[DcifrThs]

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I posted this a few days back to someone new to investing:
As a former B/D owner,I have ONE word of advice for anyone new to investing in the market.

I became fairly wealthy retiring after 20 yrs from the commisions from daytraders alone

DO NOT DAYTRADE..the Big Boys will eat you up,as intra-day trading can run up HUGE costs,from commisions,ECN costs from ARCA/Island,monthly sofware costs(a premium daytrading platform like RealTickPro costs almost $300 a month),etc

If you are DT'ing from one of their remote locations(we had 20+),it will cost even more as they(the B/D) will encourage 40 or more trades a day.If you are trading from home,you are an isolated target lacking live news feeds as Bloomberg-Reuters,cable connection vs. T-1 or better yet T-3 lines,home distractions,etc.You are gonna' go broke fast just watching CNBC or Cramer(what a joke/FOOOL)from home

This is WAAY too much to over come.Sure a B/D will give you a muliple monitor set-up,free lunch,BS you with all kinda CANT MISS formulas,etc...but it is ALL about the # and volumn of each trade.

You are only a commodity while trading with them....until your last one.Then ,,,,,NEXT!

Of the THOUSANDS of DT'ers I that came and went 99% went BUST!
I am just trying to warn anyone that thinks DT'ing is easy or anywhere near in comparison to standard investing in the stock market.The commisions over time,cannot be overcome when doing 30+ intraday trades per day

~stephen

If you have any questions,feel free to ask

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how do DEshaw & renaissance make such a killing doing thousands of (equity) trades per day?

Barron

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C'mon man....these are TWO giants in the game,with DEEP pockets....I am talking/giving advice to the average Joe Blow daytrading?

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right but you made very specific claims, namely that the commissions will eat you alive if you do a lot of trades every day.

so i asked a question to try to learn. shaw & williams do thousands of trades a day with who knows how much money behind every trade...is it then that the commissions they pay become smaller and smaller % of the total capital as the amount they allocate to each trade increases?

thats 1 issue.

other issues are the spread and the running of the market.

the spreads being quoted by their prime brokers are minimized i'm sure by the randomization of orders accross many brokers so no 1 broker gets the whole trade. that spreading out means more trades and more commissions. do firms like that get a price break? or are the commissions as a % of the capital they trade that small?

another issue is the cost of trading so big and the running of the market. i don't have experience actually quoting prices or trading in the traditional sense but i think the size of a trade being ordered does affect the spread as well since it is harder to find a counterparty and more risk is taken by the exchange (or specialist or whoever).

further, despite being broken up, a big trade may still need to be broken up further by the prime broker which then may make it seceptible to being front run OR having the market move up as the trade is executed.

i'm just trying to get an idea of all the issues here and try to completely understand the impact of these things on shaw and williams. i know they have entire divisions devoted to minimizing these costs so obviously it doesn't directly relate to individuals.

thanks for your input.

Barron