From what I can gather retail traders make up a small volume of actual shares traded on a daily basis. We are merely ticks on a dog's @$$ relatively speaking. I'm looking to get a better understanding for how "big money" operates. For example understanding how algorithms enter and exit the market, pension funds for equities etc. I'm would like to know him how they price their entries, what time of day they enter that sort of thing. Just throwing it out there to see what comes up.
Why? Retail traders shouldn't necessarily be concerned with big money institutional plays. You're just making it overly complicated on yourself.
Why not? What harm could come from having a better understanding of how the market works and how the big players operate. Might be another reason why over 90% of retail traders fail perhaps?
Commodity Funds can be considered big players but often times they breakeven, lose small amount or make small amount as they really trying to make the management fees. Producers like ADM seldom ever lose as they generally have the product, they sell as prices get very high and buy when prices get very low. Big Traders who trade for self, check out when the biggest volume happen during the day and they is when they most likely are trading, it is not take they have no signals during lunch but they can't get out without moving the market and cause bigger loss. It is all about risk management, lack of volume means more risk. So mornings has much more trading first 90 minutes than most other times in Index futures and generally stocks as well. After that it is scalpers going for couple ticks many times. Depends on what you doing, if you going to keep a stock for a week, you should develop methods and back test them long enough to know what to expect. Host of reasons why so many lose, but lack of enough back testing often is one good reason and trading your Trading Plan without making any changes while during the day session. Way Way Way too often newbies keep changing their indicators or systems in other ways only to make worse. Unless the trader knows charting extremely well, they should not start using indicators as they will not understand what they indicate. Nothing predicts the future, they help indicate the past just like charting. I think it is fine asking firms how they trade and develop systems based on how they trade, but times usually based on system trading.