It's not that difficult to have strategies that don't have losing days with a few core, key trades and decent infrastructure. That still doesn't mean there's enough money in the winning days to make it worth it.
HFT isn't going anywhere, they will be more regulated and they may lose their sub penny advantage but they will be around; we might as well get used to it...
Wall Street banks' equities-trading units aren't getting much relief from the strongest stock rally since 2009, as sinking volume and already thin margins threaten to make their annual performance the worst in six years.
Third-quarter equities-trading revenue probably fell 14 percent from the same period in 2011, the fifth straight drop of more than 8 percent, according to estimates by Kian Abouhossein, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) analyst. Full-year revenue at the five largest U.S. investment banks may be the lowest since 2006, UBS (UBSN) AG's Brennan Hawken wrote in a Sept. 19 note to clients.
