lot of position change on the back of it. Maybe everyone who wants to buy already has. What would happen now if bad news came out?” In general traders will be wary of entering a crowded position because it will be hard to attract additional buyers or sellers and there could be an aggressive exit. If you want to enter a trade that is showing extreme levels of positioning you must think carefully about this dynamic.
Bet correlation
Retail traders often drastically underestimate how correlated their bets are. Through bitter experience, I have learned that a mistake in position correlation is the root of some of the most serious problems in trading. If you have eight highly correlated positions, then you are really trading one position that is eight times as large. Bruce Kovner of hedge fund, Caxton Associates For example, if you are trading a bunch of pairs against the USD you will end up with a simply huge USD exposure. A single USD-trigger can ruin all your bets. Your ideal scenario — and it isn’t always possible — would be to have a highly diversified portfolio of bets that do not move in tandem. Look at this chart. Inverted USD index (DXY) is green. AUDUSD is orange. EURUSD is blue. Chart from TradingView So the whole thing is just one big USD trade! If you are long AUDUSD, long EURUSD, and short DXY you have three anti USD bets that are all likely to work or fail together. The more diversified your portfolio of bets are, the more risk you can take on each. There’s a really good video, explaining the benefits of diversification from Ray Dalio. A systematic fund with access to an investable universe of 10,000 instruments has more opportunity to make a better risk-adjusted return than a trader who only focuses on three symbols. Diversification really is the closest thing to a free lunch in finance. But let’s be pragmatic and realistic. Human retail traders don’t have capacity to run even one hundred bets at a time. More realistic would be an average of 2-3 trades on simultaneously. So what can be done? For example:
You might diversify across time horizons by having a mix of short-term and long-term trades.
You might diversify across asset classes - trading some FX but also crypto and equities.
You might diversify your trade generation approach so you are not relying on the same indicators or drivers on each trade.
You might diversify your exposure to the market regime by having some trades that assume a trend will continue (momentum) and some that assume we will be range-bound (carry).
And so on. Basically you want to scan your portfolio of trades and make sure you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. If some trades underperform others will perform - assuming the bets are not correlated - and that way you can ensure your overall portfolio takes less risk per unit of return. The key thing is to start thinking about a portfolio of bets and what each new trade offers to your existing portfolio of risk. Will it diversify or amplify a current exposure?
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits
One common mistake is to get bored and restless and put on crap trades. This just means trades in which you have low conviction. It is perfectly fine not to trade. If you feel like you do not understand the market at a particular point, simply choose not to trade. Flat is a position. Do not waste your bullets on rubbish trades. Only enter a trade when you have carefully considered it from all angles and feel good about the risk. This will make it far easier to hold onto the trade if it moves against you at any point. You actually believe in it. Equally, you need to set monthly limits. A standard limit might be a 10% account balance stop per month. At that point you close all your positions immediately and stop trading till next month. Be strict with yourself and walk away Let’s assume you started the year with $100k and made 5% in January so enter Feb with $105k balance. Your stop is therefore 10% of $105k or $10.5k . If your account balance dips to $94.5k ($105k-$10.5k) then you stop yourself out and don’t resume trading till March the first. Having monthly calendar breaks is nice for another reason. Say you made a load of money in January. You don’t want to start February feeling you are up 5% or it is too tempting to avoid trading all month and protect the existing win. Each month and each year should feel like a clean slate and an independent period. Everyone has trading slumps. It is perfectly normal. It will definitely happen to you at some stage. The trick is to take a break and refocus. Conserve your capital by not trading a lot whilst you are on a losing streak. This period will be much harder for you emotionally and you’ll end up making suboptimal decisions. An enforced break will help you see the bigger picture. Put in place a process before you start trading and then it’ll be easy to follow and will feel much less emotional. Remember: the market doesn’t care if you win or lose, it is nothing personal. When your head has cooled and you feel calm you return the next month and begin the task of building back your account balance.
That's a wrap on risk management
Thanks for taking time to read this three-part chapter on risk management. I hope you enjoyed it. Do comment in the replies if you have any questions or feedback. Remember: the most important part of trading is not making money. It is not losing money. Always start with that principle. I hope these three notes have provided some food for thought on how you might approach risk management and are of practical use to you when trading. Avoiding mistakes is not a sexy tagline but it is an effective and reliable way to improve results. Next up I will be writing about an exciting topic I think many traders should look at rather differently: news trading. Please follow on here to receive notifications and the broad outline is below. News Trading Part I
Introduction
Why use the economic calendar
Reading the economic calendar
Knowing what's priced in
Surveys
Interest rates
First order thinking vs second order thinking
News Trading Part II
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
Data surprise index
Using recent events to predict future reactions
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
The mysterious 'position trim' effect
Reversals
Some key FX releases
*** Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
From the first half of the news trading note we learned some ways to estimate what is priced in by the market. We learned that we are trading any gap in market expectations rather than the result itself. A good result when the market expected a fantastic result is disappointing! We also looked at second order thinking. After all that, I hope the reaction of prices to events is starting to make more sense to you. Before you understand the core concepts of pricing in and second order thinking, price reactions to events can seem mystifying at times We'll add one thought-provoking quote. Keynes (that rare economist who also managed institutional money) offered this analogy. He compared selecting investments to a beauty contest in which newspaper readers would write in with their votes and win a prize if their votes most closely matched the six most popularly selected women across all readers: It is not a case of choosing those (faces) which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinions genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. Trading is no different. You are trying to anticipate how other traders will react to news and how that will move prices. Perhaps you disagree with their reaction. Still, if you can anticipate what it will be you would be sensible to act upon it. Don't forget: meanwhile they are also trying to anticipate what you and everyone else will do. Part II
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
Data surprise index
Using recent events to predict future reactions
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
The trimming position effect
Reversals
Some key FX releases
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
The majority of releases are quantitative. All that means is there’s some number. Like unemployment figures or GDP. Historic results provide interesting context. We are looking below the Australian unemployment rate which is released monthly. If you plot it out a few years back you can spot a clear trend, which got massively reversed. Knowing this trend gives you additional information when the figure is released. In the same way prices can trend so do economic data. A great resource that's totally free to use This makes sense: if for example things are getting steadily better in the economy you’d expect to see unemployment steadily going down. Knowing the trend and how much noise there is in the data gives you an informational edge over lazy traders. For example, when we see the spike above 6% on the above you’d instantly know it was crazy and a huge trading opportunity since a) the fluctuations month on month are normally tiny and b) it is a huge reversal of the long-term trend. Would all the other AUDUSD traders know and react proportionately? If not and yet they still trade, their laziness may be an opportunity for more informed traders to make some money. Tradingeconomics.com offers really high quality analysis. You can see all the major indicators for each country. Clicking them brings up their history as well as an explanation of what they show. For example, here’s German Consumer Confidence. Helpful context There are also qualitative events. Normally these are speeches by Central Bankers. There are whole blogs dedicated to closely reading such texts and looking for subtle changes in direction or opinion on the economy. Stuff like how often does the phrase "in a good place" come up when the Chair of the Fed speaks. It is pretty dry stuff. Yet these are leading indicators of how each member may vote to set interest rates. Ed Yardeni is the go-to guy on central banks.
Data surprise index
The other thing you might look at is something investment banks produce for their customers. A data surprise index. I am not sure if these are available in retail land - there's no reason they shouldn't be but the economic calendars online are very basic. You’ll remember we talked about data not being good or bad of itself but good or bad relative to what was expected. These indices measure this difference. If results are consistently better than analysts expect then you’ll see a positive number. If they are consistently worse than analysts expect a negative number. You can see they tend to swing from positive to negative. Mean reversion at its best! Data surprise indices measure how much better or worse data came in vs forecast There are many theories for this but in general people consider that analysts herd around the consensus. They are scared to be outliers and look ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid’ so they instead place estimates close to the pack of their peers. When economic conditions change they may therefore be slow to update. When they are wrong consistently - say too bearish - they eventually flip the other way and become too bullish. These charts can be interesting to give you an idea of how the recent data releases have been versus market expectations. You may try to spot the turning points in macroeconomic data that drive long term currency prices and trends.
Using recent events to predict future reactions
The market reaction function is the most important thing on an economic calendar in many ways. It means: what will happen to the price if the data is better or worse than the market expects? That seems easy to answer but it is not. Consider the example of consumer confidence we had earlier.
Many times the market will shrug and ignore it.
But when the economic recovery is predicated on a strong consumer it may move markets a lot.
Or consider the S&P index of US stocks (Wall Street).
If you get good economic data that beats analyst estimates surely it should go up? Well, sometimes that is certainly the case.
But good economic data might result in the US Central Bank raising interest rates. Raising interest rates will generally make the stock market go down!
So better than expected data could make the S&P go up (“the economy is great”) or down (“the Fed is more likely to raise rates”). It depends. The market can interpret the same data totally differently at different times. One clue is to look at what happened to the price of risk assets at the last event. For example, let’s say we looked at unemployment and it came in a lot worse than forecast last month. What happened to the S&P back then? 2% drop last time on a 'worse than expected' number ... so it it is 'better than expected' best guess is we rally 2% higher So this tells us that - at least for our most recent event - the S&P moved 2% lower on a far worse than expected number. This gives us some guidance as to what it might do next time and the direction. Bad number = lower S&P. For a huge surprise 2% is the size of move we’d expect. Again - this is a real limitation of online calendars. They should show next to the historic results (expected/actual) the reaction of various instruments.
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
A final example of an unpredictable reaction relates to the old rule of ‘Buy the rumour, sell the fact.’ This captures the tendency for markets to anticipate events and then reverse when they occur. Buy the rumour, sell the fact In short: people take profit and close their positions when what they expected to happen is confirmed. So we have to decide which driver is most important to the market at any point in time. You obviously cannot ask every participant. The best way to do it is to look at what happened recently. Look at the price action during recent releases and you will get a feel for how much the market moves and in which direction.
Trimming or taking off positions
One thing to note is that events sometimes give smart participants information about positioning. This is because many traders take off or reduce positions ahead of big news events for risk management purposes. Imagine we see GBPUSD rises in the hour before GDP release. That probably indicates the market is short and has taken off / flattened its positions. The price action before an event can tell you about speculative positioning If GDP is merely in line with expectations those same people are likely to add back their positions. They avoided a potential banana skin. This is why sometimes the market moves on an event that seemingly was bang on consensus. But you have learned something. The speculative market is short and may prove vulnerable to a squeeze.
