Not a bad show, I had fun. I haven't missed a single one for the past 12 years or so, since I live just an hour from midtown Manhattan.
I was there this past Sunday and yesterday, Monday, Feb 19 and 20. For the most part I attended several seminars; also spent a few hours around the floor speaking with the vendors and listening to some of their presentations. I thought the speakers are getting better and better - I would actually venture to say that the Expo is gradually turning more educational, rather then new trading system oriented.
However, there were definitely fewer exhibitors - mainly the big brokerage houses, like Fidelity and TradeStation, and a few medium size trading systems developers, like Nirvana (excellent software and methodologies there) and Best Choice (interesting, kind of expensive.) Long gone are the days, 5-6 years ago, when dozens of small-medium size innovators were crowding the corridors, showing off their fresh-out-of-the-lab "trading system breakthroughs". That was definitely a lot of fun... in contrast, the corridors now are mostly clear... who needs that?
One interesting observation: lots of young people there, in their mid-twenties I would say. Perhaps recent college graduates who can't get jobs at large corporations and are looking for a challenging new career. That's good, new blood is always great, if they can get plugged in properly and make a good living in trading.
First time, imo, that nobody offered free t-shirts... just lots of pens... oh well
Not a bad show, I had fun. I haven't missed a single one for the past 12 years or so, since I live just an hour from midtown Manhattan.
I was there this past Sunday and yesterday, Monday, Feb 19 and 20. For the most part I attended several seminars; also spent a few hours around the floor speaking with the vendors and listening to some of their presentations. I thought the speakers are getting better and better - I would actually venture to say that the Expo is gradually turning more educational, rather then new trading system oriented.
However, there were definitely fewer exhibitors - mainly the big brokerage houses, like Fidelity and TradeStation, and a few medium size trading systems developers, like Nirvana (excellent software and methodologies there) and Best Choice (interesting, kind of expensive.) Long gone are the days, 5-6 years ago, when dozens of small-medium size innovators were crowding the corridors, showing off their fresh-out-of-the-lab "trading system breakthroughs". That was definitely a lot of fun... in contrast, the corridors now are mostly clear... who needs that?
One interesting observation: lots of young people there, in their mid-twenties I would say. Perhaps recent college graduates who can't get jobs at large corporations and are looking for a challenging new career. That's good, new blood is always great, if they can get plugged in properly and make a good living in trading.
First time, imo, that nobody offered free t-shirts... just lots of pens... oh well
I went for a few hours on Tuesday. I've been going for long time also. My real complaint is that they don't seem to be acknowledging the realities of the market these days. Still lots of day trading companies, software, etc. Not much that a professional algo trader would be interested in (not that I am one). I wish there were more algo-trading stuff. The expo seems to be still mainly for neophytes.
thanks for that update. i didn't go this year, so nice to hear the report, but a couple questions:
-> are you saying tradestation/fidelity *were* there, or weren't?
-> which book vendors were there?
-> was the hall area also filled with vendors?
just wondering...i was surprised last year that connors was there in the hall selling some new reversion-to-mean * black box strategy as well...
* i'm assuming it was RTM.
Yes, several big brokerage companies (eg, Fidelity, TS, Schwab, Alpari, FXDD, LightSpeed, TDAmeritrade, T3, et al) were present, well staffed and very active, made presentations round the clock.
Wrt book vendors, I saw Traders Press but didn't really hang around because I can get the books I want for less elsewhere.
The exhibit hall was almost full, but the outside hall areas mostly empty - perhaps 3-4 vendors on each floor as compared to 20-30 in years past.
A Connors salesman had told me that they would be there, but they didn't show up. I have a lot of respect for Larry and Co having been a user of his TS trading module for a while.
