What kind of trade is this?
A limit order is simply an order to buy at a maximum price or sell at a minimum price. For example, if the price is $100 and you want to sell if the price rises to $110, then you can simply put a limit order to sell at $110. The order will be placed in the market and when the price reaches $110 your order will be executed. If the price gaps at the open to $111, then you would end up selling for $111. In other words you will get a minimum of $110 per share. A stop limit order is where you put a stop loss order, which when it gets triggered, will place a limit order in the market for you. For example, you want to limit your losses by placing a stop loss order if the price drops to $90. If you chose a market order with your stop loss as soon as the price hits $90 your stop loss would be triggered and the shares would sell at the next available price, usually at $90, but could be less if the market gaps down past $90. If on the other hand you placed a limit order at $89.50 with your stop loss, when the stop loss order gets triggered at $90 your limit order will be placed into the market to sell at $89.50. So you would get a minimum of $89.50 per share, however, if the market gaps down below $89.50 your order will be placed onto the market but it won't sell, unless the price goes back to or above $89.50. Hope this helps. "The question mentions a trailing stop. A trailing stop is a type of stop loss order. It allows you to protect your profit on the stock, while ""keeping you in the stock"". A trailing stop is specified as a percentage of market price e.g. you might want to set a trailing stop at 5%, or 10% below the market price. A trailing stop goes up along with the market price, but if the market price drops it doesn't move down too. The idea is that it is there to ""catch"" your profit, if the market suddenly moves quickly against you. There is a nice explanation of how that works in the section titled Trailing Stops here. (The URL for the page, ""Tailing Stops"" is misleading, and a typo, I suspect.)"
"http://www.attaincapital.com/alternative-investment-education/managed-futures-newsletter/investment-research-analysis/423  http://www.cta-info.com/cta_stats.htm  I just googled ""managed futures stats"".    I'm not 100% sure what your goal is, but I wouldn't look to filter out trades.  You're better off grading returns and variance within the returns.  http://www.autumngold.com/  Poke around the ""top traders"" section and compare the returns with the drawdown of the traders.  You'll see the ""lucky"" traders, but you'll also see the high risk guys and low risk guys." "I don't know why people ask these types of questions.  Do you have an interest in the business world?  Do you play the stock market, or do you at least follow some companies?  Do you read about hedge funds?  Do you read about algorithmic trading? If the answer is ""no"" to all of these, then consider something else.  I've seen too many people in the industry who are desperately unhappy because they have no interest in the industry, but are hooked on the money." "In addition to what @George Marian said, a very large portion of trades are from computer programs trained to make trades when certain apparent patterns are observed.  Since these programs are not all designed in the same way, much of the supply and demand is a result of different algorithms with different ""opinions"" on what the stock is doing." A UK based organization had an end buyer who urgently required Steam Coal. The UK Company found a good supplier in Indonesia with competitive prices and struck a lucrative deal with them on payments terms by Standby Letter of Credit aka SBLC (MT760) with support of Bronze Wing Trading LLC. To add a bit to Daniel Anderson's great answer, if you want to 'peek' at what a the set of bid and ask spreads looks like, the otc market page could be interesting (NOTE:  I'm NOT recommending that you trade Over The Counter.  Many of these stocks are amusingly scary):  http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/ACBFF/quote You can see market makers essentially offering to buy or sell blocks of stock at a variety of prices. "You avoid pattern day trader status by trading e-mini futures through a futures broker. The PDT rules do not apply in the futures markets. Some of the markets that are available include representatives covering the major indices i.e the YM (DJIA), ES (S&P 500) and NQ (Nasdaq 100) and many more markets.  You can take as many round-turn trades as you care to...as many or as few times a day  as you like. E-mini futures contracts trade in sessions with ""transition"" times between sessions. -- Sessions begin Sunday evenings at 6 PM EST and are open through Monday evening at 5 PM EST...The next session begins at 6 pm Monday night running through Tuesday at 5 PM EST...etc...until Friday's session close at 5 PM EST. Just as with stocks, you can either buy first then sell (open and close a position) or short-sell (sell first then cover by buying). You profit (or lose) on a round turn trade in the same manor as you would if trading stocks, options, ETFs etc. The e-mini futures are different than the main futures markets that you may have seen traders working in the ""pits"" in Chicago...E-mini futures are totally electronic (no floor traders) and do not involve any potential delivery of the 'product'...They just require the closing of positions to end a transaction.  A main difference is you need to maintain very little cash in your account in order to trade...$1000 or less per trade, per e-mini contract...You can trade just 1 contract at a time or as many contracts as you have the cash in your account to cover.   ""Settlement"" is immediate upon closing out any position that you may have put on...No waiting for clearing before your next trade.  If you want to hold an e-mini contract position over 2 or more sessions, you need to have about $5000 per contract in your account to cover the minimum margin requirement that comes into play during the transition between sessions... With the e-minis you are speculating on gaining from the difference between when you 'put-on' and ""close-out"" a position in order to profit. For example, if you think the DJIA is about to rise 20 points, you can buy 1 contract. If you were correct in your assessment and sold your contract after the e-mini rose 20 points, you profited $100. (For the DJIA e-mini, each 1 point 'tick' is valued at $5.00)" I trade futures. No FX or equities though. It is my only source of income, and has been for about 5 years now.   