Two kinds of reversals
Fairly often you’ll see the market move in one direction on a release then turn around and go the other way. These are known as reversals. Traders will often ‘fade’ a move, meaning bet against it and expect it to reverse.
Logical reversals
Sometimes this happens when the data looks good at first glance but the details don’t support it. For example, say the headline is very bullish on German manufacturing numbers but then a minute later it becomes clear the company who releases the data has changed methodology or believes the number is driven by a one-off event. Or maybe the headline number is positive but buried in the detail there is a very negative revision to previous numbers. Fading the initial spike is one way to trade news. Try looking at what the price action is one minute after the event and thirty minutes afterwards on historic releases.
Crazy reversals
Some reversals don't make sense Sometimes a reversal happens for seemingly no fundamental reason. Say you get clearly positive news that is better than anyone expects. There are no caveats to the positive number. Yet the price briefly spikes up and then falls hard. What on earth? This is a pure supply and demand thing. Even on bullish news the market cannot sustain a rally. The market is telling you it wants to sell this asset. Try not to get in its way.
Some key releases
As we have already discussed, different releases are important at different times. However, we’ll look at some consistently important ones in this final section.
Interest rates decisions
These can sometimes be unscheduled. However, normally the decisions are announced monthly. The exact process varies for each central bank. Typically there’s a headline decision e.g. maintain 0.75% rate. You may also see “minutes” of the meeting in which the decision was reached and a vote tally e.g. 7 for maintain, 2 for lower rates. These are always top-tier data releases and have capacity to move the currency a lot. A hawkish central bank (higher rates) will tend to move a currency higher whilst a dovish central bank (lower rates) will tend to move a currency lower. A central banker speaking is always a big event
Non farm payrolls
These are released once per month. This is another top-tier release that will move all USD pairs as well as equities. There are three numbers:
The headline number of jobs created (bigger is better)
The unemployment rate (smaller is better)
Average hourly earnings (depends)
Bear in mind these headline numbers are often off by around 75,000. If a report comes in +/- 25,000 of the forecast, that is probably a non event. In general a positive response should move the USD higher but check recent price action. Other countries each have their own unemployment data releases but this is the single most important release.
Surveys
There are various types of surveys: consumer confidence; house price expectations; purchasing managers index etc. Each one basically asks a group of people if they expect to make more purchases or activity in their area of expertise to rise. There are so many we won’t go into each one here. A really useful tool is the tradingeconomics.com economic indicators for each country. You can see all the major indicators and an explanation of each plus the historic results.
GDP
Gross Domestic Product is another big release. It is a measure of how much a country’s economy is growing. In general the market focuses more on ‘advance’ GDP forecasts more than ‘final’ numbers, which are often released at the same time. This is because the final figures are accurate but by the time they come around the market has already seen all the inputs. The advance figure tends to be less accurate but incorporates new information that the market may not have known before the release. In general a strong GDP number is good for the domestic currency.
Inflation
Countries tend to release measures of inflation (increase in prices) each month. These releases are important mainly because they may influence the future decisions of the central bank, when setting the interest rate. See the FX fundamentals section for more details.
Industrial data
Things like factory orders or or inventory levels. These can provide a leading indicator of the strength of the economy. These numbers can be extremely volatile. This is because a one-off large order can drive the numbers well outside usual levels. Pay careful attention to previous releases so you have a sense of how noisy each release is and what kind of moves might be expected.
Comments
Often there is really good stuff in the comments/replies. Check out 'squitstoomuch' for some excellent observations on why some news sources are noisy but early (think: Twitter, ZeroHedge). The Softbank story is a good recent example: was in ZeroHedge a day before the FT but the market moved on the FT. Also an interesting comment on mistakes, which definitely happen on breaking news, and can cause massive reversals.
What do you all make of the mainstreaming of the market?
There are so many new investors it’s almost staggering! I know this is known, but the scale of it finally caught up to me. My 22 year old nephew is Forex trading, and he didn’t even finish high school. The SoFi sponsored Cowboys game ran an ad claiming to give away free stock if your team wins....like fucking pizza!! The fully mainstreamed free trades and fractional shares. What in the world is this shit? CashApp has investing. Everybody I know is talking about this thing...as if it’s a brand new toy they just discovered! It reminds me of all those companies trying to buy up our gold before the 08 crash. As if they’re trying to get all the cash before we go to a new and fully digital currency (like the corporate fascist shit that’s been happening in India the past few years). On a more pertinent note, how has this changed your outlook on trading, investing and price targets? I mean if we are all now playing to the least common denominator of the hyped up FOMO and short sighted illogic of the masses, doesn’t this substantially change the game? And the ripple effects will be huge! For example: an already defunct, decontextualized, profit based media system will be pumping out market related garbage for clicks, and this could drastically increase prices (or at least volatility)...as if it already hasn’t. Schwab has a new warning ⚠️ note posted to their site about volatility being the “new normal”. Sure it may just be the recession-like/Covid situation we’re in...OR this could really be the new normal when the markets are completely mainstream. ...and we haven’t even mentioned the Fed...and I’m not going to. I really just feel like the game may be permanently changed. And if you pit Joe Blow against JP Morgan, that spells disaster for even more people. Thoughts?
For a quick, easier search - http://www.isthisanmlm.com/ has compiled this whole thread. Special thanks to u/SHIFTnSPACE. - This is now a part of the sidebar as a button widget!
What is an MLM?
Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called pyramid selling, network marketing, and referral marketing, is a marketing strategy for the sale of products or services where the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling the company's products/services, while the earnings of the participants are derived from a pyramid-shaped or binary compensation commission system. THIS LIST MAY CONTAIN COMPANIES THAT HAVE PREVIOUSLY HAD MLM BRANCH BUT MAY NO LONGER HAVE ONE. If you see a company and are not sure that it belongs on this list, please reach out. I have compiled this list from the sources listed at the bottom along with input from community members. This list may not be 100% accurate but the goal is to get it as close as possible. 31 - Bags 5Linx - Home & Business Services Abby & Anna - Clothing ACAN Pacific - Utilities ACN - Utilities ActiLabs - Skincare/Health Adornable.U - Accessories Advocare - Dietary Supplements AeroGrow - Garden Tools Agnes & Dora - Clothing AIM Global - Nutritional Supplements Akasuka (Japan) - Alcone - Beauty Alice's Table - Flower Arrangement Classes All'asta - Home Goods Allysian Sciences - Aloe Vera of America (Young Living) - Nutritional Supplements Aloette - Beauty Alphay Int - Nutritional Supplements AlureVe - Skincare/Health Amare Global - Nutritional Supplements Ambit - Utilities Amelia James - Ameo - Essential Oils American Income Life - Financial Amsoil - Motor Oil Amway - Health/Beauty/Home Goods Ann Summers - Product Ann Summers (UK) - Adult Novelties Anorak (UK) - Home Goods Anran (China) - Apollo (India) - Juice Apriori - Skincare/Health AquaSource UK - Nutritional Supplements Arbonne - Skincare/Health ARIIX - Water Purification Arsoa Honsha (Japan) - Fitness/Weight Loss Asea Global - Nutritional Supplements Asirvia (shut down) - Marketing Aspire/Digital Altitude - Marketing ATC Coin - Crypto Currency Athena's - Adult Novelties Atomy - Skincare/Health Ava Anderson - Ava Rose - Clot Avisae - Weight Loss Avon - Beauty b:hip Global - Health Bachar Nutrition - Nutritional Supplements Bamboo Pink - Jewelry Barefoot Books - Books Bath.Ologie - Bath Bombs Beach Body - Fitness/Weight Loss Videos BearCereju (Japan) - Cosmetics BeautiControl - Beauty Counter - Cosmetics Beauty Society - Beauty beCAUSE Cosmetics - Cosmetics Become International (US & AUS) - Cosmetics Bedroom Kandi - Adult Novelties Beever (UK) - Hair Care BelCorp (Latin America) - Cosmetics Bellame - Skincare/Health Bemer - Appliances Better Way Design/Imports - Clothing Biogreen Argentina - BioPerformance - Automotive (Fuel Pills) Bod-e Pro - Nutritional Supplements Body by Vi/Visalus - Health Body Shop at Home - Beauty Boisset Collection - Wine Boston Finney (shut down) - Bounce Life/Network - Insurance Bud Star (Canada) - CBD/THC Products BurnLounge (shut down as pyramid scheme by FTC in 2012) - Buskins - Clothing Butterfly Beauty - Cosmetics Cabi - Clothing Cambridge Weight Plan/Diet - Dietary Supplements CAN - Utilities Captain Tortue - Clothing Carico Int - Home Goods Celebrating Home - Home Goods Cellements - Skincare/Health CEO Movement (Not MLM but scammy) - Chalk Couture - Chalkboard Signs Chalky & Co - Home Goods Chandeal (Japan) - Clothing Charle (Japan) - Clothing Charlie's Project - Clothing Chef's Toolbox (AUS) (Insolvency) - Kitchen Accessories Cherish Natural Products - Chloe & Isabel - Jewelry Clever Container - Home Goods Close to My Heart - Scrapbooking Cloud 9 Parties - Adult Novelties Cobra Group/Appco - Cocoa Exchange - Food Color by Amber - Jewelry Color Happy - Color Street - Nail Wraps Colour Me Beautiful (UK) - Clothing Compelling Creations - Jewelry Conklin - Roofing Cookie Lee (shut down) - Cosway (Malaysia) - Health/Beauty/Home Goods Country Scents - Product/Candles Create Your Life - Health Creative Memories - Scrapbooking Credit Repair USA - Financial Crunchi - Cosmetics Cutco - Knives CVSL - Multiple Companies Daisy Blue Naturals - Personal Care Damsel in Defense - Product/Self Defense Darceys - Candles David Lerner Associates, INC - Financial Dazzle and Daze - Clothing Deutsche vermögensberatung/Dvag (Germany) - Financial Diana (Japan) - Dione Cosmetics - Cosmetics Direct Cellars/DC Nation - Wine Discovery Toys - Educational Toys Divvee/Nui - Dot Dot Smile - Clothing DoTERRA - Health/Oils Du Northing Designs - Clothing Dubli Network - Financial Dudley Beauty - Cosmetics DXN - Health/Beauty/Home Goods Dynamic Essentials - EcoWarehouse - Home Goods Elepreneuer - Elk River Soaps - Personal Care Ella Tina - Clothing Elli Kai - Clothing Elvacity - Nutritional Supplements EmGoldEx/Global Intergold - Enagic/Kangen Water - Ionized Water Endless Xpressions - Clothing/Accessories Enersource Int - Nutritional Supplements Enjo (AUS) - Cleaning Producs Envy Jewelry - Jewelry Epicure (Canada) - Food Equinox International (dissolved in 2001) - Ergo (Germany) - Insurance Essante Organics - Essential Bodywear - Clothing European Grouping of Marketing Professionals/CEDIPAC SA (dissolved 1995) - European Home Retail (dissolved 2007) - Evanescence Network - Health EVER Skincare - Skincare/Health Evolution Travel - Product EvolvHealth - Health Faberlic (Russia) - Health/Beauty/Home Goods Family First Life - Insurance Family Heritage Insurance - Insurance Fantasia - Adult Novelties Fantasia (Canada) - Adult Novelties Farmasi - FES Connect - Financial Fibi & Clo - Footwear Fifth Ave Collection - Jewelry First Fitness Nutrition - Dietary Supplements Fit4Mom - Clothing FITTEAM Global - Dietary Supplements Flamingo Paperie - Art Fleuresse - FM World (UK) - For Tails Only - Pet Supplies Forever Living - Health/Oils Forex Education (iMarkets Live branch) - Crypto Forex Entourage - Financial Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (dissolved 2013) - Four Oceans - Health Fragant Jewels - Bathbombs FreeLife - Nutritional Supplements Frontrow - Fuel Freedom Int - Automotive Fund America (Bankrupt 1990) - Gano Excel - Nutritional Supplements GelMoment - Beauty Gemstra - Jewelry Genesis Pure - Nutritional Supplements Global Legacy Initiative - GoDesana - Pet Gold Canyon - Product/Candles Golden Days (China) - Health Grace & Heart - Jewelry Green HoriZen - CBD Greeting Cake Company - Cake Kits H2O At Home - Personal Care Hale - CBD Oil Hanky Panky Parties (Canada) - Adult Novelties Happy Coffee - Coffee Harvard Risk Management (Legal Shield) - Hayward's Gourmet Popcorn - Food HB Naturals - Health He(L)o - Health Healthy Peach - Dietary Supplements Heavenly Chia - Food Heka Corp - Fitness Helo Wristbands - Health HempWorx - Health Herbalife - Health Heritage Makers - Scrapbooking Hinode - Cosmetics Holiday Magic (shut down) - Home Interiors - Home Goods Honey - Beauty Honey & Lace - Clothing Hualin Biotech (China) - Health iCoinPro - Crypto Currency ID Life - Health Igniting Passion (Canada) - Adult Novelties iMarketsLive - Financial Trading Software Immunotec - Health Imperial Candles (UK) - Candles In a Pikle - Bags Income Advantage - India Hicks - Product/Accessories Infinitus - Health Initials, Inc - Bags Inkd Up Nails - Beauty innov8tive nutrition - Nutritional Supplements InteleTravel - Travel Intimo (AUS/NZ) - Adult Novelties Isagenix - Dietary Supplements ItWorks! - Health J. Elizabeth - Clothing J. Hilburn - Clothing J.R Watkins - Jafra - Beauty Jamberry - Beauty Jamby - Clothing Jamie at Home (shut down) - Janice Collection - Home Goods Java Momma - Coffee Javita - Coffee Jbloom - Jewelry Jequiti - Cosmetics Jerky Direct - Jeunesse - Beauty Jewel Kade (31) - Jewelry Jewelscent - Product/Candles JK Apparel (Canada) - Clothing Jordan Essentials - Beauty JoyMain (China) - Health Joyome (Plexus) - Beauty JuicePlus - Nutritional Supplements Jump Natural - Health Kaesar & Blair - Kalaia - Skincare/Health Kalo & Co - Pearl/Jewelry Kangen Water - Kannaway - CBD Oil Karat Bars - Gold Kaszazz - Scrapbooking Keep Collective - Jewelry Keep Me Safe - Cos KETO (Pruvit) - Keto Coffee - Coffee Ketones - Health Kirby - Vacuums Kleeneze - Home Goods Kobold (Vorwerk) - Kyani - Health Labella Baskets - Home Goods Lady Godiva Beauty - Cosmetics Lavylites - Beauty L'BRI - Beauty LeadUp Consulting - Legal Shield - Legal Services LegArt (Canada) - Leggings Legend Age (China) - Legging Army - Clothing Legging Girl - Clothing Lemongrass Spa - Beauty LeReve (Canada) - Cosmetics Le-Vel (Thrive) - Health Lia Sophia (dissolved) - Jewelry Life Abundance - Pet LIFE Leadership - Financial Life Tree World - Food LifeBrook - LifePlus (US/Germany) - Dietary Supplements Life's Abundance - Pet Supplies LifeVantage - Dietary Supplements Lilla Rose - Jewelry Limelife - Skincare/Health Limu - Health Limu - Nutritional Supplements Linen World - Home Goods Lion Crown - Lipsense - Beauty Liv International - Travel Live Sore - Clothing Longabeger Company - Baskets Longrich (China) - Beauty Lorraine Lee Linen - Home Goods Love Winx - Adult Novelties LR Beauty & Health - Beauty LuLaRoe - Clothing Lulu Ave - Jewelry Luminess - Cosmetics Lyconet/Lyoness - Lyoness - Financial M. Global (Jamberry) - Jewelry M. Network - Nutritional Supplements Maelle Beauty - Beauty Magnabilities - Jewelry Magnolia & Vine - Jewelry Makeup Eraser - Cosmetics Man Cave - Kitchen Accessories Mannatech - Dietary Supplements Mark. - Financial Market America - Health/Beauty/Home Goods Marly Ray - Pearl/Jewelry Marvelous Mouse Travels - Travel Mary & Martha - Home Goods MaryKay - Beauty Maskara - Beauty Matilda Jane - Clothing Max & Madeleine - Skincare/Health Maxwell Clothing - Clothing MCA - Financial Medifast - Nutritional Supplements Melaleuca - Health/Beauty/Home Goods Metabolife (dissolved in 2005) - MiA Bath and Body (Closed) - mialisia - Jewelry Miche EU - Accessories Miki (Asia) - Nutritional Supplements MOA Nutrition - Nutritional Supplements Modere - MojiLife - Essential Oils Monat - Hair Care MonaVie (went into foreclosure 2015) - Morinda Bioactives - Personal Care/Dietary Supplements Motives Cosmetics - Cosmetics Multpure - Water My Club 8 - CBD Oil My Daily Choice - Nutritional Supplements My LALA Leggings - Clothing myEcon - Financial National Safety Associates - Dietary Supplements National Wealth Center - Education Natura (Brazil) - Cosmetics Nature Direct (AUS) - Essential Oils Nature's Sunshine Products - Dietary Supplements Neal's Yard Remedies Organic - Beauty NeoLife - Dietary Supplements Neora (Nerium) - Nerium - Skincare/Health NeVetica - Pet Supplies New Era (China) - Nutritional Supplements New U Life - Health Neways - Personal Care Nikken - Noevir - Beauty Nomades - Jewelry Noonday Collection - Jewelry Norwex - Cleaning Producs Nouveau Riche (real estate investment college) (dissolved 2010 - Nspire Network - Feminine Products NuCerity - Skincare/Health NuSkin - Tooth Paste/Personal Care Nutriboom - NXIVM - Financial Nygard - Clothing Omnilife - Dietary Supplements One Hope Wine - Wine Optavia - Health Opulenza - Jewelry Organo Gold - Coffee Oriflame - Personal Care Origami Owl - Jewelry Our Hearts Desire - Jewelry Paid 2 Save - Travel Pampered Chef - Kitchen Accessories Paparazzi - Jewelry Paperly - Paper Park Lane Jewelry - Jewelry Party Girl - Candles Party Lite - Candles Party Time Mixes - Food PartyLite - Candles Passion Parties - Adult Novelties Pawtree - Pet Paycation - Travel Peach - Clothing Pearl Chic - Pearl/Jewelry Peekaboo Beans - Clothing Perfect (China) - Cosmetics Perfectly Polished - Beauty Perfectly Posh - Beauty Personally Poetic - Jewelry PHP - Insurance Pierre Lang - Jewelry Pink Zebra - Candles Piphany - Clothing PixieLane - Clothing Plexus - Health Plumeria Bath - Beauty Plunder - Jewelry PM International - Health Pola (Japan) - Skincare/Health Poofy Organics - Beauty Powur - Solar Panels Premier Designs - Jewelry Premier Financial - Financial PrimeMyBody - Health Primerica - Financial Princess House - Kitchen Accessories ProDoula - ProYoung - Health Pruvit - Health Pulse Cosmetics - Cosmetics Pure Haven - Cosmetics Pure Romance - Product PureHaven - Home Goods PUREly - Essential Oils Purium - Health Qnet - Nutritional Supplements Quanjian Natural (China) - Food RadiantlyYou - Rain International - Health Rainbow Vacuum - Vacuums Real Time Pain Relief - Health Red Aspen - Beauty RED Safety - Security Regal Home and Gifts - Home Goods Reliv - Health Reliv - Nutritional Supplements Renatus Real Estate - Education RevitalU - Coffee/Health Riway - Deer Placenta Robert Kiyosaki - Rodan+Fields - Beauty Roland (Vorwerk) - Rolmex (China) - Kitchen Accessories Royal Tongan Limu (dissolved in 2003) - Royaltie Gens - Marketing Ruby Ribbon - Clothing Saba - Health/Beauty Sabika Jewelry - Jewelry SafeGirl Security - Self Defense Salad Master - Home Goods SARSO (India) - Scentsy - Health/Oils Schneider's Gourmet World - Food Scout & Cellar - Wine Seacret - Beauty SendOutCards - Gift Cards Senegence - Skincare/Health Shakeology (BeachBody) - Dietary Supplements Shaklee - Dietary Supplements Shopping Sherlock - Shrimp & Grits - Clothing Signature Homestyles - Home Goods Silpada - Jewelry Silver Icing - Jewelry Simple Man - Personal Care Simply Success Elite - SimplyFun Games - Education Skinny Body at Home - Dietary Supplements SkinSanity/Tomorrow's Leaf - Skincare/Health Smart Circle - Smartway - Solavei (dissolved 2015)[ - Solvei (bankrupt) - Sophie Paris (France/Asia) - Clothing South Hill Designs - Jewelry Southern Living at Home - Home Goods SouthWestern Advantage - Education Sseko - Clothing Stampin Up - Paper Steam Energy - Utilities Steeped Tea - Tea Stella & Dot - Clothing Stream Energy - Financial Style Dots - Jewelry Success University - Education Sun Hope (China) - Sunrider - Health/Beauty/Home Goods Sunset Gourmet - Food Sunshine Empire (dissolved 2009) - Surge 365 - Travel Sweet Legs - Clothing Sweet Minerals - Beauty Symmetry Financial Group - Insurance Syntek Global - Automotive T.O.P Marketing Group - TAG Team Marketing - Taisei/Green Planet/Kaikisui (Japan_ - Purifiers Tara at Home - Home Goods Tastefully Simple - Food Tavala - Health Tealightful - Tea Team National - Financial TeDivina - Tea Telecom Plus (UK) - Utilities Telexfree (bankrupt 2014) - The Advert Platfrom - Crypto Currency The Body Shop at Home - Beauty The Landmark Forum - Health The Super Affiliate Network - Marketing Thermomix (Vorwerk) - Thirty One - Bags Thrive - Health Thrive Life - Food Tiber River Naturals - Beauty TKO WorldWide - Tocara (Canada) - Jewelry Tom James - Clothing Total Life Changes/TLC - Health TouchStone Crystal - Jewelry Touchstone Essentials - Dietary Supplements Tracy Negoshian - Clothing Trades of Hope - Jewelry Tranont - Financial Transformational Beauty - Cosmetics Travel Evolution - Travel Traveling Vineyard - Wine TraVerus Global - Travel TriVita - Nutritional Supplements Tropic Skin Care - Skincare/Health True Peak Revolution (Europe) - Truvision Health - Health TS-Life - Nutritional Supplements Tupperware - Tupperware Unicity - Health United Sciences of America (dissolved in 1987) - United Warehouse (UK) - US Health Advisors - Usana - Nutritional Supplements Usborne - Books Utility Warehouse (UK) - Utilities Valentus - Dietary Supplements Vantel - Product/Pearls Vasayo - Health VectoCutco - Knives Vemma - Dietary Supplements viaOneHope - Wine ViBella - Jewelry VIC Cosmetics - Vida Divina - Tea Vie at Home (closed) - Virtuity Financial Group (World Financial Group) - ViSalus (Body by VI) - Dietary Supplements Vitality Extracts - Essential Oils VivaMK - Cleaning Producs Volo - Health Vorwerk - Home Goods Votre Belle Maison (UK) - Giftware Voxxlife - Health Wakaya Perfection - Health WakeUpNow (dissolved 2015) - Watkins Inc - Health/Home Goods Wealthperx - Travel Wikaniko - Home Goods Wildtree - Food Willing Beauty - Beauty Winasun - Health Wine Shop at Home - Wine Wines for Humanity - Wine Wink Naturals - Health World Financial Group/Pinnacle Leadership Development - Financial World Leadership Group (dissolved in 2008) - World Ventures/Wealth Wave/TKO WorldWide - Travel WoTaBu - Travel XanGo/Ziji - Health Xerveo - Dietary Supplements Xoom Energy - Utilities Xooma - Weight Loss Xstream Travel - Travel Xyngular - Health Yanbal Int - Jewelry Yandi (China) - Nutritional Supplements Yelloow - Beauty Yevo (closed) - Yofoto (China) - Health Yoli - Health Yoonla - YOR Health - Weight Loss Young Living - Health Youngevity - Younique - Beauty YTB International - Travel Zepter - Zija - Health Zilis - Health Zinzino (Scandanavia) - Zrii - Skincare/Health Zurvita - Health Zyia - Clothing Zyn - Travel TOTAL COUNT = 594 This list will be continually updated (5/19/2020). 2018 Archived MLM Mega Thread Sources: https://mlmtruth.org/2018/02/08/the-mlm-master-list/ , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multi-level_marketing_companies Special thanks to u/Copacetic1515 (I could not stick your thread) For income disclosure information: Updated 2019 Thread Other Helpful Links: Discussion about World Financial Group
