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North Carolina
Experience: Beginner
Platform: NinjaTrader, Tradestation
Trading: es
Posts: 644 since Nov 2011
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*CFD's aren't aloud in the states yet Forex is, it uses the same kind of leverage ratios, right?
It has to do with Commodities Exchange Act. CFD might be permissible to trade in specific situations but you'd have to do your own research.
*Can you trade Forex via the DOM or not as it has no "centralised" exchange? I'm getting blurred answers on this so far.
Don't trade Forex but probably depends on whether you are using an ECN or broker model. But, there is probably enough liquidity to make it less relevant in most cases.
*With futures or ANY other non FX/CFD markets, what instruments have the most leverage available? is there anything else with leverage similar to forex that isn't forex?
Plenty of leverage in any futures product. NADEX binary options and spreads.
*If you zoom right into a chart and see a few ticks it's just a random line, you would be better of scalping from the DOM right? I'm finding that to actually see technical analysis breakout patterns etc I need to see at least a days worth of chart history, does my summary of that sound "right" to you or?
The problem you would run into trying to do this is your cost structure is higher as a retail trader in futures, you will not be able to maintain top of book, and you will be slower then HFT. A market maker is basically trying to offset the cost of market jumps by trading a high volume and capturing the spread each trade-- even so, basic or naive models of that will not be profitable in live markets. With Forex, you will run into the problem of the spread and specific to broker. Trading shorter time frames typically requires more advanced skills. You might want to get an elite membership and read traders journals to learn how day traders are trading. Typically, day trading is considered more difficult then swing trading and more active day trading is considered the most difficult.
*Do people actually make a living by just looking at a chart and placing their order? is technical analysis actually a real thing that works or?
So, you move from "does it work" to correlating that to "does it work well enough" to trade for a living. Also, you equate "technical analysis" to just looking at a chart. Some technicians will work 40 to 60 hours in a week studying charts. Markets are influenced by a variety of factors. If you include any/all market generated information into "technical analysis", like I think of it, then it basically encompasses almost everything you could trade off of except for news/events. However, classical analysis or any method applied in a non expert fashion is unlikely to return any better then mediocre to average results. The future return of any method is unknown. It would be a mistake to assume a method you read about will just work. Markets change and well publicized methods tend not to work well. Because the future is unknown, it is not possible to say whether or not any method will work in the future. The other aspect to this question is the matter of confidence of return. If you are going to require a method to work over 100 years of data then you're probably not going to find much that works and whatever you find probably won't work well, if you're going to only look over 5 or 10 years you will find more stuff that works better with less confidence. Discretionary traders may be able to apply methods that wouldn't work if applied with rigorous consistency. But, whatever you do, it would be advisable to have obtained some threshold of success paper trading or backtesting first.
*With charts, what do you do if there is no volatility and it's just a straight-ish line with no patterns or trends emerging?
It depends on your plan. If you are a single market trader, you would not trade. Many traders are multi-market traders, they will move to next market. Options traders can sell volatility if they wanted. You can also move down to a lower time frame.
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