Equities and FX, to me, seems like more of a gamble than Vegas. I don't know how people do it. The trader has purchased 1095 options, each of which is a contract which entitles him to sell 100 shares of Cisco stock for $16 a share. He paid $71 for each contract (71 cents a share x 100) which is roughly $78k total. He will get $109,500 for each dollar below $16 Cisco's stock is when he exercises it (he can buy the stock for the going rate and then sell it for $16 immediately), or he can sell the option itself to someone else for a similar gain (usually a little more, especially if the option has a long time until it expires). If the option expires when the stock is over $16/share, he gets nothing; i.e. the original $78k is lost. For reference, Cisco's stock was trading at $17.14/share as of market close on March 18, 2010. The share price had recently been boosted by the recent news that they would be paying a quarterly dividend. It has been heading mostly downward since February 9, after they announced that they're not expecting profits to be as good as the analysts thought they would be: they claim that people aren't buying too much networking equipment just now, and they're also facing mounting competition from the likes of HP and Juniper for switches, and Aruba / HP / Motorola for wireless devices. They may lose market share or need to cut prices, hurting profits. Either way, there's certainly a real possibility of their stock going below $16 in the next few months, so people are willing to pay for those options. (Disclosure: I work for Aruba, who competes with Cisco. I also own shares of Aruba, possess assorted stock options and similar equity grants, and participate in the employee stock purchase program.  I also own shares in Cisco indirectly through various mutual funds and ETFs.) I'm not familiar with QQQ, but I'm guessing this is something like IShares Ftse 100 (see description here) Someone already mentioned that this is a risk-reversal, but as an aside, in the vol market (delta-hedged options) this is a fundamental skew trade. (buying calls, selling puts or vice versa). Initially vega neutral, the greek that this trade largely isolates is vanna (dvega/dspot or ddelta/dvol). The trading industry is one that rakes in a lot of profit. But all the buying and selling can become a business management nightmare. To help you with it, we have SAP Business One ERP for Trading Industry. The manufacturing industry on the other hand, is also a very lucrative industry. But the buying of raw materials, machine and manpower can be hard to keep track of. That’s why we’ve introduced SAP Business One ERP for Manufacturing Industry. While these industries are mostly on a large scale or are a part of a large scale business, there are many that are on a smaller scale. We have SAP Business One ERP for Small Business, specifically for the small business out there. We also have SAP Business One ERP for Service based Industry, which has been specifically designed for the service based industry, keeping their requirements in mind.   SOFTCORE SOLUTIONS is a global software solutions provider with over 10 years of Industry experience. Since the year of 2007, our organization has been established as an authorized channel partner for SAP Business One. SOFTCORE SOLUTIONS has a successful track record for delivering on time, within budget, state-of-the-art IT solutions to a broad range of global clientele. From single problem applications to complete turnkey operations, SoftCORE Solutions delivers solutions to your doorstep. The Company's infrastructure allows it to implement projects on multiple platforms in India or abroad. The Company is involved in evolving software solutions in the latest technology areas. Company has excellent practical hands-on experience in database related business applications. It customizes software for specific application, environment &amp; roles. SOFTCORE SOLUTIONS builds &amp; delivers solutions with high quality of commitment and expertise While the tone of the article isn't the best or the most informative the general premise of bid-rigging and collusion is still a problem and wait till all the swaps/derivatives come to light that were sold to european municipalities also uncompetively and collusively (if the europeans have balls to press charges).  A lot of the products were offered with clauses that disallowed the muni's to check the market prices and some had even collusion (I will dig up the link when I find it). "Sorry as mentioned, totally new to all of this and this Subreddit's description fit my interests:   **""Topics of Interest  Market and Economy News Business Earnings and Releases Investor and Trader Tips News that Moves the Markets Long Term and Short Term Investment Ideas Economic Related Humor Most Anything Related to the Economy And, most EVERYTHING is Related to the Economy""**  However, I appreciate your info and will test out the other pages subscribers knowledge :)" You can have a pretty good guess by looking at price pattern and order flow (size of the trades) a) price should be traded in a range b) relatively large size orders, speed. I will assume that you are not asking in the context of high frequency trading, as this is Personal Finance Stack Exchange. It is completely acceptable to trade odd lots for retail brokerage customers. The odd lot description that you provided in your link, from Interactive Brokers is correct. But even in that context, it says, regarding the acceptability of odd lots to stock exchanges: The exception is that odd lots can be routed to NYSE/ARCA/AMEX, but   only as part of a basket order or as a market-on-close (MOC) order. Google GOOG is traded on the NASDAQ. Everything on the NASDAQ is electronic, and always has been. You will have no problem selling or buying less than 100 shares of Google.  There is also an issue of higher commissions with odd lots: While trading commissions for odd lots may still be higher than for   standard lots on a percentage basis, the popularity of online trading   platforms and the consequent plunge in brokerage commissions means   that it is no longer as difficult or expensive for investors to   dispose of odd lots as it used to be in the past. Notice what it says about online trading making it easier, not more difficult, to trade odd lots.