Sounds like you stock guys just need to boot up a futures chart. Trade the CL @ $10/tick and see if there are fractions of a penny movements. As for this firm dropping the lowest earners, what business does not do this? Prune off the junk and work w/ the best, any decent business does this. While I was a broker and moved up the ranks, this was very common on this side of the business as well - we'd track new brokers commissions month-to-month, look at 6 month cum and 12 mo cum. If it was below the target, adios.
"We all had 7 figures going around" HILARIOUS coming from you. Are you implying that you had a 7 figure year? Dude....you were a TINY trader at Schonfeld and never even came close to being a a big trader. Hell.....you probably were in the bottom 20% when it came to size. From your anti-trading posts on here it's obvious you were a failed trader. And you were....you got canned when Schonfeld downsized after the firm got clobbered in 2000. No big deal...they canned a good part of the office. No shame in that. Move the fuck on and quit bashing something you couldn't hack, but plenty others can. You mention DB and Rearden like you were one of them. You weren't even in the same area code as them when it came to trading. It's funny how the guys who make a big part of the money keep quiet, and the smaller guys love to go around a run their mouths. We all can read from your posts that you are some big swinging dick in The PE world. One would think someone as successful as you could move on from his failed trading career. But you always comeback to it.
When I posted about the bots fucking up the game years ago, I got almost 100% flack about it. Now all of a sudden everyone is fessing up. PS The game can still be beat but its a much bigger pain in the ass.
i agree with this, the game is tougher now things are camoflouged so much more. still can be profitable its just not as cut and dry and yes a pain in the ass trying to figure it out. i wish i traded back in the late 90s early 2000s where it was just follow the big bid and offers and lean. i do hear that trading on other exchanges such as ftse and lse are like the us markets were back then. surprised many us equity traders havent made the move to trade other markets.
well put....i agree completely....i am trading well and don't have much time to read or post....i focus on honing my skills and expanding the breadth of stocks I can find to trade on any given day...manually. I will go so far as to say that I have beena profitable short only trader for4 years, before that i did spreads, pairs and merger arb. I haven't entered a long order (on purpose) to open a trade in 4 years, and thats how I eat, breathe, and pay for my lifestyle. I was also told by a prominent trader tax preparer that my chances of winning an audit with the irs was small, and I needed significant outside help. I reduced my liability from 48,000 to 1,800 in my appeal by buying a book and doing my own homework. The walls are there to keep people out who don't want it badly enough, it's their job to go find something else.
I too have noticed what "seems" to be more bots lately. However, the size that they seem to be trading is pretty small for the most part, at least in e-minis and Euro contracts. At least this is my perception anyway. I can't remember the last time I saw a 200 or 300 or 500 contract print on ES. I used to see them all the time at breakouts. Instead I see a whole bunch of 1 and 5 and 10 car trading getting pinged back forth by small traders and bots from S/R levels - with no big size hardly ever coming in to run the bots and pikers over like used to happen frequently in the past. The markets just seem "quiet" all the time. There is little frantic buying or selling. I believe this is a problem that is actually amplified by what seems to me to be a lack of "crowd" trading. There have been so many failed breakouts and patterns lately. My personal opinon is that due to the horrible economic policies of this administration (specifically the last 4 years of Frank/Dodd) that have brought the USA to it's f***ing knees, that too many big players are simply content to sit or trade small. They are all trying to stay off the radar of legislators and/or keeping their risk smaller. The markets are still scared 2 years after the "crisis", the "recovery" is all government and media spin. Unemployment still sucks. The new proposed laws (and the mindset) has not revived very much. I am pretty confident that if employment ever gets better and the Dems are stopped from getting ready to tax and target the Golden Goose (retirement funds) and other horrible ideas they have proposed, that things will pick up someday. Meanwhile, trade 1/2 size and be more patient. Just my .02, I can't actually prove any of it.