Adapt by leaving the markets permanently. Just like in trading, we cut our losses quick. It is now time to make the ultimate stop loss by leaving the markets. Time is the most valuable commodity, not money. There is no point in wasting time on this kind of market.
well, I think it's important to note that other than intraday trading, the opportunity potential has not changed much. When talking about lack of true liquidity and contracted intraday ranges, that starts & stops intraday. I don't know about pure stocks trading personally, but swing trading equity options on active stocks will work. Futures swing trading works. FX swing trading works. Very strict ES day-trading works, seeking +/- 20 index points monthly per contract and add size. Russell 2000 intraday trading works, if you limit size to 1 - 2 contracts. So it's not like all hope is lost for traders & trading everywhere. I see potential in lots of places, but for strictly intraday we have to discipline ourselves to wait for fewer actual trade setups over longer periods of time AND settle for smaller per-trade gains. That, and accept the fact that some markets/symbols are so thin, full of HFT noise or both that real opportunity does not exist there now. Personally speaking? I can make life work booking +10pts ~ 20+ ES points per contract averaged in a month in a symbol that will readily take more size than I ever need. It's a much slower game than what I'd prefer, but the world changes and life changes without taking our desires into consideration.
2004 - 2006 isn't comparable to what we have now, the fed was in a tightening cycle, we actually got a taste of that a few months ago, when everyone thought the fed was going to raise rates sooner than they thought.
i'm doing that right now. working on my resume. seriously. and the biggest problem is a 15 years gap in my career. as for PnL decline since 2005-you say thank you to the SEC and NMS http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulation-nms.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_NMS n 2005, the rules promoting the national market system were consolidated into REG NMS. Some of the more notable rules include:[3] Order Protection (or Trade Through) Rule - provides intermarket price priority for quotations that are immediately and automatically accessible (Rule 611) Access Rule - addresses access to market data such as quotations (Rule 610) Sub-Penny Rule - establishes minimum pricing increments (Rule 612) Market Data Rules: a) Allocation amendment â institutes a new Market Data Revenue Allocation Formula, b) Governance amendment â creates advisory committees, c) Distribution and Display Rules â governing market data (Rule 600, 601 & 603).
Others have noted that "looser" seems to be a big challenge on this board, especially since it is used so much!
You guys are basically saying: "Black and white TVs do not sell anymore, let's stop selling televisions and quit this business for good!" While in fact you should be saying (for example): "Ok, black and white TVs do not sell anymore, let's sell High Definition TVs instead and make a killing!"
You can't just sit there and expect the market to come back. If I traded now like I did in 2008-9, I'd be out of the market too. Expect everything you're doing to stop working at any moment, there is no real stability in this profession. I recall Bob111 being very flashy years ago, showing off how much money he was extracting from the american markets, I believe he was showing off pics of cars as motorcycles. Market has a way of humbling all participants. I've had the best start of the year but I have no illusions about being invincible or anything of the sort.
oh please..one pic of used MB(that was my hedge to US dollar,which worked perfectly ) and 'undervalued' bike that i picked up from police auction for 4K (and sold for profit 2 years later)now counted as been flashy? how about being a little bit more fair to me -I've been saying exact same words as you are above and i didn't spend money that i've made off the stock market. i knew that it will eventually come to the end. that's why(if you noticed) i have all those back testing apps,stats that track my performance,fills ratio etc each and every day. i knew exactly what is going on and why my s** ain't working anymore. as i said before-if there a decent yield in the bank-it would be enough for me just sit down and live on interest. imo-i did good. not perfect,but good(cause i'm very cautions by nature and dont have 'gambler' personality,don't like directional trading either) however-my biggest regret is that i didn't invest all my profits during 2007-2009 collapse. that was just plain stupid. i was very busy with my day trading,shoveling literally hundreds of thousands of dollars each and every day and since it was market neutral system-i never actually looked into market itself and things like high div. stocks,funds, prefers etc..shame on me..