Sure but before replying do you mind shedding more detail into "you are full of crap as usual" ? Have we ever conversed or argued about any trading approach ever? At least I don't recall. Please refresh my memory.
A big theme of tape reading was to identify large traders and anticipate that their orders would see more follow through and to in that way identify where the larger order flow was headed. That has all but completely disappeared in stock markets, especially, with the fragmentation via different exchanges and dark pools. Regarding futures a lot of volume is nowadays not transacted via futures but etfs because it's much easier to conceal interest. That applies to many commodities, metals, and indexes as well. And even then hft made it virtually impossible to glean any information from the order book. If that was possible then hft would not spend hundreds of millions on technology to be faster but they would employ millions of Pakistanis and Indians to read tapes, after all its easy to take on some kid and teach it how to read the tape, as we could hear from another user.
So no, I am not some disgruntled trader who failed to read tapes (I never tried) but I believe I am educated, well read, and have spent a multiple of half a decade in various markets to battle against each other. No bank, no hedge fund employs tape readers. Guess why.
A big theme of tape reading was to identify large traders and anticipate that their orders would see more follow through and to in that way identify where the larger order flow was headed. That has all but completely disappeared in stock markets, especially, with the fragmentation via different exchanges and dark pools. Regarding futures a lot of volume is nowadays not transacted via futures but etfs because it's much easier to conceal interest. That applies to many commodities, metals, and indexes as well. And even then hft made it virtually impossible to glean any information from the order book. If that was possible then hft would not spend hundreds of millions on technology to be faster but they would employ millions of Pakistanis and Indians to read tapes, after all its easy to take on some kid and teach it how to read the tape, as we could hear from another user.
So no, I am not some disgruntled trader who failed to read tapes (I never tried) but I believe I am educated, well read, and have spent a multiple of half a decade in various markets to battle against each other. No bank, no hedge fund employs tape readers. Guess why.
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