Well, Mr Bright, nice to hear from you - finally. And yet, when I do, you do not make one single attempt to address any of the allegations of talking BS I made. An outright admission of guilt if I've ever seen one.
Why in the world would I want to call you Don? I have made it quite clear that I do not wish to expose my identity to you. What useful purpose would speaking on the phone with you serve? Let me make it quite clear. I do not care very much for you Don Bright. I do not consider you to be representative of your firm as a whole. The firm itself consists of many wonderful traders and operating under a solid financial structure, to the mutual benefit of all. As such, I still intend to join the firm. If people want to interpret this as hypocracy on my part, that is their prerogative.
Sure Don, you have many supporters in the trading business. You are, afterall, far more vocal than any other trading firm representative. And deep down you're probably a really nice guy too, but your brash arrogance and the web of crap you spin seems to have finally caught up and bit you in the ass.
Sir, I assure you, I am most certainly not the first to feel the way I do. The first to voice my displeasure on such a public forum, perhaps. There were at least four other attendees at the "school" that pretty much the same way I do. I have also received many PMs here on ET (whose identity I will not divulge, as per their request), thanking me for airing a sentiment they themselves share.
A "frank discussion and error your ways" you say? Mr Bright, please, I have been nothing but frank and forthright. Show you the error of your ways? Well, I don't see how we could possibly agree on the "right" thing to do. I am only interested in not being ripped off, you, on the other hand, are interesting in getting new traders for your firm, (and are willing to say almost anything, it seems, in pursuit of that goal).
Why do you find it necessary to utterly dismiss retail trading as a poorer execution system than what you possess? Why do you make the implicit statements that Worldco is in financial trouble? Are you not able to argue for your firm on its merits alone?
Why do you speak in complete untruths about the nature of Nasdaq trading? I have a friend in the firm (who shall remain nameless of course) who showed me a memo in which office managers are encouraged to tell the trader that it is "extremely difficult" to get out of a moving Nasdaq stock. Excuse me? What is so difficult about it? Remember, we are in 2002, not March 2000. Do you discourage it so much because your firm has to eat the ECN fees perhaps? I have no idea why you are so against it. Certainly all the reasons you give for it being so bad are just complete bullshit.
Let me add one more thing. Overall I found you, your brother and Earl to be extremely arrogant, sometimes bordering on obnoxious. You, yourself, are far from the statesman you come across as in these boards.
You guys are the last people who should be running a "school". Questions are dismissed with the briefest of answers, as if we are somehow getting in your way. Let me give some examples.
Don was discussing "enveloping orders" and how one of his traders does "hundreds" of these orders every day, adjusting his bid and ask prices as the price of the stock changes. A student asked him if there was automated software for doing this - an innoncent enough question - and Don exploded, "Well why don't you write it? Bill Gates made a billion dollars with software. If you want it, then why don't you do it. We can't do everything for you, we expect you to do some work." Geez, I felt like saying something but bit my lip. Why did such an innocent question warrant such an outburst?
There was some guy there talking about First Alert, and Earl was there too. A student asked if the software guy could put up a chart and show how the S&Ps acted when they hit the "pivot points" (which were discussed earlier). Earl interjects, "what? what do you want? Here they are (pointing to where the pivot points are pinned on one of the walls), you can look at em here."
The student points out again that he wanted to see them on a chart. Earl, "hey? they're up here on the wall. come on now, you don't wanna look at charts. you only wanna look at charts cos you wanna delay making a decision. thats true, thats why you look at charts." Say what? Rude, arrogant and mysteriously unresponsive to student questions. All three of em, Don, Bob and Earl.
They had one of their traders, a relatively new kid from Vancouver who'd been with the firm for a month (so why exactly are we listening to him??) get up and address the class. Although I didn't think he would have much of value to add, he surprised me. His civil, respectful tone was a welcome breath of fresh air and his discussion of his strategy in the brief half hour he spoke was a more thorough treatment of strategy than the Bright's gave the during the whole course! (apart from Opening Orders, which are pushed as the magic bullet to riches, ad nauseum.)
A lot of the people are very new to trading, which I gathered from the very simplistic questions many asked (what's a Bid/Ask?) and from my conversations with them during breakfast and dinner. As such, a lot of time is spent discussing mind numbingly simple things like online brokers (ETrade, Ameritrade, you know, the "we sell order flow" types), the difference between investing and trading (phew, lucky I attended, now I know the difference..), oh, and ever present is the theme "how Bright is the better than everything else".
So Don, rather than waste half the classes money AND time. Why not make up a simple questionaire that lets you know at what level a trader's knowledge is at? That way you can tailor a "school" for the greenhorns and suck them in with your BS (hell, they won't know the difference) one for people who actually know something about trading, and for which you'd better provide some useful discussion. But, since the Bright Way is the Right Way, I doubt you'll even consider that for one moment.
