I love how Zhou has placed the "Buy" button next to the Ask price in the instant execution window to encouraged noobs to make their BTC buys at the Ask resulting in an immediate loss on the spread to the buyer and an immediate profit for Bitcoinica.
Yea he's got himself a nice a little business. To open a position, you lose the spread (~1%) not just once, but as many times over as your leverage. So each time you open a position at five to one leverage you're basically giving him 5% of your deposit, and at ten to one its 10%. Bitcoinica daytraders would more than likely be seeing their accounts dwindling if this wasn't such a strong uptrend.
Even as it is, for my risk profile its better to just hold my coin for longer-run gains and sell on mtgox (or any other real exchange). I'm not subject to a zhoutonging at every whim of the market, and I won't have to give away my (still fantastic) gains 5x over on those rare occasions when I will want to reduce my risk.
Short-term traders just don't seem to realize how much your gains multiply themselves when you aren't hovering over the sell button and biting your nails during a monster fucking bull run. You just have to let them run. When you trade short-term all you're doing is giving away your gains to sophisticated market makers. You still make money, but they don't multiply when you do that.
Its all in good fun though. Not like any of us here are folks desperate enough to bet more than we can afford to lose, right?
gooôöòóoœøōõo looooôöòóoœøōõooooong (hold down the o key I just noticed gives this bunch of còól ōptions, nöt sure if that's this fôrum or my cømp, first time that I've seen it = neatõ)