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Reading some of the strategies posted on this site I would be surprised if more than a handful actually make a living off their trading.

As Shakespeare was known to say "the actor's talent is in the choice of the part". Likewise I believe a trader's talent lies in what he chooses to trade. I suggest people find less heavily traded stocks that they can value correctly and try to provide liquidity when investors look to lighten up...

In order to be a billionaire you would have to manage institutional money. You arel You are competing with market makers. You have to be better or more knowledgeable than they are. Many market makers are automated programs now. They don't really know where the spread should be. Supplying...

The first thing you have to do is understand the difference between a trader and a speculator. You must understand what service you are brining to the market. Are you supplying liquidity or are you demanding it. Also, you tend to make the most money is corporate bonds or stocks that you know...

I disagree with that assertion "more trades and instruments traded less likely to have a good run, The law of diminishing returns". The hedge fund manager Jim Simons described his style of trading as the farming method, where they take a lot of positions as to reduce overall risk. The key is to...

It is not so far fetched to think that a trader can go for relatively long periods of time without such a drawdown. This might be possible if you are doing fundamental analysis on stocks or bonds and making the spread on a large number of issues, while taking small to medium sized positions in...

Since you brought up Shakespeare - I think it was Shakespeare who said "the actor's talent is in the choice of the part". Likewise, I believe a good part of a traders talent is choosing what to trade rather than how to trade.

First you should understand what service you are providing to a capitalistic economy. Traders provide liquidity. That is the service you get paid for. You should look for things to trade that require your liquidity to make the market more efficient. I personally don't like stock index futures...

One way that seems to work is to trade with the daily trend, buying dips into an uptrend and selling pops into a down trend. Having traded both stock index futures and stocks, I find trading stocks more profitable because there are more opportunities for market inefficiencies.

Lightspeed uses JP Morgan for access to Nasdaq and Arca executions. Using lightspeed means you are restricted by JP Morgan's risk parameters. They are too restrictive for experienced traders/market makers. They are fine for beginners (and intermediate traders) who are prone to input errors...

I was wondering what traders think the best daytrading software is for Stocks? I am really wondering what experienced traders (10+ years are using these days). I already know the ones geared towards beginners.

I would rather not name specific brokers but I have gone through a few of these turnovers. It is somewhat similar to what investment bankers call "cleaning up the balance sheet" before they start the selling efforts, but in these cases it involves making the business seem less risky than it is.

Seems some traders are noticing increasing risk tolerance limits for entering trades as wells increased regulatory oversight. In my experience these have pointed to firms preparing to shop themselves for a sale.

Also, co-location is a real advantage for trading stocks off fast breaking news or if you believe every tick of the futures signals a directional move in the market. However, most of the ticks in the S&P futures are probably just random filling of orders (taking out bids and offers) and don't...

Commissions when Soes started were around $25 per 1000 shares. After a couple of years some firms were down to $12 per share. Before Reg NMS you could have a stock with a 1/4 spread on the Nasdaq but you would have an ecn such as Brut or Redi doing a half point spread. Do the math. If you buy a...

There were many more inefficiencies in the stock market back then. That was before Reg NMS so it was possible to arb the ECNs like Island, Brut, and Btrade. There are still inefficiencies in the markets but they are much harder to find and they disappear much more quickly.

The brokerage firms will likely have to take a slice of the rebates and hope for volume to make up for their lost commission revenue. Trading a lot becomes a losing proposition if you are hitting bids and lifting offers. Your transactions costs will put you out of business. The only way to make...

The brokers catering to daytraders will have to come up with ways for their customers to compete with firms like Virtu, otherwise they will simply cease to exist. The advantage the day trading firms have is they will have humans to monitor the stocks they are trading.

What made SOES better? The answer is that when SOES first came out it gave the daytraders a speed advantage since the market makers had to use SelectNet to get stock as the market moved. Once everyone got access to instant executions that SOES advantage was gone. Also when SOES first came out...

I would think people would have to find a way to make money doing it. Either that or they trade stocks with wider spreads. You can't fight the laws of economics and probabilities.