4 ms·
> 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),
by saosebastiao 8y ago
> 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 slight edge. Just like running a casino, a small statistical edge is enough assurance that any individual game outcome doesn't matter because you will have more wins than losses. And a tiny edge is not hard to do.
I'm doing fine without news feeds at all. An economic calendar and some basic technical analysis is sufficient enough of an edge to win more than I lose.
- speedplane 8y agoOkay, so you need to read 5 minutes into the future with some X% accuracy, where X is large enough to provide a return. You're still trying to read the future, if you could do that well, you could make money betting on coin flips.
- vlasev 8y agoIf it's a temporarily biased coin, you can make some money off of it.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoIf it's a fair coin you can make money off it, and convince yourself you can predict the "market" "because the coin is biased" ... but it's just 'luck' (ie statistical anomaly).
- HeadsUpHigh 8y agoIt evens out in the long run so this doesn't apply to this person's trading.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI think that's a statistical misunderstanding. It's likely to even out; across a population it will even out. An individual however can get "more heads than tails" by chance.
- monadgonad 8y agoEstimating likely changes in the future based on current information is different from divining the outcome of a completely independent chance-based event.
- austhrow743 8y agoPeople can read five minutes in to the future. Five minutes from now I'm going to be sitting on my bed. Five minutes from now I'm going to be male. Five minutes from now I'm going to have a nose. That I can read these aspects of the future has no bearing on me being able to tell the future of coin flips.
- usefulcat 8y agoIf I can buy X for $1.00 from location A and sell it for $1.01 at location B, then the only thing I need to worry about is what happens if the price moves against me at either A or B between the time I send my orders and the time they're accepted. I guess you could technically call that "trying to read the future", but the (big) difference is that the horizon is on the order of probably a few milliseconds at most, not 5 minutes.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoSeems like you can automate those technical analysis algorithms that you have and just sit back and rake in the cash
- wruza 8y agoThat’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.
- phyalow 8y agowho is they? Is it your broker? why would they do that it? It's in their interest to have you trade as frequently as possible...