Quote from pineman:
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Again, who is talking about videos...the man gave a formal training class on all aspect of the markets before you can even touch the computer....if that is not a formal training class vs. what this therad is about, then clearly, all this went over your head.
Draw, Salary, whatever, the point is he had the new trader vested interest in mind !
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Class, book, video, same difference. Do you really think guys learned how to trade by taking a class on trading 101?
A lot of firms give traders draws. We simply gave our guys cash. Someone generated 20k in commisions, we gave them 5k in cash for the month to live on. We were giving them their OWN money back!!!!!
You can't be this stupid. It didn't cost Kanter anything to give out that measly draw. He was paying them with their own commission dollars! LOL. Seriously man, you need to understand how the equity prop model worked. Firms marked up commisions big time. Then they either paid out a draw giving the trader their own money back or they would just give them cash whenever they asked for it, which is what we did. We gave them back pennies on the dollar though. It was a win win!!!!!
Any trader that was above average or better generated ungodly amounts of commission dollars. The prop firm then gave a small fraction back to the trader. Most traders could not live on that and if they didn't make money, sooner or later they would leave. Worldco would usually cut a check to any guy the second he even hinted at leaving. That is how we kept guys from quitting. We would say, hey pineman, markets been tough lately, we know, we know you want to quit and we decided if you stick around a little longer, we'll float you 10k in cash to get by. LOL. In my opinion, this was not generous. In fact, it was downright cruel. The reason being is that it kept guys around for months and years after they should have moved on to greener pastures.
I am trying to explain this to you. ALL firms did this crap. No firm was better or worse then anyone else. Like I said in my first post on this thread, the key was to get into a good GROUP. If you found the right mentor, you had a fighting chance.
The edge we had at Worldco is Walter went to every firm in NY, found the best traders, asked them what their rates were, and said, we'll cut those in half if you work for me. And they did. We then took these superstar traders and put 20 to 40 newbies under them to learn to trade. Some guys made it, some guys didn't. But I have to give Walter credit, he got the best traders to work for him. These guys were monsters. We published our top 30 list everyday for all in the firm to see. The guy coming in at number 30 would be up about 50k on the day. The guys in the top 5 were making 200k to 500k a day!!!! Monsters!!!
And these guys trained the newbies. Some of them made it, most didn't. But please don't think for a second there was any charity work going on here. Newbies paid out the nose in commisions to get those draws. They were taking money from their left hand and putting it in their right hand. We gave guys the best equipment, the back office, best service, but again, charged them through the roof for that privilege.
The equity model is dead today because commission rates are almost nothing and guys are doing nowhere near the volume they did then. You can no longer float guys today like you could then. We had guys that were 100k in the hole and we were still paying them cash to stay around!!!! It was free money to us. They generated 20k in commisions, we gave them a few bucks back. It wasn't that we cared about the traders, it was good business.
So please stop it with this ETG cared about their traders crap. ETG cared about their bottom line just as all prop firms do and should. Of course the prop firm wanted you to make it because when you left, they would have to replace a warm seasoned body with a new cold one trading 100 shares at a clip. It was bad business. Keep the veterans around. Cut their rates, give them money, take them out to dinner, whatever it took. Just don't let them leave. You could say it was a lot like scientology.
It was a great business model while it lasted. Those days are over. At the end of the day, it's up to the trader to make it in this business.