Well, I politely disagree with you. Reading books and watching tutorials are not enough to teach how to pilot an Airbus, but they are part of the learning process. Surgery, fishing, skydiving, piloting, driving, anything would be extremely hard and time-consuming to learn without some "crude" information OR a experienced guide. I don't see how trading the markets could be different. I don't mean to put Al Brooks or any other experienced trader in the position of "superhero" or "guru", but I believe I should listen to experienced people and try to extract valuable information from them, even if I'm not taking everything they say as truth. I consider myself "Asperger-ish". I mean, I study technical analysis and trading in general while I'm home, while I'm at work, during my lunchtime, while commuting, etc. Everyday I religiously scrutinize the intraday charts. Needless to say, some say I'm crazy. I didn't live that pre-HFT trading era, but he does cite the automated trading and some of its impacts. Then again, HFT doesn't seem to cause big negative impacts on charts and trading, but I can enjoy the increased liquidity.
Do you really need the opinions of anonymous forum members ? Its very simple. Learn it, backtest it and then simulate trade it. Your own personal experience will most likely be different than others but your personal experience will be more valuable...good or bad because its a discretionary trade method and each trader using it will apply it differently that correlates to their own personal trading style. In addition, there's many other threads about the method that you can easily research here at the forum and at other forum if your thread doesn't cough up any useful info that may help you to better understand the method especially if you're looking for info by those applying the method in current market conditions via your trading instrument.
There are many valid arguments suggesting liquidity has decreased with HFT overall, especially in times when liquidity is needed. There are many valid arguments suggesting daytrade management is much more difficult at the intraday level now due to the speed of price movement at -1 minute due to HFT. There are many valid arguments suggesting the cross-correlation of markets by computer programs has created nuanced changes in intraday AND daily price action charts, even weekly charts, since the market is fractal, if Brooks is right.
Happy New Year, surf. http://m.rfs.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/41.short http://www.nber.org/papers/w7613
I see. I don't feel a lack of liquidity during high volatility moments, my slippage is often due to my Internet connection. The 1 minute chart has been pretty mad for a while, though I still know some professionals who can trade it. Anyway, I can't tell if my difficulties are due to the effects of hft on my charts but I prefer to take the blame rather than blame others for my failures. I'm not saying the arguments against hft are invalid but they shouldn't be used as excuses by beginners who have trouble achieving profitability.
Thanks! But man, data that is 31 years old and around 20 years old at its latest?? Markets have changed radically since those days. What use to take days or weeks to develop now occurs in hours or even minutes. We could disect those papers and find the flaws and not to mention why the conclusions are not applicable to profitable trading--- but just the time frame of the data tells u all u need to know. To address some earlier points. Whenever u have very rapid changes happening in a very small time frame-- it throws off the entire structure of the system at every time frame. So the argument that HFT doesn't effect u because u trade 5 minute bars or whatever is mute. surf
Anecdotal evidence suggests HFT has lowered the profitability of veteran day traders, it's not just beginner traders facing a high risk of ruin in this new era of market efficiency.
Blah blah blah, endless drivel from you. We get it HFT has ruined it for everyone, profitable trading just isn't possible anymore. Al Brooks is a crook and full of shit. Haven't you beat this horse enough?
No I haven't, I want to warn others to not be deluded by Brooks and other similar memes and to prevent them from years of humiliating hardship. I'm not against trading education, but Brooks has failed to mention the subjective and intuitive nature of his trading. Most of what he's learned from experience in trading can't be taught or discursively communicated.