try scalping the 11 to 12 30 central when the large buy or sell this amount today brokers are at lunch and those orders are also,you will see the hft's grinding qrtrs out of 2 point moves,watch the time and sales,the hft's are hard at it and when that period is over,the majority of days per month,non trend days,the market will be at the same price,but the retail scalpers are poorer
Liquidity has always been historically lower during lunch time and yes, I get slippage then more often. But unless you really scalp for single ticks then, it's not much of an issue.
I mostly trade just the first couple of hours too. Then it gets much less effective to spend time watching the market.
If you are trading for a living few ticks here and there over 252 trading days times many years add up. The site is called elite trader thus this is a forum for traders. Even though our time frame is longer than HFT because they trade at all times and at all price levels they affects us regardless of our strategy. Today HFT is more prevalent in the stock market however other markets will be saturated in few short years, remember pre credit crisis there were handful firms known to operate HFT today there are 900.
That is why I am suggesting in near future HFT will be as prevalent in other markets as they are in the stock market today.
Right, but I simply accept reality as it is. Tough or not, I compete in order to survive. Why complain about HFT or whatever if we can't do anything about it? So far it doesn't seem to noticeably turn my profits into losses overall. If it ever does, I will have to adapt, so what?
Futures traders should not be worried too much about HFT until that day arrives when it becomes prevalent in the futures, fixed income, forex or options industry or prevalent in the trading instrument that a trader is trading one of those mentioned markets. By the way, not mentioned by many folks that throw around the HFT word... http://www.businessweek.com/article...ts-lost-high-frequency-tradings-rise-and-fall ...For the first time since its inception, high-frequency trading, the bogey machine of the markets, is in retreat. According to estimates from Rosenblatt Securities, as much as two-thirds of all stock trades in the U.S. from 2008 to 2011 were executed by high-frequency firms; today itâs about half. In 2009, high-frequency traders moved about 3.25 billion shares a day. In 2012, it was 1.6 billion a day. Speed traders arenât just trading fewer shares, theyâre making less money on each trade. Average profits have fallen from about a tenth of a penny per share to a twentieth of a penny. Anyways, as a futures trader, I doubt HFT will be able to do what it has done in the equity markets...too many foreign industries need money and will see it as an opportunity to increase HFT's transaction fees so the governments of these countries can make money from that billion dollar industry. By the way, a few years back I remember seeing different stats about HFT in the futures markets by about 10% to 25% and expected to grow by year 2020. Recently, due to problems for HFT in equity markets and foreign governments tightening their ship in their own markets...stats show HFT declining in futures markets. Regardless, if/when HFT reaches like 50% threshold in any type of market outside of equity markets, rules & regulations will change so that foreign governments can profit from such...increasing HFT cost of business to the point its impact is minimized. If not, we'll need to adapt.