Trade with ultra small position sizes eg risking 0.25% of capital per trade. Not sure how that would work for daytrading. Maybe not even worthwhile but I've recently realized that my trading would have been better had I risked much less than the 1% touted
I wander what your reasoning is? Unscalable/Unsustainable, maybe? Can't argue it doesn't work. Ok, so it's fragmented. How is it a problem for your average daytrader? You have provided lots of insightful info regarding infrastructure, but I don't see how it's relevant to a guy trading 25k to 5M account. He will not be market making. US Equities market is the most retail friendly due to regulations, imho. Forex and Cryptos ... Anything goes ... You don't even have access to an official/regulated data feed to reference. Maybe your style of trading takes advantage of such inefficiencies but equities are too mature for them? Curious to know your opinion.
I route to CSFB AES for certain orders so they would handle the details. I couldn't imagine sending an order to the usual destinations as a whole, that order would be pillaged as you say. The strats I use also interact with dark volume. I understand CSFB screws me as well but they seem to screw me less than expected. Which is all I can ask for at this point. The exceptions here are extremely liquid ETFs and such in which I'm an ant and blend in. IEX orders have also been a massive help, the executions are far superior to anything sent to ARCA, NASDAQ or anywhere else. They at least partially have solved the venue timing problem. IB likes to market their SMART but the penalties you pay on executions are massive. I completely agree that it's a huge hide and seek game now. Anyone using the "plain" orders is just a meal for the HFT.
Uhm. If you're trading mid/smallcaps at quiet hours and have a $50k position that you want to liquidate in minutes, you will have to learn this game. You'll often have a 0.15 spread on a $40 stock and hitting it with a market is extremely costly. Putting a limit in the middle is an even worse idea. Anyone with an account above $100k needs to know this stuff really. Why do you assume the US equities are most retail friendly? I trade non-US as well and the fills seem to be better. Purely anecdotal but seems there aren't so many games being played.
Compared to US Forex and Cryptos. I am not familiar with non-us so can't comment. Unloading big position in a thin market, and you want someone to just take the other side no questions asked? So you are the one playing the hide and seek games then. I'm not knocking you, but it's not fair to say you are getting screwed, imho.
Well, forex and cryptos are the wild west. Any regulation they supposedly have is a joke. I have to play the "hide and seek games" even though my positions aren't that big -- I might be just 5% of the vol but HFT sniffs stupid retail out. The future should be auction orders only but that's not happening, so dark pools it is. The rest can keep playing poker where one side (retail/mutual funds) plays with open cards.
No enterprise with a 90% failure rate and a 5 year start-up time (or 10,000 hours of learning or whatever way its put) is worth undertaking. Therefore, taking this summary as fact, seek an alternative approach to trading. Use a proven strategy which is simple enough to be learned in 1 day and thoroughly understood in 2 more: demo trade it for 1 month until consistently profitable: extend this in 1 month increments until consistency is achieved. This almost certainly excludes daytrading.