I don't think I ever put in 18 hrs in one day but the number of hours over the course of many years is very very many. I'm not sure I would have ever been able to craft my current system without serious dedication and hard work. It would have been easy to throw in the towel after the first few iterations weren't robust enough.
the OP of this tread has been teaching how to trade for over 10 years. I am still very confused why a combine would be so difficult for him. after 10 years of having people pay you, I would imagine you would pick up a few tricks on how to make money. I have a feeling he is betting it all soon, gambling in the last few days. I also think this isn't a method where people should pay for. who knows the truth.
what Surf is really trying to say is that he knows more than you about markets especially the back end of the vol curve etc...
Most would be better off with another profession if they can only make money during the "good years", the good years wont make up for the lost (or negative) income during the bad years. And you are clueless if you think market making is dead and spread trading is dead, investment banks derive a good chunk of their income from market making and trading spreads, how do you think goldman sachs got their flawless trading records? The algo guys are still around, they are the ones who wrote the programs that the computer is running you dimwit and LoL at those silly comments that everyone can front run, how many ET pikers can afford to front run like what HFTs are doing now? Let me guess... zilch? And what about this? http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetel...report-following-disclosure-of-early-release/ The fact that volume declined to nothing after the front runners were "found out" is proof that MOST TRADERS did not know about this. So you are absolutely clueless if you think everyone can front run, you need to know what to front run, how to do it and you need the resources to do it. I dont know what arbitrage funds you are babbling about but these guys, like 99% of the hedge funds out there, likely have no real edge. Most of them are underperforming the SPX, tell me if I care they have been decimated? All I know is I did very profitable arb (arb'ing the same 2 instruments) for many years, I went from a 20k a/c to nearly 900k in just 5 years, doing the same thing everyday, so again you are ignorant if you think there are no more arb opportunities left in the market. There are always inefficiencies in financial markets, especially in markets that arent as developed as the US market yet. Obviously that edge has now been exhausted but no edge lasts forever, but those are real edges (while they lasted).
Stopped doing that after that edge was exhausted about 3 years ago, switched to trading the ES after that and I did ok on my first year, the following year (2012) was horrible though. I was getting wild gyrations in my a/c, in the end I was lucky to end in the black for the year, but just barely enough for it to be worth my time (and all that fucking anxiety). Decided to stop trading the ES this year, left a chunk of my a/c in the SPY, and invested the rest in a business.