The difference between a gamble and a calculated risk with safeguards

  

While we can appreciate the lure of a casino for an evening’s entertainment, especially those of the standard of the superbly run establishments in Monaco and Estoril, Portugal, with their first-class restaurants and excellent stage shows as side attractions, it is hard to envisage the appeal of putting money at risk with the statistical disadvantages that exist in a game like roulette when played on the Internet. The pure thrill must have something to do with it.

Trading Forex embraces risk too, but as regular visitors to Omicron Forex will know, we strive to create for our clients the opposite situation to that of a casino patron. Our raison d'etre is to stack the probabilities on the side of our trader clients rather than on the side of their various counterparties (and make no mistake, trading is a zero-sum activity - for you to win, someone else, somewhere, has to lose).

Now, it would seem, purveyors of skewed risk have come up with another wheeze to part the unwary from their assets. This has the sophisticated sounding title of “Binary Option trading”. Thus a term to describe an instrument that was designed to hedge risk, the option, has been expropriated in order to give a veneer of legitimacy to something that probably has less to offer the player than Roulette or Blackjack. The providers of Binary Options are indifferent to the outcome of any given "trade". People who understand probability will realise that this says it all.

As Gordon Pape writes in Forbes Magazine:

"If people want to gamble, that’s their choice. But let’s not confuse that with investing. Binary options are a crapshoot, pure and simple."

You can read his full Forbes article, entitled “Don't Gamble On Binary Options“, HERE.