Companies like DRW use proprietary methods to trade a variety of instruments, incuding equities, using their own money. Is anyone here familiar with these methods and can they be used by individual daytraders? Norm
The simple answer is no. As I have indicated before, during my days in chicago, I am fortunate enough to be somewhat familiar with a few trading firms, incluing DRW. While I can't claim that I am very familiar with their methods, their strategy category is quant based market making. To do market making, the basic requirement is a good quantitative understanding, and things like decent capital size and exchange memberships, etc. While the requirements are not completely out of reach for a "day trader" (i.e., 1M or so in capital and an exchange seat), I am not sure that's what most daytraders willing to do. However, firms like DRW deploy a variety of methods, some of the "borderline" methods (for instance, dividend strategy between SSF and the security) can be tailored for the daytrading class of trader. But since I am not a daytrader, that's not really my area of speciality nor interest. Hope this helps.