[alva]

This service is purposefully targeting people who know next to nothing about the stock market, and making them feel like they have some sort of clever control of the outcome of their investments.

I have criticised this idea elsewhere in the thread so this will be my last post on it. I hope all HN folk reading this thread will look into it and discover how parasitical this sort of venture is.

[princeb]

it's a free country and people are free to trade however they want (with restrictions haha).

they just need to be aware that retail traders are not going to get the same kind of competitive advantages that the big boys like Citadel or GETCO have.

it's not a "rigged" game in the same way Walmart being able to buy wholesale apples cheap and flip it to us richer is not a "rigged" game.

[alva]

You are correct, if people want to risk their money then that is their right (providing they have been supplied all the legal warnings designed to protect people from losing money in a game they don't understand).

This service is the equivalent of putting an amateur chess player in front of Kasparov and suggesting they bet real money on winning because you taught them a basic opening move.

[princeb]

i don't think this company is suggesting anything of that kind, because this myth has been perpetuated since the start of retail financial markets, and possibly both the brokerages and other retail investors are to blame for this.

everyone in this thread here seems to have the common sense to say "don't try to compete in the same strategies as the HFT specialists". that's absolutely true.

but then this idea that financial markets cannot be anything else other than a HFT's playground doesn't seem to go away, even in this thread. that's not a fair assessment.

if you are a retail investor, if you pick a portfolio allocation appropriate to your risk appetite, if you pick a reallocation and reinvestment policy that you can get a good handle on, and you stick to it without fail, then you are half of the way to what pensions/insurances/savings plans implement for you, except now you don't pay fees, and you don't have to wait 20 years for the investment to "mature". in fact, because retail fees are so high, retail investors are better off using a minimal rebalancing policy: trading less, tweaking less, getting less fidgety about their trades - and that is a good thing. trading less and getting better returns usually comes together.

if you are happy with more risk, and you take controlled bets with options structures going out several weeks or a few months, you can get away with some good wins and a hopefully fewer losses and may still come out ok even after spreads/fees.

if you try to compete with HFTs on the sub second horizon without any of the equipment/services that the HFTs pay for, then you will lose. don't do that, that space is not for you.

[tedmiston]

> and people are free to trade however they want

Sort of. Until they trade too much too fast.

Pattern day trader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader