I'm not a smoker nor have I seen two side coin research on tobacco. I do know it kills and have seen proof of such with my own two eyes. I also seen with my own eyes how one's health improves when they stop smoking. I also know there's scientific proof about the negative impact of tobacco smoking. Simply, not two side to me. Once again, I've been around long enough to see HFT get a foot into this market. I'm also hearing more frequent stories about traders finding flaws in the HFT algorithms. Ironically, even those traders that profited from those flaws...they too discussed the liquidity problem and the volatility problem.
From my understanding, HFT are far from people taking risk and being traders. HFT is all about backdoor deals with exchanges and brokerages to buy order flow and use information to trade against the traders (that do take on risk) while using what should be illegal information. I believe in any other field this would be illegal but apparently in this field, it's perfectly alright. There are some extremely naive assumptions about HFT in this thread. I deal with their presence without major problems but that doesn't mean they are either needed or participate in a fair way. To me it's akin to defending inside trading -- hey, they add liquidity.
What's your name and email? I woukd like to speak with you. Thanks. OR Will all these DIY winners forever be relegated to anonymous posts and vendors??
That is my point. However, for years, Big Tobacco funded and employed "scientists" to obfuscate the fact that smoking is toxic, and relied on false equivalency to bypass legitimate concern. (Interestingly, some of the very same "scientists" who years ago reported no harm in smoking are now denying climate change and, oddly enough are funded by Big Oil, but that's another matter.) You seem to think HFTs, as they presently operate, serve a useful function. I have already noted earlier that I am not very well versed in this matter, so I won't belabor the point. However, I will say that, as a matter of course, I would prefer to avoid as many middlemen as I can in my transactions, especially if their only responsibility is to themselves. The fewer sweaty hands between me and the guy who is really on the other side of my trade, the better. I'm old-fashioned that way. Since I can't really do anything about it myself, I can only adapt to present circumstances. I'll leave the subject matter for now with a parting gift: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014...-turned-the-tables-on-high-frequency-traders/ http://haimbodek.com/blog.html
Its over a decade now into my search for truly succesful DIY day traders -- they always vanish when facts are requested. NothIng new here. B
Define "truly succesful" day traders... What's truly successful to you...in terms of average annual % returns? I actually prefer to use Monthly, or even Weekly,...average % returns instead...in my conversations with traders, or day traders. (i'm post reply number 99...1999, my favorite year)