Date: February 18th, 2018 1:18 PM
Author: Stubborn galvanic crotch locale
Commission business is eroding rapidly and the nepotism on the Street is truly shocking. Machines are picking these guys apart slowly.
It makes sense - most of the guys running things now came up when shit was easy and you could make dollars per trade, now it is pennies (if that).
that said however short term trading is more gambling than anything, so who cares if the near term money gets hit a bit.
Some short term algo's or quant traders however move in predictable ways and you can see them moving in certain stocks if you give it a long enough time. If you observe their behavior long enough you can chip them for some pretty good money - a few grand or so every time they run their strategy or tweak it.
A lot of the time it is really Algo-on-Algo battles and money waging war with other money - not related to the stocks per-se.
I'd even think that a modified Tobin Tax mechanism to cut back SOME of the algo stuff wouldn't be a bad idea.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3743701&forum_id=2#35431039)