Is Day Trading Bollocks?

I don't think it can be, it's just a short term gambling game, and as with most games, there's skill involved, and there are winners and losers.

These days I work in a job where I get to see some of this dynamic at play. As long as there are signals with some predictive ability, enough to overcome trading friction, I think it's possible (what I am saying is tautological, but you get the idea, I'm saying that it happens, it's not impossible).

I am most impressed by the feats of Japanese day traders. There's no mathematical stuff being used, no regression, no modern portfolio theory or anything. It's just buying and selling based on whatever information you've got. Inside their brains they are do doubt doing similar stuff, and finding signals and intelligently playing the probability game, see Testas blog (http://blog.livedoor.jp/tesuta1), or MatsuiSecurities, a popular broker/daytrading channel I stumbled across (https://www.youtube.com/@MatsuiSecurities/playlists).

If I take a step back and see this as another prediction game: just as a poker playing bot is going to be able to play poker well if it works off the right signals, a trading bot is going to do well if it works off the right signals too.

Is a macro hedge fund really doing all that differently if we get down to it? Someone works out what signals work best, and then they mine that as far as it will go, and then repeat. Sure, we can change the timeframe to weeks or months rather than days, whatever, my point is that day trading isn't bollocks if the right signals are found.