u/Individual_Type_7908

Hey Im curious how have you found algotrading ideally or just trading generally smaller agricultural futures ? What sort of timeframes did you focus on ? Anybody tried short term ? Like minutes to hours (maybe up to a few days)? How has the playground been ? How would you compare to other assets ?

Most curious about what finding an edge in there has been like for you ? Have you found it harder or easier than whatever else you tried.

Any crypto bros who tried this ? Curious about it as it seems like smaller markets, with potential

I'm curious

At what point did you notice, maybe if you have big goals or some sort of ambition, that you naturally felt a drive to push it all the way, long term goals that require sense of purpose and delayed gratification ?

I feel some bursts of dopamine and focus return within 2-4 weeks depending, but the purpose seems to take more time or something more

I know what i want, or like what i want to do, but it has weak backing without caffeine or alternative stimulation. Or just short natural bursts that aren't enough on their own to drag it to the goal long term

Hey

I was wondering, why are retail trading forex so much? There's crypto, new, evolving, you can find alternative data and you can have a real edge, not as gatekept. You can probably focus on niche agricultural cfd's or micro-futures where also you have a shot at having a real structural edge. Or maybe prediction markets at some point if they become more liquid eventually.

Or if anything maybe you can do stocks which are still heavy institutional dominated and you can't really get as much of a structural edge, ofcourse you can make money in anything with little but you're already at a disadvantage in stocks, where atlest I can think of few advantages you could try to get, but, you don't have insider info which others may have, you probably don't have the data that quant firms have that you cannot get, it's well gate kept, even historical orderbook data is pain and if you have that in crypto, it's really useful, but in stocks ? You've just leveled the field a little bit, it's less meaningful.

Stocks / forex are also affected by politics which are pretty hard to predict, playing on that is very noisy I think, but i can sort of see you can specialize on some stocks or certain mechanics and play that.

But forex? I think it's where the gap is most amplified, decentralised markets(you don't have 1 source of data, it's big, and unreachable often times) , you can't get data beyond price and maybe some available stuff, you have banks with transactions data and ton of advantages you have no chance to ever get. And it's geopolitics and stuff you can't really predict I think, or very very very few people can and even then I think the edge is modest at best if you're really damm good, and maybe a bit of luck too. Like I just don't see why out of everything somebody would pick forex, a field saturated with giants who have so many enormous advantages and I don't see anything retail could use to level the field. In crypto or niche markets you can not just level the field but I would argue even become the main player almost if you're really serious and technical.

But forex is like, war is difficult on it's own, but you're picking to be like a small military with AK 47's against a full blown empire with jets and intelligence and all the modern tech. And you're choosing that voluntarily. So I wonder why ?

Enlighten me please, I've had this question in my head for a while. Like what you picked forex and sticked with it, there's probably a reason right ? Like why you thought forex would be where you would do well. I personally try really hard to gain structural edges in crypto, not just fight better(data analysis to find an edge in the data aka my strategy) but actually have superior ground and gear, more data that almost nobody has, stuff that's somewhat available but super annoying to process, hard work and nerdy work, and then ways to intepret it. And various stuff. But I just don't see any of that in forex, and stocks barely. Many niche agricultural markets driven by structural demand make sense to me too, where heavy quant is scarce. I can also see how I or somebody like me who's really serious among retail could try that, but stocks seem like uphill battle, and forex feels like doom, like almost impossible.

I'm not saying you can't win, ofcourse you can, but it's a hard game in any space, and forex seems like the worst one retail could pick, in my opinion, the profile is so so bad for retail. It's pretty horrible I think. So there has to be a reason why people pick that.

It's possible I'm unaware of edges retail can really exploit here, and if that's the case I would really like to know about that. Ofcourse there's "some" edge, but I'm talking about real leverage retail can have here. And repeat it.