Today we have a special contribution from John Anthony
What I’ve been wondering about lately is how much money you can actually make trading binary options. While I’ve personally never traded binary options, I’ve seen the topic covered on dozens of personal finance blogs. In this article I’ll be trying to answer whether you can really make money in binary options.
In this form of trading you will have to predict how the prices of various assets will develop in the future (i.e. go up or down). You will not actually have to buy any of these assets but merely predict whether their prices will go up or down.
If you made a correct prediction, you will be paid out a certain amount of money. If your prediction is incorrect you will lose all the money invested.
Now, this might appear as a 50% chance to win but it’s only 50% if you make random predictions. If you actually want to make money you will have to increase your winning chances even more.
One of the things many people claim is that binary options is gambling, therefore it’s not possible to increase your winning chances past the 50%. This is simply incorrect. If you are able to follow charts, conduct technical analysis and understand the impact certain news have on stock prices then it’s perfectly possible to increase your winning odds past the 50% mark.
There are however two problems with this. Problem number one is that not everyone is capable of understanding stock prices and the movement of market prices on an advanced level. I believe that the vast majority of people trading binary options at this moment should not be doing it because they don’t have the necessary skills to consistently make money.
The second problem is that in order to win you will have to increase your winning odds much further than just 50%. This is because a lot of times you trade binary options you will not be paid out 100% profits in your investment.
Most binary options brokers offer payout rates that are much less than 100%. Check out this page: http://www.optionsadvice.com/brokers/ – you will see that the binary options brokers they have listed there offer at most a payout rate of 95%. However, I’ve checked those sites in the list and this seems to be the maximum payout. In most cases the payout will be around 75%.
This means that in order to consistently make money you will have to win at least 80% of the time. While I think this is possible, I don’t think most people will be able to achieve it. In order words, even if 75% of your predictions are correct, you will still lose money.
So, in short I do think you can make money in binary options in theory. You might be able to make money in practice as well in case you are a professional investor and trader, however not so much if you are just a random person on the internet.
I’m just really wondering why so many people still register at binary options websites when it’s so obvious that your winning chances as a regular person are even lower than in the case of casino games like blackjack and slots.
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Personal Capital lets you see all of your accounts in one convenient place. Sign up now for free.I mean, if people really want to invest then you can do it the proper way by buying real stock and then selling them once their value has increased. You can do this online as well from your living room, so there should be no valid reason to trade binary options instead, which is probably the most dangerous form of trading.
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