Someone posted on here a few days ago asking about forex and forex trading in Kenya, I have gone through the responses and clearly, most people don’t have an idea. It is 3am in the morning and am in a good mood so let me make this post. This will be a comprehensive and lengthy post so grab a pen and paper and sit down. We’ll be here a while. FIRST OF ALL, who am I..? I am a forex trader, in Nairobi, Kenya..i have been actively involved in forex since I found out about it in Feb 2016 when I somehow ended up in a wealth creation seminar (lol) in pride inn Westlands, the one close to Mpaka Rd. Luckily for me, it was not one of those AIM global meetings or I’d be on Facebook selling God knows what those guys sell. I did not take it seriously till August of the same year and I have been active ever since. I don’t teach, mentor or sell a course or signals, I trade my own money. I am also posting from a throwaway account because I don’t want KRA on my ass. What the fuck is forex and forex trading. In simple plain English, forex is like the stock market but for currencies. Stock Market = Shares, forex = currencies. If you want more in-depth explanation, google is your friend. These currencies are pegged on specific countries, united states- dollar, UK- pound, euro zone- euro, Switzerland- Swiss franc, Kenya- Kenya shilling.. you get the point. Now, there are specific events and happenings between these economies that affect the movement and values of the currencies, driving their value (purchasing power up and down). Forex trading exploits these movements to make money. When the value is going up, we buy and vice versa (down –sell) Is forex trading illegal in Kenya? Is it a scam? Illegal, no. scam, no. All the banks in the world do it (KCB made about 4 billion from trading forex in 2019) Have there been scams involving forex in Kenya? Yes. Here is one that happened recently. This one is the most infamous one yet. Best believe that this is not the end of these type of scams because the stupidity, greed and gullibility of human beings is unfathomable. However, by the end of this post, I hope you won’t fall for such silliness. What next how do I make it work..? Am glad you asked. Generally, there are two ways to go about it. One, you teach yourself. This is the equivalent of stealing our dad’s car and hoping that the pedal you hit is the brake and not the accelerator. It is the route I took, it is the most rewarding and a huge ego boost when you finally make it on your own. Typically, this involves scouring the internet for hours upon hours going down rabbit holes, thinking you have made it telling all your friends how you will be a millionaire then losing all your money. Some people do not have the stomach for that. The second route is more practical, structured and smarter. First Learn the basics. There is a free online forex course at www.babypips.com/learn/forex this is merely an introductory course. Basically it is learning the parts of a car before they let you inside the car. Second, start building your strategy. By the time you are done with the babypips, you will have a feel of what the forex market is, what interests you, etc. Tip..Babypips has a lot of garbage. It is good for introductory purposes but not good for much else, pick whatever stick to you or jumps at you the first time. Nonsense like indicators should be ignored. The next step is now the most important. Developing the skill and building your strategy. As a beginner, you want to exhaust your naivety before jumping into the more advanced stuff. Eg can you identify a trend, what is a pair, what is position sizing, what is metatrader 4 and how to operate it, what news is good for a currency, when can I trade, what are the different trading sessions, what is technical analysis, what is market sentiment, what are bullish conditions what is emotion management, how does my psychology affect my trading (more on this later) an I a swing, scalper or day trader etc Mentors and forex courses.. you have probably seen people advertising how they can teach and mentor you on how to trade forex and charging so much money for it. Somehow it seems that these people are focused on the teaching than the trading. Weird, right..? Truth is trading is hard, teaching not quite. A common saying in the industry is “Those who can’t trade, teach” you want to avoid all these gurus on Facebook and Instagram, some are legit but most are not. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is hard but I did that for you. The info is available online on YouTube, telegram channels etc. am not saying not to spend money on a course, if you find a mentor whose style resonates with you and the course is reasonably priced, please, go ahead and buy..it will cut your learning curve in half. People are different. What worked for me might not work for you. Here are some nice YouTube channels to watch. These guys are legit..
After a short period of time, you will be able to sniff out bs teachers with relative ease. You will also discover some of your own and expand the list. Two tips, start with the oldest videos first and whichever of these resonates with you, stick with till the wheels fall off. How long will it take until things start making sense Give yourself time to grow and learn. This is all new to you and you are allowed to make mistakes, to fail and discover yourself. Realistically, depending on the effort you put in, you will not start seeing results until after 6 months. Could take longeshorter so there is no guarantee. Social media, Mentality, Psychology and Books Online, forex trading might not have the best reputation online because it takes hard work and scammers and gurus give it a bad name. However, try to not get sucked into the Instagram trader lifestyle as it is nowhere close to what the reality is. You will not make millions tomorrow or the day after, you might never even make it in this market. But that is the reality of life. Nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed. Your mentality, beliefs and ego will be challenged in this market. You will learn things that will make you blood boil, you will ask yourself daily, how is this possible, why don’t they teach this in school..bla bla bla..it will be hard but growth is painful, if it wasn’t we’d all be billionaires. Take a break, take a walk, drink a glass of whatever you like or roll one..detox. Chill with your girl (or man) Gradually you will develop mental toughness that will set you up for life. Personally, I sorta ditched religion and picked up stoicism. Whatever works for you. Psychology, this is unfortunately one of the most neglected aspects of your personal development in this journey. Do you believe in yourself? Can you stand by your convictions when everyone is against you? Can you get up every day uncertain of the future? There will be moments where you will question yourself, am I even doing the right thing? the right way? It is normal and essential for your growth. People who played competitive sports have a natural advantage here. Remember the game is first won in your head then on the pitch. Books: ironically, books that helped me the most were the mindset books, Think and grow rich, trading for a living, 4 hour work week, the monk who sold his Ferrari..just google mindset and psychology books, most trading books are garbage. Watch and listen to people who have made it in the investing business. Ray Dalio, warren, Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn. This is turning out to be lengthier than I anticipated so I’ll try to be brief for the remaining parts. Brokers You will need to open up an account with a broker. Get a broker who is regulated. Australian ones (IC Market and Pepperstone) are both legit, reliable and regulated. Do your research. I’d avoid local ones because I’ve heard stories of wide spreads and liquidity problems. International brokers have never failed me. There are plenty brokers, there is no one size fits all recommendation. If it ain’t broke..don’t fix it. Money transfer. All brokers accept wire transfers, you might need to call your bank to authorize that, avoid Equity bank. Stanchart and Stanbic are alright. Large withdrawals $10k+ you will have to call them prior. Get Skrill and Neteller if you don’t like banks like me, set up a Bitcoin wallet for faster withdrawals, (Payoneer and Paypal are accepted by some brokers, just check with them.) How much money can I make..? I hate this question because people have perceived ceilings of income in their minds, eg 1 million ksh is too much to make per month or 10,000ksh is too little. Instead, work backwards. What % return did I make this month/ on this trade. Safaricom made 19.5% last year, if you make 20% you have outperformed them. If you reach of consistency where you can make x% per month on whatever money you have, then there are no limits to how much you can make. How much money do I need to start with..? Zero. You have all the resources above, go forth. There are brokers who provide free bonuses and withdraw-able profits. However, to make a fulltime income you will need some serious cash. Generally, 50,000 kes. You can start lower or higher but if you need say 20k to live comfortably and that is a 10% return per month, then you can do the math on how big your account should be. Of course things like compound interest come into play but that is dependent on your skill level. I have seen people do spectacular things with very little funds. Taxes..? Talk to a lawyer or an accountant. I am neither. Family? Friends? Unfortunately, people will not understand why you spend hundreds of hours watching strangers on the internet so it is best to keep it from them. Eventually you will make it work and they will come to your corner talking about how they always knew you’d make it. The journey will be lonely, make some trading buddies along the way. You’d be surprised at how easy it is when people are united by their circumstances (and stupidity) I have guys who are my bros from South Africa and Lebanon who I have never met but we came up together and are now homies. Join forums, ask questions and grow. That is the only way to learn. Ideally, a group of 5-10 friends committed to learning and growth is the best model. Pushing each other to grow and discovering together. Forex is real and you can do amazing things with it. It is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want a quick guaranteed income, get a job. And now it is 5am, fuck. This is oversimplified and leaves out many many aspects. Happy to answer any questions.
