if you make a series of trades predictably, then HFTs can fuck you over by clearing out the order book 1ms before you buy and turning around to sell to you.
You could prevent this by using a limit order, yes? But execution still seems hard even if you are allowed to use limit orders.
In general, it seems to me unnecessary to know exactly when you will trade in order to exploit you. If I can predict your future trades, and believe they would be profitable for you, I can take advantage by doing those trades myself first. In fact, unless I think your trades would be profitable only at the exact time you plan to do them, I likely want to make your trades as soon as I can, not wait for when you were going to make them.
Naive use of limit orders will cause you to lose the profitable trades, and fill the unprofitable ones. There are ways around this, but it’s not trivial.
You could prevent this by using a limit order, yes? But execution still seems hard even if you are allowed to use limit orders.
In general, it seems to me unnecessary to know exactly when you will trade in order to exploit you. If I can predict your future trades, and believe they would be profitable for you, I can take advantage by doing those trades myself first. In fact, unless I think your trades would be profitable only at the exact time you plan to do them, I likely want to make your trades as soon as I can, not wait for when you were going to make them.
Naive use of limit orders will cause you to lose the profitable trades, and fill the unprofitable ones. There are ways around this, but it’s not trivial.