Quote from: elebit on June 23, 2014, 12:47:13 PM

If you're trading super short swings, with leverage, on an unregulated exchange, you really can't complain much. But if you take a longer view, front running doesn't matter much. Where are we going in a week? In a month? There's still money to be made.

Really?

So would you go to bed without a stop loss on a leveraged trade? I soon learned that setting stop losses were just a way of helping the exchange insiders farm my arse, so I stopped doing it. Then one night I went to bed and woke up to find that Bitcoin had gone some $40 against my trade. Instead of cementing the losses, I decided to go Kamikaze on the trade and hold until the trade came back to my break even point. The trade eventually did come back to my break even point but before that happened, I am afraid I lost my nerve some $110 into the wrong side of my trade and realised the biggest capital loss I have ever suffered in my entire life.

So what can a trader do? He has to set Stop Loss orders and accept the fact that whenever it is feasible, profitable and proficient to do so, these unregulated exchanges can and will farm your arse. But since we are trading on unregulated exchanges we can't really complain too much about this sort of thing, right? Instead, we can resolve to never make a leveraged trade in a flat market? Well how are you ever going to catch any sweet breaks if you don't trade when the market is still flat?

And where are we going in a week, in a month? If you went leveraged long last week you would have gotten in at about $590. Two weeks ago and you would have gotten in about $650. A Month ago you would have gotten in at $540. That is much more like it, but what about the 0.25% daily compound interest? Say you got in on May 23rd with 10000 USD leveraged trade. The interest you would have to pay on that trade for one month would be around $900 USD. That is more than your profit margins would be today. Well done, you are on the winning side of the trade but are in the red.