right so I posted up a presentation and you are dismissing it as rubbish even though you say you haven't watched it.
I said 'you need to be very aware that around 70% of the market is bots'
is that what you think is rubbish?
I said 'They wait for sufficient retail traders to enter the market so they can run the price back on you and force you out (liquidate you)'
Is that what you think is rubbish? I would clarify I didn't mean this is the only thing the bots do it is one of the behaviours.
I would be interested to hear your side of the discussion if you are serious but if you haven't even watched the presentation it's a bit like us discussing a film that you haven't watched.
Good Luck.
Did you actually watch the video? I think you jumped to a few conclusions about what the guy is saying. Certainly based on your description of what he says.
There'a a few things to consider.
This 70% number comes from somewhere - but I never actually saw it backed up - but anyway it's worth considering the fact that you are effectively saying that 70% of the market is targeting retail traders - or non-algorithmic traders many of which could be spreaders who don't care about direction anyway.
Whilst I heard that 70% of the market is algorithmic, I never heard it was 70% HFT. I think there is a huge difference.
Putting that aside - what is an algo? It's just a bit of code that executes a trade. An iceberg order to refresh bids as price trades a level is an algo. It's fairly dumb, not at all predatory and is just performing a task that would have been performed manually. Hell - a Ninja ATM strategy is an algo.
So - of your 70% algo's - what percentage of those are actually predatory? Can't be more predators than prey now, can there?
Next thing is the spread of algos. Stocks like BAC have traditionally been the target of Algo trading. 101 milions shares trade BAC on average, yet it's only moving 20-30c per day. At it's peak "C" would trade a billion shares a day and move 5c. It does seem that this has eased off now but you can see how executing a billion transactions on one stock can 'skew' any percentages you look at.
Anyway - suffice to say that not all algos are predatory and not this 70% is not evenly distributed across all markets. Not all trading is directional either so just because you see buying, does not mean people are getting long.
So - whilst running stops is not outside the realms of possibility - it certainly does happen, you need specific market conditions to allow it. No-one can simply turn a market around to run stops - they'd just get hit themselves if momentum was strong - in stock markets it's probably easier/cheaper to do this BUT you'd have to pick the right stocks - with fewer players.
Obviously markets get manipulated and that has been happening for years - way before algos existed and it's silly to think they don't but I think a little perspective is needed.