Quote from bone:
I've placed several clients here locally in Chicago. Spread traders and black box guys seem to dominate - I know of very few pure scalpers these days. Ten years ago they were all scalpers and the spread traders were a minority. IMO it just got harder and harder to hold a big scalp position with all the market turbulence. There was a time in the late 90's and early 2000's where there was just enough latency where manual scalpers using a good execution platform like X-Trader could do really well. These days you need to either have blinding speed and automated rules-based position management (the black box crowd) or you need some staying power and a better-behaved market to trade (the spread guys).
Most of the guys that I know that made the real FU money had some sort of unique quasi spread arbitrage going. Black box spread trading seems to be the ticket these days. That's why Harris Brumfield (Trading Technologies) bought Tick-it late last year.
http://www.tickit.com/
Agreed.
If you're not spreading and at least semi automated you're full of sh*t.
If you start talking about technical analysis, candle sticks, NASA type math models, blah blah blah, you're full of sh*t.
If You think the last words to The Star Spangled Banner are "Gentlemen, start your engines."