Holy Grail HFT - Found

Discussion in 'Automated Trading' started by Alex27, Feb 22, 2016.

  1. I don't know how you can say HFT is dead. First of all, what is HFT? No one seems to be able to agree on a definition. While some strategies that trade at high frequencies have certainly been squeezed out of existence (and sometimes whole firms), others continue to do well.

    I think the ones that strictly rely on speed and being second place means not making money. Then yeah, those strategies are a waste of time and dead to everyone except the firms that can afford to be the fastest. Additionally, any firm using strategies profiting from market structure loopholes will die sooner or later as well. The trick is for them to keep finding new loop holes.
     
    #11     Feb 23, 2016
  2. botpro

    botpro

    It seems the buzzword for such HFT trading companies is now changing from "HFT" to "Market Maker"
    for the traded single instruments, not to be confused with the official MMs.
     
    #12     Feb 23, 2016
  3. botpro

    botpro

    It's IMO simple:
    HFT = frontrunner

    Fully ACK!
     
    #13     Feb 23, 2016
  4. Alex27

    Alex27

    Its not dead dumb ass bot pro HFT make more than you a yr most likely and they love spoofing that book ! your suck a negative troll bot pro lol
     
    #14     Feb 23, 2016
  5. botpro

    botpro

    Alex the idiot, how he lives and acts... You have no principia, you easily believe any marketing cr*p out there.
    Yes, "they" surely might love spoofing the book, right. But how can that fact be helping you, or me?
    Just learn some probability theory to see the things a little bit realistic.
    Alex, I'm sorry for you if my postings have shattered your (day)dreams... ;-)
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2016
    #15     Feb 23, 2016
  6. IAS_LLC

    IAS_LLC

    HFT Dead? That is a silly statement. Its just become more normal, so people don't talk about it as much. I think many of the Chicago prop shops who do "HFT" are still doing quite well.
     
    #16     Feb 24, 2016
    Alex27 likes this.
  7. SpencerJS

    SpencerJS

    Exactly. I'm afraid too many on this forum just don't know what they're talking about.

    "Market Maker" is not a buzzword. Look it up. There are HFT firms making markets, others are not. It's one of many ways to trade using latency sensitive strategies.

    And to say: "HFT = frontrunner" only means you've swallowed the simplified zerohedge/nanex/lewis story hook-line-and-sinker. That's fine to view HFT firms negatively, but if your only view is "HFT = frontrunner" then you're just expressing ignorance as to how markets actually work.

    Indeed, prop shops often have a hard time and fold. But there are many that are thriving. And the larger banks are getting faster and faster.
     
    #17     Apr 4, 2016
    IAS_LLC likes this.
  8. From my couple of connections from inside the HFT/Market Maker world I can add that the original predatory algos have more or less cannibalized each other, and there is a new generation of algos running that simulate the activity of institutional investors (prey), and predate on the activity of generation I & II HFT algos. Such trading is only for the very well funded and very well informed. All my algos have counter - HFT capability... but thats mainly to deal with thin depth in the book. Good trading to all.
     
    #18     Apr 8, 2016
  9. Alex27

    Alex27

    When designing a automated algo, what counter HFT capability do you/can implement ? I understand working on a bigger time frame helps.
     
    #19     Apr 8, 2016
  10. yes increasing your trade timeframe helps - but the same issue of NBBO liquidity has to be dealt with by breaking up your order in a smart way. Market makers still cannot reliably detect and react to orders that are within certain standard deviations of the recent time and sales (tape) volumes... so you can hide your activity by replicating recent tape activity. All of this is much easier at the market open - which is when there are so many crosscurrents in play that you really can get well positioned cheaply in relatively illiquid markets. All of this becomes much more critical in stocks, but is effective in futures. Hope this helps.
     
    #20     Apr 8, 2016
    Alex27 likes this.