Quote from Daal:
I've been using this strategy now for over 6 months. Here are some thoughts
-You have to be a monk in terms of focus. I made a few mistakes in my spreadsheets that end up costing me several weeks of profits. The other day I forgot to update the closes of my stock list and of course the previous day the market had tanked as a result I got filled in almost every stock. After liquidating everything I was down about 1 month worth of profits.
I also made a mistake of messing my spreadsheet and 'crossing' my buy sell orders, at the opening action I was filled in the buy and sell side at the same time in almost every stock. I had to pay commissions for all that
-There are hidden costs if your execution is not well planned. I was using IB's 'smart' router to take profits through limit orders. Problem is SMART is a fucking dumbass when it comes to adding liquidity, it was sending to ECNs and exchanges where my costs where higher while at the same time my order in inherently going against the mini-trend and thus should not have that. Once I started using BATS I cut down my costs
I understand that if someone has orders larger than 2000 shares it could be better to use ARCA or others because its more likely to get filled but in my case the trading was being done in the 200 to 600 share size and against the mini-trend, its almost sure to get a fill if the price starts trading at the same price
-News can hurt a ton. I lost weeks worth of profits a while back in a stock with a news item that I couldn't find anywhere. Every 2-3 weeks or so this will happen. Nowdays I use yahoo, google, flyonthewall plus a number of other sites for upgrades/downgrades. I still get screwed on occasion
Overall, the strategy is up a bit(And I mean little bit). It if wasn't for the mistakes it could have been up more but still would not have been a nice profit. The $hourly rate is downright dismal. Why do I keep doing it?Overall I find it helps me to learn more about order execution, how news items impact stocks, stock trading among other things. I consider this cheap education by doing it rather than reading books
I would not recommend it if someone is trying to earn a living