i guess we sorta agree when defining the opportunity as being more infrequent. my primary point was just that cyclical nature of markets expressed as volatility = opportunity means that opportunity will always be there, it won't just be there on a day to day basis. but thats how markets should be, anyhow. like i said, we haven't seen a true crash in the HFT age. it could be really insane.

That's cool, I may incorporate something similar.

Hmmmm? I thought you said in the past that technical setups didn't work? Actually many technical setups are already easily programmable and have been for at least a decade. Problem is there is almost an infinite amount of them. Timeframe alone gives you lots of choices. Then which market? Some setups work in one market or timeframe and not another. I have about 20 setups I monitor daily but usually only use a few. They are almost all market dependent. One setup can work for both the buyer and seller depending on risk parameters and hold time of either side.

Niche trading will exist for a long time and as Clayton says when the **** hits the fan the HFTs will get turned off or add to the mayhem and add opportunity. HFTs are outstanding market makers but I'm not so sure they will be great speculators.

Does anyone use https://www.trade-ideas.com/products/ ?

NAFTA ain't going anywhere guys, if Trump tries to rip it up congress and Senate will overturn his decision with a 9/10ths vote

Al has been posting a lot of good charts on his twitter lately. He's one of my fav Twitter follows http://twitter.com/alsabogal

commodity traders arguing with stock traders is becoming one of my most favorite thing to eat popcorn and watch

As long as there are auction markets where buyers and sellers come togehter, there will always be an edge. Doesn't matter if you trade stocks or live cattle...

This sort of qualitative data is very important for what you do since many of your trades are very subjective in terms of what gets you into a trade as well as how much you bet. I'd also wonder if you trade better when your previous x trades did well/poorly.

% return is super important so I don't really understand why some people just choose to not calculate it. We all have a bankroll/liferoll in some sense and we don't have to keep it invested in our firm/daytrading/swing trading strategies. You have to compare your returns to what they'd be if you allocated your roll in something else.

I know guys who built up 7 figure bankrolls trading not very scalable strategies who will bust their ass for 150k per year. I always wonder why they don't invest it all and earn nearly the same return but with almost no work on their part. Or at least the guys who daytrade but have held a $1m cash position for the past 5+ years. Seems criminal to not at least invest in something low risk.

Outperformed the market by multiples, and using strategies that likely fair better in down markets.

I agree. The quant guys will slowly deteriorate every mechanical strategy. They won't kill them but they will drive down the margins or the risk reward enough to force out manual traders. Manual traders can really only trade strategies that work extremely well as to not really test human conviction/patience. The quants can manage a portfolio of 300 mediocre strategies which can produce very consistent pnl when run together. While a human trying to manually trade 10-20 of those strategies isn't going to be able to sit through the drawdowns/volatility.

It's similar to the results of that massive MTT staking thread. Looking at the results of the entire stable it's very easy to see that they are printing money and their strategy works. But if you look at any individual player it's a different story. I'm sure the guys running way below ev want to kill themselves, especially if they were playing without the backing.

I go a little stir crazy if it's weeks or even months (since Trump) without a viable low risk, very high return trade I can shove meaningful money in. 2012-2016 had a lot of great trades that even a moron could pull off; Trump has almost killed these opportunities. The end of long bulls are very irrational and low variance; look at where VIX when in the last good months of 2007, almost as low as now. Pure complacency and certainty the bull would never end. For me it's a matter of sitting it out and picking off the rare stragglers.

Since it's impossible to watch the market most days for most of the day and not trade, the solution for me is just to keep this small and just churn maybe 5 trades/week at money amounts that don't matter.

Bingo, you guys all posted what I was thinking. Computers are great at arbitrage but it's yet to be proven how good they are at investing especially when liquidity becomes scarce. Worth noting that quant funds are lagging YTD with a few of the majors actually losing money.

Insider trading can be quantified for instance but how well can a machine determine the reasoning behind it? Humans acting "irrationally" or not in good faith is an interesting variable.

I feel like using fund returns are biased. The best traders in less scalable strategies are trading their own money and not publishing returns. I wonder how similar this will be to real time solvers in no limit. 10 years ago people thought there was no way a computer could beat a competent/good NL player. Now solvers are beating the top pros heads up. We thought there was no way a computer could beat deepstack NL because it there were too many variables. Now we understand that too many variables are what computers are good at.

Too many variables like human rational & emotion? What if we're playing under different rules than what computers are programmed to handle?

Btw congrats on your success man.

I view it way more like dominoes. Trump giving his 6 month notice to pull out of NAFTA hits the first domino and the market reacts. Later on congress saves NAFTA. But you can't unhit that first domino, it was already struck.

Either way I figure tons of volatility from it all. And it favors shorts in the near term certainly.

IBM with more blockchain pr, yet the price barely moves.

anyone taking a direction on nflx earnings?

Bought some lottery tickets in the form of KSU puts at 94, 95 and 100 strikes, expiring Oct 20.

Do January 19 puts cover next earnings? If so they're an incredible bargain. Netflix is of course priced schizophrenically, like all high betas tend to be at the end of long bulls. See 2000 - the crappier the stock, the worse the business, the more it ran up.

If they capture two earnings, $175 Jan 19 2018 puts for $5 are the mother of all bargains, at least 200% of +EV imo. A minor market correction will put it below $170 in days.

No opinion whatsoever on earnings.

Unlikely they capture 2 earnings

I can't find the expected date, but I think you're wrong. Netflix tends to release earnings on the third Monday of the month after the quarter. Options expire on the third Friday.

On a chilly autumn morning, the only thing that can make a warm bialy and fresh cup of coffee better is...

Stopped out before I could finish breakfast. 8% is better than nothing considering this thing might go red today.

Yeah you're right, that seems like the trend lately. The date isn't super predictable though so might be some risk there.

I find it weird that earnings dates aren't more predictable, maybe I just don't understand the factors that go into a company choosing its date.