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Strategies & Market Trends : Trading For A Living -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Colin Cody who wrote (525)	6/25/1998 8:58:00 AM
From: Len	Respond to of 1729

They are often on the inside quote but MY trades come through via "normal" wholesale or retail MMs. I don't know what you mean. But see below. How am I doing? Is the delay I'm experiencing about normal? I hear people get "instant" confirmations, but what's "instant" 5 seconds or 5 minutes? (g).Should I be looking to trade via ISLD, rather than say via HZRG? Your e-broker is the reason firms like Datek have become popular. No, you're not doing well. Since they indeed sell their order flow, as in my previous message, there is a layer between you and the market, which naturally takes time, so everyone on the food chain can take their cut. And as I previously mentioned, there is the question of whether the MM's trade ahead of the orders they receive, which also takes time. With Datek, your order is instantly displayed to the entire market, instead of one or two MM's. Thus, you get executions of 1-5 seconds in most instances.(Market orders on Nasdaq stocks)(Even limit orders often get those same type of executions) Disclaimer: Datek has been very slow during opening and closing half hours, due to the tremendous volume increases in their client base. So don't expect that kind of performance at those times.(By the way, in case you are unaware, Datek's commissions are $9.99 per trade up to 5000 shares, which also helps make those tiny fractions you can make really turn into meaningful profits). As for looking to trade thru Island, you really can't just decide to do that. You first have to use a broker who will route your orders to them first. Your other choice is to use some of the order entry firms I mentioned in my last post, where you can actually preference your order to Island, or any other ECN or MM, just by hitting a key. These are the methods used by many active daytraders. One other thing. While it would appear that you could indeed make steenths all day long, it actually doesn't happen that way in practice. Yes, these methods give the daytrader many real advantages, but there are many bigtime MM's playing this game also, with much better tools at their disposal, and they usually win in the way they play against you. The best way to make money is to recognize what they are doing, and hop aboard the train they're on, and try to share in their profits from the games they play. It is a vastly corrupt system, and you can only try to hitch a ride when they're doing their manipulations.