i'm not sure but i may have missed the post where pitufo says he makes $500 to $1000 a day. (i thought he wished he only paid that in comm)...my guess is he does very well. one does not do that kind of volume and barely squeak by. have you ever traded those amounts, i have trouble trading 60k and rarely do so.
Bryan, Read my post carefully. How many shares you trade is a function of your business model ie.) commission structure. You would probably do fine trading high volume if you were paying low commissions like most high volume traders are. Bottom line... anyone who 'scalps' high volume has an extremely low commision structure ( or some type of split arrangement). You can't trade huge volumes-short time frames and pay regular retail commissions, the math is simply not there.
actually i am aware of low cost....i am paying less than a penny a share currently. i've been in the business for 4 yrs and have never traded with someone that trades 500k to 800k shares a day. at that level you better know what you're doing.....you guys make it sound like it is so easy, i know it is not. if you guys(splat and mac) are currently trading those amounts i am equally impressed with you also.
The more often one trades, the greater risk that is taken, however, that's why they trade the lower volatile stocks( I assume). I
Sorry fellas hit the wrong key! What I was attempting to say is; big jdez without sounding like a contrarian pr@#! I believe the opposite of your statement. Risk is actually increased with the length of time you are in a trade. The shorter time frame you have your capital exposed to any one direction in the market the less risk you are taking. The danger in short time frame high volume trading is of course is in being on the wrong side constantly. Obviously this is true to all types of trading but I prefer take action to cut my losses immediately and try to get on the right side of the trade rather than hope that time will be my friend and bring the trade back my way. This is what trading is about for me, I am trading not investing. I am not saying that it should be everyone's style of trading only that it works for me. As I said earlier it is good that people hold many different opinions on this topic and trade in different ways and for different reasons... this is what creates liquidity and that benefits everyone from scalpers to investors.
I scalp trade also although, I look for .10 min. moves and knowing your stocks well helps reduce risk but there's more than one type of risk, you may reduce market risk by taking quick losses but your oppurtunity risk is also impaired when you're whipsawed out of a trade for example. Not to mention the commissions that are racked up.
I agree with you about both market risk and opportunity cost. I try to limit market risk by minimal time exposure and as for opportunity cost well... as I said when a stock is ripping I try to ride it for as long as my conscience permits. On the topic of being whipsawed, it is part of the game sometimes but you are right that is why guys like me tend gravitate toward slower moving stocks for the majority of our trading (5 cent and less scalping). It's all about risk/reward I guess and I can't afford to take big risks so I guess my opportunity for big rewards is limited. The upside of course is that I live to fight another day. I am not trying to move markets or even really read/predict them just exploit them for incremental profit. MACD
I don't understand why you people think that 100's of K's in volume is a lot for one day.. I thought this was a SCALPING thread.... if you are only scalping 20k a day then you aren't scalping.. My firm averages 250K per trader.. factoring in the skinny pukes who just begun... Someone was right though. to pump that many shares you need to be focused the whole time.. I do around 200K a day give or take a few, depending on the liquidity at the current time.. I average 1600 shares per ticket ..that is the key to getting the day total to suck imaginable numbers...
It's not the volume that folks find hard to believe, it's whether you can make that many sensible trades. It takes no skill at all to bang out volume, but making a profit, ahhhhhh. Seems like lots of folks are claiming that they can beat the spreads (small as they are) and find logic amidst the noise of intraday moves. Must be an easy game