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Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

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121–130 of 263 posts

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your average trade lasts less than 5 minutes, then you can conceivably make money only if you can read 5 minutes into the future (not currently possible), or have tools that allow you get news/information faster than everyone else, analyze that information, and act on it, 5 minutes before everyone else. I can't perfectly read 5 minutes into the future, nor is it necessary. All that is necessary is to have a slig…

Seems like you can automate those technical analysis algorithms that you have and just sit back and rake in the cash

That’s when it stops working, as far as I understood. You turn into next deterministic robot that you just exploited with your’s. The same holds for bet arbitrages; once you automate it, they find you and cut your leverage.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#122
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe there’s any day trader using any kind of information making a consistent profit. Isn’t everybody just dabbling around hoping to be in the 50% that outperform by chance? i’ve read about ed thorp pioneering statistical arbitrage in the 80s (?) which would fit the bill of “consistent returns”, but I doubt that there is any of that left close to 50 years later. I’m wondering what all these quant…

FWIW, I'm day trading and I'm making consistent returns, well above the rates of most mutual funds and hedge funds. The caveat is what most fund managers would call capacity. My trading strategy can't scale without severe cuts in those returns. It's extremely easy to buy 10 contracts and hold for 5 ticks. I've never experienced slippage at all. Operating at mutual fund sizes, I would be trading at volumes that would…

Out of curiosity, how much manual work that can't be automated does this require?

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the IRS has no way of validating these numbers (they do require brokers to provide the numbers these days)? Overall I'm just not buying that this story is true, in other words.

What makes you think the operators are giving correct numbers to the IRS, or that the IRS would necessarily detect something like that on a fairly small scale? (I have no idea how any of this works, but I would assume that if they're willing to defraud their own customers they're probably not acting entirely above board on the associated tax paperwork either.)

I just think this story is not worth talking about. Two people created a fake website. That is the story. This is a span story.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#124
post #115

To play Devil’s Advocate: How is this different from being a market maker? I am presuming that if the customer actually made money, these guys would pay them from their own pocket. Or alternately, assuming zero or low enough transaction costs, if these guys just took the opposite position of their customers for each trade (also known as hedging) in the market, then wouldn't the net positions be exactly the same? Basi…

You're right. It's not very different and I think this is perfectly legal if you register as an ATS and comply with Reg ATS. Reg ATS is not even all that onerous if you are already a broker dealer, but at a minimum it includes reporting trades correctly and telling your customers you may take the other side of their trades.

It is a "technical" crime. There are good reasons to regulate ATSs, and the brokers didn't follow those regulations. Instead of prosecuting the brokers here for an obscure crime like "operating an unregistered ATS", the SEC decided to prosecute them for fraud. Judges know what fraud is and as Matt Levine puts it in other articles, "every financial crime is also securities fraud".

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way you can consistently make money is by knowing things others do not (e.g., insider trading) or by taking advantage of structural problems or inefficiencies in the trading platform (e.g., high frequency trading). I do believe that insider trading is rampant. I've seen many occasions where a large corporate announcement sends a stock up or down, but hours before, you can see the price of the stock slowly sl…

There's an article recently where a hacker hacked a bunch of journalists and was selling that information to investors on wall street.

I think this is what you are referring to https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/22/17716622/sec-business-wir...

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#126

How much do you want to make per year? How much do you want to start with? What kind of return do you want each year on the initial investment? Believe it. I do make it consistently.

He is hawking his own service, his bio says it all. Arent there rules against this?

I'm just trying to enlighten people to think for themselves. Don't listen to someone say that the professional traders are the only way, and passive investing is the way to go. That's small time thinking. There are many I.T. programmers on here, and if you spend your spare time at beating the market you can. My reasoning for pointing out my site is many people are skeptical to think that you can beat the market, well in that case, sign up for my trial, paper trade it, see the reality, then go back and create your own system in your spare time. Once it's profitable, you can sell it to me or trade using the system. I don't want your money, but if you are making money of my plans, then I will take your money. :)

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#127
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not joking. I don't need the sophistication, I trade options and I don't need instant orders, or to be near the exchange. I don't need insider information because I can already see what's going to happen with a high probability. You can view my profile, sign up for a trial and see it for yourself. I don't care about fees, taxes, or any of that because it's inconsequential to me.

There’s a classic [0] scam: send 2^12 letters to 2^12 random people. Half say that some stock will go up next week and the other half say it’ll go down. 2^11 of them will be correct [1]. Send those people similar letters the next week, half with one prediction and half with the opposite. Repeat until you have, say, 2^4 people who have seen 8 consecutive correct predictions. Now offer them more predictions at $500 a p…

That's with penny stocks. You can't move a $300BN stock with $50M.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information asymmetry doesn't have to be on insider information.

> Information asymmetry doesn't have to be on insider information. In theory, yes, in practice no.

I used to visit fuckedcompany.com to short sell companies based on information I found there. It worked for awhile until that site became too popular. That was a long time back, 1999 or so.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#129
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would happily make money for n-years and lose for one, provided the amount lost was a fraction of what I earned.

> I would happily make money for n-years and lose for one, provided the amount lost was a fraction of what I earned. Your caveat there often swallows the rule. Many bet on the market and make big bucks only to lose multiples of it later.

If you set up a stop loss you could make it impossible to lose a huge enough amount on a single trade to wipe put the profit on your prior ones.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, it's extremely difficult to get information 5 minutes sooner than everyone else without insider trading. You're assuming parent is trading on news, information, or fundamentals. A technical trader wouldn't care about anything you've mentioned.

> You're assuming parent is trading on news, information, or fundamentals. A technical trader wouldn't care about anything you've mentioned. I don't believe it's possible to consistently make money ignoring "news, information, or fundamentals". Otherwise you're just fitting curves to noisy data. If it could work consistently, then you would be able to read the future.

It's educated guesses. At small scale you're just a speck traveling with the wind. Your job is to guess if direction suits you long enough. If you see someone with a leaf blower, it's just easier.
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