In-depth analysis: why does the outcome of speculating futures only lose?

The process of commodity futures from daily limit to daily limit last Friday was heated by the media, mostly because of the difference between compensation and profit. In fact, speculation in futures, or similar leveraged varieties of foreign exchange and crude oil, mostly ends in only one, that is, loss! Because there is an unsolvable operational logic fallacy, there is only one long-term result-compensation. The author brings you in-depth analysis.

Let's talk about the futures event that happened next Friday. This event is actually very simple. The varieties that fell at the opening limit suddenly fell, and countless investors suffered heavy losses.

This disastrous situation has become a hot topic on the Internet, such as "Holocaust" and "Black Friday". At that time, the environment of commodity futures was full of enthusiasm, starting from coke rebar and rising all the way, and suddenly the daily limit to the daily limit was really lethal; Another reason is that in the process of instantaneous daily limit, the system suddenly got stuck, the reaction was too late, and the opponent's position was not enough, which caused the bulls to have no time to close their positions at the set stop loss position and went directly to the explosion position.

Of course, there is no lack of online use of the unpredictable futures market, a kind of heroism like licking blood, or an appropriate fortune teller's theory of hanging empty orders before the daily limit and suddenly making profits, which makes the common long-short game in this financial market seem to be an attractive investment experience. Here, the author rationally tells investors that futures will lose money and there is an unsolvable logical dilemma, as follows:

Futures, a leveraged investment product, is characterized by two-way leverage, that is, in theory, both long and short make money, which is also the place where many institutions publicize the benefits of futures. But the fatal problem of futures also lies in leverage, because long and short positions can be bet, so it involves the concept of margin. All operations must be carried out with leveraged margin on the premise that you need to pay margin. The actual effect is not particularly accurate, in order to be more intuitive. That is to say, your own 65,438,000,000 assets (such as normal stocks) may fluctuate by thousands every day on average, because after betting on two-way leverage, the average daily fluctuation will become tens of thousands. The advantage is that you may make money faster than before, and the other side of the coin is that you may match faster than before. From the stock point of view, this seems to be a problem. Unlike the stock, it won't be wiped out, because the stock is delisted, even if it falls by a penny logically, as long as you don't sell it, your loss is a floating loss, that is, you have no loss. Maybe after this pass, you will return to your capital and even make money. For example, after the big bear in 2008, last year's bull market liberated many people from the top of the mountain. The leveraged margin system of futures can only be returned to your account when your margin is insufficient, or after you lose money to a certain extent. We often hear the important things said three times.

There are the following points. If investors can't do it, they will lose money by speculating in futures.

The first thing is that many investors can't control their hands and still operate in Man Cang when there is no profit-making effect and systemic risk in the market, so the possibility of making money is very small, and the probability of losing money becomes greater.

Second, investors have no strict discipline, and they can't stop profit and stop loss in time in the short term. There are often many investors who want to have another daily limit when they see the daily limit of futures, but sometimes the daily limit will not go up the next day, and they will open lower directly, and some even open lower.

At this time, many investors are often reluctant to sell futures. After selling the futures, the futures pulled the daily limit again, and the futures that originally made money became losses. There is also the day after the daily limit, investors always want to continue the daily limit. As a result, the highest point did not go, and it fell in the late session. The futures that originally made money did not eat big meat. Since it is ultra-short-term, it is necessary to take profit and stop loss in time.

Many people are reluctant to cut their meat and always want to throw it back, but the futures market doesn't give you a chance to pay it back at all, so discipline is very important. This is difficult, but 99% of investors can't strictly stop loss and take profit. One is afraid of rising after selling futures, and the other is unwilling to cut money. To put it bluntly, I paid too much attention to money and lost a lot.

Third, the reason for losing money is because I like chasing high, but the success rate is too low. If the success rate is too low, and then you often cut meat, then you must have cut all your money.

The fourth point is also a very important reason for the loss. Many people blindly learn other people's operation methods when they see how many times others turn over a year. In fact, many operating methods are with others, but they are not suitable for you. The result is that the more you learn from other people's methods, the more you lose. If you can only learn a little, you can't reach the level of others at all, and your execution and control are not as good as others, then losing money is certain.

The fifth reason for the loss is that many times, when it first started to rise, it was afraid to buy futures or bought very little. As the index rises higher and higher, the positions are getting heavier and heavier, and funds are constantly joining. At the highest point, I worked hard for a month, then fell in three days and returned to before liberation.

There are also many such investors. When the index began to rise, they were afraid to buy it and bought 65438+ 10,000. As the index soared, it began to increase to 300.5 million. Finally, it will be 8.0 1 100 million. Just as investors began to work hard, the disk of futures began to adjust. Who did you say you couldn't trick?