This thread is the direct continuation of my previous entry, which you can find here. I have the feeling my rambles may be long, so I'm not going to repeat anything I already said in my previous post for the sake of keeping this brief. What is this? I am backtesting the strategy shared by ParallaxFx. I have just completed my second run of testing, and I am here to share my results with those who are interested. If you want to read more about the strategy, go to my previous thread where I linked it. What changed? Instead of using a fixed target of the -100.0 Fibonacci extension, I tracked both the -61.8 and the -100.0 targets. ParallaxFx used the -61.8 as a target, but never tried the second one, so I wanted to compare the two and see what happens. Where can I see your backtested result? I am going to do something I hope I won't regret and share the link to my spreadsheet. Hopefully I won't be doxxed, but I think I should be fine. You can find my spreadsheet at this link. There are a lot of entries, so it may take a while for them to load. In the "Trades" tab, you will find every trade I backtested with an attached screenshot and the results it would have had with the extended and the unextended target. You can see the UNCOMPOUNDED equity curve in the Summary tab, together with the overall statistics for the system. What was the sample size? I backtested on the Daily chart, from January 2017 to December 2019, over 28 currency pairs. I took a total of 310 trades - although keep in mind that every position is most often composed by two entries, meaning that you can roughly halve this number. What is the bottom line? If you're not interested in the details, here are the stats of the strategy based on how I traded it.
Extended: 223.46 R of return, 2.34 of profit factor, 0.72 R of expected value, 46.13% winrate. The average win is 2.72 R while the average loss is -1.00 R.
Unextended: 172.20 R of return, 2.19 of profit factor, 0.56 R of expected value, 53.23% winrate. The average win is 1.92 R while the average loss is -1.00 R.
The highest drawdown for both systems was 18 R. This seems like a lot, but remember you're splitting risk in half.
Here you can see the two uncompounded equity curves side by side: red is unextended and blue is extended. Who wins? The test suggests the strategy to be more profitable with the extended target. In addition, most of the trades that reached the unextended target but reversed before reaching the extended, were trades that I would have most likely not have taken with the extented target. This is because there was a resistance/support area in the way of the -100.0 extension level, but there was enough room for price to reach the -61.8 level. I will probably trade this strategy using the -100.0 level as target, unless there is an area in the way. In that case I will go for the unextended target. Drawdown management The expected losing streak for this system, using the extended target, is 7 trades in a row in a sample size of 100 trades. My goal is to have a drawdown cap of 4%, so my risk per trade will be 0.54%. If I ever find myself in a losing streak of more than 8 trades, I will reduce my risk per trade further. What's next? I'll be taking this strategy live. The wisest move would be to repeat the same testing over lower timeframes to verify the edge plays out there as well, but I would not be able to trust my results because I would have vague memories of where price went because of the testing I just did. I also believe markets are fractals, so I see no reason why this wouldn't work on lower timeframes. Before going live, I will expand this spreadsheet to include more specific analysis and I will continue backtesting at a slower pace. The goal is to reach 20 years of backtesting over these 28 pairs and put everything into this spreadsheet. It's not something I will do overnight, but I'll probably do one year every odd day, and maybe a couple more during the weekend. I think I don't have much else to add. I like the strategy. Feel free to ask questions.
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Reposting because I didn't get input last time. Demographics: Indian. Male. From ProspeFrisco Texas. Middle/Upper class area. I would say my high school is very competitive. Intended Major(s): Computer Science ACT/SAT/SAT II: SAT: Have not taken a real test. I have taken three practice test all resulted 1440+. Prepping for 1500+, but consider my score to be a flat 1400 for now. UW GPA and Rank: UW: 3.981 Rank: 12/979 Coursework: Freshmen Year: - Honors French 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - HonoGT Geometry (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors Computer Science 1 - Honors Biology (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Human (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4) - Honors English 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Outdoor Education (Required) - Digital Art and Animation (Required) Sophomore Year: - Honors English 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors French 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Computer Science A (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5) - AP Computer Science Principles (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4) - AP World History (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Biology (Highest Level that year available to me ) (3) <-- Not sending this score - Honors Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors Algebra 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Academic Level Architecture (Highest Level that year available to me ) Junior Year: - AP English 3 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Independent Studies in Video Games (AP Level but not AP) (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors UIL Math Prep - Ap Physics 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5) - Academic Level US History - AP Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4) - AP Environmental (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5) - Honors Pre-Cal (Highest Level that year available to me ) Senior Year (will take upcoming year): - Honors Computer Science 3 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors Computer Science 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP English 4 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Gov/Econ (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Physics C (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Calc BC (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Stats (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Still Deciding but not AP for sure. Awards: - Adobe Certified Associate - Visual Design using Adobe Photoshop CC2015 - Aloha Math Competition Certificate. - UIL Math Competition Certificate. - Multiple Student of the month award Extracurriculars:
I am an intern at Visual Technologies LLC. I have helped in 4 projects regarding computer science for outside companies. This is one of my biggest achievements as a real company was willing to work with me and we ended up doing 4 projects together helping me grow every second of me working with them. After two successful projects with them, I was given some responsibilities such as following up with clients and other things. This gave me a sense of accomplishment because this would mean that they saw qualities in me that they would look for in a “normal aged” programmeconsultant.
2020 - I have worked for Cutco for about 3 months in which I have learned many skills for marketing. I have been promoted and over $3000 in sales. Other details mentioned earlier.
2019-2020- For UIL math we program our calculators to make tests easier for us. Last year I was one of the top coders for UIL math right after my seniors. I made programs that were complex. Although I didn't create many programs, I made programs that other programs were not able to create the year before because they were termed as “too hard”. Me being able to code those programs gave me the stance as a well-known programmer for UIL Math - an achievement in itself.
2016 - 2021 has offered free tutoring to many students who strive to be better but cannot afford fees. I have given at least 80 hours of free tutoring (not for school)
2020 - I have also worked for Ambit and have managed a successful team of over 50 members as I am a regional consultant for the company. I am in the top 10% of the company according to my boss, but I don't know whether this is true or not. I can certainly say that more than half of the people working do not make it to the level I am at. This company is an electricity company, and I have capitalized on selling our service to apartment complexes. I have also helped many high schoolers needing a job to find success in this business.
2020- I volunteered to make a system for the school called “Corona Tutors”. This is a platform where students can anonymously ask questions and receive answers from other students who want service hours. This fixes many problems: this eases the extreme dependence of teachers being online 24/7, this makes sure that students are getting their questions answered, this also allows students who want to help society. This is an official Prosper resource on their webpage which students can use at their will.
2017-2020- I have been a volunteer at ICNA Relief committed about 2 hours each week, and puts me right over 300 hours of community service. We as a group have made a rationing system where we try to fairly distribute goods and other goods as per people's needs. We help with anything from getting food to getting families a laptop for their kid's education.
My love for business goes very far. In 7th grade, fidget spinners were very popular and amazon took 3 months to ship them. This was perfect for a mini business, so I bought a fidget spinner directly through the supplier (AliExpress) and got my shipment. Not only did I retail them I also wholesale them in the mall to any store that was allowed to sell them. I came profitable from this business, but it was not the money that made this great, it was the contact I got through this business. - 2016
2020 - I resold brand new bikes with a high markup. One day scrolling through Facebook marketplace I realized that some bikes were being sold for almost 2x their price at Walmart. (During COVID) I simply contacted my contacts and was able to get about 200-250 brand new bikes. Since this was a very big investment I had five partners with me, and we marked them up according to market price a month later (150% return on investment)
2020 - When school ended, I started to get a lot of Forex trading ads, so I chose to take a look into what it was. Forex trading is a currency exchange and is highly risky. When I started to learn about it I started to see that there were groups called “signal groups”. These groups told you when to trade what and claimed that they have a 99% accuracy on their trades being profitable. Instead of trading, I chose to get in contact with famous traders and offer them a lucrative cut for simply sending a message in a group chat about what they are trading. For one month I tested the service and then put it into action for the public. The program kept working until all traders were able to work and then it was shut off making sure that more one was a loss.
2020 I have written a book/report that I have published it on Amazon. This report took me 200+ hours to make. As we learn in school, there is a rise in global warming, and it is our job to find alternative ways of fuel and stop the rise in global warming. I took an already done research - well in parts in college language- and made it into a more understandable report considering almost every aspect of the situation. I covered everything from the experimental design to how we can use the waste product in everyday life to how we can scale this project to how even a high schooler can make a difference by simply taking initiative and presenting this idea to their school. This report allowed me to take complex language and make it into an everyday language report. I showed my report to many people in the community and it was very satisfying to hear from their parents when they said “my son is going to present this idea to his school because they mostly have a lot of oil”. The report is about converting waste cooking oil to biodiesel.
