Currency exchange rates.. Am I wrong about this?
 

It's all done electronically. . you would think actual delivery would be possible. It isn't, because you could make a lot of money if it was. I think.

Am I wrong?

Like this as an example you've got five currencies

#1 is your currency where you are

#1 is strong against #3 and #3 is strong against #2 and #2 is strong against #4 and #4 is strong against #1

You could trade #1 for #3 and then buy #2 with your #3 and then trade your #2 for #4 and then buy #1 with your #4 and end up with more of #1

See

But

When I had a forex account, I always had to trade back for my baseline currency before I could buy another currency. Say I bought yen, right, well if I wanted to buy some eur with my yen, forget it!!! Have to trade back to dollars first. See.

And sure it's only a three pip spread an even less... but you're still trying to predict waves just like many people do with stocks. Why is it impossible to trade outside of the "pairs"??

I mean to say I am pretty sure fucking banks can do that and end up with fortunes .. not to mention that they charge a fee or difference on every fucking thing they ever do .. all the motherfucking money changers ever DO is steal value quietly

Also, I always wondered quietly to myself if there was a way to have multiple accounts in different countries, and if the baseline currency is always dollars for forex accounts. Because see if you could have different baseline currencies and move money between accounts without paying too much in fees and whatever else BLAM you'd be a rich wealthy fuck. And it could easily be automated... There could easily be software that looked for profitable chains

the exact reason it is set that way is so you can NOT do what the banks are doing.

Now If you can drop lets say 50 or 100 million into an account I bet you just might see some different settings.

It's called arbitrage. Yes, there is software to do it. Very good software that recognizes the splits and acts in milliseconds. There's not as much money to be made that way as you might think.

You're not the first person to think of it, obviously. Lots of people have thought of it, so as soon as an imbalance occurs people start buying and selling and in about one second things are brought into balance by the increased demand for the weaker currency. It's a race to get your transactions done while the imbalance exists. Because it's a race, people spend big money on systems to do it fast - fast computers, low latency communications links, etc.

Let's say there is a 0.01% split. Doing $10 million in transactions would net you $1 thousand. BUT your competitor can take that $1,000 if they are faster than you, so they spend another $500 on faster equipment, for a net gain of $500 on $10,000,000. You see that they are faster, so you spend $900 upgrading your equipment so that you can win the race and net $100. Congratulations, you've just made $100 on your $10,000,000. Oops, you didn't know about the faster guy in Florida. Your transactions were slower and you actually list $25. Welcome to the world of currency arbitrage. That competive pressure means the profits aren't huge.

To make it worth trying, you do want to use big numbers, buying and selling millions because otherwise you're only going to make pennies - not enough to pay for your equipment.

You can also see now why taking physical delivery wouldn't work at all. By the time the first few bills have been counted the guy down the street would have already done the trade electronically and the opportunity would be gone.

Although there's a lot of competition in currency arbitrage, the same principle can be applied elsewhere and I've done so successfully. In other areas it often involves an element of marketing as well - buy from someone who hasn't taken the time to market the thing well, then do the marketing to sell it to the person who really wants it and is willing to pay top dollar.

That makes sense. It sounds like sports betting arbitrage would be a lot easier. Ha

you can have multiple accounts at your bank, i always had a Euro and a dollar account.