Quote from roscoe28:
What I am doing with the Dax? That is a great question and one I ask myself about 50 times day. Do you remember the opening scene in the Terminator? Its in the future when the machines rule the world and the humans are running from junk pile to junk pile trying to fight off the monster machines, meanwhile living a life underground with only dogs able to detect the "terminators". Thats basically my life now. Alot of these programs are written specifically to pick off the locals. Whether its as simple as flashing size or pushing the market to short term extremes to try to squeeze locals most of the time its just trying to get people to panic and hit and lift at bad levels. The way I trade now is completely different from 1998-2003. Back then it was flat out easy. Anyone with half a brain could make a good living scalping the dax but those days are long long gone. Even though I can squeek out ticks I realize its a losing end game. The one big downside to all this is that the programs essentially make the markets very efficient. There is very little junk. That lowers vol and minus the occasional global event to shake up the markets, they just don't won't move like they use to. There is always a program on the bid or offer. Compared to only a couple years ago for the most part these markets are boring and will continue to move in that direction. The Dax use to always have 100 tick ranges. Always. Now it can sit in a 10 tick range for 3 hours. Its like trading fixed income. I want my mommy.