Was 2009 a disaster? What are you doing for 2010?

thanks for the reply. I had 500 short, got out 400 at 35.18(-80$), was looking to re-establish. What pissed me off was the day's largest move(I dont think it will make a 1.6$ full move rest of day) was too tough to ride on. Couple of days back I remember RMBS making 2$(or 7$ if you dont consider the busted trades) move within a minute. What gives me good money is gradual moves like today in GPS, not the freaky ones like ANF. And such seem to be fewer.
 
sorry about that but thats why I gave up scalping, especially near the open, its just too random, and too fast.
 
2009 was ok. Not as good as 2008.

If the last few days market price action is anything to go by, looks like 2010 will be a hard slough.

For 2010 I'm expecting a small dip then a merciless grind up to new highs. It's going to be a hold-your-nose and buy every dip year.


Quote from Ephstrader:

I have been a professional trader for the past 7 years trading predominately Nasdaq stocks. My p/l has gone up 20-40% a year from about $30k a year to my peak in 2008 at about $200k. Life was good...until 2009. Last year I made about $20k. I wish that were a typo but it isn't.

Obviously my confidence, size and risk tolerance have been profoundly effected by my performance. I have kept my head down and slogged forward hoping something would break right but I have felt 1-5 steps behind the curve consistently. I feel the only thing that can explain this is a systemic change in the way the markets trade making my techniques less profitable or obsolete.

Has anyone else noticed this out there? I'm not sure what I can do. Obviously I am broken, not the market and I'm not looking for a silver bullet. I just wanted to see "what it's like out there" and determine if something has changed in the market, if my strategies no longer work, or it's all in my head.....
 
Quote from spinn:

sorry about that but thats why I gave up scalping, especially near the open, its just too random, and too fast.

It ain't random :)


And it aint about scalping! it's about trading!
 
I dont think you can short anything at this point, the govt could come in at any time and blast it up.

3 of my last 10 trades were $1.5-2.0 winners and that happened, the other 7 were winners that I exited because I had a profit....even though they looked to go down further.
 
anf-aeo-gps... they move beautifully on substantial news.

btw gps was a butter trade... opened above prev close. Hard for me to believe anyone watching was not short around 20.80.

I've decided to cut size for trades at open for next few days.
 
2009 was not a disaster but pretty bad.

For 2010 I will be doing the exact same thing what I have been doing the last 11 years. Doing something else would be stupid because doing otherwise would mean I know in which way the market is going to change this year. I don't know. Nobody knows.
 
Quote from tripledtrader:

There has been a shifting of power to HFT algorithmic systems. Through flash orders and sub-pennying, they have the complete edge on us.

Looks like these Flash Orders, Dark Pools and HFT computer trading are hurting the daytraders performance. While others types seems to be doing O.K.

Below is the opening paragraph about Hedge Funds performance in 2009.

Quote from marketwatch:

In just a year, hedge funds have gone from worst to first.
After suffering its worst year on record in 2008, the [Hedge Fund] industry generated the biggest gains in a decade in 2009 as credit and equity markets rebounded strongly, according to early estimates released Thursday by Hennessee Group.
 
Hmm, some traders here are saying that "they" meaning institutions i guess have to bring the volume back but I believe that we traders have a lot of influence on how these bots operate and how we can bring significant volume.

I believe the decrease in volume is also due to thousands of stranded traders that are cutting down on size and are waiting for all these bot issues to somehow dissolve.

If these bots and fast algos are making money taking our money and if we are no longer playing this game, these bots will have to stop or improve either way bringing changes to the market and hopefully a better environment for all of us.

By now, I am sure all of you have stopped whinning like me, rolled up their sleves and did some hardcore strategy thinking right???
 
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