Hey Mick, The shoe anecdote works.I know the feeling. Do I remember you saying you are a 'long only' trader? I had an epiphany the other day and realised shorting or betting on exhaustion of a move is something I could remove and not worry about.
Unfortunately I'm mostly unfamiliar with how the USA systems work, it is a lot different from ASX system. WE are hamstrung here with the ASX which runs a 80 year old monopoly crap system but as typical, they get government protection to run a monopoly, ya know, look after ya rich buddies. Anyhow I digress... Shorting stocks on ASX is nigh on impossible, and limited to Options trading I believe. Yeah, shorting is probably the best way of making money if it were easy to implement, shorting small caps would be lucrative imo.
Ok no day trades and no futures gotcha. Why not stick to something in your own backyard "XJO". You can use the etf's GEAR for long signals on xjo and BBOZ for short signals on xjo. BBOZ gains in price as XJO moves down and is very liquid. You will see by the massive volume spike yesterday on it someone knew the US markets were going to puke last night. You can trade eod based on the signals you get from the xjo as that is basically what I do. I don't use those two etf's as I use a mixture of SPI futures and xjo options to obtain the outlook I want. Anyway just my 2c worth
I forgot to mention in my earlier post on brokerage, you can actually do $6 round trips up to 30K value with Stake. My daughter uses them as her account balance is not huge and they are chess sponsored as well unlike some of the other cheapies.
GEAR & BBOZ imo are best suited for short term trading. Locally based ETF's have no advantge over USA bases ETF's I doubt, I think USA mkt has less volatility, more legs than ASX mkt. GEAR.AX vs NDQ.AX, 5 years weekly chart
Sold ASM today, but a tad late, like yesterday would have been better but yesterday I was in hospital having a Endoscopy checkup and arriving home after the close. The ASX market is definitely not a good place to be atm, the best position right now would be flat. Anyhow I'm no longer going to trade this system, the next algo in the pipeline will be similar, I can use parts of the old into a new system which will be slightly simpler, however the market is not ideal atm for any trading for ASX stocks unless perhaps you're a day trader imo.
I've calculated all the selling brokerage fees at time of buying into the above. But you've raised an interesting idea, I'll phone them and attempt to negotiate reduced fees.