Market can be extremely manipulated. Searching and hunting stops. Just today I had the price follow up my stop each time i moved it for 15 minutes. Price NEVER moves the way it did, it made NO sense in this history of 4 years I've been trading futures. Quite obvious - why even play a rigged game. I knew price would come crashing down ANY second. The second it hit my stop, the price came crashing down in my direction. Fucking bullshit really. I'm done with stops. I'll have a mental 3pt stop from now on, because the hunters hunt. I'll blow out this account soon and thats that. hft ruined trading. bitch ass whores. bout to throw in this towel and go back to pepsi truck driving, steady pay less stress.
You got it. MMs are making their profits, given the the incoming order flow. They would screw most they can, statistically speaking. And if the "real" liquidity is scarce (apart the fake transactions to create the feeling of liquidity), there is really no game. The entry / take profit / take loss trading scheme is simply a slot machine, which rapidly sucks all the coins you put in it. A "grand scheme" is needed to make $$$... a totally different approach ...
My grand scheme is explained here on <a href="http://www.datatime.eu/public/gbot/strategies.htm">this page</a>, and i also have a few test journals here on ET, that you can browse. Example: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3517512 However, being "grand", actually it requires some very decent capital. [ In general, for small capital, I just suggest to enjoy the $$$ elsewhere ;-)) it's the best thing to do! ]
With so many computer programs in the markets, putting actual stops is asking for trouble i.e. they too know where the most likely places for the stops are, combat that with setting alerts rather than stops.
Well, I feel no pity for traders that put absolute stop losses instead of relative ones, as these are surely gonna be eaten by almost equally simple predatory traders.