sunshinejim

Sadly, there is no answer to be found. While you state day trading is not impossible, the facts just don't back you up. Retail trading is virtually dead, CME volumes continue to shrink, not as fast because most traders have vanished. You can't read a tape, by the time you see the volume trade it's too late to act on it. Technicals can still work for traders on a longer time horizon but the true scalper is finished. If you are making money, it is not from buying halves and selling 60's. If you are a 1%-er, great but oh how we long for the days when everyone had the same info and speed was measured in seconds.

This is most likely true, the HFTs are entering the cannibal phase but that will only lead to fewer competing HFTs, they are never going away. We need to demand that our exchanges provide free markets that do not favor one party over another. Exchange leaders have argued that allowing this HFT innovation to proceed is facilitating a free market. This is patently false, if it were true than the actions of the Hunt brothers in the silver market would not have been wrong, they were true pioneers in trying to corner the market. There will always be gamers in any system and HFT is no better than the Hunts, just because they don't drive tVhe market in a single direction does not mean they are not cornering the market thru volume and order book manipulation. Watch for new exchanges to develop that will not allow any order to enter the market in under a certain time limit nor can that order be canceled until it has been resting in the market for a set time limit. The only way to level the playing field is to provide retail clients their own exchange. One where honesty and integrity rule and not special interest groups. Shame on the CME for calling themselves leaders in innovation and for their free market hyperbole. There will be many that disagree with me but having 20 plus years of pit trading and 10 years of electronic have taught me to understand the dynamics of both systems. I was all for electronic trading and in the beginning many professional traders like myself flourished without these market manipulators. When the exchanges allowed them unlimited and biased access to our markets.....well sadly most traders careers have crashed.

I've been trading futures for 30 years. Anyone who thinks that HFT has not negatively affected the trading environment is a fool. When I was in the pit people would blame order fillers for reducing order flow to traders, turns out this was true imagine knowing where all the orders lie in the market and being able to place your own personal orders ahead of those orders. Dual trading was eventually outlawed. Order fillers found a way around this problem by creating a friend on the top step of each pit that they could trade with during the day and gave peference to above all other traders. Although every honest trader in the pit knew that this was taking place there was very little that we could do about it, occasionally the exchange would find collusion and issue fines. Once again true free market activity was inhibited by the actions of the few. HFT is worse than top step trading and order filler trading combined. The profits of the many have now been reduced to the pockets of the few. Competing in this arena requires anywhere from 1 million to 100 million in infrastructure, if that doesn't say this market is unfair I don't know what does. Sure there are some prop firm traders that are being allowed to trade enormous size with very little of their own money being put at risk but for those of us that use our own money to trade , competing in this environment is very difficult if not impossible.

If you are trading futures CQG is top notch. I have had a very successful career in futures since 1984, tried tradestation esignal among others but have always returned to CQG for it's superior charting and now trading capabilities. If you are going to fail trading it won't be because you spent too much on your charting software....give yourself a fighting chance.