Sorry I must have missed that bit; I'm catching up on the last 15 years of posts around here so I speed-read... I wasn't trying to laugh at your comment per se, just poking fun in the general direction of all those saying that tape reading is dead now that we're full-blown electronic, full of algos and that the only "edges" (which by the way, everyone has a distinct personal definition for) are ephemeral technical glitches (which for the most part, aren't accessible to retail traders anyway). To me, even arbitrage between the market and a bucket shop constitutes a short-lived gimmick, not a reliable edge. It can vanish in an instant. It should, unless the shop is run by morons who don't notice, in which case they won't stay in business for long anyway, so yeah, short-lived either way.
I guess my personal definition of an "edge" boils down to "whatever works consistently for you". I'll leave it to the experts to argue about whether markets are random and edges illusory (i.e. marketsurfer), as long as my speculation plan works for me.
