Never become complacent especially when you’ve been gimmick trading all of your career. I refer to any trading practice that can become extinct from a rule change or system replacement as gimmick. The prime example was soes. Once the soes phenomenon started taking root, the big boys were already laying plans to do away with it and replace it with a better system. One that would allow more shares and faster executions, one that would put the advantage back into their hands. They succeeded in 01 when they replaced it with the supermontage, and thus soes became relegated to the history books.
After stumbling around aimlessly and wasting about a year liquidity trading before worldcom finally kicked the bucket. I started hearing about traders of my ilk (quick gratification type scalping large blocks and small moves) who were making decent cash trading on the nyse. Once again, the gimmick game was on, and then one by one they started sealing up all the holes. NYSE open book was great for a while, and let’s not forget all the fun we had using bullets(synthetic hedges from Essex) to hammer our favorite specialist from time to time.
The gimmicks were fun, but I feel that with my current style, there really isn’t anything that could impact it adversely (barring me breaking all of the rules and/or the market just sitting there). In other words, as soon as I was hitting my stride with one of my old styles, then it would end and you’d have to start all over with something different. What I am doing now has longevity, and so over time, as I improve I should really be able to achieve some nice velocity.
