You guys can keep complaining about HFT or learn their tactics and adapt accordingly to avoid them or use them to your advantage.
Or keep complaining and see where that gets you.
Or keep complaining and see where that gets you.
Quote from ogarbitrage:
You guys can keep complaining about HFT or learn their tactics and adapt accordingly to avoid them or use them to your advantage.
Or keep complaining and see where that gets you.
Quote from zdreg:
these complainers will miss the liquidity. who is going to be on the other side of their crap trades?
MARKETSMAY 5, 2011
Traders Exit High-Speed Lane
Firms Reduce Use of Computer-Driven Strategies as Volatility and Volume Wane
By TOM LAURICELLA
When stocks collapsed in a free fall last May, the fear was that the market had been taken over by high-speed computers that had run amok.
A year after the "flash crash," which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge 600 points in less than 10 minutes, the stock market is a much quieter place.
Companies that use fast-trading, computer-driven strategies, which were painted by some as culprits of the collapse, have curtailed trading. So, too, have many long-term investors, for whom the trauma of that May 6 afternoon was the final straw after a decade of stock-market turmoil. In their absence, trading volume and volatility have plunged, further deterring high-frequency traders.
High-frequency strategies "have less to work with, so they don't participate, which creates less volume," said Will Mechem, a managing partner at high-frequency trading firm Pan Alpha Trading. "This would seem to be a vicious cycle."
Associated Press
Arthur Andrews, of Banc of America Specialists Inc., on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on May 6, 2010, during the 'flash crash.'
Read More
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In the first four months of this year, average daily trading volume of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market is down 15% from 2010's pace, running at an average rate of 6.3 billion shares a day. Volume has been edging lower throughout the year, with April's daily average of 5.8 billion shares marking the slowest month since May 2008.
"The ripple effects across trading from the lack of fundamental demand are very real," said Jose Marques, global head of electronic equity trading at Deutsche Bank AG.
Volume had marched higher for most of the last decade, escalating during the financial crisis. It doubled between 2006 and March 2009, when an average of nine billion shares changed hands every day.
A big reason for the decline in volumes has been a general quieting of the big swings in stock prices commonly seen from 2008 through the first half of 2010. That has been reflected in a decline in the Chicago Board Options Exchange volatility index, also called the VIX, which last month fell to its lowest level since July 2007.
The declines in volatility and volume have been bad news for high-frequency traders, whose strategies generally rely on squeezing profits out of the tiny differences between the buy and sell orders of stocks within a fraction of a second. High-frequency traders also act as liquidity providers in the market, often taking the other side of a trade from long-term investors.
Rosenblatt Securities Inc. estimates that high-frequency traders would have made, on average, five cents to 7.5 cents per 100 shares traded in the U.S. stock market in 2010. That is down from 10 cents to 15 cents per 100 shares in 2008.
Quote from southbeach4me:
Lets make this clear to the newbies or experienced traders that are losing most of the time and blaming the HFTs.
HFTs are not the reason you are losing more than half the time, the reason is bcuz YOU don't have a strategy that works in the market you are trading.
3rd Party vendors are an absolute waste of money, PERIOD....NO EXCEPTIONS !! Any fool who spends money on them deserves to have their wallet raped....TWICE !
Quote from trickshot:
Looks like the HFTs have sucked most retail traders/investors dry, or perhaps they now realise its very difficult to beat the HTFs, so they are staying away from the market.
Quote from Bob111:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...5248&perpage=6&highlight=cgarcia&pagenumber=2
just like achilles28 said-not easy, but it's possible. most people are not committed and not patient enough. 99% of them are undercapitalized..
Quote from luisHK:
Are they so undercapitalised ?? EMG -who seems to enjoy hammering the same message post after post- writes about 5000usd accounts but I read that IB average account is 150K. Many serious retail traders must have an account way larger than 150K. And what about the longer term investors ? They need to be well in the 7 digits to make a living and they are out there.
With 5K savings I would be afraid not to survive a single week in the world, so I'd agree it's way undercapitalised to trade stocks.