Friends, traders, wannabes: (Well, wannabes might wanna just watch). As you may (but most likely do not) recall, I exhausted a considerable part of my waning youth as a prop trader. I finally faced the music that it was nearly impossible to beat the house and trade my style, which is low risk, high frequency. But I sure made two shops a good bit of stready, low risk money, for years, and they duly folded up in spite of it, mismanagement being the key requisite for entry into the business, apparently. Anyway, since I was laid off from my "real" job, I, perhaps exhibiting the sort of foolish tendency that keeps a woman going back to an abusive mate, have decided to check out the "state of the art" in prop trading. I know somebody who knows a big shot at Hold Brothers, so I thought that "in" might be helpful, which it probably will, in getting me fleeced again. But they don't have a space in Manhattan. That may actually be a plus, as having a lower nut might make management less desperately creative in insistence on separating traders from their gross. So, what's changed while I was out living a normal life? [i edited this post because I jolly well felt like it]
What I really want to know is, what prop traders are making money. I don't want details, but the truth would be nice. Lack of liquidity is a killer. So is there any liquidity in your market? The shift away from open-outcry exchanges has changed everything. What do markets act like these days? Is the market impossible these days, or is anything happening in your market? thanks in advance.
Plenty of movement out there if you know where to look, the lack of liquidity just helps in this respect. I'm no big volume trader, but take 1000-1500 share positions. I shoot for points at a time, P/L regularly in mid-4 figures daily.
The current trading climate is probably the worst I've ever seen. The market basically runs up or down at the open and then flat lines the rest of the day. There isn't much to do other than wipe the drool that flows down your chin from sheer boredom. I've never seen a market with such sheer lack of movement.
liquidity has absolutely been killed in the small/mid cap arena. algorithmic order flow is close to negligible in this space