all i know is that my stops are mostly worthless now. i always get stopped out by some stupid quick price spike and since i go market into the hybrid system, i get filled like 10 cents beyond my stop price. supposedly the specialist cant see stops anymore but i feel like the book and ecns will thin out momentarily and sweep whatever is there to clear out stops since hybrid is so fast you cant cancel your stop after it gets ticked.
Are the games that are played on level2 and the open book typical of periods of low volatility or is this how the market has become over the last few years. I am wondering what to expect if volatility picks up whether we will see these same games or we will be able to more easily define our risk with size in the open book. Step down buyers, step up sellers etc....! In a slow market it makes sense to get a better price. Has anyone traded a few years back when volatility was low (even 10yrs ago) and noticed the same characteristics of this market?
Funny, but I'll put money on the fact that the FBI knew about it beforehand. You can look up an SEC case that pretty much proves it. Yeah, no whacky conspiracy there, standard SEC document outlining the insider trading case and the very suspicious amendment 1 year later. Branching off that topic, you can look through SEC rulings over the past 5 years and then use the good ole brain to piece together the pattern. Like decimalization, who really benefited from that? Not the daytraders, nor the mutual & pension funds nor the investors. What happened to the old Level II readers? Most were chopped up by Goldman's black boxes. This is Wall Street, not fairy land. But then to really see what goes on, you need to do some snooping. Can't expect most to do that, they would rather just let the Wall Street media machine tell them what to think. NYSE daytrading space is quite crowded now. Obviously the big boys want a piece of it, one way or the other.
Hydro, I am on your side. I think there's a lot of truth to what you are saying. Maybe there is a way to prove it to the nay sayers. Is there any way to see how much gs made in their trading operations for a particular year? If we can get that data, then we can prove the conspiracey. I personally beleive that there are programs designed to trade against day traders. For example, there are a lot of situations where I would get in a very strong stock with 1200 shares and the stock goes down 10 cents and there is a bid on arca for exactly 1200 shares... And I hit that 1200 and the stock reverses and continues in its trend. So I am thinking, "why 1200" and "why 10 cents"? I think the avg tolerance for most scalpers is 10 cents and thats why the bid is at 10 cents below my entry. This happened to me several times. I know I am setting up for a series of comments which are going to insult me as a "paranoid loser". I really don't care because I am just stating what I am seeing. I am sure others have seen this.
You can't expect GS to disclose their numbers. But those in the industry know that GS is the leader in auto-algos. If you know the company, you know they are "special" in almost everything they do. Look at their earnings and their size, these are guys are at the top of the food chain of the evolved paper pushers. Of course there are programs that run against the general daytrader sentiment. Specialists did this manually, so did other bigger daytraders. How about the guy from Assent who used to count the bullet hitting down the market short and then grabbing the whole size for himself to sell to the panicking daytraders 10-15 cents higher? Dunno who else knows about him, he was/is BIG. Being that daytraders are more and more numerous, they start to comprise a big chunk of the intraday action. Most are net losers, hence, the ones with special privilieges want a piece of it. The most secure way to do this is with speed, hence the fear of computers, you cannot win with them on speed and execution. They can also push your stop loss limits, there are formulas for this. If those in charge of the order flow can predict and almost control the range, then they can push the smaller players to get stopped out while not giving enough of a move to take profits. AKA chopping them up. It's the trend, nothing more. It's been talked about for year on ET, this why a lot of smart money moved from US equity markets, they do not wanna deal with a market that has little barriers to entry and is starting to be dominated by computers.
This is the most brutal of all competitions and everyone is trying to extract money from the market. So if its known that a bunch of weak hands play a certain strategy then other market participants will devise a strategy to try to take your money YOU'RE AT WAR while trading and EVERYONE IS TRYING TO F@#K YOU
Is this a career ending event? Dont people have bills to pay and because i hybrid they cant take home checks are guys still making money?
Not for everyone. But I watched traders quitting & giving up when bullets were banned. Some simply could not evolve beyond the gimmick, others simply felt the market was no longer worth it, better stuff out there.
What was the reason for Hybrid? Does it keep a better orderly market, does it benefit investors, is it cutting down expenses not using specialist always, and how does it benefit traders?