My problems were originally, I needed two 75" 4k tvs and a powerful computer, racing thoughts, phobia of losing any money, ADD symptoms like zero focus, constant distractions, and I needed to be able to analyze trades a little more quickly. I put out the money for the TV's and computer but I still got the other problems.
Don't listen to moonbrow, he's just a previous poster ragging on me. All I can say is...If you have racing thoughts, ADD, and feel the need to get two 75" 4K TVs and the other hardware right away, you are going too fast and need to calm down. You seriously need to calm your brain down, or you are going to burn your $16K into oblivion. As you have now discovered, imaginary trades do not always work in the real world. Don't try to pick exact tops and bottoms. You seem to have a feel for the general tops and bottoms in the instruments you trade. In this case, options. So work with that. Give yourself a bit of leeway on the bid/ask so you don't again get caught in this trap of "missing out on huge profit because I missed it by one tick." Believe me, I have been there with futures. It sux to hell, man. You seem to have strengths in your trading strategy. Work with them, not against them.
I don't know why you'd think some part is insincere. I've been making pretend trades for many years. Waisted my life doing so. There was just so many little problems that always got in my way. I wanted to learn several fields of engineering, physics, programming, 3d animation but my foggy mind always stopped me. BUT, I was still somehow VERY good at predicting stocks. I developed a common sense strategy that has almost a 100% success rate and is extraordinarily profitable. I've tested it thousands of times in real time. I use several stock side-by-side comparisons, different time frames, divergences, extremes, price levels, trend lines, economic sentiment, a little bit of candlestick patterns, common time-of-day behaviors, several types of moving averages, $TICK chart, and extreme familiarity of typical stock behavior. I also use concepts like the most probable goal of many competing collective trader goals and I also usually wait until the last few seconds before the beginning of a stock turn before make final decisions. If I'm not sure enough of how far a stock move will be I just simply get out at the first sign of trouble, but if I see no trouble then I hold and often a small trade will turn into a big trade. I NEED lots of confluence too.
TD Ameritrade sells your orders to internalizers. The quotes you see on the platform are a consolidation of the entire market but that doesn't necessarily mean that an internalizer wanted to sell at 30cts. This broker is a shit - show. Use the platform for analytics (FWIW) but take your business to a direct access broker and route yourself. Perhaps @Robert Morse can help out
If the offer is 30 cents they have to fill you at 30 cents. However sometimes their Lagos can move the market “just before” your order becomes live - but that will never happen in index of spy options at the size the OP is trading
Yeah, I've had my eye on LightSpeed. I think I heard their data and software can show darkpool trades. I think that would uniquely and significant help me make better trades. don't know if they're a direct access broker though. I was going to get an account once I got the courage and focus to successfully make $20k or so.
Me too! Equity Dark pool trades are displayed in the time and sale window with other alternative networks as "ADFN". Option markets have very few dark pools, but all those trades must "trade" on one of the Listed Option exchanges like any other option order.
REG NMS Rule 605 just states that off exchange trades cannot be filled at worse prices, meaning that when the internalizer offers at 31cts while the market is at 30cts, they're not allowed to fill you at 31cts, so your order is stale. Usually these orders are routed directly to the market when the internalizer doesn't want to trade against you, but re-routing takes time and probably they just wait till the last second just to see if they can't trade against you for edge. And you know...once in a while they have issues or straigth up game your order. And you never know the actual market at the time of potential execution because you don't get a high resolution data feed at TD - Ameritrade. You get a snapshot of SIP which in itself is already trash because it needs to be consolidated first before it's sent out. So you never know if the BBO didn't flip to 31cts neither do you know how the trades that went through at 30cts were matched