Now why would you think you can compete with the HFT pros if only you spent $50 (or even $500) a month on data/etc? Frame your question as to starting a new major league baseball/basketball/football/soccer/hockey team to compete against the best of the best. Would $50 or $500 a month cover that? Small traders compete where the bigs don't have an advantage.
This was just to illustrate a point, of course they do not. Their business model is front running due to tech/co location and rebates. Heard game over so to speak as too many entered the field. Not as juicy as it used to be.
None. You need to build infrastructure and code yourself. No idea about the cost but 50-100 mil range is not far off I think.
To be honest, I don't fully understand why such a detailed analysis is needed, I mean the second one... In fact, it is almost impossible to put it into practice somehow, even if you find a high-quality trading terminal, which is well adapted for scalping or any other dynamic format. Both active work and too active work are absolutely different things. Of course, I may be wrong, but I believe that a trader should not get in the frame, because it could soon lead to a deterioration in the quality of work. And in my opinion, it is much more promising to take a more relaxed approach to avoid excessive fatigue and emotional burnout as far as possible.
You're not capable of HFT at the moment, not even close. First you'd need to master a low-level programming language or pay a lot and hire probably more than a few people. Then colocation costs come into play which can be steep. HFTers compete in milliseconds and less. It's a pipe dream unless you consider yourself to be genius in trading terms.
Oportunities Are you familiar with the cost structure for these colos? And can you name some if you know trading specific ones.
Any examples of barriers which leave some lawns unoccupied by HFTs? Regulatory restrictions/illiquid market/ too small and hence unattractive prize pool to join?
Have esignal now. It's pretty fast They tell me it can't show size for any Forex pairs in Market Depth. Is that your experience as well? I mean even IBKR shows size for Forex (of course it's not the whole market but whatever they can show). Have you found a way to show Forex size?
If you're trying to do HFT then you need to know how market microstructure works. That will tell you where the weakness is and how to exploit it. It has nothing to do with analyzing ticks or candles.