Watch a pro football game and it’s obvious the guys on the field are far faster, stronger and more willing to bear and inflict pain than you are. Surely you would say, "I don’t want to play against those guys!" Well, 90% of stock market volume is done by institutions, and half of that is done by the world’s 50 largest investment firms – the smartest sons of bitches in the world working their tails off all day long. You know what? I don’t want to play against those guys either. — Charles Ellis Ellis lays out the brutal truth: investing is a rough and tumble business. It doesn’t matter where these traders work – they may be on prop desks, mutual funds, hedge funds or HFT [high-frequency trading] shops – they employ an array of professional staff and technological tools to give themselves a significant edge. With billions at risk, they deploy anything that gives them even a slight advantage. These are who individual investors are doing battle with. Armed only with a PC, an internet con...
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