2015 - 2020 - I have helped my mom in her business called “BLANK (don't want to say) Designs Collection”. Simply by watching her sell and trying it myself I acquired skills that I use to this day not only for business but simply for communicating. Currently, I am a social media and online sales handler for the company.
2018 - 2020 - I have been a part of Mu Alpha Theta for two year tutoring students for Math. Last year I was one of the top tutors for Mrs.Wood for algebra 2. I went there every time I did have an eagle time activity.
2020 - I recently joined the Science Honor society; we have helped the science fair in their activities.
Essays/LORs: Essays, I have not started. Letter of Rec: I have three incoming from my teachers. English/CounseloComputer Science/ Math (waiting for response) Schools: - MIT, - Brown University - Caltech - Carnegie Mellon - Columbia University - Cornell University - Duke University - Georgia Institute - Hamilton - Harvard University - Johns Hopkins University - Princeton University - Purdue University - Rice University - Stanford - UMich - UT Austin - UT Dallas - Texas A&M - UC Berkley
I used to trade only FOREX. I have since diversified into cryptocurrency for a less stressful approach. Anyone here interested in learning how to trade cryptocurrency and what steps you need to take?
As the title says, I used to only trade on FOREX. I have since diversified into cryptocurrency because FOREX was so stressful for me and I needed to have something that was a bit less news-job-report intensive to level it all out. You can't get away from charts and candles in crypto, but I feel like there are more long-term hold opportunities in the crypto space and I feel like longer-term investments are less stressful for me. I know this isn't 100% FOREX related, but since I do trade on FOREX, I feel like it has relevance in terms of the ways the spaces are similar. First, the reasons I diversified. The main one that frustrates me is I feel like the cards are stacked against me in ways I have no control over. Exchanges can sell information about customer buy and sell points to bigger fish than me. The whales have way more information about what the public is doing than I do. Next, trading firms have access to news much faster than me. They can process announcements in microseconds. And lastly, countries do crazy things with their currencies and I just wasn't great at interpreting all the signs. I don't like my fortunes being tied to job reports and the decisions of a treasury secretary that doesn't take any input from me. The above reasons pushed me to start trading longer term in FOREX. That's fine, there are plenty of long-term strategies that work. Most people will tell you that longer-term is safer, and so the shift didn't bug me that much. But over time, I felt like there were more currencies I was missing out on, so I started adding cryptocurrency into my portfolio. For those of you that don't know much about cryptocurrency, it's basically a currency that is not controlled by any one person or government (or shouldn't be). It's money free from political corruption, free from bailouts, and free from big banks. It is also highly more volatile than FOREX. Gains and losses are measured in the 10% or 20% range per day. There's actually lots of money to be made day trading it, just like FOREX. But I chose to take a longer term approach for my peace of mind. One of the things that I looked for when trading FOREX was to trade pairs where I could earn interest while holding it. Then when the pair appreciated, I could sell it for a gain plus the interest. Win win. Right now, I feel like I found that in ADA (Cardano) crypto. ADA just opened staking (mining) capability last week, meaning that just by holding it you can earn 4.5%-5.5% on your coins (paid in coins, not in dollars). It's the most undervalued crypto in the market (in my opinion), and the fundamentals on it look really strong. It is doing everything I was hoping a FOREX pair would do and I think it's the best crypto investment right now, so I'm just filing it away as a 5-year investment. It's now 50% of my "overall" currency investments, including FOREX. Anyway, that's my story. I wanted to share it in case anyone here was curious about Cardano in particular, and how it related to fiat currencies. I was super intimidated about crypto at first, but I am also a software developer with a lot of experience, and so I was able to make the transition quite well. I even started my own mining pool to earn more.
Demographics: Indian. Male. From ProspeFrisco Texas. Middle/Upper class area. I would say my high school is very competitive. Intended Major(s): Computer Science ACT/SAT/SAT II: SAT: Have not taken a real test. I have taken three practice test all resulted 1440+. Prepping for 1500+, but consider my score to be a flat 1400 for now. UW GPA and Rank: UW: 3.981 Rank: 12/979 Coursework: Freshmen Year: - Honors French 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - HonoGT Geometry (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors Computer Science 1 - Honors Biology (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Human (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4) - Honors English 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Outdoor Education (Required) - Digital Art and Animation (Required) Sophomore Year: - Honors English 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors French 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Computer Science A (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5) - AP Computer Science Principles (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4) - AP World History (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Biology (Highest Level that year available to me ) (3) <-- Not sending this score - Honors Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors Algebra 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Academic Level Architecture (Highest Level that year available to me ) Junior Year: - AP English 3 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Independent Studies in Video Games (AP Level but not AP) (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors UIL Math Prep - Ap Physics 1 (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5) - Academic Level US History - AP Chemistry (Highest Level that year available to me ) (4) - AP Environmental (Highest Level that year available to me ) (5) - Honors Pre-Cal (Highest Level that year available to me ) Senior Year (will take upcoming year): - Honors Computer Science 3 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Honors Computer Science 2 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP English 4 (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Gov/Econ (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Physics C (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Calc BC (Highest Level that year available to me ) - AP Stats (Highest Level that year available to me ) - Still Deciding but not AP for sure. Awards: - Adobe Certified Associate - Visual Design using Adobe Photoshop CC2015 - Aloha Math Competition Certificate. - UIL Math Competition Certificate. - Multiple Student of the month award Extracurriculars:
I am an intern at Visual Technologies LLC. I have helped in 4 projects regarding computer science for outside companies. This is one of my biggest achievements as a real company was willing to work with me and we ended up doing 4 projects together helping me grow every second of me working with them. After two successful projects with them, I was given some responsibilities such as following up with clients and other things. This gave me a sense of accomplishment because this would mean that they saw qualities in me that they would look for in a “normal aged” programmeconsultant.
2020 - I have worked for Cutco for about 3 months in which I have learned many skills for marketing. I have been promoted and over $3000 in sales. Other details mentioned earlier.
2019-2020- For UIL math we program our calculators to make tests easier for us. Last year I was one of the top coders for UIL math right after my seniors. I made programs that were complex. Although I didn't create many programs, I made programs that other programs were not able to create the year before because they were termed as “too hard”. Me being able to code those programs gave me the stance as a well-known programmer for UIL Math - an achievement in itself.
2016 - 2021 has offered free tutoring to many students who strive to be better but cannot afford fees. I have given at least 80 hours of free tutoring (not for school)
2020 - I have also worked for Ambit and have managed a successful team of over 50 members as I am a regional consultant for the company. I am in the top 10% of the company according to my boss, but I don't know whether this is true or not. I can certainly say that more than half of the people working do not make it to the level I am at. This company is an electricity company, and I have capitalized on selling our service to apartment complexes. I have also helped many high schoolers needing a job to find success in this business.
2020- I volunteered to make a system for the school called “Corona Tutors”. This is a platform where students can anonymously ask questions and receive answers from other students who want service hours. This fixes many problems: this eases the extreme dependence of teachers being online 24/7, this makes sure that students are getting their questions answered, this also allows students who want to help society. This is an official Prosper resource on their webpage which students can use at their will.
2017-2020- I have been a volunteer at ICNA Relief committed about 2 hours each week, and puts me right over 300 hours of community service. We as a group have made a rationing system where we try to fairly distribute goods and other goods as per people's needs. We help with anything from getting food to getting families a laptop for their kid's education.
My love for business goes very far. In 7th grade, fidget spinners were very popular and amazon took 3 months to ship them. This was perfect for a mini business, so I bought a fidget spinner directly through the supplier (AliExpress) and got my shipment. Not only did I retail them I also wholesale them in the mall to any store that was allowed to sell them. I came profitable from this business, but it was not the money that made this great, it was the contact I got through this business. - 2016
2020 - I resold brand new bikes with a high markup. One day scrolling through Facebook marketplace I realized that some bikes were being sold for almost 2x their price at Walmart. (During COVID) I simply contacted my contacts and was able to get about 200-250 brand new bikes. Since this was a very big investment I had five partners with me, and we marked them up according to market price a month later (150% return on investment)
2020 - When school ended, I started to get a lot of Forex trading ads, so I chose to take a look into what it was. Forex trading is a currency exchange and is highly risky. When I started to learn about it I started to see that there were groups called “signal groups”. These groups told you when to trade what and claimed that they have a 99% accuracy on their trades being profitable. Instead of trading, I chose to get in contact with famous traders and offer them a lucrative cut for simply sending a message in a group chat about what they are trading. For one month I tested the service and then put it into action for the public. The program kept working until all traders were able to work and then it was shut off making sure that more one was a loss.
2020 I have written a book/report that I have published it on Amazon. This report took me 200+ hours to make. As we learn in school, there is a rise in global warming, and it is our job to find alternative ways of fuel and stop the rise in global warming. I took an already done research - well in parts in college language- and made it into a more understandable report considering almost every aspect of the situation. I covered everything from the experimental design to how we can use the waste product in everyday life to how we can scale this project to how even a high schooler can make a difference by simply taking initiative and presenting this idea to their school. This report allowed me to take complex language and make it into an everyday language report. I showed my report to many people in the community and it was very satisfying to hear from their parents when they said “my son is going to present this idea to his school because they mostly have a lot of oil”. The report is about converting waste cooking oil to biodiesel.
2015 - 2020 - I have helped my mom in her business called “BLANK (don't want to say) Designs Collection”. Simply by watching her sell and trying it myself I acquired skills that I use to this day not only for business but simply for communicating. Currently, I am a social media and online sales handler for the company.
2018 - 2020 - I have been a part of Mu Alpha Theta for two year tutoring students for Math. Last year I was one of the top tutors for Mrs.Wood for algebra 2. I went there every time I did have an eagle time activity.
2020 - I recently joined the Science Honor society; we have helped the science fair in their activities.
