So I got this deal (I don't want to talk about where and how) where I trade equities commission free (regulatory and exchange fees still apply) in exchange for a cut of the profits. Some more details:
- Fast manual order entry with level 2
- Programmable interface
- Intraday capital practically unconstrained
- I have some acumen in programming and quant finance/machine learning
- Access to other financial products (futures, currencies..)
Constraints:
- Strictly intraday
- Amount of risk (daily stoploss) very tight and dependent on consistency of results. E.g. less than 20% losing days, with losing days not much larger than winning days.
- Programmable interface slow, no co-location. Fast enough to beat any human, slower than anything else.
Are there opportunities here for outsized profits? E.g. on SPY if I trade with resting orders most of the time, exchange plus regulatory fees can balance out to zero, net = gross.
Btw I don't think automatization is the answer, as I am too slow for simple HFT strategies/arbitrage. And slower automatic strategies are not consistent enough I believe.
