heh, i started trading in february this year. if you will remember, this was one terrible time to be trading -- the war in iraq created some sloooooow days. i never experienced the boom of the 90's, so i haven't a clue as to what is slow and what is good. the way i look at it, if i'm able to make a living during these times, then i will be having a blast whenever it picks up. always look on the bright side!
Well funky, if volatility pick's up again just don't be in the habit of thinking that fading every 2pt move is the ticket.
hehe....gotcha actually days like friday suck for me. breakeven at best. i hardly fade anything yet. just building a solid trend following system as my base profit. i will dabble with other stuff once i am trading good size and making a comfortable living. i'm sure that volitility will come back, its just when. but you can EASILY make a great living in this market. no doubt about it. you just can't make as many mistakes as you probably use to be able to do.
At this point I would say get used to these trading conditions in the equity markets in the US. The mentality of "it will be great again when it picks up if I can just hold out now" has been said for several years now. I used to say the same thing until I realized I would be sitting around a long time waiting for conditions to come back to fit the strategies I had developed. Several traders I know are working for the man now because conditions never returned for them. As hard as it is to believe in every market condition someone is doing something right where they are making money. When Silk was killing it last year, I knew people just trying to hold out thru the "bad times" until things picked up. Then this year, as lasts years stars struggled and tried to wait out the storm for good trading to return, I ran into some people that were again doing something different but are just as successful (100K+ months). Although they are not trading equities they are still making big money daytrading. So it is still out there, it is just hard to keep up with the changes. I know I have struggled to figure out my next evolution as a trader too.
Bond and index futures -- both US and Eurex. Of course not everyone is doing that but how many equity traders do you know who can put that up in a month. Actually I am sure there are equity traders still doing that but I would guess for the most part they would not bother posting on a trading chat board.