[mistrQ]

> People literally spend all their time doing this, if there was free money to be made someone would be making it:)

I used to think this, then I worked on a trading system in an investment bank. Don't underestimate how quickly and easily you can learn and exceed people who should know what they're doing, given sufficient motivation.

[falsestprophet]

There are thousands of buy side firms all over the world stocked with stone cold geniuses who do this all day every day after having trained in maths and science all their lives.

The fact that you saw some people you perceived to be clowns once, does not demonstrate the market is anyone's for the taking.

[lnanek2]

Those people are usually managing a lot of money, though. Warren Buffet has said he has to trade completely differently nowadays due to size. So those people are not working the same opportunities most people here are going for.

[jonknee]

A lot of HFT shops (if not most), don't "manage" any money in the conventional sense. They close the books at night and don't hold any positions when there isn't active trading.

What Buffet does and what HFT do are completely different. The reason why Buffet has to change how he trades is because of HFT. If Buffet puts in an order for 100,000 shares of Coke (KO) while it's at $40 a share, he would not stand a chance. HFT bots would swarm in and scoop every last share of KO that's available and then sell it back for incrementally more. All within a fraction of fraction of a fraction of a second.

[falsestprophet]

Sure, even small hedge funds and propriety trading firms are generally working with millions of dollars.

I agree there must be some niches are that are amenable to exploitation by small independent traders (perhaps anything to do with nanocap stocks).

I have not had success finding niches where I thought I would be successful, but I could very well be insufficiently clever.

But trading highly liquid equities on a multi-day timescale (the strategy proposed here) is certainly not prohibitively hostile territory for large, sophisticated buy side operations.

[Mikeb85]

So true. When you have a small account you can be much more agile and make some good returns simply by being able to trade without moving prices...