OK seriously. Look, I don't know what firms you are talking about but traders at most firms certainly do have a choice. And the ones that don't have a choice can't pick and choose regardless so it's a moot point. For example a kid out of college that gets recruited by Goldman to trade the yield curve. But I don't like your question because the correct answer is volatility. You should choose volatility. And volatility is a slippery sucker. It moves from product to product. If you put a gun to my families head I would pick futures over stock if I could trade any futures contract all over the world. Simply because as a group, I could probably seek out and find volatility better then if I was confined simply to equities. I assume you have not been trading very long but for those of us that experienced the drought in 2002 to 2007, it was brutal. Over 90% of the equity prop firms folded and it really washed out a lot of guys out of the business.
Are you serious? Are you watching cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar? Momentum down? It's going through the roof! Honestly the momentum is so high I would almost go as far to say it's not tradeable, which is why I would favor commodity options to contain the risk. Pull up the charts there and get back to me. LOL.
so you;ll choose futures than... some traders just prefer stocks over futures. the only thing that i care about is ROC which securities makes the most money.
That's not how trading works. You need an edge. If you don't have it you are probably better off buying a laundry mat or nail salon.
HFT machines have an edge...automated trading systems are an 'edge'.. market makers broker/dealers have an edge.. edge just means competitive advantage. goldman sachs has an edge it frontrun client orders etc. and trade against client order and position that is the 'edge'. and have access to fed funds at 0% unlimited buying power. naked shorting is an edge. ability to short any stock is an edge. no such thing as no shares to short. AND ability print shares is an edge. ability to move markets is an edge'
No what you want is future ROC ... but nobody knows that one ... only future will tell you ... you can do nothing with the prices of yesterday's newspaper, it won't make you money in any way, well at least not directly ... you want something liquid and you want something volatile and preferably something where you can leverage up and you want and edge ... the first three you can find 1 and 3 in SIF's, Forex will give you 1, 2 and 3 number 4 you will have to find out on your own though is my experience, although the simple things are the things that work ... most people try to make things too complicated ... it's number 4 that will decide exactly what your future ROC will be ...
BTW, even 'real' companies can only guess what their future ROC will be ... ask any good bookkeeper ... they only pretend they really know that one, it's a big sharade imo ...
being a small trader is an edge, as you can be very versatile, going with the flow while big traders are like tankers: you see them coming from a mile while they try to manouvre ... this sentence should be above anyone's desk trying to daytrade ... EDIT: the question remains though: how are you going to milk that edge ... it's like that in every business ...