I was there on Sunday. It was fine, despite all that Forex stuff (which I don't do,) but even smaller than last year's - the downslope in attendance and vendor interest continues.
Again, I had the feeling that I knew many if not most of the people there, which probably means that the traders' universe is what it is, mostly those of us who entered in the late 90s, lots of departures and few new entries.
What was clearly missing, even more than last year, was the cheerful group of innovative new vendors with a brand new and "super profitable" trading system to peddle. Instead, the booths of the likes of Fidelity, TradeStation and Schwab grew even bigger and better staffed. Pristine this year had a minimal presence out in the corridor - and they are only a few miles away at White Plains! Business must have been suffering on their end, which was a little sad (took their 3-day seminar a few years ago and liked it a lot... I still like their DVDs.) Realtick had a small presence too, although their T-shirt had a better color this year. Tony Oz gave one of the 90 minutes Realtick seminars and instead of his usual ebullience, full of new ideas, he just sat down in front of 300 people and said: "Do you guys have any questions?" I then knew that it was time to walk out and go spend $5 on a cup of coffee, downstairs.
The best one of the gems of friendly broker advice I overheard: Customer (timidly): I am new to trading and someone said that I can make a living with the eminis... but my account is only $10,000... what do you think?
Broker (assertively): No problem... With us you can actually trade 20 contracts because our margin rates are so low!
Oh well... I plan to be there next year too, and the year after, until they move the event to Newark or something
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