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Base Salary + Payout
- Thread starter showtime23
- Start date
Originally posted by chasinfla
i don't think it's blue collar arrogance. it has nothing whatsoever to do with net worth. it's about elitism.
Maybe.
But just to correct your English. It should read "blue BLOOD arrogance". Because blue collar is working class. White collar is more professional. Blue blood denotes noblity.
just makin' sure we are using the right terms..
Yeah, elitism really sucks! I feel pretty common.
Originally posted by trader99
What you wrote is NOT exactly all correct. Top ibanks/prop desks do NOT(I repeat DO NOT) have "thousands of prop traders"!!
For example, at Bear Stearns , the group is only 15 people!
trader99
very true, there is this big illusion floating around that all the people sitting behind monitors in huge trading rooms at institutions are all betting the houses money.
which obviously isn't the case as you stated.
cheers
by the way, prop traders at big firms are real W2 employees, get a base salary that is enough to survive in Manhattan, put up none of their own money, trade accounts of many millions, make their own hours and get 7-12% of their trading profits as a bonus at the end of the year. And Goldman alone has bunch of them. But they are definitely a lucky minority in the trading biz.
Originally posted by lojze
Are they LUCKY ?
They need to be really good - otherwise they won't get high salary and they take home just 7- 12%.
As pro trader, you can earn more than just nice 6-figures salary and 7-12%, right?
Or I miss something?
Lojze
I guess in theory you could earn infinity. But practically as Hitman once posted the stat for Worldco, a prop trading firm I'm not totally familiar with, was that a very small percentage even make it to just basic 6 figures. The rest are making like McD's salaries or just a little more.
I mean 60-90% cut is really fantastic if you can do huge size and over many stocks like what quant prop traders do with computerized execution.
So, it's up to you. There's no right or wrong way about it. It's just the institutional prop traders have a pretty decent cushion of 100-200K to live on even if they fail to make a single penny that year(but obviously this can't go on for too long especially when you are risking the firm's capital! haha). But as prop traders, every day you have to make money to feed yourself and with no benefits, health insurance, 401K, paid vacation,ec.
but you get FREEDOM! That's a pretty good exchange I think.
trader99
I know which one I would pick.
Originally posted by dotslashfuture
by the way, prop traders at big firms are real W2 employees, get a base salary that is enough to survive in Manhattan, put up none of their own money, trade accounts of many millions, make their own hours and get 7-12% of their trading profits as a bonus at the end of the year. And Goldman alone has bunch of them. But they are definitely a lucky minority in the trading biz.
Goldman doesn't have a bunch of prop traders ANYMORE! haha. They have totally downsized their operations since they became a public company and has to be responsive to shareholders.
The same thing happend to Solly prop trading group which was huge in the 80s to mid 90s. Solly shut down the entire fixed income arbitrage group in the late 90s(another friend of mine worked there). Then they shifted him to credit derivatives. And now he's at a hedge fund.
To get back to my original point, GS prop group is much much smaller than it used to be. And they are very risk adverse now that they are a public company and not a private company. And I think their GS payout is not all that compared to other groups since they are not that aggressive.
So, if you really want to do the big risk and get a cut then you shouldn't go to GS. Go somewhere else like hedge funds or prop trading shops.
trader99