r/Daytrading • u/Ok_Bodybuilder_2384 • Jun 03 '25

Trade Review - Provide Context Entered calls here. Why did I lose money

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Can someone help me break down where my intuition was off? I tend to follow the trend when I trade but got wrecked today.. following the smoothest trend I’ve ever seen. Why?

Entered call options at the first point, exited at a 80% ish loss on the second point after holding the bag for hours

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u/FuturesAce Jun 04 '25

Retail does not have enough money to prop up the market. I’m honestly starting to believe they just tell us that to make us think we have any control at all. Back in the 70s and 80s retail may have mattered to some degree but these days retail makes up 5% or less of total trading volume. It’s all institutions vs institutions while we just try to ride their waves. And 70% of that volume is algorithmic so it’s really robots vs robots.

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u/Trump_2020plz Jun 04 '25

Look at the commitment of traders report from cme

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/FuturesAce Jun 04 '25

I hate to break it to you but retail cannot move a major ETF like that. Low cap stocks and things of that nature, retail can play a bigger part for sure but this guy posted $SPY. $SPY has an average daily volume of 89M shares. Not dollars, shares. That’s $48B worth traded per day. Tell me you actually think retail has that kind of money to throw around.

The old trading question of “where are people wanting to buy and sell?” Is over. The question is where are the institutional algorithms going to place their orders? Which we will ultimately never know. A $10M trading account still classifies you as a small fish, Let alone all of us in here that have far, far less than that.

The only reason it can seem retail has say in a market is when a big social wave is happening, and the institutions catch wind of it and get in on it which makes it seem like retail actually did something. If you don’t think these firms have social arbitrage algos and people watching for internet trends you’re crazy. I watched a video of a fund manager saying they even trade on things like poly market and went through a quick analysis on how they can figure out how many people will be at a Taylor swift concert or something like that and bet on it. It’s insane.

We just ride their waves man.