Anyone Here Been Trading 20+ Years?

I'm looking forward to trading the unintended consequences of any regulatory actions. They can outlaw capitalism, close the markets, trading will always exist in some form. They can change the rules all they want, I'll just figure out the new rules. If things get really dictatorial, then that's bad, cause then if you are not permitted by the government to trade, they put you in jail. If you are, it's a license to steal.
 
Also, if there's anyone here who hasn't read Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, I recommend it. At least you can be aware how you're getting screwed. Then maybe do something about it.
 
I been trading since 1978. Costs of getting started is different in some ways as I needed satellite dish for data 1985 for $800 a month, first PC was $2,000, and longer ordeal to place orders. Years went by Tradestation was couple grand or buy crappy Ensign, Futuresource was 3 levels of prices and CQG was the most expensive of $1,000. Back testing was a joke till Tradestation came out. Today laptop costs $400 and data next to free. But for retail to trade equal Big S&P500 in early nineties of $500 a point was $25 roundturn and same bang for the buck now would be 10 contracts and even if it was $4 bucks, you still paying more fees. You definitely got cheated more by the floor, get fills outside the daily range, always calling the broker for adjustments and many months broker made more than me, back then Commodity brokers made very good money. The markets were smoother I believe, less arbs. Trading anything in New York, you were going to get screwed with slippage.

Today there are far more opportunities to do better but you have to have well back tested skills. Long term commodities there are less doing it cause so many want to do day trading, but the rewards long term are far greater. To be consistent trading today, you have to trade far more size and grind out smaller targets relative to daily ranges. And options are going to become much more traded than now.

I find today's day trader far more lazy, whinny, under capitalized, under educated and there will be fresh batch of 60,000 a year from now, thank goodness for new meat. They seldom listen, they want to open an account to start trading, welcome welcome and come all, and their favorite sayings will be "I am so close". To make it, have to work for 2-4 years before opening an account, you have to be as good as the traders who trying to take your entire account, you become a robot and grind it out, no emotions.
 
Find me this emotionless trader. I want to meet him or her. Usually I hear that you have to Controll your emotions. So I'm all confused.
 
I usually find that people who say you're not supposed to have emotions get all emotional when they talk about people who express their emotions.
 
tommo said:
Surely there were day traders in the 70's? Certainly were in the 80's.
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Yeah, the traders who traded for the broker's account. True there were days now and then when you entered a trade and it exceeded the 3% commission. But as so many stocks were manipulated back then, if you could read the price movement, it was best to ride the short term runs.
 
Cswim63 said:
We live in a curious time where we try to teach humans to be more like machines and machines to be more like humans.
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...if you can master that hybrid way of trading...you will be one of the all-time greats...
The markets afterall are part art, part science :rolleyes::wtf:
 
tommo said:
Always interested to hear from the veterans and getting their take on things. Observations on how things have/havent changed.

Ive been trading professionally for about a decade. We constantly hear "things are changing so fast and so much". Well, yes and no, somethings have changed, some for the better, some for the worse. Lets stop all the negativity and realise things have also changed for the better.

Its true there are more algos now, edges have died out. You can't really trade news announcements anymore as the computers get the headlines first.

But edges also are created. Back when I started if you wanted to spread anything you had to be very fast mentally (or punching numbers into a calculator) to work out your spread price. Now you just put your orders in an autospreader and it does the work for you. I can trade 20-30 markets simultaneously with super fast trading speeds from a home office. Trading commissions are dirt cheap. there are more exchanges competing for our business offering new products.

Is trading harder now? in my opinion no. Its always been hard. There were similar failure rates 10 years ago as there are now. Edges are a little harder to come by. But barriers to entry are so much lower and software so much better.

Would be interested to hear guys that have been trading since the 80's and 90's take on things.

And my question to them, how much were trading commissions back then? I feel im getting lulled into quite expensive strategies and would probably suffer if there were price hikes on trading costs (which are possible with regulations), i imagine costs were higher back when exchanges had less participants/volume

thanks
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I'm doing more intermarket analysis now, and I'm not sure if it's because I've grown as a trader or the markets all move together much more than 20 years ago. If you pay attention you can see the money sloshing around, around the globe 24 hours a day, 5 and a half days a week. I can look at the forex board and tell fairly accurately what the equities are doing or about to do. The hedge funds have grown so big that they cannot hide their footprints. The money is like water in a barrel-_it eventually finds its own level after moving back and forth a few dozen times.
 
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