I thought the same thing on his my first response to one of my earlier postings on this thread. I felt it would be better to give the guy a chance to respond with out ragging on him. I think my postings made sense and the questions were reasonable. I have not traded since 2001. I still do not believe executions can ever be as well handled remotely as in an office with T5 or T1 lines, direct phone lines to ECNs to get things done when something goes wrong. Then on each trade row at ProTrader we had a broker to handle any and everything that wasn't just right. Our Commissions averaged between .03-.04 per share with ECN and other fees added on to them. Protrader supplied the GR8trade software, similar to RealTick and when you averaged 20 or more trades daily you had free access to a kick butt scanner/screener with programming tools so you could make your own indicators. Maybe I'm really on the wrong forums for the kind of trading I'm talking about. If any of you reading this have a better suggestion for a forums or information... I'd appreciate a link. I do find since I've started researching that daytrading as I knew it is pretty well gone. I may be totally wrong, but I think daytrading the tick/scalping from home is still a losing situation just as it was six years ago. The brokers advertise Direct ECN Access (but from where) Even if you have ECN access you still have to run your trade to the broker first, and he relays the trade to the ECN. (as far as I can tell). That is not direct ECN access. If however, the broker allows you a direct connection to the ECN without processing through broker's office I don't see how the revenue stream can be correct for the broker, especially since most people use more than 1 broker. (broker overlap with ECN) It would seem... IMO of course that since all the fast execution daytrading rooms are shut down that the MM and wallstreeters have gotten their way. They hated daytraders, one big reaseon was we could take fills away from them so quickly during regular trading hours. From what I've been reading, since so many of the daytrading rooms are gone the wallstreet boys have relaxed a lot. I mean there is talk of doing away with those stupid shorting rules the street forced upon us for so long. Maybe I should wait abit longer until the street goes back to fractions instead of decimalizations. Then I'll know they've forgotten about the old SOES bandits. LOL Thanks
i trade from home and have no issues with speed.i use Assent who are also self clearing.reg nms made trading much faster as did proactive keys on Assent's platform. quite frankly i don't understand how you can paint all of the trading platforms with such a broad brush/ firms like Assent that cater to daytraders are head and shoulders above online brokers such as schwab cyber trader. further,there are many firms that affors traders the benefit of trading intraday with only 5k in their account and getting 10-1 margin.
Sorry, I haven't heard of Assent. A little add to my previous posting. I traded with AB Watley and they provided me with the Level II screen/Real tick. I lost on a lot of trades when I couldn't get fills. I was deceived by the appearance of everything. My trades to the ECNS were still going through ABWatley first. They were not going directly to the ECN as I thought. I was looking at the ABWatley direct to market type trade screen. I was hitting those ECNs, but no fills. I finally got on the phone with an AB Watley broker. He informed me of just how things were handled. The broker was actually laughing, thinking it funny. I was some kind of fool for not knowing, even though ABWatley wasn't very forthcoming about just how ECN trades were handled. I wasn't too happy, as I recall I'd just lost about 1,400+ on the trade in question. I haven't looked but I wouldn't be surprised to read AB Watley still says they provide direct access to the ECNS in their ads. I'm not bitter. I think if I'd known enough about this problem to ask the right questions and they'd have told me to start. At that time in my trading I didn't know enough to know what kind of questions to ask. It is a real eye-opener when you're in a position that should easily turn a good profit and it goes against you when you can't get a fill. It's even worse when it's a run, and the stock price is ripping. Direct reliable access to the ECNs is critical to intraday trading. I wouldn't advise anyone to trade without direct ECN access, unless time wasn't important. I'm kinda like John McEnroe, if the ball was over the friggin' line it's out...and I'll argue about it and raise a stink. I believe you should play for every point. It is stupid to think that you can always get it back.
so tell me more about the AB WATLEY incident? can a company like scottrade who ows Knight Trading or they are owned by the same people... sell or buy contrary to the trader? i know they buy big blocks of stocks-KNIGHT-UBS-and others and then sell to the traders without the orders ever hitting the trading floor- so will the big boys game us? where are we safe?
Whew... you hit on something many people have worried over. I remember having to daytrade against Spear Leeds MM on the ECNs and they were the clearing house for stocks I traded at Protrader. Then Goldman Sachs bought them... One thing that always bothered me. Are daytraders really getting realtime information, or were the ECNs and others providng some small time lag. I can't tell you how many times I couldn't get a fill and the shares I was hitting were still sitting on the ECN and I wasn't getting them. As I recall I mentioned it more than once to the broker and got this casual response, that was another MM with the same house on the screen (or other). Sometimes that argument was spurious because the shares on the ECN were some strange odd number like i.e., 654, 264, 242,etc. Somehow, and I'm not an expert on this... but somehow if time is important to your trading you've gotta trade where you can get the fastest most reliable possible executions. Don't lie to yourself, it's your money. Inquire and ask questions about any and everything, the wallstreet boys love arrogant know it alls.. who bring liquidity to the markets and then lose their money fast.
i worry about some sort of trace program/share id tag that tells them when the shares were&when bought/sold if the shares are on cash or margin acct etc etc it would not be hard to do or have the computers fast enough to execute such orders-ever thought about those possibilities? so once again what to do? scottrade will execute/fill orders quickly but the MM turn the market right after the buy /sell was executed i have seen it so many times on a runup or rundown or just regular trading patterns intrady-how in the hell dould the odds of that be that 9 times out of ten the market moves that way-i am trying not to be paranoid-but ive seen them hold a market sideways for an hour because you managed to get a good straddle-sold short high and bought low-graybars on the volume chart for an hour no lie .and multiple days too-just coincedence? i think only volume is cover but sometimes that is not enough because sometimes it seems the houses are just trading back and forth to eachother-am i crazy?
Your difficulties in getting ECN fills could have been caused by many problems outside the broker's control, if you, as a trader, didn't know what you were doing. If your order was a short sale, for example, then failure to execute against an ECN quote might have been blocked by enforcement of a tick-test ("uptick") rule. Another factor which could have blocked your ECN executions was the pre-Regulation NMS trade-thru rule, which was in effect at the time you were trading. The more I read your posts, the more I am persuaded that your execution difficulties were due to your own lack of knowledge. I think I share stock777's beef against you, which apparently is that your earlier posts pontificated incorrect advice based on a very surprising lack of knowledge. It is only in your subsequent posts, after stock777 ribbed you, that you seem to be backpedaling and gradually revealing that you don't really know what you are talking about.
I've been courteous in all my discussions on this thread. Your credibility as a responder is nil along with the content of your posting, which is nothing but a disguised personal attack.