Trading is a lot easier. Many years ago when I started I had to calculate a 25 SMA with a hand calculator. Now we have all these fancy tools and online order entry. Nice stuff, made trading a lot easier. Now, I think you meant profitable trading. Yes, it is much easier now because there are many more players in this game, judging from the posts in ET and elsewhere, who still use indicators and charting techniques. In the old times, it was your mind against his mind. Now it is my super-algo against that newbie trying to figure out what the MACD does.
Its not your imagination, stuff that a retail trader could use years ago, doesnt work now. Level 2 is basically useless, indicators cant be trusted, and the traders that actually know what they're doing don't want to talk.
I think things have changed, but aren't per se easier or harder. The prevalence of mechanical trend following and mean reversion systems has made the market a lot harder to trade on some time scales, especially with methods that mimic those systems. On the other hand, a substantial decrease in commissions (especially for retail traders) and an increase in liquidity due to electronic market making has made it possible to trade strategies that never would have worked in 1980. Of course, the huge multi-month market-wide trends in 2008 and 2009 should have made nearly anyone who was paying attention a nice return. Overall I'd say it's easier to trade from the liquidity consuming side, and harder from the liquidity supplying side.
trading over the past 2 years is neither easier nor more difficult imo. but it certainly is very different. therefore some traders are now better off - and some go BK. survival of the fittest... p.s edit: in the meantime another poster basically stated the same. obviously one vote option is missing here...
Back when I started, trading 100 shares of IBM was $125 comm., one would study and study, backtest by hand, do charts by hand. I did my own charts by hand for twenty years even after I got computers, I learned by seeing and drawing. If you did indicators, had to calculate by calculator or adding machine!!! But today's younger trader is generally lazy, doesn't want to invest the time into himself, and heaven forbid go out and buy some data to do several years of backtesting. Hardly anyone wants to study anything longer than a weekend, can't learn price action in that time. Hurry up and open an account, they can't wait to lose their money. Trading now has become so much cheaper and so much easier than thirty years ago, AND because it is so much easier to open an account, much easier to lose when you lack experience.
Dont generalize, I've spent a ridiculous amount of hours over the last few months manually backtesting and studying charts to put together my trading plan. Nobody handed me anything, if some guy decides to open up a trading account and treats it like a Roulette wheel, that doesnt refect the majority of new traders here.
it was just one more long post in a series for intradaybill evidencing he is clueless, and proud of it...
I think that the hardest part, is that a lot more people are chopping up the markets, making markets more efficient, more noise, and less profit opportunities. In fact, it was demonstrated that HFT extracted profits that normally would have been available to others, due to their time advantage. I had a link once, but do not remember it now...