structural advantages such as building infrastructure (fiber) at a location closest to the exchange to get lowest latency so they can frontrun, etc.
sure, retail traders can also spread. long september, short december futures on bitmex. but you know that's not what i was talking about. the inst stat arb we usually refer to involves huge amounts of capital in places where the edges are usually too small for it to be worth much for retail traders' capital, requires infrastructure to attain the highest speeds. and honestly, even inst stat arb in the crypto space is losing its edge these days...there just isn't enough liquidity now.
most ppl on this forum aren't posting to one day get hired at a prop/hedge/bb as a "Trader." most ppl on here have a primary job and are doing this on the side or are doing retail trading full-time, which is very respectable on its own right.
no, it is not gambling. retail trading is not automatically < institutional trading. more and more technologies have become available to retail traders at a much lower price than before that, imo, has given saavy retail traders plenty of tools to gain transparency into the market.
honestly, just keep grinding. this profession does not have a prescribed curriculum like law or medicine or engineering. no one worth his salt is going to give away his secrets. and there is no one answer to the markets which means there are tons of ways to approach it. the good thing is, unlike many other professions, how you do it doesn't matter since we have a single, objective, unquestionable metric we measure each others' success by: PnL. keep reading, watching youtube videos, asking questions on trading forums like this, studying the charts, reviewing your trades, joining a trading group where you can bounce off ideas, experimenting with different strategies, questioning your assumptions, etc etc. the internet truly is the single greatest invention b/c as long as you've got the will and smarts, everything is within your grasp. your job is merely to sift through the bullshit (and there is a LOT of it) and pick up the gems.
i know this wasn't very helpful but at some point, you'll understand why i wrote what i did. in the mean time, focus more on not losing money and managing risk rather than making money. one common theme you'll see in trading is that while all traders have wildly different ways of making money, they all share a common theme when it comes to losses. sometimes, understanding the ways not to lose money is more important than learning how to extract money from the markets.
sure, retail traders can also spread. long september, short december futures on bitmex. but you know that's not what i was talking about. the inst stat arb we usually refer to involves huge amounts of capital in places where the edges are usually too small for it to be worth much for retail traders' capital, requires infrastructure to attain the highest speeds. and honestly, even inst stat arb in the crypto space is losing its edge these days...there just isn't enough liquidity now.
most ppl on this forum aren't posting to one day get hired at a prop/hedge/bb as a "Trader." most ppl on here have a primary job and are doing this on the side or are doing retail trading full-time, which is very respectable on its own right.
no, it is not gambling. retail trading is not automatically < institutional trading. more and more technologies have become available to retail traders at a much lower price than before that, imo, has given saavy retail traders plenty of tools to gain transparency into the market.
honestly, just keep grinding. this profession does not have a prescribed curriculum like law or medicine or engineering. no one worth his salt is going to give away his secrets. and there is no one answer to the markets which means there are tons of ways to approach it. the good thing is, unlike many other professions, how you do it doesn't matter since we have a single, objective, unquestionable metric we measure each others' success by: PnL. keep reading, watching youtube videos, asking questions on trading forums like this, studying the charts, reviewing your trades, joining a trading group where you can bounce off ideas, experimenting with different strategies, questioning your assumptions, etc etc. the internet truly is the single greatest invention b/c as long as you've got the will and smarts, everything is within your grasp. your job is merely to sift through the bullshit (and there is a LOT of it) and pick up the gems.
i know this wasn't very helpful but at some point, you'll understand why i wrote what i did. in the mean time, focus more on not losing money and managing risk rather than making money. one common theme you'll see in trading is that while all traders have wildly different ways of making money, they all share a common theme when it comes to losses. sometimes, understanding the ways not to lose money is more important than learning how to extract money from the markets.
