mav; on friday u wrote "So out of the 40 something traders I over saw how many of them made money? None. How many of them blew out their accounts? Almost all" then your last post you mentioned at worldco..you sat next to more big traders than anywhere not an investment bank" can you clarify a bit better what you are trying to convey? possibly things are random..or the one set did not study enough vs the other set..or even possibly the trading environment was more conducive to day traders? or something entirely different... i take it u were mostly a risk manager as opposed to trader in these jobs? you write entensively so i apologize for maybe skimming your points.
So what specific methods were these guys using that you "bought into" and is that something that could be replicated easily buy a retail trader? You mention time and sales. Is it just identifying direction of large order flow and riding coat tails, or is it turning the market during slow periods and trying to get momentum traders on board?
SIV, Two completely different environments. At Worldco we ironically had a very high percentage of Ivy League Grads (here comes the haters). However we also had a ton of asians and Russians right off the boat so speak. Hell, we had a few guys right out of high school. However the intellect there was amazing, even for that time period before the quants took over. Also the guys there busted their ass. People make fun of Worldco a lot but these guys brought game. The intensity there was amazing. At VTrader it was basically Elite Trader. No I have never been a risk manager but I was responsible for watching the guys who I brought in there. It was just easier for me to talk to them when there was a problem then having some guy in SF screaming at them to get out of a position. Honestly SIV it was night and day. One group was a bunch of hobbysist traders who wanted to give the old trading game a college try. Show up at the office at the open bell, leave two hours before market closes. Sell some premium, go to lunch, run some errands. The other group showed up 3 to 4 hours before market open. Left 3 hours after market closed. Ate lunch at their desk. Built huge proprietary edges. Guarded them with their life. Hell the Russians had their own floor and locked all their doors to keep guys out. Groups were very secretive. It was really an eye opening experience. SIV it's just a function of worth ethic, to some degree intellect, and focusing on areas of the market that were quiet and and not crowded. We only traded listed names and mostly midcaps. But we dominated that space. We probably represented half of all the trading on the NYSE on on those names ironically enough. Guys on this board just don't understand the kind of work that goes into this business. And by work I mean both in trading and education. If guys want to believe you can use a straight ruler and a movinvg avg crossover on ES futures and claim some kind of edge, well this is America and they have that right. I'm just offering advice. Not charging anything for it.
Also to be fair, we as a firm did have an edge that went away in 2003 and that was bullets. Bullets were a huge edge. I don't know what % of our p&l was attributed to bullets, it wasn't all but it was a lot.
One, not trading the nasdaq names at the time. EVERYONE and their mother was trading internet and tech names. We were trading hardware stores and chemical stocks that did 300k shares a day. That was very tough for me to buy into at the beginning. Looking for the stuff that didn't move a lot but had news catalysts in a similar name. The second thing was ditching charts. All we looked at was the NYSE tape. Since these stocks traded so little shares it was very easy to track the tape. I watched every print in every stock I traded. Never looked at a chart. THAT was hard to buy into as well. Not fading stuff. Being willing to buy a stock up 8% on the day that normally moves 1% a day. These are all very psychologically difficult things for guys to do. But you look around you and you see guys making 100k , 300k , 500k a day and you do what you have to drink the medicine and get on board.
gotcha; i concur with the time, modeling etc needed. i will diverge with you that there are no guys who have done the steps necessary to make it. that time/modeling, maths needed precludes me from posting a lot!
SIV, there are 40k aliases on this site. Obviously I'm speaking about the general population. I am actually working with some pretty bright people on this site on some modelling projects. But they are few and hard to come by on here.
hmm yes the best I have seen are secretive, immensely committed and focussed. An intense concentration on money management also. They don't try to cut losers or trades they no longer want they just do it instantly without thinking/hesitating and walk away. If I was going to trade stocks with DOM & TOS and no charts I would probably choose 6 to 8 names and watch the sector/commodity etf/spy. Clear through a broker with tiny round trip costs and pay away a small split aiming to take out 20-30 price ticks a day.
Since I didn't come from a true Prop background and still struggle with the DOM, I am at a disadvantage in some respects. However, I do know my fractal wave patterns on the CL and NQ. And with those I know how to extract some $$. I think most retail traders concentrate on the wrong instruments, the ES comes to mind, and get worked over by enlightened traders before they ever get the chance to really learn the game. Working on adding reading the order flow to help confirm and refine my entries. Same lessons that applied to my IT career applies to trading. If you're not learning something new , you're falling behind.