Churning tons of shares for pennies is dead. Evolve or Die, You cannot stay with the same game plan and keep expecting the same outcome. Technology evolves, life moves on. I make money in the options market and it is quite lucrative why? Thanks to the machines all this volatility and machine generated churn ends up in your pocket if you play it right. Screw sitting on a screen all day trying to fight for nickels and dimes and trying not to get run over by automated systems.
Just take the set-ups, they work just fine I have no Idea why small traders can't make money cause of HFT........ that is just BS I take the same set-ups every day and guess what ? THEY WORK
The real innovation of modern societies if lobbyists who are so efficient at persuading law makers that exchange created front running and trading against customer order flow is not just legal but patriotic.
Day trading is dead. I know, I know, there are a million millionair traders here on ET, all daytrading. But Steven is correct in his decision. I traded with Schoni, back when the Russian put up 75 million in two years or there about, Rearding Metal, this guy put up sick positive days in my trading room, hell we had all kinds of 7 plus figures going around. Since 04 this has started to, not be the case. Dark Pools, Lighting Fash black Box modes, etc are taking the edge away from daytraders. Stocks would move points, now, they move pennies...watching paint dry. Sure, there may be a few 400 dollar a share stocks...that move but over all, market volume is dead. The guys that I still keep in touch with, all trade long and longer time. They Hedge, the put on spreads, they move in and out of markets like a big elephant in and out of a small pool...one leg at a time and it displace the water, hence, not lean and mean as we did back in the days. With the current administration, with the Rules and new regs, 10% circuit breakers on individual stocks, capital gains, long and short going up next year, lower volume, etc...good luck daytrading. There is still plenty of money to be made in the markets, and over in Asia. However, "intraday Bandits" are a thing of the past. It's structual unemployment folks, Technology has made the markets more efficent to .0001 of a penny, the New Socalist Nanny State is squezzing the neck of the Free flowing markets.....Old game is over. Now you gota find the new game or end up on Obama's hand out program. Good Luck.
I'm an example of an-ex stock trader turned options trader (per Robert Greene) post. When I was at my old stock prop firm, my manager confided to me over a beer at a trader's expo in NYC that of the traders he monitored within the firm, only the automated traders were making decent money. That was 2006! They are still around but smaller now. He (my manager) himself ran automated tradeing programs from his home based rack of servers, including pairs, market making, open orders, MOC's etc. I was doing some automated entry with modest success but I relied on others to write the programs. I did not understand what was going on "under the hood" so did not adapt, could not adapt to automation even though I'm quantitatively oriented. Now I trade options and stocks full time in a room with ex-floor traders. The bots ARE in the options game but have not killed my edge so far. But it's keeping me awake at night.
There you go again with your lies about the regulators pressuring prop firms "behind the scenes". Give us proof or stop spewing your lies. Give us the name of firm that has been pressured. Put up or shut up. Still trying to figure out your motives for your "sky is falling" mission, but I'm sure your true colors will come out in the end.
When stocks went for 1/8's to 1/16th's everyone said day trading was dead. It wasn't. When stocks went from 1/16th's to pennies everyone said trading was dead. It wasn't. When the NYSE went electronic everyone said day trading was dead. It wasn't. Traders need to adapt. At then end of the day, stocks are going to move. Good traders are going to be able to capture these moves and make money. So Shonfeld let go 50 of his bottom traders, big deal. As someone else said, he still has 300. It's probably the classic 80/20 rule, so cutting out the high maintenance lower end traders makes a lot sense from a business point of view.
The risk/reward just isn't there for those looking for pennies, nickels, dimes -- hasn't been for a while. But the lack of liquidity has its advantages as well.