Quote from logic_man:
Right, those are huge capital outlays for systems and those costs need to be passed on to investors. No question about that.
I will be the first to say I have a terrible "feel" for markets. I rely on my rules to keep me in or out of trades. Those rules are built around a logical principle which I learned from someone who was a successful trader and then I adapted in a new way. The reason I took up this principle as the basis for my trading was because it was not something I had ever seen anyone else use and I saw that the guy who developed it was already making money. All I had to do was program a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and I was up and running. A couple of years of refining it and it shows no signs of deteriorating. One of the ways I know it works is that almost every time I try to break one of the rules, I end up making less money than I would have if I had just kept to them. Maybe 1 out of every 5 times I break a rule, I make more (or lose less) than I would have otherwise. Again, that's related to my terrible "feel" for the market.
Anyway, back to the issue of HFT, I think that sometimes the best breakthroughs in a field are conceptual, not simply a matter of refining or speeding up the old ways. Throwing a supercomputer at a problem won't necessarily solve it if the supercomputer isn't programmed with the correct concepts. It will just get you to the wrong answer faster.
Interesting, well congrats on getting something going for yourself.
I think I have gained a decent feel for markets over time, I say ok because every time I'm doing great and think I'm getting a really good feel, I get smacked lol
I have rules of course, but they are more like general rules. Conditions change so... you have to adapt to that.