The first of the work from home options I want to discuss is MTurk from Amazon. Basically, what you do here is work tasks. It can be anything from writing an article, to clicking on a link. You can make pennies to dollars. You aren’t going to get rich from this, but you can add a little change to your bank account. This can be something you can do while watching TV. Heck, work the task while the commercials are on.

Next is filling out surveys. A quick search of Google can find you many options where companies will pay you to fill out surveys. You can get lucky a few times, but don’t expect to get rich. Remember, this is just another way to supplement your income.

And the last of the work from home options is making money online. This, in and of itself, could and should be a host of articles in and of itself. Perhaps I will do that later. Suffice it to say there are many methods out there. It can take some work. A great site to start from is www.thekeywordacademy.com. You’ll have to pay a little but I believe it is worth the price.

So if you are looking for work from home options, they are out there. I have mentioned a few, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Do your homework. Search Google. Read. And above all ask questions. Get on message boards and ask. Email people. The worst that can happen is they don’t answer. Then you are no worse off then before you asked.

But what is high frequency trading? How does it work? Who does it? And more importantly, how does it impact the rest of us, particularly those of us who are typical long-term investors?

In a nutshell, high frequency traders (or HFTs) trade on electronic markets, using sophisticated computer programs and high-speed infrastructures, enabling them to send multiple orders in short bursts of a few seconds. These short bursts can consist of thousands of orders per second.

So far so good. What is more worrying however is the danger that some high frequency traders might use their ability to enter and exit the market at sub-millisecond levels to engage in predatory practices, such as front-running (which is in fact illegal).

How could they do this? Consider this situation. A high frequency trader wants to see if there is a big institutional order lying in wait to buy a particular stock. So he sends thousand of sell orders into the market followed immediately by cancellations, all within the space of a few hundred microseconds (i.e. less than a thousandth of a second). By the time the institutional investor has seen the sell orders coming in and reacted, those sell orders have been pulled and the institutional investor has shown its hand. This is just one example of where high frequency traders have the potential to “get one over” the rest of the market.

It’s is tricky situation and the regulators are struggling to come up with the best way to deal with it all.

One idea that is doing the rounds at the moment is for the regulators to put in place a cancellation fee if more than a certain number of orders are cancelled within a certain timeframe. The HFTs would not be able to engage in the predatory practice outlined above without being able to cancel the majority of their orders. So if they had to pay a fee for doing this, it would make the practice less profitable for them.

This has been proposed at high levels in the US, for example by Senator Kaufman and various influential bloggers, e.g. the Themis Trading Blog and Tyrone Cortese at the High Frequency Trading Review are also supporting it. We await to see if it is actually introduced.

Beginners to the stock market may not automatically want to go into option trading. It may be smarter to get experience with other more stable types of trading before going into the riskier business of option trading. Also, be advised that options trading may appear to be quite simple, but usually isn’t the case. As with many other types of trading on the stock market, option trading gives you the opportunity to make huge profits, but you can also lose huge profits as well. Those new to option market should understand this and may not to initially invest a large amount of money at first, it may be smarter to start off with a smaller amount of money, then add more as you gain more experience. Operating with a large capital can be very risky, and should not be done unless you are a very experienced trader.
When involved in stock option trading, it’s important to have a large amount of stats an analysis reports on the market, that way you’ll be able to make well informed decisions. Research as much as you can beforehand, there are many online option trading websites have a large amount of material that you may find useful. Flexibility and maneuverability are also very important when trading, so that if any changes happen in the market, you’ll be able to quickly and easily change your option trading strategies as well. Even if you’ve thoroughly researched your strategy, sometime there’s no telling how the market could change, you’ll need to be prepared to respond quickly to these changes.
Researching and education has to be a personal effort. Remember that the more you know about your subject, the better prepared you will be. There are many online articles and training courses on option trading, it’s better to come too prepared than unprepared.
If you haven’t done option trading before, you’ll probably want to find a trustworthy firm that will be able to help you choose different strategies and recommend which one you should use. Be practical when forming your option trading strategies and don’t make risks that are too big. A company or firm will help you to make better decisions; they’ll also be able to give you additional advice on the market, as you become more experienced, you may eventually be able to launch out on your own. When investing, be sure that you’ll know exactly when to invest and when not to, these decisions can only be made through knowledge and experience.