Quote from lolatency:
I like this thread. I don't trade at a frequency where much, if anything, is normal.
I'm trading sub-minute strategies in very liquid instruments and sub-second liquidity providing strategies. This is a plot of the distribution of some normalized[1] data from that time-frame.
[Attached]
If you go into R and run the shapiro.test() on the 5k most recent values, you get:
Shapiro-Wilk normality test
data: [filtered]
W = 0.8124, p-value < 2.2e-16
I'm using non-parametric procedures to work on results from this particular distribution.
In this particular strategy, I'm looking to collect a few cents per trade -- removing liquidity on entry.
Where I used to work, they used to move out of these time-frames just to get the normalized result. They were trading with a latency of around 40-80ms, with worse at higher rates.
[1] Normalized in a generic sense, not referring to a normal distribution.
Financial Labs who were bought by Bank Of America a few years ago used to trade a very similar noise catching strategy on currencies. Although it somewhat resembles your typical RTM method it is not quite the same.
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