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I’m sure you’re more than well acquainted with those bland little lists of 3, 5, 7 or perhaps 8 or maybe 10 (there may even be some witter merchant who has somehow compiled 100) things to consider before you take the plunge and open a binary options trading account.

And what pearls of wisdom do these various homilies to all that is most trite and tedious impart?

Well, apparently you definitely need to avoid getting ripped off by scam sites that don’t play straight and/or don’t pay up.

No shit Sherlock! And these scam sites are? Hmm… bit short on detail there. But never mind, I have put together a half decent guide to finding the best binary options trading platforms – or at least safe (or as safe as this business gets) ones. I suggest you go read up on this topic for yourself, but in brief:

– Beware anything that looks too profitable to be plausible. Specifically “bonuses” – the scam here is that the condition for receiving what might appear to be “free money” is you being locked into making an almost impossible number of trades before you can withdraw either your winnings or your own original money!

– Check any prospective binary options trading broker for evidence of registration (the link above includes clear instructions on what to look for, and what to look out for).

– Use your nose! Does something smell? Does the thought “I wouldn’t touch that with late Uncle Eugene’s gangrenous dick” pop into your head? If so, pass swiftly on by, pausing only to wonder how it went when old Eugene finally met his maker… “So, God, the necrotic green trouser snake – what was that about?”

One especially helpful search “result” even suggested that I might want to understand what binary options actually are and the difference between a Call and Put option, before I go ahead and wager this month’s salary on the likely price fluctuation of cumquats over the next half hour. So glad I found that one before I put when I should have called. Phew!

5 Things To Shove Up Your Ass Before You Open a Binary Option Trading Account

However, among the genuinely important things to consider, which none of these list wankers have the wit to mention, is that binary options trading is gambling. Despite the fact that the CFTC (see earlier link) themselves refer to “investing in binary options” and the whole shebang is all dressed up in the lexicon of financial “investments” – it don’t actually make it so.

As this piece about binary options and money management makes clear, in common with all forms of gambling the game is rigged. The math ensures that normal probability (which is predicting future outcomes correctly half the time and incorrectly the other half) gives the broker a 5:4 advantage (assuming a payout of 80% for a correct prediction/guess).

To get to an approximate break-even point with an 80% payout means being correct 56% of the time. So if you stake $10 for each of 100 “trades” then your 44% of losses would amount to $440 and your 56% of wins would be $448. But in order to achieve this, you not only need to possess well-placed confidence in your ability to predict specific future outcomes significantly more accurately than random chance, but do so using only 1% of your “pot” of money (see previous link to “money management” to understand why).

Let’s look at that previous paragraph another way… We need to start with a pot amounting to $1,000 and place 100 trades of $10 each (e.g. 1%). If we are indeed able to correctly call the future 56% of the time then we will make… not $800, not even $80 but, wait for it… $8 profit. This assumes using a “flat betting” scheme whereby you always place one percent of the original pot.

Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like the 80% profit that everyone seems so keen to sell you on, but that’s because I’ve used real math to factor in the cold hard reality that you are not going to win all of the time or even most of the time.

To get that 0.08 percent return on your initial $1,000 you need to place a fuck of a lot of trades and, crucially, be fucking good at predicting future outcomes in money markets. Failure on either count and you will wind up well and truly fucked.

But there is an upside…

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