Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:
Huh? So if the odds of a baseball player making $25mil in a year is 1 in 100 million I'd deduce A-Rod is "cheating" because he's made 20mil 10 consecutive years?
Or if a local in the bond pit goes several months in a row without a losing day he must be stealing?
The article makes some asinine statistical errors. If a dealer has an edge than his odds of making money are not 50% but rather higher. And if one has infinite flow than his odds are extremely favorable.
In other words if you have a 55/45 edge per trade but make just 1 trade a day than we'd expect you to make money 55% of sampled trading days. What if you have a 55/45 edge but make 10,000 trades a day? We'd then expect you'd make money virtually every day, eh?
So then answer me. How many losing days does Oanda have? Or Harrah's? Or a disciplined floor trader?
Comparing the profitability of a speculator or a gambler to a market maker or a casino is akin to comparing a 16 inch softball player to Albert Pujols. Other than everyone is swing a bat not much commonality....
Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:
I see nothing in the article referring to the data on a trade by trade basis.
the firm's Equities Commissions revenue for the quarter dropped to $930 million from $1.2 billion YoY, while prop Equities Trading skyrocketed from $354 million to $1.8 billion YoY! And just in case you were wondering someone, somewhere was motivated to destroy Fixed Income powerhouse Lehman and Bear, look no further than Goldman's Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities which did a gentle jump from $1.6 billion in Q3 2008 to $6 billion last quarter.
Quote from krazykarl:
Show me this documentation that is so public. Links please showing those were the [only]people he talked to daily. You also forgot Bernanke, which he should have been talking to daily. You've just demonstrated how FUD gets started.
Quote from Kassz007:
There is no need to draw a definitive line. If I told you I won the lottery 1 time you'd say "you sure are lucky". If I told you I won the lottery 5 times you'd say "you sure are lucky, something smells rather fishy here". If I told you I won the lottery 9 times out of 10, you'd say "that's not possible - you cheated somehow".
Quote from Mvic:
You seem to have far more time on your hands than I do, search for it, its not that hard. Lewis complained about this relationship BoA did not enjoy.
Quote from krazykarl:
Link to Lewis complaining about his competition doing better then he did. Oh wait, GS didn't make sub-prime loans, they just traded the derivatives. =) It's not that I have time on my hands, it's that I know where to quickly get this info because it's all been in the news recently.(past 5 years)

Quote from truehawk:
I have to admit that I have not yet looked at your link but, have you had a position stopped out 6 points below what was market by a second ago by a 15,000 contract market sell order, then an immediate buy after the stops were popped only to see the market resume it's direction upwards? Now who trades in ES blocks that size????
1. Are you seriously comparing the legit money that could be made on market making activities 30 years ago, when the spreads were greater and before decimalization to TODAY?
2. Goldman has been at this, like this a long long time. Go read about their activities before, during and after the stock market crash of 29. There is not any evidence that they just started this crap, just that they are now subsidized to do it in a much bigger way today.