Quote from Lucias:
Mav, I'm not looking for a fight. I don't have any strong feelings either way.. But I notice you tend to be the type of person that swings from hot to cold.
Examples
When we first started this business, I was claiming that most props are looking for quants these day. You were claiming that there were several Chicago firms stilling hiring discretionary traders. You recently seemed to switch to what I was saying.. most firms aren't hiring discretionary traders but just quants to run boxes.
My opinion has NEVER changed on this. I don't know any firms in Chicago that are hiring discretionary traders outside of some kid who has a friend somewhere and does a favor for him. The old networking thing. Have you been on LinkedIn? Have you read the job postings? No one is looking for directional punters. However, all firms have guys that are ALREADY there who have built up huge amounts of deferred p&l and many of them take risks. Also, the word discretionary does not always mean directional. I know a lot of market makers, HFT guys and algo traders that make discretionary decisions all day long.
You were claiming many times that don't risk more then 2% of your account per trade or you blow up. But when I point out your total account at TST (at lowest level) is only 1k then you come up with all kinds of other ideas such as treat it like blackjack.. consistency.. etc. Ideas that didn't jive with eveything you been saying earlier. (Note, I pointed out that if you are likely to blow out risking 4%-5% per day then your risk of blowing out at 2% is going to be very high. You have to run monte carlo simulations to see this is true.)
Lucias, you and I have a fundamental disagreement on risk. When I talk about risk, I'm talking about your equity. With TST, you technically don't have any equity. Sure they call it a 50k or 100k account but it's not like you will ever see an account statement that shows 100k in cash in there. TST gives you a risk allowance. So it's not an apples to apples comparison with a guy that has say 10k at Velocity. I firmly believe you should not risk more then 2% of your "equity" per day. In this case, that would be $200 on 10k. I have NEVER waivered on this.
In the TST/PTK thread you were defending them that they couldn't make money from running the combine but had to make it off their traders. Now you flip/flop in thread and claim that the only way to run one of these businesses is if that you make money off the combine fees.. that trying to make money off the traders will never work.
Wrong again. The reason they can't make money, in my humble opinion, is because they are absorbing all the losses. This is the deal killer for me. The only way to make this model work is get rid of the free refunds and make the trader accountable for his losses. I found no other way to make this work.
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