Anyone else sick of trading against computer programs. Used to have a half a second to respond to selling at a given level, now its down to 0. If you dont know what Im talking about, never mind.
Your trading against the fellas who programmed the computer. As long as you read your indicators faster then his model you'll win. And Yes, I agree it has gotten tougher
If you're not trading for cents, you might consider entering one tick above/below programs. Use a very tight stop in case programs don't come in. You will loose some on your performance but it's better than sitting aside ..... I noticed my pairs / spread trading has become somewhat less profitable but still make a decent return.You have to addapt to new conditions.
are you talking about listed, nasdaq, or both??? i've noticed this big time on the listed ecn's...really makes it tough...taking all my easy trades from me...
I think the computers are increasing the momentum, especially now that things are more active. You may want to catch those reversals cause the computer drove things way too far in one direction. Usually take profits when you get back inside the bollenger band, but sometimes you'll see MLCO or SIZE doing just that! So you gotta get in front, or hope they get taken out. All in all, I think a computer is definately stupider than a good trader. You can't code in experience. The idea runs contrary to the fact that there are no hard and fast rules, which programs try to employ. You have to adapt each moment, that's what "market feel" is.
Acoording to a recent report in the Economist, 40% of all equity-trades in the U.S.-markets are generated by ATS, whereas in Europe, they account only for 3%. So, why not trade in e.g. France? Money doesn't stink, even if its made of French stocks
You gotta get used to it. More and more trading are getting automated. It will only accelerate in the future. In fact, you don't even need to be a big institution to do automated trading anymore. Oh Heavens sakes, every Tom, Dick, and Jane with a Tradestation or an IB account can do automated trading. Just write up their system and let it run. Imagine the effects of thousands of those types of programs PLUS the program traders PLUS the quant funds PLUS who knows what else is out there...
Actually you can code experience ... they're called Expert Systems, a subset of Artificial Intelligence. When I was still working in software we developed a system via Knowledge Acquisition of an "expert" plant scheduler (i.e. human being) and created a plant floor scheduling system that pretty much ran the plant with a person monitoring the system. The same can be done with trading; they're nothing more than heuristics or rules that one would code.