Quite honestly tired of threads that are meant to discuss discipline, habits, and reality of trading turn into broker bashing(?). Many of us looking at traders as a long term investment, not as a statistic.
Today most customers reach out to the brokers because they want to enter the markets. Most discussions are revolving around technology, execution, latency, software and also most are educated enough where they are aware of the challenges of trading. However, what we do face, in terms of a challenge is the leverage customers want to trade with. Some at times overleverage, and we have to explain that it will be a very short career if you build leverage on leverage (in the case of Futures or FX).
Second, the "micros" was not a contract requested by brokers, rather the CME exchange decided to launch it with ZERO (my personal opinion) research into the demographics of net-worth or income of those who requested it. I actually took the time and wrote to the CME asking why this contract should be different from any other micro out there that was launched in the past. I am also puzzled as to the size they chose because I am not sure how liquidity is built around such small notional size. Time will tell.
As far as car salesmen, the last one who told me "I need to talk to the manager" was filling up the gas in my new car before my final "Bon Voyage". My recommendation was to reread Zig Ziglar.
