Alright, I just happened to find this thread on the net while reading about HLV going "public" and thought i should give some firsthand feedback.
It seems like some people are getting quite emotional and hostile in these threads so I"ll say what my background is and say straight out that I lost money, i did not whine about to HLV nor do i blame it on HLV, I was a noob trader and even with better rates, I would have lost in the end. My background is that I worked in their ny office about two years ago, my first trading experience ever. I was a noob trader and I will admit that I still am, considering I have not touched a stock since leaving them a few years ago. In light of the fact that I do not know anything about the trading industry and its standards, I will just present facts below on my experience there, with no opinion. i am sure things have changed somewhat in the time since i have left, but i figured the basics would still be the same (and they are from what i've been reading on these forums and in the paper).
Here the facts:
- They do require 5k capital which im assuming is some sort of standard since i know other places have the same requirement. They took 20% of profits from first-time traders in addition to charging software fees and execution fees. The fees could sum up to a tidy sum every month, but I can't comment on them because I am not familiar with what the standards are. One thing with HLV is that they do NOT take part in any of your losses. If you lose, it comes out of the capital you put down. So if you make money, you keep 80% and they take 20% (in addition to the extra fees they charge). If you lose, you lose 100% and they lose 0%. HOWEVER, as they like to state, the cut HLV takes is negotiable and the 20% is if you are a beginner. I believe it starts at 90%, if you have some experience and a proven track record.
- Also, it seems they have implemented a system where you do not need to put up capital. Back in my time, they had started doing that and the terms were not that good, so bad in fact that I was given that option (after i had spent some time trading with them and proved my worth) and rejected it in favor of an 80/20 split.
- I believe they are still charging approximately $125 for software fee per month. The problem i had with this $125 fee was that if you go to the omnipro website, you can get it on your own for a monthly fee of about $50 (*may not be true anymore, this was a while ago*), so I did not like that it seemed to me that they were charging in excess of what they were getting charged(I didnt know until after I had left HLV).
- Another problem i saw was the NYSE fee in which you are charged $2.00 or around that for every 1000 shares traded in NYSE. With the strategies they teach, you end up trading in excess of 30,40, even 100 thousand plus shares a day and when you are using the NYSE, that fee can get very high as well. What I asked some other friends in trading about that fee and they said they had it as well, but lower, around $1.25 or something. I am not sure what this fee is exactly or why it is there, but it seemed like it was higher than it had to be.
- Another thing is that I traded some NASDAQ stocks there and I hear that it is possible to receive rebates through ECNS. In my time with them, they never taught me about rebates or told me about them so I never asked and never received. After I left and told a friend of mine about how I lost a lot of money in trading, he asked me why I dont rebate trade and when he explained it to me, it seemed as if I had been ripped off of rebates. However, I am not sure if that is true (from what he told me, you get a rebate if you are passive on an ECN on a NASDAQ stock?) since I am not exactly sure what it is or how you get it. if it is what i said in the parenthesis, then I am pretty sure I did get gypped out of rebates since I did go passive on nasdaq stocks.
- Last thing - When I left them, I still had some money left in my bank account. I had to call them multiple times in order to get my money back and it ended up taking about 2-3 months for them to finally get it to me. I think that was somewhat unprofessional.
In light of these aspects of HLV, it is not surprising to me that the place had a very active revolving door - people came in for a few weeks and would leave and not come back. I know the few I spoke with told me they had lost their 5k and did not have the capital to trade anymore.
Despite what I have said above, which paints a negative picture of HLV, I feel obliged to say what I did like about HLV (which maybe u can find in other trading firms, but I do not know as HLV was the only place I ever traded at). The training program there was superb, I learned a lot about market theory and dynamics, trading strategies and the stock market in general. I gained a broader understanding of trading and was able to gain much knowledge that I am VERY thankful for.
So that is what my experience was like, you can all take my words as you like. That is pretty much all i have to say about it and i will most likely not be coming back to these forums since i will not be googling hlv anytime in the near future so feel free to flame, agree, cry, curse me or applaud me - i will not be here to see it =)
