An Example of my HFT: Today I made a profit of $96 gross on 44k shares trading S. After commission and rebates, I collected another $20, to make $116 on about 30 minutes of work at the close.
Yesterday was sick. The news of C's death brought great volume to the stock making it great to trade, though a lot of people who averaged into it (works on a lot of days, when it doesn't you take a rip but it doesn't have to blow you up... still not my style) got creamed. +1117 on 872,130 shares traded
Nobody is hating but its its wrong to call anything that includes parity, HFT. A monkey could make money in C using floor brokers. Its also a joke that Affinity charges $5k for what is nothing more than pushing buttons to buy and sell. Do not get me wrong, there can be some mojo involved to increase profitability but its hard to lose money doing that. All you are really doing is taking a 1penny spread by placing orders on both the bid/ask using a floor broker...hardly HFT and not difficult.
That's what, half a cent. That's for the round trip I assume. Even at that , how did he make .007 on a 1 cent spread.
Wether or not they are real traders doesn't matter.I know of one that trades this style and he now owns a trading firm with about 150 traders. At one point he was pulling in about 400k a month on this type of trading by himself. Checks deposited in the bank count the same as a "real trader".
Although I agree with the parity part (It is really simple ), the more profitable methods for HFT are rebating faster stocks like BAC and F (and S today). I am still a beginner, so parity is still my main method, however I am incorporating the more profitable, rebating strategies as well, which are much harder. (Its funny that you mention a monkey can do it because thats exactly what the firm says as well.) Really what your paying for is the access to the routes, and the infrastructure.
NICE! Hopefully I'll be doing that many shares in the future . Yesterday was actually my least volume day in a while ironically! I only trade the last hour because of my school, and C basically died that last hour.