In a breaking news, it would appear that one of the greatest cause for irritation among retail traders, notably that some big institutions used “flash” computer systems to front-run their client’s orders will be ended shortly, as the Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously to ban the practice, accused of allowing among others GS to pocket its enormous trading gains. More also here.
Some breaking news on the WSJ. Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into whether GS or employees committed securities fraud. This is more serious than the fairly toothless senate committee.
Updated at 6:08/30th April/Baroda
Another explanation as to why real time news is useless:
Mike Bloomberg became the richest man in New York by selling traders just fifteen seconds head start on the data they needed. Fifteen seconds costs thousands of dollars a month per trader. But in most cases, what we get online is not actually in real-time and it’s not news, either.
Getting ever closer to the first moment is expensive in other ways. It might cost you in boredom, because watching an entire event just to see the good parts takes time, particularly if there’s no guarantee that there will even be good parts.
It might cost you in filtering, because the less you’re willing to wait, the more likely it is that you’ll see news that’s incorrect, out of context or not nearly as valuable as it appears.
When journalists, analysts and pundits are all racing to bring you the ‘news’ first, you get less actual news and more reflexive noise. Go watch an hour of cable news from a year ago… what were they yelling about that we actually care about today? (more…)
Creating a system and sticking with it is one of the hardest lessons. The struggle is shared across the trading world. An excerpt from “The Little Book of Trading”:
If you learn anything from this book, let it be the simple lesson: Stick with it. There will always be distractions: Breaking news banners, surprises, and unpredictable chaotic events are everywhere, but you can’t let yourself be fazed. Here is one big secret: Top traders don’t pay attention to that stuff. They have found, through hard work, diligent study, and perhaps a little luck— that their ability to stick with a trading plan is far more important than knowing or worrying about what their neighbor is doing.
