High Frequency Trading in Jobless Recovery

I follow an outstanding lineup of financial professionals and traders on Twitter. I learned about some of them through Stocktwits, which describes itself as “a social, stock microblogging service.” Stocktwits now offers a free desktop with more functionality than TweetDeck.

StockTwits is an open, community-powered idea and information service for investments. Users can eavesdrop on traders and investors, or contribute to the conversation and build their reputation as savvy market wizards. The service takes financial related data – using Twitter as the content production platform – and structures it by stock, user, reputation, etc.

While I’m not a trader or active investor, I enjoy the intelligent conversation of Stocktwits gurus like @aiki14 @Dasan @iron100 @ekanters @gregormacdonald @nelderini and others from around the world.  They’re quick to extrapolate from a world event to its effects on global economies, individual sectors and stocks.  (Note: follow Charlotte hometown favorite @kevinmhughes as he gains national notoriety).

Truckers and retirees now stock jockeys?

I thought my world view was skewed by my Stocktwits exposure to trading, where lots of folks new to trading and investing subscribe to the charts and advice of experts.  But then I saw an article on un-employed and un-retired people going into trading for the lack of other employment opportunities.   The next day The Daily Show ran a segment on the topic. Hmmm, something’s afoot.

I appreciate that there’s money to be made trading. But all the trading in the world doesn’t feed people, clean the environment or find a cure for cancer. And, as Samantha Bee points out in this piece, it’s not as easy as promoters would have us believe.

Writing prompts for financial professionals

• What tax considerations to high frequency traders & rookies overlook?
• If you’re a financial advisor, how do you advise would-be traders to allocate their overall portfolio in consideration of high frequency trade risks and returns?
• Review the different software products needed to pursue a career as a trader.
• How long does it take and how much do you need to lose before you figure out whether this career is a good fit for you? What’s the total investment, considering hardware, software and mentoring services?