OK, who here doesn't understand the simple concept

Actually, with today's bandwidth, I don't think you would have any trouble executing, out of your home, the same scalping strategies the sharks use at, like,


http://www.schonfeldsecurities.com/


or


http://www.icapdirect.com/index2.htm


for instance.


There is always a new fast/intraday game being found and played somewhere, and the best way to discover it is to just move around and tag along with whomever is hot in a given year. The better talent - which requires more smarts than just being a copycat - is to understand why the different games work when they do, so as not to get left high and dry when they stop working. A lot of used Ferrari's get passed around.


Anticipating your response, I intentionally weighted my list of heroes to off-floor characters. I wouldn't be surprised if, among the S&P-futures traders I am familiar with, the bigger score isn't being made off-floor. The CME pit is mostly empty half the time, and it's local-on-local - with no fish - the rest of the time.


In fact, other than maybe Mike Milken or Tom Baldwin, I have trouble thinking of any of these traders whom you "can't possibly beat" who actually made huge fortunes. And I promise you, you go to the NYSE floor, or UBS in Stamford, you wil find people who would have trouble beating 2-4, they have dropped to the level of their advantage. It's just mass production.


They just vegetate around their advantage like moss, and that moss is receding as the advantage dries up. It's just a million fractions of pennies anyway, being processed by half-conscious factory workers. The ones who get a clue strike out to manage money, or to build a new software tool for the factory workers, or something.


Really, your only option is to learn the off-floor game from someone who has already taken the losses. But, unfortunately, there aren't any solid books on the underlying theory, nothing like TTOP. And it's a little late in the game to become a Turtle, though that is the longest-term, easiest in-your-spare-time way to get started.


But the long-term futures game is still the big game. Understand that NOBODY has an advantage in long-term futures - because nobody has any local information from, like Japan, and nobody is using any economic model that is worth diddly. Soros' "reflexivity" model, for example, was actually pretty half-baked.


The reason Soros had an edge, in my opinion, was not only because he had put in endless late-night reps as a grunt currency arb, but because he truly LOVED the geopolitical drama of Europe. There aren't too many people who know the first thing about economics who give a hang about Europe. But that was also Soros' undoing, because he made like a $2 billion philanthropic contribution to Russia at his clients' expense!


I promise you, Ray, Russ, and everyone else:


NOBODY HAS AN EDGE ON YOU IN PREDICTING WHERE THE YEN WILL BE NEXT YEAR. It's wide open! And the best your competition can do is to buy when it starts going up, and sell when it starts going down. If you can take it an inch above that - nothing like 40-80 hi-lo mind you - you win.


Besides, you know why most people who lose at poker lose. It's not because they're not smart enough, or because there's not enough information at the table, or because the odds are stacked against them from square one. It's because they're too lazy to learn, and too emotional to execute it even after they have learned. They're safer punching a clock than counting on themsleves to not call 75o.


The off-floor game is wide open to people with discipline, people who can function when their whole day isn't mapped out safely in advance. Most people just don't like walking minefields, it makes them miserable, when the mines are their own errors.


perry