Seems over the past year or so most all the stock daytraders (intraday) that I knew have gone bust or moved to futures. This has become very evident in the bid/ask spreads getting much bigger lately and no more piles of daytraders at the inside jumping in front of each other incessantly adding all the liquidity. Is anyone besides the market makers benefitting by the new lack of liquidity, or will it just continue to get worse with more wild spikes and eventual disappearance of all stock intraday traders?
I just got back into looking at stocks after a long time away, and just yesterday I was noticing that all of the charts seem to gap and jump all over the damn place !!! What is the cause of this? What changed in the last few years?
it's not destroyed. volatility is when you can make a lot of money(and lose it too). if you know what u r doing, volatility is the key.
Reg NMS and the hybrid have contributed to this. Before, there was price improvement and restrictions on size of auto-exec orders, so there was a lot more "stacking the book" because they weren't worried about getting filled. Now, If you have a bid or offer out there, it can basically get hit for any size at any time. Same thing for the charts- if a stock is spread $.50 and someone sends an order to buy 100 shares and someone else sends an order to sell 100 shares at the same time, you're going to see two separate prints $.50 away from each other (one on the bid and one on the offer). Before, the specialist would fill those orders together somewhere in between. That's going to make the tape and charts much choppier.