I'm afraid that people who do futures have experienced short positions, so when the problem comes, is there no way to solve short positions?

There are two ways:

The first is to control positions, that is, I bet with few positions, and the remaining positions are guaranteed. This inaccurate metaphor is like if the lever fluctuates at 10000 before I use 10000, in extreme cases, when I make mistakes continuously, I lose 10000 yuan every day, and the deposit can last for 10 days. After I adjust my position, I can use leverage.

The second is to set a stop loss, that is, when I specify the loss to a certain extent, such as my principal loss 10%. This single stop loss is a completely acceptable loss range, regardless of the extreme impossibility of closing the transaction. Isn't this investment a perfect solution to the problem of short positions?

These two methods are really beautiful at first glance, but if you think deeply, you will find that this is a logical dilemma with no solution!

Where is the dilemma?

First of all, in the position control, if you control the leverage to the daily fluctuation 1000, then the profit-making effect is weakened a lot because of the security of your margin, that is, you have been fighting for 10 days continuously, which is very difficult. As a result, you may earn 65,438+00,000 because of the position, according to the previous metaphor. If you didn't control your position, your income would have been 65438. So how much is the position control? There may be a logical and reasonable proportion in the control of positions, but what people can't solve is that they are psychologically right and the positions are too low. If you add too much, you are afraid that you will make a mistake again and again, and it will be gone after a few times. This is a dilemma.

The more unsolvable dilemma is the setting of stop loss, which is a completely unsolvable logical dilemma! As I said before, futures fluctuated greatly because of leverage, including this time on Friday. Many people joked that short positions were first destroyed by the daily limit and then killed by the daily limit. What does this mean? In other words, you correctly saw the megatrend, or bet on the megatrend, but due to the increase in the fluctuation of leverage, when the market is about to be the same as you predicted, there will be a reverse retracement, which is normal. However, we don't have to make extreme assumptions by exploding positions. It is formed by the simplest setting of investors' active stop loss, which is not the case that extreme stop loss cannot be realized. What will definitely happen in the futures market is that you set a stop loss of 10%. When you set the stop loss in the opposite direction of 10%, you will soon start to verify your judgment at 12%, and it will go up. If there is no stop loss, it may be profitable! But you didn't make any money because you set a stop loss. Furthermore, if your stop loss is set at 15%, you will make a profit after surviving the loss of 12%, so you decide to set your stop loss at 15% in the future, and then you will find that a 25% callback will bring 100%. So you set the stop loss to 30%, then repeat the above logic, 35%, 45% retreat, and so on, until after several times, you find that 80% stop loss can better accept fluctuations, so you set the stop loss to 90%. After you made many profits, one day, your stop loss was triggered, so you stopped and you lost 90%. Yes, in order to ensure that the stop loss of the general trend fluctuation is effective, it really triggered that day, and you suffered heavy losses, or you didn't set a stop loss and asked the system to stop it for you. The arrival of that day is what I said before, broken position!

That is to say, in the futures market, under the dual guidance of profit and risk control, the sentence "risk is proportional to income" is vividly reflected. This unsolvable dilemma is that there is no reasonable position ratio and stop loss ratio for investors to use, just like a classic case of that year:

For Wuhan woman Wan Qun (a pseudonym), yesterday was an unforgettable day in her life. As the protagonist of the market myth that "Wuchang female residents can achieve14.5 million from 40,000 in half a year", the last 300 contracts of soybean oil held by Wanqun were forcibly closed yesterday morning due to insufficient margin, and the last remaining funds in the account were less than 50,000 yuan. Nearly half a month later, a multimillionaire's "dream" finally came to an end.

The investor made huge profits through market coordination all the way to Man Cang. Her profitable futures operation is unreasonable. If she uses reasonable methods, she won't earn100000. The problem is, many people, because of temporary irrationality or gambling, can't quit after the pot of money they earned is full.

Furthermore, if you have enough rationality, control and logical ability, you will find that only by solving the balance point between positions and stops can you get long-term stable profits, which are actually the so-called quantitative hedging and arbitrage, and this stable profit actually became very attractive last year, and interested friends can study it themselves.

For most investors who want to get enough income in the investment market as much as possible, the balance between positions and stops can never be solved. This unsolvable logical dilemma, if there is no income to withdraw from the leveraged market, will inevitably be tortured and tortured in this dilemma.

Here, ordinary investors are advised not to make leveraged investments such as futures, foreign exchange and gold. , including trying not to trade stocks through financing leverage, because without leveraged investment, you can have the investment freedom you want, you can "sell when you should", you can "walk away" when you lose money, and the big deal is "you have everything for me". This is a good investment.