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Last I heard (a few years ago), the average gross profit of a futures floor trader was around $500,000. The firm that backs you will give you between 30-60% of that amount depending upon your experience. So, the lower end figure they gave you for a new trader sounds about right. This...

I don't go for this dual stuff either, its too cutesy european. You're either in or you're out. Holster your gun, put your cowboy hat on your head, throw your hands in the air and shout - thank God I'm American! IMHO

……not are you paranoid, but are you paranoid enough? The answer is – I wouldn’t be paranoid if everyone wasn’t out to get me! :eek: FWIW, here is a quote from S&P pit trader Lewis Borsellino’s book “The Day Trader” “Among my customers in the S&P pit was a major...

I do believe that brokers study successful traders accounts to figure out what they are doing. If you had access to that type of information - wouldn't you do the same? Here is a cure for this over-curiosity syndrome. Open two accounts (different brokerages). Every now and then enter a...

For a while there, if you put in a market order in the emini, the bid-offer would suddenly shift to ding you .25 from what was showing. Then it would shift back after you got your bad fill. This happened to me about 90% of the time on about 40-50 trades, so I know it wasn't a fluke. Then...

Another vote for the Aeron chair. Coach makes one in leather for those of you who are extravagant. I also use a hang ups inversion table to stretch out the spine. When my back hurts I use the table and I usually hear a pop in my back, probably freeing up a pinched vertebrae...

IMHO pivot is an obsolete indicator. It was originally designed for floor traders before they had computers with moving averages. Pivot basically mimics a 20 period exponential moving average on a 15 minute chart. With the 15-minute ema - when it is sloping, you look to buy or sell in the...

The guys in the pit win in that the emini is made less attractive for higher volume users. Higher tick means greater costs getting in and out (losing the spread) for the emini than the pit contract. The way I see it, price discovery has two elements price and depth. While depth remains in...

I don't think that the 5 levels were available at the time of the interview. The pub date according to your link is may 2000. The interview was probably done 2-6 months before that. It sounds like the IB guy's bitching paid off. But don't let your enthusiasm go to waste. If you...

I have not placed a market order on the emini s&p in a couple of years. Always using limit orders and getting filled at the offer (if buying) and bid (if selling). Back then it seemed that they use to ding you .25 if you placed a market order vs. a limit. Is this still true? The reason...

Right now traders pay a variable fee per transaction called the spread. Instead of having a spread, you would pay a fixed fee per transaction, kind of like the SEC fees. Would this be considered a subsidy to trade? No, its a fee for the market maker to provide liquidity, just as the...

What do the NYSE specialists do when a stock hits a bump - they stop trading in the stock. Some shock absorber. Eventually I think when markets become all electronic, large financial institutions will play market maker for a fixed fee depending upon the volume/liquidity of a stock. They...

All that decimalization offers is the possibility of narrower spreads, not the certainty. On Nasdaq it seems to be working, on the NYSE with their black box bid-ask system they are playing games that make sequential limit orders unlikely. They want you to submit market orders so they can...

This doesn't directly apply to Nwbprop's question, but its on the subject of NYSE vs. Nasdaq. I remember when the NYSE specialists were trying to forestall decimalization (unsuccessful) and the opening up of their operation (successful). They said that the then current specialist system was...

You are right......as the thread gets longer I tend to forget what the original question was about. .

I think the consensus answer here is: 1.) The spreads are wider on equally liquid NYSE stocks with their specialist system vs. the Nasdaq market makers. Obviously the regulators need to bust open the NYSE's black box bid-ask spread and make it more transparent and accessible like the Nasdaq...

What is this Alice in Wonderland or NYSE promotion night? If you compare apples to apples, stocks with equal volume, the spread on a liquid Nasdaq stock is always tighter than on a equally liquid NYSE stock. I'm not talking about the spread that they flash for a microsecond at the NYSE...

His eyes were glassy, he was talking, make that shouting.... like a mad man - I would swear he was on speed/coke/some drug when he did that infomercial. .

If all of us individualists and loners could somehow pull this off we could become a very effective grass roots organization. Sort of like the NRA. The NRA doesn't have as much money as people think, but they have hundreds of thousands of motivated members who will write/call/show up in...

The problem is that individual traders don't have a group/guild etc. representing their interests in Washington. The exchanges do, the brokerages do, but traders don't. There is the AAII (?) or something like that. But they seem more interested in old time stock investors. We need a...