Thanks TD80. Obviously my main concern related to the commissions was for day trading - although I take no offence at all. Obviously it's not a domain I'm familiar with - and I do wonder if I should touch it at all. Yet as i'm planning to move slowly a very sizeable proportion of my ( highly illiquid ) assets from my main trade to more liquid markets, studying seriously the matter (long term but also possibly day trading ) is a possibility over the next few years . And to study seriously, IME although in different businesses , better have some money at stake !
I would not use market orders at all. There is just too much risk in using them. If I had to use them, I would only want to use MOOs on NYSE routing. MOCs are bad (I should say worse, I've never met a good market order) because in many cases you are not even guaranteed execution by close (read the fine print from your broker on MOCs). I would stay far, far away from using any market orders. In terms of trading, particularly short term trading, I would say it is like any other skilled trade in many respects. Expect to spend on average at least 10,000 hours to become proficient (in trading terms this may be called: consistently not losing money in the future).
Agreed. But unlike "other skilled trades", even after 10,000 hours, my guess is that a new trader will still almost certainly fail -- unless they've figured out some real, novel/underutilized edge much earlier. In fact, many professional traders who were at one time successful over many years are now unprofitable and leaving the biz -- markets are just a lot tighter than they were even a few years ago.
Absolutely. Even after 10,000 hours there is a lot of variation of quality of practitioners in other professions. Trading can be worse because it is one of the most competitive and dynamic endeavors I know of. There is always someone looking to knock you off. One thing you tend to learn if you survive long enough is to fish where other people are not fishing. If you see the fishing boats roll in then you need to be ahead of the curve and looking for a quieter spot. This becomes more challenging when there is too much cash in the system and this is why you see the correlations all increasing between historically uncorrelated instruments. This will eventually resolve itself one way or the other.
To the OP: Trading equities requires some competent mentoring for mostly any potential trader. I would say it is a good idea to have a plan (A business oriented thing), a strategy and a routiine. Equities, in my opinion , are best traded from a position trading viewpoint. You could plan of learning to improve your cycles per year by going from 30 to 100 plus cycles a year. The net would be half of the price excursion or 10% of price. You leave half on the table and make half. for position trading, most expert traders only trade stocks that look a like. As they get better they do crossover trading based on money velocity. This means enter late and exit early. The stocks that lok a like are usually 3 Beta or better and you can count on trading 10% of the daily cummulative volume with ease. Stocks with the above description will allow you to hold 100,000 shares max. You can comfortably manage up to 12 streams of capital. This set of stocks has a well known sweet spot in terms ot their characteristics. In terms of the daily routine of trding, you wold use a 30 min chart to get into the ball park abd a 5 minute chart to carve the turns. Volume leads price and the trading tool is the market order. you block size is dictated to you by the market (look at T&S). To get best fills look at the DOM as part of the "carving of the turn". Since 1957, when I began, there have been some changes. To enter and exit, during the day, it was normal to just execute block by block. Generally a person can do a week's planning in advance if he is trading streams and doing 60 to 100 turns a year @ 10% net a turn. You double your capital every time a stream has completed 8 turns. Now the bad news, you are in the dark so far. Secondly, you do not understand what people are telling you so you cannot weed out the chaff. Unfortunately, learning to trade is all about learning how markets operate. Here is a note: When trading a stock @ 100,000 shares position trding to make 10% on a brief hold period, it takes about 20 partial fills to get in and 30 partial fills to get out. Attached is a one pager with the rules and the signal look up for a 3 beta type liquid Universe.