It would be worthy to read every word in this post if you wish to survive trading:
I placed a detailed post about Dark Pools, and the book I'm now reading, up on the weekend thread. Anyone who is posting and stating there are benefits to program trading does not know Wall Street and should be dismissed immediately because they are ill-informed as your head should spin as to what this market is now. I have used the term "Institutionalized Rape" and it is every bit of that, and more.
(Weekend Post)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=597&p=82980#p82980
This book,
"Dark Pools: High-Speed Traders, A.I. Bandits, and the Threat to the Global Financial System" http://tinyurl.com/7tyfjym will explain the history of how things changed in 2009,
(the old mkt is 100% dead) how they are raping the public, how they place orders that push yours to the back of the list, and how exchanges pay them to trade. There is a big game going on where one trader pays, for example, $1 and the other trader takes in 80 cents on commissions, and the exchange makes 20 cents on the trade. It's all about volume and running the public (mostly mutual funds as we contribute little) in and out of the market.
It is a disturbing book as they exploit "The Plumbing" and no one is 100% sure the plumbing is sound and a bot could go into an endless loop of selling and cause May, 2010 all over again, and worse, at any time.
I'll go so far as to say this.
Read that post and then you'll find a link inline for 79 free pages of the book. If you don't have the time to do that, my professional recommendation is to take the money in your account, buy a boat, and start fishing. Because until you understand the potential for what has been happening here, you are making a mistake being in the market at all. In a sense, there is no "market" anymore. When you read my post, and six pages from the book I have placed there, you will better understand how much of this is an effort in futility when their programs take the market where they want it to create volume. I have the audio version and frankly, it is making me ill. The SEC rule change on forcing the public's order to be routed to the best price possible allows them to play with the bid/offer (flutter) and in moving those orders they place yours to the back of the line if it gets near the front. So if, for example, you are buying 500 SPY at 134 they will buy 500 first. And when the sell order comes in they will "hit the delay button" and sell you those. They took no risk, paid no commission, and are out. You can't think of the market as being against them as you have no chance. When this was revealed to someone who designed trading system (his father is a physicist who was upset he did not get the Nobel prize for work with quarks) he had asked the exchanges for what changed in 2009 as he kept searching his vast program for an incorrect line of code, but they would not tell him. An HFT trader revealed what had happened thanks to the SEC routing regulation. The Mutual Funds Organizations are complaining about this, but so far they are doing nothing.
Read the post, then decide what you want your approach to be as old rules are broken and one must be more nimble than ever because the mkt moves only when they see orders to go to and exploit. This should be stopped, but if they do all the exchanges would collapse. If that happens the economy collapses. And for those who remember, someone revealing some of this in April on a Sunday night with John Batchelor on WABC had his appearance stripped from the podcast. Could "National Security" have forced that conversation to be removed? Sure it could as he revealed that the FBI had hired some HFT traders caught in a case and were trying to infiltrate this world they know nothing about. Can't have the public being told this game is now 100% rigged, can we?
They have created a monster of dark pools, inside dark pools, inside dark pools, etc. And they do not fully understand the risk nor have they any method of controlling it. There is concern that enemies of the US might figure a way to create a total collapse of the system. That is how convoluted it has become. The author did us a service in penning this book. I suggest you at least read the post I put up and give some thought to this revelation.
There is a post on ZeroHedge that led me there, which I believe someone here put-up. Thanks to whoever did that as I'm halfway through the book and every suspicion I had is coming through in spades.
ZeroHedge has today what I think is their finest compendium of this thieves game that the regulators do not touch. It literally is
"All Rape - All The Time", in all markets.
The DarK (Pool) Truth About What Really Goes On in the Stock Market:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/dark-pool ... ock-market
Part 2: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/dark-pool ... ket-part-2
And also read how the big banks have rigged interest rates:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/20 ... lar-market