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about others walking up to you to ask questions or chat about the market? Do you welcome it or prefer not to be bothered? How much will the competitiveness of the scene affect you? Will it tend to make you take chances that you would not otherwise take if others weren't there letting you know how they are doing? And how do you feel about others looking over your shoulder, checking your trades? |
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To summarize, by far the biggest advantage of a trading room is the speedy direct connections to the electronic networks for instantaneous execution of trades, as well as the amount of data offered through the software. You also have access to support from experienced traders and a structured environment to do your trading. |
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The experiences in and reactions to the trading room were during numerous visits in 1997 when it was operated by Block Trading. Since then, Block has gone out of business and Momentum Securities has taken over the offices. |
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I went back to the same trading room in November 1999 to find some things had changed. I had been invited to a complimentary four-hour class on using Level II. In the service of painting a fair and current picture, and because I think the changes at this facility may be indicative of the direction the day trading industry is moving, I want to mention what I found in returning to the scene. |
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To begin with, the trading room had been reconfigured to accommodate many more trading stations than it had previously. This made it appear more congested, with less space between each trader, a tighter fit between chairs and monitors. What before had been designed to accommodate maybe 50 to 60 stations was now handling over 100 in the same space. Clearly, the interest in day trading had increased to warrant squeezing every bit of space out of the rather large room. |
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Secondly, an area had been separated out from the main room up on a platform in a corner. This was reserved for 20 or so hypertrading scalpers who were doing hundreds of trades per day. |
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Another small but perhaps telling sign of the altered thinking was that donuts were no longer available but bagels still were. Instead, there were five plastic containers each filled with a different kind of cold cereal. |
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There was now an adjoining room that was used for the Online Trading Academy, which taught the classes that traders were now |
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