keystone trading group

Hi guys. I had a few questions.
I attended the TradersExpo these past few days in the City and I was in one of the Velez' seminars.

Currently I'm working for a firm that I'm getting killed on comission alone(80 cents for 100 shares). I mean only commissionwise this guy sounded pretty convincing to me.

I've been thinking of joining him, but I don't want to make the same mistake that I made by joining the current place that I work, which I'm basically working for someone else doing a whole lot of volume with no clear strategy that will work in the current trendless market.

So I did some research and I see the same posting about some guy Vaccaro etc etc about cheating his wife and other personal stuff along with his association with Velez.

Anyone can explain how this story works and where to find a decent place for day trading because honestly I'm getting tired of where I am and it seems like I'm not getting anywhere.

It'll be great if someone can explain what this Velez thing is and whether it's worth it, because from my research online I've come up only with two extreme views.

1. He's the greatest
2. He's a piece of sh.... with no morals and a scammer.

It can't be both, especially if he's a scammer, because he can be a piece of shit but who is successful and whose traders are successful as well. Today at the Seminar he was boasting that currently employs more then 500 people and opening offices in Singapore and some other places.


Thanks again
 
my lord i just read vcm's site. velez is like the old al williams. he's running a marketing machine. my lord he's charging people 9k up front and taking 40% of the profit. he's running a churn and burn operation. he's also charging $99 for a $60 scanner that is trade ideas. he farms it out from trade ideas for $25 a month probably and resells it for $99 amonth. the .02 commissions he brags about he's not telling you he's at .0005 are less so on that 400 mil a month vil he's making 600k a month in overides. in profit splits add in another 200 k a month. add in another 150k from the 9k upfront for training and another 50k are more from scanners and other software and he's probably netting after all expenses a cool 3-5 mil a year easy
 
hello, keystone traders... how are you doing?

please post some present experience about this firm.

we got it that in the past erik solomon and peter renzulli decided to terminate their association with the velez gang...,

but anybody trading with them currently?

thanks
 
Before anyone starts making inferences into TUCO, they should understand the circumstances. Doug, is and has always been a gentleman. Please do your homework before you cast a stone.
 
I have been trading with Keystone for a month now. Overall they're good. I opted for the independent program with commissions of 50 cents per 100 shares and 10 to 1 intraday buying power. Erik was very proffessional and helpful, which was nice. It seems like everytime I call somebody (or they call me) in this business, they have this attitude like they're some hot stuff and they're starring in Boiler Room. He certainly didn't sound like that.

They use the Sterling Trader platform. It's certainly not worth the $150 a month, but it gets the job done once you get used to it.
One thing that I have never understood is why it doesn't have one-sends-other orders. If XYZ is at 20.00 and When I place a buy at 19.90, I want the ability to automatically send a sell at 19.95 as soon as the first order is filled. When I called them about this (I thought maybe I wasn't doing something right) they sort of thought that was a rediculous idea and couldn't figure out why I would want to do that. So now I just have the second order lined up and have to keep a constant eye on when I get filled. I have traded or had demos on several kinds of platforms and even the cheapest forex one's had the ability to send a limit exit order with an entry order. Otherwise it's fine, although it just went down now for several minutes, but this is the first time it's happpened, so I'll write it off.


I think I will probably be closing the account soon. I originally opened it because I realized that if I pay $1 round trip to buy 100 shares and if I added liquididty, I would get a 40-60 cent rebate, all I needed to do was sell it for 1 cent higher to make about 50 cents net and 2 cents higher to make about $1.50 net and do this 100-500 times a day to make a living. Sounds simple
enough right? As you can guess I'm right about 90% of the time and loose $15-30 when I'm wrong. So I usually break even but end up losing with the commissions and fees. Except of course when I always seem to be short anytime news about Ambak suddenly comes out and RIMM rallies $5 in 15 minutes or AAPL rallies 95 cents in 45 seconds. THen I loose a few hundred. So the math simply doesn't add up.

The only other way to make money with a strategy like this is if I could trade at the institutional rate of 2 cents per 100 shares. Then, theoretically I could buy a stock and add liquidity (get the 25 cents) then immediately sell at the same price and route the order to a different ecn that doesn't charge to remove liquidity. I would buy and sell at the same price and just keep the ecn rebates minus commissions. Unfortunately nobody will let me trade at that rate even if I put up a security deposit and split the profits 50/50 and take all of the losses. Seems like a no lose for them, but I guess they don't go for that. I guess I'm back to square one. I hope this helps.
 
Yes, but not necessarily because of Keystone. I would recomend them if what they offer is what you need. I think it's just my strategy that didn't work. Like I said it may work if I was able to get the 2 cents per 100 shares, but the only way they'll give me that is to pay for their training program, which is $3500, then they'll let you manage a 25k account and split the profits and they'll take the losses. That's probably a good deal, but not really what I'm looking for. Another thing they are good for is if you like to do intraday spreads. If you want to do a long spy/ short iwm spread then the 10-1 leverage is good. The risk on that is actually very small, but because you have to buy/sell both, a typical brokerage account will require too much cash. I don't hold trades overnight, so the 3-1 overnight leverage doesn't really matter, but is worth noting.
 
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