Has Day Trading Changed?

it seems it's getting harder to make it as day trader these days. I think day trading is done, but not dead yet. What do you think? probably, HFT has contributed a lot to the demise of day trading.

 

Part of the problem is that many moves are before the open or after the close. You have to adapt.

 

That is a little close, but I like it.

 

Hi Robert! please tell percentage of trading that your fund day trades. would you say 20% day trading, and the other 80% is long term trading?

 

You gotta adapt.

20 years from now it won't be HFT and it'll be something else and people will be asking that same question since the early 1990s.

 

It has to be difficult. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

 

I don't run a fund. I’m with Victor Securities. We are Introducing Brokers to Merrill Lynch Professional, Apex Clearing, ADM Investor Services & INTL FC Stone and provide a variety of solutions for small and medium-sized Hedge Funds, CTAs, Trading Groups and Active Traders. I’ve attached an informational PDF to inform you about our business and what we do for our clients.

We offer professional brokerage and cap-intro services. I would say around 20% of my clients are day traders and go out flat everyday. I would only call one client "Long Term". Most are L/S equity, option or futures hedge funds, CTAs or active traders that do trade everyday, but at EOD have positions. Some of the "day-traders" are systematic.

Bob

 

It seems...?

Based on what really? Personal losses? Intuition? Or hard data to suggest that markets are any different today than in some distant past?

The markets still offer wide daily ranges and swings. As long as that remains so, day trading is still as profitable as it ever was. If volatility should dry up radically and the markets stop moving around, then we can talk.

 

Wide intraday ranges when looked at in retrospect on charts does not mean that day trading is as profitable as it ever was, unless you have evidence of discretionary traders capturing the majority of these ranges consistently on par with prior to the HFT/algorithm paradigm shift, if so please share it.

A lot of trending breakouts and then trend reversals in Crude oil futures take place in seconds to under 10 minutes...You're suggesting that the speed of price action has no influence on a discretionary day trader's profitability?