how did Szeven go from making 0/day to 5k/day in just 3 years?

NY0BScalper · May 8, 2008

Quote from chewbacca:

i wonder if mnx has any regrets about disclosing his edge...... i think he has admitted that after too many guys started trading it, it (the edge) weakened and then it dissappeared............but that's the case with all arb. stratagies

i don't think he disclosed it... I believe it was stolen... which is the problem with Swift trade, your strategies if youre making money can be seen by others and used.

EricP · May 8, 2008

Quote from NY0BScalper:

i don't think he disclosed it... I believe it was stolen... which is the problem with Swift trade, your strategies if youre making money can be seen by others and used.

I think this can be a problem at any firm, but especially those that teach courses to train newbie traders 'what is working.' You can imagine how it would feel if you found an innovative new strategy, started making consistent and sizable profits off of it, and a month or two later, your detailed methods are being taught to the masses. As a result, the firm makes more commissions, the newbies get a strategy that quickly deteriorates with the added attention, and you get screwed.

Szeven: Free T-shirt? I'm all ears, man. Bring it!

ilikefox es · May 8, 2008

"Quote from Szeven:

...When left, i think 9/10 people were over 100k in the top 10, and the top 3 or 4 were over 200k..."

Back in the glory days at Broadway trading, this was a common thing for one day.

syswizard · May 8, 2008

Quote from Szeven:

How do i do it now? I have no idea... buy and hope it goes up, sell and hope it goes down. When in doubt, get out. Then once a week dont get out and lose your last 4 days of profit. Great stategy eh!

Strange you said the above...that's EXACTLY is what is happening to MBAGearhead ! He's super consistent most of the time, but then WHAM, he gets clobbered for a monster-size loss.
Even more strange, that loss happens about once every week or two.

Booker007 · May 8, 2008

ok thats it! im starting a Szeven fan club. Whos in?

chewbacca · May 8, 2008

Quote from NY0BScalper:

i don't think he disclosed it... I believe it was stolen... which is the problem with Swift trade, your strategies if youre making money can be seen by others and used.

that makes sense.......i knew about a prop firm in nyc (no longer in business) that copied trades of one of the top traders at the firm..........this is one of the risks of trading at a prop firm

chewbacca · May 8, 2008

Quote from syswizard:

He's super consistent most of the time, but then WHAM, he gets clobbered for a monster-size loss.

an average down / short volatility strategy will produce results like that

ElCubano · May 8, 2008

Quote from syswizard:

Strange you said the above...that's EXACTLY is what is happening to MBAGearhead ! He's super consistent most of the time, but then WHAM, he gets clobbered for a monster-size loss.
Even more strange, that loss happens about once every week or two.

that happens to me...and it is almost always on thursday or friday....peace

robbie380 · May 8, 2008

Quote from traderpro:

By your answer we look at the markets and trading different.

There is a first for everything! first time i have ever read or heard someone not understand what an edge is. When you get one you will understand it better

lol...thanks for the encouragement. maybe one day i will find an "edge" to exploit. for now i will just stick to figuring things out faster than others and knowing what is going on in the market. crazy stuff.

robbie380 · May 8, 2008

Quote from NY0BScalper:

A lot of the time I trade based on discretionarily trying to interpret the order flow and because of my experiencing and good risk management, it works, definitely no silver bullet, and I find it analogous to the way you claim to use common sense and critical thinking.

However, sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - I see a raw pure edge, some stupid free money left on the table where I am the only person understanding the way the algos in a stock interact and can trade with really, really high accuracy... not being right 40% of the time and holding for 2:1, being right 90%+ of the time with 1:1, where if I posted on elite what I was doing that would die down.

One problem I've found, is when I get that real real edge, and it lasts a few weeks or a month, I tend to give back way too much of the money I made trying to re-learn to trade the old fashioned way - without an edge - with critical thinking.
Perhaps you have never experienced an edge in the form I described very vaguely above, but I suspect Szeven has something stupid like that... like he noticed that in stock XYZ whenever some program that shows 700 on BOOK ECN refreshing, but flashes pulling (i.e. you don't see the quote for a brief second but it comes right back, long enough to get the twitch scalpres out) with a certain unique time-signature, the program gets filled on shares, pulls for 3 minutes, then jumps back in on the the bid 10 cents higher than before... so if he notices that, he buys the shares after the program leaves, probably a ridiculous amount, all he can below 10 cents from where the bid was t he first time, where he doesn't really have a safe out, but he's relying on that program coming in, and because he has an edge, it does, and he can sell all he bought at a profit, and he only loses when the program comes back in but gets immediately filled by a seller, or when natural market activity pushes the stock against him to a point where he can't manage it.

I have no idea what the fuck he does, I'm just speculating out of my asshole, but it does seem like a reasonable explanation for such consistent P/L

there used to be a lot more free money before reg nms. if i still see it i hit. an example being some of the programs that pre and post market. they are relatively easy to recognize but they come and go so i don't ever count on them anymore.

i remember back when i was first starting to make consistent money scalping there was this one idiot who would come in LCC right near the close of the day and only use inet to trade. so since reg nms wasn't in effect the fool would just hit the nearest inet within about 50 cent to a point of level 1. i wish i had been trading bigger size back then because i would have raped that guy. oh well it was still good for some consistent money.

anyhow...i am going to guess szeven trades like more than a few of the guys at my office...including myself. and if we are saying that hitting crosses and recognizing programs is an edge then i dunno what to say but i guess i'll go with it.