How much does a HFT trader typically make?
- Thread starter turkeyneck
- Start date
That's believeable as an average, but what's the standard deviation ?
I posted this and got no responses...It appears everyone is clueless in regards to the winning strategies and their potential.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=231782
I'll tell you one thing: the easiest thing in the world to do is to create a losing algo ! Anyone can do that. Only the best of the best can create winners.
You will probably disagree with me Winston (and I respect your opinion a lot), but the whole hft trading thing seemed like an arms race that is pointless.
I don't disagree - but think about this... We used to have 3G now we have 4G. We used to only have 10/100 NICs now gigabit and Wireless N is standard (and cheap btw).
Who knew that you could take a video card and use GPUs as processing power??
Yes its dumb, overkill, way out of control, etc. but it allowed companies like Verizon to introduce FiOS and brought gigabit networking from Wall Street to Main Street.
It really allows the average day trader to have a millisecond time frame versus seconds or minutes. It has also compressed the space a bunch and made it a lot more competitive.
I'm totally against the industry in general because I think there isn't really any "edge" just some people have different or better access than others and I don't believe that you should be able to make money when someone else can't just because you are an insider and have different access...
That said, NASA brought us stuff like Gore Tex and I believe that HFT and low-latency trading has improved the overall end-user computing experience drastically.
GordonTheGekko
Guest
There are no clear numbers, but HFT is a battlefield all on it's own, effectively an arms race of computer hardware, and programming-skilled traders. Tons of fun IMO, even though I haven't been involved anywhere as long as some people! Try HFT without programming, just intuition and a set of rules. Blows Modern Warfare 3 out of the water, IMO.
just myself and partner - the profits and frequency depends on the profit per trade we try and accomplish. well over 90% wins, i know it sounds crazy to the average trader. but i was working with a cray in the early 80's thru the mid 90's this is not an overnight success. it's a 25 year programming obsession to win at a game and you evolve or die. you experiment even when you don't have to, preparing for loses. risk management and levering occupy your time after you have the edge. and you learn more about banking than you ever wanted to know - you become a phd in banking and your amazed how you know so much more than any banker does and how dangerous the whole system is. depressing shit. m
ps i would like to also correct that after all related expenses it really works out to about $11 a minute per 100,000.
also someone asked what the std-dev is - there is none to speak of.