Essays/LORs: Essays, I have not started. Letter of Rec: I have three incoming from my teachers. English/CounseloComputer Science/ Math (waiting for response) Schools: - MIT, - Brown University - Caltech - Carnegie Mellon - Columbia University - Cornell University - Duke University - Georgia Institute - Hamilton - Harvard University - Johns Hopkins University - Princeton University - Purdue University - Rice University - Stanford - UMich - UT Austin - UT Dallas - Texas A&M - UC Berkley
Hey everyone, I have an exciting money talks coming up. Please use the GoogleForm to share any questions or discussion topics you have for us. https://forms.gle/5kPrK7LqerKxZJC48 I'd like to introduce Carley, her bio below. Senior Commodity Market Strategist and Broker, STOCKS & COMMODITIES Magazine Columnist, http://TheStreet.com Contributor, and Author Carley Garner is an experienced futures and options broker with DeCarley Trading, a division of Zaner Financial Services, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her commodity market analysis is often referenced on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money on CNBC and she is a regular guest on Bloomberg Television’s Options Insight segment with Abigail Doolittle. Garner is a regular contributor to http://TheStreet.com and its Real Money Pro service and is also a regular on the speaking circuit and can be found at TradersEXPOs and MoneyShows throughout the country. Garner is also an award-winning commodity futures and options trading book author. In addition to Trading Commodity Options with Creativity, Garner has authored Higher Probability Commodity Trading; A Trader's First Book on Commodities (three editions); Currency Trading in the Forex and Futures Markets; and Commodity Options. Her e-newsletters, The DeCarley Perspective and The Financial Futures Report, have garnered a loyal following; she is also proactive in providing free trading education at http://DeCarleyTrading.com. Carley authors a monthly column in Stocks & Commodities magazine and has been featured by several major media outlets.
Immediate Edge Review, Is Immediate Edge SCAM Or Legit Trading App?
Immediate Edge Review: Is This Crypto Robot Legit or Scam Immediate Edge Review and investigation 20twenty. The Immediate Edge app is a crypto, forex and choices trading robot utilized by folks to automatically obtain and sell Bitcoin and create profits. Wanting at the website, many people claim it helped them move from rags-to-riches trading Bitcoin. Further, some claims linked it to Ronaldo and Sir Alex Ferguson https://preview.redd.it/rttn3i4hohm51.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f0dc345c3ace4032d571d44fabe356f13ff1a33 Is Immediate Edge app legit or scam? 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[Closed--as much as any trade negotiation with the EU can be] The EU has slowly been extending its vast array of free trade agreements to cover much of the world, and, quite simply, China, as a member of our peaceful and prosperous rule-based international order, wants in. This new FTA would massively expand the EUs zone of free trade, increasing it by nearly twenty trillion, as well as increasing our trade ties with the world by a roughly equivalent amount. While we understand that developing this trade agreement will be a difficult and complex task, we have some thoughts on where to start:
European Concessions
Allow China general access to European financial systems
Allow Chinese nationals 30-day visa-free access to Schengen
General access to the EU of Chinese manufactured goods
Relax or eliminate restrictions on Chinese investment in the EU, including in R&D
Chinese Concessions
Improved IP protections, patent sharing agreement
Establishment of internationally-staffed tribunal for arbitration of dumping/subsidy disputes
Expanded market for European [in particular] films and culture products, with European films receiving a separate annual quota in addition to being eligible to be part of our general quota
Improved human rights conditions, including wrapping up of our counter-terror operations in Xinjiang which you all seem so concerned about
General allowance of imports of European agricultural products
EU citizens will receive 30-day visa-free access to China [EMSCO partners, as a result, will receive either 30, 60 or 90-day visa-free access to China--will be in other post]
China will implement EU-standard sanctions on Russia until it drops this whole expansionism thing. It's bad for business and making everyone freak out.
Joint Projects
Replacement of US-backed SWIFT system with joint Euro-Chinese interbank payments system designed for security and processing of transactions in EUR and RMB
China will shift to the Euro and Euro-denominated debt as its preferred reserve currency holding; and will purchase significant [ultimately, $1 trillion, as we migrate our forex holdings down to one-third USD, one-half EUR, one-sixth yen/pound/other] quantities of European debt. Note that this will be a gradual process to avoid financial panic, and one that will involve Chinese purchase of higher-risk Euro-denominated bonds from Italy and Spain--we expect a reasonable guarantee on the part of the ECB that they will not default.
Rail standardization; including adoption by China of ETCS [and subsidization of adoption of ETCS by Central Asian nations, including all the 'stans', and Iran/Turkey], and synchronization of rolling-stock standards to allow trains to run seamlessly from China to Europe
These are really just a starting point, and we'd like to hear the EU's thoughts on this matter. Negotiating trade agreements with the EU is known to be difficult, but we think we may find it worthwhile.
No, the British did not steal $45 trillion from India
This is an updated copy of the version on BadHistory. I plan to update it in accordance with the feedback I got. I'd like to thank two people who will remain anonymous for helping me greatly with this post (you know who you are) Three years ago a festschrift for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri was published by Shubhra Chakrabarti, a history teacher at the University of Delhi and Utsa Patnaik, a Marxist economist who taught at JNU until 2010. One of the essays in the festschirt by Utsa Patnaik was an attempt to quantify the "drain" undergone by India during British Rule. Her conclusion? Britain robbed India of $45 trillion (or £9.2 trillion) during their 200 or so years of rule. This figure was immensely popular, and got republished in several major news outlets (here, here, here, here (they get the number wrong) and more recently here), got a mention from the Minister of External Affairs & returns 29,100 results on Google. There's also plenty of references to it here on Reddit. Patnaik is not the first to calculate such a figure. Angus Maddison thought it was £100 million, Simon Digby said £1 billion, Javier Estaban said £40 million see Roy (2019). The huge range of figures should set off some alarm bells. So how did Patnaik calculate this (shockingly large) figure? Well, even though I don't have access to the festschrift, she conveniently has written an article detailing her methodology here. Let's have a look.
How exactly did the British manage to diddle us and drain our wealth’ ? was the question that Basudev Chatterjee (later editor of a volume in the Towards Freedom project) had posed to me 50 years ago when we were fellow-students abroad.
This is begging the question.
After decades of research I find that using India’s commodity export surplus as the measure and applying an interest rate of 5%, the total drain from 1765 to 1938, compounded up to 2016, comes to £9.2 trillion; since $4.86 exchanged for £1 those days, this sum equals about $45 trillion.
This is completely meaningless. To understand why it's meaningless consider India's annual coconut exports. These are almost certainly a surplus but the surplus in trade is countered by the other country buying the product (indeed, by definition, trade surpluses contribute to the GDP of a nation which hardly plays into intuitive conceptualisations of drain). Furthermore, Dewey (2019) critiques the 5% interest rate.
She [Patnaik] consistently adopts statistical assumptions (such as compound interest at a rate of 5% per annum over centuries) that exaggerate the magnitude of the drain
Moving on:
The exact mechanism of drain, or transfers from India to Britain was quite simple.
Convenient.
Drain theory possessed the political merit of being easily grasped by a nation of peasants. [...] No other idea could arouse people than the thought that they were being taxed so that others in far off lands might live in comfort. [...] It was, therefore, inevitable that the drain theory became the main staple of nationalist political agitation during the Gandhian era.
The key factor was Britain’s control over our taxation revenues combined with control over India’s financial gold and forex earnings from its booming commodity export surplus with the world. Simply put, Britain used locally raised rupee tax revenues to pay for its net import of goods, a highly abnormal use of budgetary funds not seen in any sovereign country.
The issue with figures like these is they all make certain methodological assumptions that are impossible to prove. From Roy in Frankema et al. (2019):
the "drain theory" of Indian poverty cannot be tested with evidence, for several reasons. First, it rests on the counterfactual that any money saved on account of factor payments abroad would translate into domestic investment, which can never be proved. Second, it rests on "the primitive notion that all payments to foreigners are "drain"", that is, on the assumption that these payments did not contribute to domestic national income to the equivalent extent (Kumar 1985, 384; see also Chaudhuri 1968). Again, this cannot be tested. [...] Fourth, while British officers serving India did receive salaries that were many times that of the average income in India, a paper using cross-country data shows that colonies with better paid officers were governed better (Jones 2013).
Indeed, drain theory rests on some very weak foundations. This, in of itself, should be enough to dismiss any of the other figures that get thrown out. Nonetheless, I felt it would be a useful exercise to continue exploring Patnaik's take on drain theory.
The East India Company from 1765 onwards allocated every year up to one-third of Indian budgetary revenues net of collection costs, to buy a large volume of goods for direct import into Britain, far in excess of that country’s own needs.
So what's going on here? Well Roy (2019) explains it better:
Colonial India ran an export surplus, which, together with foreign investment, was used to pay for services purchased from Britain. These payments included interest on public debt, salaries, and pensions paid to government offcers who had come from Britain, salaries of managers and engineers, guaranteed profts paid to railway companies, and repatriated business profts. How do we know that any of these payments involved paying too much? The answer is we do not.
So what was really happening is the government was paying its workers for services (as well as guaranteeing profits - to promote investment - something the GoI does today Dalal (2019), and promoting business in India), and those workers were remitting some of that money to Britain. This is hardly a drain (unless, of course, Indian diaspora around the world today are "draining" it). In some cases, the remittances would take the form of goods (as described) see Chaudhuri (1983):
It is obvious that these debit items were financed through the export surplus on merchandise account, and later, when railway construction started on a large scale in India, through capital import. Until 1833 the East India Company followed a cumbersome method in remitting the annual home charges. This was to purchase export commodities in India out of revenue, which were then shipped to London and the proceeds from their sale handed over to the home treasury.
While Roy's earlier point argues better paid officers governed better, it is honestly impossible to say what part of the repatriated export surplus was a drain, and what was not. However calling all of it a drain is definitely misguided. It's worth noting that Patnaik seems to make no attempt to quantify the benefits of the Raj either, Dewey (2019)'s 2nd criticism:
she [Patnaik] consistently ignores research that would tend to cut the economic impact of the drain down to size, such as the work on the sources of investment during the industrial revolution (which shows that industrialisation was financed by the ploughed-back profits of industrialists) or the costs of empire school (which stresses the high price of imperial defence)
Since tropical goods were highly prized in other cold temperate countries which could never produce them, in effect these free goods represented international purchasing power for Britain which kept a part for its own use and re-exported the balance to other countries in Europe and North America against import of food grains, iron and other goods in which it was deficient.
Re-exports necessarily adds value to goods when the goods are processed and when the goods are transported. The country with the largest navy at the time would presumably be in very good stead to do the latter.
The British historians Phyllis Deane and WA Cole presented an incorrect estimate of Britain’s 18th-19th century trade volume, by leaving out re-exports completely. I found that by 1800 Britain’s total trade was 62% higher than their estimate, on applying the correct definition of trade including re-exports, that is used by the United Nations and by all other international organisations.
While interesting, and certainly expected for such an old book, re-exporting necessarily adds value to goods.
