3 ms·

My layman's take on this: If you really do think you can make money at this, you'd be silly to waste your time mucking about with a retail options platform. Go

My layman's take on this: If you really do think you can make money at this, you'd be silly to waste your time mucking about with a retail options platform. Go get a job as a trader instead. You'll have to go through quite a bit of training and apprenticeship and suchlike first. That's a good thing. It will get you access to higher quality information than is available as an outsider (those in the know don't dilute the earning power of their best knowledge by just giving it away). Possibly even better yet, you'll be getting paid to learn it instead of expending your own resources and free time. Once that's done and you're set loose as a full-fledged professional trader, you'll quickly have a pretty enormous amount of capital to work with. You'll only get to take home a small cut of what you're able to earn with that money, but the total size of that cut is still going to dwarf what you can make just playing with your own money.

rjdagost 8y ago
That is just not true. One of your primary advantages as a retail trader is that your positions (being much smaller) don't move the market anywhere near as much as if you're a big institutional investor. So you can pursue strategies that are off limits to institutional investors. Options on small cap companies tend to be illiquid and traded in small quantities, so they often won't be touched by big money. This presents an opportunity for retail investors.
- mrfredward 8y ago
  It's true that being small is an advantage, but there's something else to consider: Long-term investing is a positive sum game--companies grow and return money to investors, so most investors make money over time. Short-term trading is not like this, it's zero sum. Every quick profit comes at someone else's expense. As they say in poker, if you don't know who the fool at the table is... ...it's probably the guy trading on an app he downloaded 5 minutes ago, whose brokerage doesn't even let him use limit orders.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Well, sometimes it's going to be that little guy, but not always. You can also, for example, try to skim off the moves of big institutional players, whose activity frequently moves prices, by trying to get in there and be the one who reaps the benefit of that price shift. The ultimate seller maybe gets a little bit less than they might have, and the ultimate buyer maybe pays a little bit less, and there's maybe a small gap in between those prices that reflects the trader's take. I do agree that there can be nooks and crannies with ample room for small players on the equity options market. I'm just not convinced that someone who thinks they have the skills (and guts) to reap a reliable reward in that space should be going straight to Robinhood without at least submitting an application to Citadel first.
zaccus 8y ago
Can one just go out and get a job as a trader, with no related (formal) education, experience, contacts, etc?

rjdagost 8y ago

That is just not true. One of your primary advantages as a retail trader is that your positions (being much smaller) don't move the market anywhere near as much as if you're a big institutional investor. So you can pursue strategies that are off limits to institutional investors. Options on small cap companies tend to be illiquid and traded in small quantities, so they often won't be touched by big money. This presents an opportunity for retail investors.

mrfredward 8y ago
It's true that being small is an advantage, but there's something else to consider: Long-term investing is a positive sum game--companies grow and return money to investors, so most investors make money over time. Short-term trading is not like this, it's zero sum. Every quick profit comes at someone else's expense. As they say in poker, if you don't know who the fool at the table is... ...it's probably the guy trading on an app he downloaded 5 minutes ago, whose brokerage doesn't even let him use limit orders.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Well, sometimes it's going to be that little guy, but not always. You can also, for example, try to skim off the moves of big institutional players, whose activity frequently moves prices, by trying to get in there and be the one who reaps the benefit of that price shift. The ultimate seller maybe gets a little bit less than they might have, and the ultimate buyer maybe pays a little bit less, and there's maybe a small gap in between those prices that reflects the trader's take. I do agree that there can be nooks and crannies with ample room for small players on the equity options market. I'm just not convinced that someone who thinks they have the skills (and guts) to reap a reliable reward in that space should be going straight to Robinhood without at least submitting an application to Citadel first.

zaccus 8y ago

Can one just go out and get a job as a trader, with no related (formal) education, experience, contacts, etc?