Ron, regarding flipping;
I've never been much of a flipper, but have read a bunch about it around SI, and about the NASDAQ rules and executions, etc. So the last couple days I decided to play around and expirement with it a little bit.
What I found kind of surprised me, but I guess it shouldn't have if I'd have thought about it. I was able to buy at the bid and sell at the ask in most cases if I was willing to wait a few minutes for an execution. Further, I was able to get fast fills (within 2 minutes or so) by offering to buy 1/16 above the best quoted bid or to sell by offering to sell 1/16 below the best ask (I think that the rule is that if they don't fill you within 90 seconds, your order has to get shown as the best bid or ask). For instance, I found if you could pick a stock that was steady and stayed quoted at 40 by 40 1/2, you can easily buy at 40 1/16 and turn around and immediately sell it for 40 7/16. I did this three times in a row yesterday on the same stock and scalped 3/8's I believe each time.
(Obvious thoughts: You have to pick a stock that is active enough to be liquid but not so active to have a narrow spread. I figure 300 to 400,000 is good. Also don't want the stock moving fast, unless you can tell the direction.)
My question is, What's wrong with this picture? It can't be this easy, can it? Is this what you mean you're doing when you say you're scalping 1/8's and 1/4's? Heck, this stock yesterday could have moved 3/8 against me and I could have still broken even. Have you done this before? What is the downside? Seems if you really stay on top of your trades, you could almost guarantee yourself no losses and make some easy profits. You're really just putting yourself in position of being a market maker. Since I've only played with this one day, I just can't imagine it can be that easy and that I must be missing something. Has anyone else played with this and have any experience? Any thoughts to bring me back to reality appreciated.
Steve |
