=========== Good points Sjf; Probably right on grocery store owners have a better chance ; than daytraders over the long term. [2]Not sure i would agree with '' gap risk for insurance fee''which is basically what scalping is . I could agree with that; but the trends are so different, profits are so different [for me anyway] & comissions are so different.I guess my main point is an experienced insurance premium collector does much better than the average scalper. I dont know how the average market maker does in comparison to the average insurance premium collector. Nice work.
=========== Cutten had 2 good points on the personal freedom/creative freedom case. Especially,even more so if one's personality is more suited to working on his own bass boat[with fish finder] rather than a needed aircraft carrier or Titanic[ignore icberg & sunk while trying to set a speed record] Actually i did find daytrading ''interesting'' as you say. But like most US aircraft carriers ,you hit the [lack]of'' profit '''part so well; and your book review sounds wise. Nice work Market Makers, specialists , most could safely ignore the warning ''Day Trading for Dummies- but that title is actually a prophetic warning for most. Not a prediction; i think Don Bright does well , but most US aircraft carriers do well.
================ E21; Good points, i dont agree with an efficient market theory. either.[My day trading track record for the first year was very suprising -even to me- it was SO much worse than random.LOL But since he wrote ''viable'' & much of that in a daytrading /efficient market context; in a practical/profit sense, the market can be very efficient when you add daytrading comissions/slippage. Note i did not say, DonBright [Daytrading could not make a profit- i think he can, even if i cant prove it. I also appreciate Sjfan's institutional based comments; but he is wrong on a small matter- this elitetradrer.com includes ''short term investors'' [Ot that was true in the past 9/10 years,LOL] .Trends can still happen , some last more than we thought-not a prediction, simply wisdom.
Many posters in this forum are NOT traders, but people of other backgrounds. I don't know specifically what background they have. But if one poster talks about day trading is not possible, you can bet all your account that he is NOT a day trader. Some posters are from institutions (not mental ones, I hope), these people definitely post stuff that is not flattering to day trading and day traders. It's understandable that they hate day traders, because they themselves don't know day trading or have lost money trying to day trade, and they definitely lose their institutional money when they trade. Remember that guy who constantly posted stuff like: small traders lose, they just lose. I can tell you one thing for sure: He is NOT a day trader and has no clue of day trading. Next time someone posts about day trading, he or she should declare if he is a day trader or not. If someone is from an institution and posts stuff unfavorable to day traders, we have a right to know where he comes from. By the way, I am a day trader and I try to take money from you institutional losers every day. I don't hide my purpose, I want to take your money. I know you institutions are bad in the market, my action is to take advantage of your stupidity. But, please, don't steal my money from my account. If you do co-locating, that's tolerable. I can also tolerate front-running from you losers. But stealing my money, that's a NO NO.
Hi Ghost of Cutten, Sorry I guess I wasnât clear on what you would be doing either your own or at someone elseâs hedge fund if you institutionalized yourself to pass due diligence to be able to trade outside money. What I meant to say is you would be hired to run your own strategies rather than do some other job such as execution, operations etc. Your boss or client hires or allocates to you because your trading profile complements their existing portfolio of trading profiles. Thus they want you to trade the way you trade and replicate your past profile going into the future. If they wanted someone to do things they way they currently do things then they wouldnât have hired you. For example when I made the jump from Merc/interbank options market making to a hedge fund/CTA the principle specifically hired me because my trading profile from interbank market making and floor scalper was very different from his traditional long term trend following. He didnât tell me how to trade because he doesnât want me to trade like he does and the same goes for the clients. I do stress that the clients were part of the professional asset allocating community and not hot money performance chasers (amateur hour) etc. In fact my current employer was that hedge fund, which first hired me, biggest client. When I decided to leave London (personal issues) I called up the client and told them I was going to leave and would be in touch after setting up. They said you have traded for us indirectly for years what about getting out of the rain and coming to the sunshine and working directly for us. So I didnât even need to do a formal interview since I had met them in London several times during their due diligence visits and they had intimate knowledge of my performance since it was primarily their money in my program at the hedge fund. Both here and at the London based hedge fund no boss or client has ever told me to how to trade because they hire me to get exposure