Surviving & Prospering in These Volatile Markets

 I think we are in the 17th year of this blog. WOW, how time flies when you are having fun. About 25 years since I came off the floor.

 What has changed a lot is the technology and the numbers. Volumes have exploded. New markets have appeared. Volatility has exploded. I remember trading the SP future - the original one in the very early 1980s. It was worth $250 a point and my target for a trade was half a point. Initially no intra day data and I had my broker on speed dial to make a trade if I was off the floor. Then Jim Schmidt, the original coder for Computrac introduced software to chart (not trade) intra day data through a 300 baud dial up connection. Broker still on speed dial.

The big change came in early 1990s when the German DTB funded electronic only trading through dedicated terminals. I traded Eurex on one of those.

Now we have almost instantaneous connectivity to the markets almost 24/6 and click a mouse to make a trade based on analysis either done by a computer or done in our heads based upon a visualization we have created of the live market on a screen.

Trading has become a lot simpler, not easier.

 To become CP, traders set up a workstation showing fairly detailed order flow information. They can then take a blank piece of paper, select a market, and look for one very repeating pattern with a setup, a trigger and an exit. They then buy a straight to funded account with a so called prop shop (one that actually pays) and if they have done everything right they can earn a living. But still a lot of traders can't get CP :-(