dtsb

I have been reading some mixed information about level 2 data recently and was wondering if it was still as important for day trading as it seemed to be a couple of years ago? From my reading I have gathered that around the mid 1990s there were strategies for people to trade based on level 2 data because most people didn't have it at the time. Then as the year 2000 came around those strategies became obsolete because more and more people were able to access real time level 2 data but it was still a necessity for NASDAQ day trading because it would show you where the big institutions were headed. Fast forward to the present and I am reading articles that give conflicting advice toward level 2. Some say it is still a necessity and some say because of the strategies of the bigger institutions to mask their orders level 2 is useless nowadays. As someone just starting out all this conflicting data is a little confusing to me and I was wondering if anyone could chime in that day trades NASDAQ and tell me their opinion.