It took me six months to be able to read prices in the pit. Locals basically read information from the order flow and squeezed the weak party. There's always a pack of five or six dominating locals who abruptly change the prices, who bid a lot higher than the previous offer and have the guts to do it, and the rest of them follow. I learned more about market dynamics in my second six months than from years on a desk. Markets move from squeezes to squeezes.
Traders make money on stop losses and other free options.
It made me interested with information economics. You're not ready to give up on all quantitative techniques. You were trained as an econometrician. You don't make wild speculative bets and I assume you try to hire traders who have some kind of quantitative skills. Anytime I take a street-smart kid with a strong Brooklyn accent and train him or her in quant methods, I develop a wonderful quant trader who knows how to squeeze the sitting ducks.