to my profile. They are not interested ordering you around to clone themselves because they already have exposure to their own profile. Actually this is not as true as you might think. Maybe for the hot money performance chasers that is run pretty amateurish but definitely not so for the real pro asset allocators. The biggest single fear a professional asset allocator has is after he makes an allocation based on an individual trader/hedge fund profile that fits nicely with his other allocations the trader hits a rough patch. The horror is the guy in a rough patch will at best style drift and at worst figure he is about to get shut down so will roll the dice on what he sees as an âall or nothingâ situation. The best asset allocator I ever met told me he spends most of his time hand holding scared traders in a rough drawdown that are freaking out that he might pull the money so he has to keep convincing them to just keep it together and keep doing what they did to get the allocation in the first place. Oh and the other one big nightmare is a discretionary trader that is either getting a divorce or building a house. For some reason having a baby appears to help focus discretionary traders and they generally get better. I donât know about quite a few but instead I view those guys you named as really special rather than typical. Besides didnât one on them come out of the US Investment Bank industry and the other sold a very successful business so started out in trading with quite a stake? And also if I am not mistaken one had a big direct allocation from Quantum? Actually that kind of allocation happens quite a bit in the industry where hedge funds themselves will allocate some of their assets under management to an outside individual trader. Of course I agree. Whether it is the parties of which you speak or the guy that just really loves his hardware store I would never advise someone to do something that would bring them unhappiness. Agreed but itâs not really a factor because it is only if your methodology can handle size that you have the opportunity of the free call of which I speak. That said you might have a more scalable method than you realize. I have a Serbian kid beside me that is a high frequency trader and both of us have played around a bit and taken some of my regular stuff and are now using it to trade high frequency. It is kind of ironic because years ago when I left interbank market making and the Merc floor my focus was short term day trading/scalping/jobbing etc and I made the jump to money management because my stuff complemented the principles trading style at the above hedge fund. Back then with the principleâs help I stretched out my short term stuff out and most of it still worked in the longer term. Now in the last several years I have taken both my longer and shorter term stuff and with the Serbian kidâs help really squeezed it down to high frequency. Just realized what a ramble this is turning into so all I wanted to say is you never know what can be done with your current stuff. The Serbian kid taught this old dog a few new tricks and it all helps. All the best! Warmest Regards, Smoker
Its a real pleasure reading you Smoker, very interesting stuff. Also turned out to be an interesting thread - far from the OP's question
Hello Smoker, Did this Serbian kid have a few articles on him about 5 years ago when( If I recall ) he was doing HFT on European markets ( Eurex or LIFFE )? It's just that Serbia is not an usual place where HFT traders come from... I tried to find his name and the articles back but I can't find it anymore.
I bet you have no clue of what HFT is. I bet you have NEVER done any HFT. Many posters talk about HFT without knowing what it is. You are one cut above them, because you claim you are doing HFT, not just talk about HFT.
HFT has multiple definitions. If you want to define it as "latency-dependent trading", in that case very few people indeed are doing real HFT. If you want to define it as "real-time statistical arbitrage", in that case many people can get involved and Smoker is probably doing something along these lines. Personally, my definition would be something like "trading dependent on the market micro-structure in real time"
Hi TraDaToR, No you must be thinking about someone else. The guy out here has never had anything written about him and thus fits the profile we feel comfortable with of staying off the media radar. Generally true but surprisingly enough like the rest of Eastern Europe generally the former Yugoslavia countries produce some very good mathematicians and computer guys. He originally didnât have any hedge fund experience and we specifically hired him to set up our global computer infrastructure for electronic trading. So he spent the first couple years with us flying around the world setting up servers next to the exchanges etc. He did a great job and it was while setting up the global infrastructure that he got interested in trading. After recoding some of my stuff some ideas popped into his head and as they say the rest is history. Besides Eastern Europe of all places Iran produces some excellent mathematicians and funny enough the majority of them are women. BTW when comparing the level of mathematics in different places I am speaking in general terms relating to the average student rather than comparing the elite schools/students. The top end math students and instruction are pretty dam good all over. Warmest Regards, Smoker