Why in the world would I want to call you Don? I have made it quite clear that I do not wish to expose my identity to you. What useful purpose would speaking on the phone with you serve? Let me make it quite clear. I do not care very much for you Don Bright. I do not consider you to be representative of your firm as a whole. The firm itself consists of many wonderful traders and operating under a solid financial structure, to the mutual benefit of all. As such, I still intend to join the firm. If people want to interpret this as hypocracy on my part, that is their prerogative.
Sure Don, you have many supporters in the trading business. You are, afterall, far more vocal than any other trading firm representative. And deep down you're probably a really nice guy too, but your brash arrogance and the web of crap you spin seems to have finally caught up and bit you in the ass.
Sir, I assure you, I am most certainly not the first to feel the way I do. The first to voice my displeasure on such a public forum, perhaps. There were at least four other attendees at the "school" that pretty much the same way I do. I have also received many PMs here on ET (whose identity I will not divulge, as per their request), thanking me for airing a sentiment they themselves share.
A "frank discussion and error your ways" you say? Mr Bright, please, I have been nothing but frank and forthright. Show you the error of your ways? Well, I don't see how we could possibly agree on the "right" thing to do. I am only interested in not being ripped off, you, on the other hand, are interesting in getting new traders for your firm, (and are willing to say almost anything, it seems, in pursuit of that goal).
Why do you find it necessary to utterly dismiss retail trading as a poorer execution system than what you possess? Why do you make the implicit statements that Worldco is in financial trouble? Are you not able to argue for your firm on its merits alone?
Why do you speak in complete untruths about the nature of Nasdaq trading? I have a friend in the firm (who shall remain nameless of course) who showed me a memo in which office managers are encouraged to tell the trader that it is "extremely difficult" to get out of a moving Nasdaq stock. Excuse me? What is so difficult about it? Remember, we are in 2002, not March 2000. Do you discourage it so much because your firm has to eat the ECN fees perhaps? I have no idea why you are so against it. Certainly all the reasons you give for it being so bad are just complete bullshit.
Let me add one more thing. Overall I found you, your brother and Earl to be extremely arrogant, sometimes bordering on obnoxious. You, yourself, are far from the statesman you come across as in these boards.
You guys are the last people who should be running a "school". Questions are dismissed with the briefest of answers, as if we are somehow getting in your way. Let me give some examples.
Don was discussing "enveloping orders" and how one of his traders does "hundreds" of these orders every day, adjusting his bid and ask prices as the price of the stock changes. A student asked him if there was automated software for doing this - an innoncent enough question - and Don exploded, "Well why don't you write it? Bill Gates made a billion dollars with software. If you want it, then why don't you do it. We can't do everything for you, we expect you to do some work." Geez, I felt like saying something but bit my lip. Why did such an innocent question warrant such an outburst?
There was some guy there talking about First Alert, and Earl was there too. A student asked if the software guy could put up a chart and show how the S&Ps acted when they hit the "pivot points" (which were discussed earlier). Earl interjects, "what? what do you want? Here they are (pointing to where the pivot points are pinned on one of the walls), you can look at em here."
The student points out again that he wanted to see them on a chart. Earl, "hey? they're up here on the wall. come on now, you don't wanna look at charts. you only wanna look at charts cos you wanna delay making a decision. thats true, thats why you look at charts." Say what? Rude, arrogant and mysteriously unresponsive to student questions. All three of em, Don, Bob and Earl.
They had one of their traders, a relatively new kid from Vancouver who'd been with the firm for a month (so why exactly are we listening to him??) get up and address the class. Although I didn't think he would have much of value to add, he surprised me. His civil, respectful tone was a welcome breath of fresh air and his discussion of his strategy in the brief half hour he spoke was a more thorough treatment of strategy than the Bright's gave the during the whole course! (apart from Opening Orders, which are pushed as the magic bullet to riches, ad nauseum.)
A lot of the people are very new to trading, which I gathered from the very simplistic questions many asked (what's a Bid/Ask?) and from my conversations with them during breakfast and dinner. As such, a lot of time is spent discussing mind numbingly simple things like online brokers (ETrade, Ameritrade, you know, the "we sell order flow" types), the difference between investing and trading (phew, lucky I attended, now I know the difference..), oh, and ever present is the theme "how Bright is the better than everything else".
So Don, rather than waste half the classes money AND time. Why not make up a simple questionaire that lets you know at what level a trader's knowledge is at? That way you can tailor a "school" for the greenhorns and suck them in with your BS (hell, they won't know the difference) one for people who actually know something about trading, and for which you'd better provide some useful discussion. But, since the Bright Way is the Right Way, I doubt you'll even consider that for one moment.