When the Crown took over from the Company, from 1861 a clever system was developed under which all of India’s financial gold and forex earnings from its fast-rising commodity export surplus with the world, was intercepted and appropriated by Britain. As before up to a third of India’s rising budgetary revenues was not spent domestically but was set aside as ‘expenditure abroad’.
So, what does this mean? Britain appropriated all of India's earnings, and then spent a third of it aboard? Not exactly. She is describing home charges see Roy (2019) again:
Some of the expenditures on defense and administration were made in sterling and went out of the country. This payment by the government was known as the Home Charges. For example, interest payment on loans raised to finance construction of railways and irrigation works, pensions paid to retired officers, and purchase of stores, were payments in sterling. [...] almost all money that the government paid abroad corresponded to the purchase of a service from abroad. [...] The balance of payments system that emerged after 1800 was based on standard business principles.India bought something and paid for it.State revenues were used to pay for wages of people hired abroad, pay for interest on loans raised abroad, and repatriation of profits on foreign investments coming into India. These were legitimate market transactions.
Indeed, if paying for what you buy is drain, then several billions of us are drained every day.
The Secretary of State for India in Council, based in London, invited foreign importers to deposit with him the payment (in gold, sterling and their own currencies) for their net imports from India, and these gold and forex payments disappeared into the yawning maw of the SoS’s account in the Bank of England.
It should be noted that India having two heads was beneficial, and encouraged investment per Roy (2019):
The fact that the India Office in London managed a part of the monetary system made India creditworthy, stabilized its currency, and encouraged foreign savers to put money into railways and private enterprise in India. Current research on the history of public debt shows that stable and large colonies found it easier to borrow abroad than independent economies because the investors trusted the guarantee of the colonist powers.
Against India’s net foreign earnings he issued bills, termed Council bills (CBs), to an equivalent rupee value. The rate (between gold-linked sterling and silver rupee) at which the bills were issued, was carefully adjusted to the last farthing, so that foreigners would never find it more profitable to ship financial gold as payment directly to Indians, compared to using the CB route. Foreign importers then sent the CBs by post or by telegraph to the export houses in India, that via the exchange banks were paid out of the budgeted provision of sums under ‘expenditure abroad’, and the exporters in turn paid the producers (peasants and artisans) from whom they sourced the goods.
Sunderland (2013) argues CBs had two main roles (and neither were part of a grand plot to keep gold out of India):
Council bills had two roles. They firstly promoted trade by handing the IO some control of the rate of exchange and allowing the exchange banks to remit funds to India and to hedge currency transaction risks. They also enabled the Indian government to transfer cash to England for the payment of its UK commitments.
The United Nations (1962) historical data for 1900 to 1960, show that for three decades up to 1928 (and very likely earlier too) India posted the second highest merchandise export surplus in the world, with USA in the first position. Not only were Indians deprived of every bit of the enormous international purchasing power they had earned over 175 years, even its rupee equivalent was not issued to them since not even the colonial government was credited with any part of India’s net gold and forex earnings against which it could issue rupees. The sleight-of-hand employed, namely ‘paying’ producers out of their own taxes, made India’s export surplus unrequited and constituted a tax-financed drain to the metropolis, as had been correctly pointed out by those highly insightful classical writers, Dadabhai Naoroji and RCDutt.
It doesn't appear that others appreciate their insight Roy (2019):
K. N. Chaudhuri rightly calls such practice ‘confused’ economics ‘coloured by political feelings’.
Surplus budgets to effect such heavy tax-financed transfers had a severe employment–reducing and income-deflating effect: mass consumption was squeezed in order to release export goods. Per capita annual foodgrains absorption in British India declined from 210 kg. during the period 1904-09, to 157 kg. during 1937-41, and to only 137 kg by 1946.
Dewey (1978) points out reliability issues with Indian agriculutural statistics, however this calorie decline persists to this day. Some of it is attributed to less food being consumed at home Smith (2015), a lower infectious disease burden Duh & Spears (2016) and diversified diets Vankatesh et al. (2016).
If even a part of its enormous foreign earnings had been credited to it and not entirely siphoned off, India could have imported modern technology to build up an industrial structure as Japan was doing.
This is, unfortunately, impossible to prove. Had the British not arrived in India, there is no clear indication that India would've united (this is arguably more plausible than the given counterfactual1). Had the British not arrived in India, there is no clear indication India would not have been nuked in WW2, much like Japan. Had the British not arrived in India, there is no clear indication India would not have been invaded by lizard people, much like Japan. The list continues eternally. Nevertheless, I will charitably examine the given counterfactual anyway. Did pre-colonial India have industrial potential? The answer is a resounding no. From Gupta (1980):
This article starts from the premise that while economic categories - the extent of commodity production, wage labour, monetarisation of the economy, etc - should be the basis for any analysis of the production relations of pre-British India, it is the nature of class struggles arising out of particular class alignments that finally gives the decisive twist to social change. Arguing on this premise, and analysing the available evidence, this article concludes that there was little potential for industrial revolution before the British arrived in India because, whatever might have been the character of economic categories of that period,the class relations had not sufficiently matured to develop productive forces and the required class struggle for a 'revolution' to take place.
Yet all of this did not amount to an economic situation comparable to that of western Europe on the eve of the industrial revolution. Her technology - in agriculture as well as manufacturers - had by and large been stagnant for centuries. [...] The weakness of the Indian economy in the mid-eighteenth century, as compared to pre-industrial Europe was not simply a matter of technology and commercial and industrial organization. No scientific or geographical revolution formed part of the eighteenth-century Indian's historical experience. [...] Spontaneous movement towards industrialisation is unlikely in such a situation.
So now we've established India did not have industrial potential, was India similar to Japan just before the Meiji era? The answer, yet again, unsurprisingly, is no. Japan's economic situation was not comparable to India's, which allowed for Japan to finance its revolution. From Yasuba (1986):
All in all, the Japanese standard of living may not have been much below the English standard of living before industrialization, and both of them may have been considerably higher than the Indian standard of living. We can no longer say that Japan started from a pathetically low economic level and achieved a rapid or even "miraculous" economic growth. Japan's per capita income was almost as high as in Western Europe before industrialization, and it was possible for Japan to produce surplus in the Meiji Period to finance private and public capital formation.
The circumstances that led to Meiji Japan were extremely unique. See Tomlinson (1985):
Most modern comparisons between India and Japan, written by either Indianists or Japanese specialists, stress instead that industrial growth in Meiji Japan was the product of unique features that were not reproducible elsewhere. [...] it is undoubtably true that Japan's progress to industrialization has been unique and unrepeatable
So there you have it. Unsubstantiated statistical assumptions, calling any number you can a drain & assuming a counterfactual for no good reason gets you this $45 trillion number. Hopefully that's enough to bury it in the ground. 1. Several authors have affirmed that Indian identity is a colonial artefact. For example seeRajan 1969:
Perhaps the single greatest and most enduring impact of British rule over India is that it created an Indian nation, in the modern political sense. After centuries of rule by different dynasties overparts of the Indian sub-continent, and after about 100 years of British rule, Indians ceased to be merely Bengalis, Maharashtrians,or Tamils, linguistically and culturally.
But then, it would be anachronistic to condemn eighteenth-century Indians, who served the British, as collaborators, when the notion of 'democratic' nationalism or of an Indian 'nation' did not then exist.[...]Indians who fought for them, differed from the Europeans in having a primary attachment to a non-belligerent religion, family and local chief, which was stronger than any identity they might have with a more remote prince or 'nation'.
Bibliography
Chakrabarti, Shubra & Patnaik, Utsa (2018). Agrarian and other histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri. Colombia University Press Hickel, Jason (2018). How the British stole $45 trillion from India. The Guardian Bhuyan, Aroonim & Sharma, Krishan (2019). The Great Loot: How the British stole $45 trillion from India. Indiapost Monbiot, George (2020). English Landowners have stolen our rights. It is time to reclaim them. The Guardian Tsjeng, Zing (2020). How Britain Stole $45 trillion from India with trains | Empires of Dirt. Vice Chaudhury, Dipanjan (2019). British looted $45 trillion from India in today’s value: Jaishankar. The Economic Times Roy, Tirthankar (2019). How British rule changed India's economy: The Paradox of the Raj. Palgrave Macmillan Patnaik, Utsa (2018). How the British impoverished India. Hindustan Times Tuovila, Alicia (2019). Expenditure method. Investopedia Dewey, Clive (2019). Changing the guard: The dissolution of the nationalist–Marxist orthodoxy in the agrarian and agricultural history of India. The Indian Economic & Social History Review Chandra, Bipan et al. (1989). India's Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947. Penguin Books Frankema, Ewout & Booth, Anne (2019). Fiscal Capacity and the Colonial State in Asia and Africa, c. 1850-1960. Cambridge University Press Dalal, Sucheta (2019). IL&FS Controversy: Centre is Paying Up on Sovereign Guarantees to ADB, KfW for Group's Loan. TheWire Chaudhuri, K.N. (1983). X - Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments (1757–1947). Cambridge University Press Sunderland, David (2013). Financing the Raj: The City of London and Colonial India, 1858-1940. Boydell Press Dewey, Clive (1978). Patwari and Chaukidar: Subordinate officials and the reliability of India’s agricultural statistics. Athlone Press Smith, Lisa (2015). The great Indian calorie debate: Explaining rising undernourishment during India’s rapid economic growth. Food Policy Duh, Josephine & Spears, Dean (2016). Health and Hunger: Disease, Energy Needs, and the Indian Calorie Consumption Puzzle. The Economic Journal Vankatesh, P. et al. (2016). Relationship between Food Production and Consumption Diversity in India – Empirical Evidences from Cross Section Analysis. Agricultural Economics Research Review Gupta, Shaibal (1980). Potential of Industrial Revolution in Pre-British India. Economic and Political Weekly Raychaudhuri, Tapan (1983). I - The mid-eighteenth-century background. Cambridge University Press Yasuba, Yasukichi (1986). Standard of Living in Japan Before Industrialization: From what Level did Japan Begin? A Comment. The Journal of Economic History Tomblinson, B.R. (1985). Writing History Sideways: Lessons for Indian Economic Historians from Meiji Japan. Cambridge University Press Rajan, M.S. (1969). The Impact of British Rule in India. Journal of Contemporary History Bryant, G.J. (2000). Indigenous Mercenaries in the Service of European Imperialists: The Case of the Sepoys in the Early British Indian Army, 1750-1800. War in History
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