quote Appearance, having a DOM with real time order publication and footprints was the real deal 10-15 decades back. Some traders who had access to platforms and knew how to play the sport, made a killing. But now it is a different story
Just this week I stumbled upon
http://www.noft-traders.com/ I don't know whether its the same; at least in principle it has to be, right? Seeing the stack of orders telling us how the market will move. Logically, that are the edge, no?
.... I will tell you a secret. Today the edge is to learn and know what the significant algo traders are doing and follow them. (firms like Renaissance Technologies). People believe these firms do some super rocket science, while in fact it is just pattern recognition. They search for context, patterns, and market behaviour about news events. For instance in a range context they fade the daily extremes(the new highs/lows) buy placing limit orders outside the range(sell over, buy below), and in trending circumstance they fade the crowd who by default trade against the strong tendencies. For example they wait patiently for the price to attain technical subject of support, wait for the crowd to buy there, and sell aggressively so the service area breaks and crowd is made to liquidate on reduced prices. (that is where the men pay for profit). This game has been going on for quite awhile. You have to understand how to recognize the pattern. The identical game is played during news releases! Unless the news is out of expectations, then they exchange against the amount. That is why 8 out of 10 instances, like you get positive amount however, the price goes only a little up(smart money absorbing the retail/dumb volume) and the price reverses and makes new low and retail traders begin to scratch their head in disbelief.