Quote from Maverick74:
I think he meant one can string a lot of small short runs together over one's trading life. Call it a cycle if you will.
And it's laughable you think the only way to make money is market making. Speaking as someone who traded on the floor, all those guys down there are long gone and selling used cars now or running a bar on the north side of Chicago. And all those guys with those algos who use to get paid for pushing buttons, they are gone too. Turns it the computer can do just fine without them. Front running you say? Anyone can do that. The Fed has given you a free trade for 4 years now letting you front one them. Arbitrage? LOL. Dude, I can list all the big arbitrage funds for you if you want. Most have been decimated by the S&P 500 the last 4 years. What else do you got in your bag of tricks? Inside information? LOL.
Most would be better off with another profession if they can only make money during the "good years", the good years wont make up for the lost (or negative) income during the bad years.
And you are clueless if you think market making is dead and spread trading is dead, investment banks derive a good chunk of their income from market making and trading spreads, how do you think goldman sachs got their flawless trading records?
The algo guys are still around, they are the ones who wrote the programs that the computer is running you dimwit and LoL at those silly comments that everyone can front run, how many ET pikers can afford to front run like what HFTs are doing now? Let me guess... zilch? And what about this?
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetel...report-following-disclosure-of-early-release/
The fact that volume declined to nothing after the front runners were "found out" is proof that MOST TRADERS did not know about this. So you are absolutely clueless if you think everyone can front run, you need to know what to front run, how to do it and you need the resources to do it.
I dont know what arbitrage funds you are babbling about but these guys, like 99% of the hedge funds out there, likely have no real edge. Most of them are underperforming the SPX, tell me if I care they have been decimated?
All I know is I did very profitable arb (arb'ing the same 2 instruments) for many years, I went from a 20k a/c to nearly 900k in just 5 years, doing the same thing everyday, so again you are ignorant if you think there are no more arb opportunities left in the market. There are always inefficiencies in financial markets, especially in markets that arent as developed as the US market yet. Obviously that edge has now been exhausted but no edge lasts forever, but those are real edges (while they lasted).