Retail accounts - How big is big?

Robert Morse said:
Each broker would be different. Some large banks require $100mm to start.
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I've never heard of any particular bank requiring $100mm for an individual retail trader to open an account with them.

In contrast, I have heard of banks requiring > $100millions to open commerical business or institutional business that trades on the behalf of pension plans, insurance companies, university trusts as examples with them in particular assets.

wrbtrader
 
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Like others have said, volume is more important than size. I used to trade a multiple-million dollar account, but I only traded a few times a year, so much commission size wasn't much.
 
I can speak for the universe of brokers, but in my opinion, every broker should strive to build a clientele that he can support technologically and knowledge wise. What they trade, their frequency of trading and the amount of their capital should be irrelevant to the broker as long as it meets the legal margin requirements.
 
Most of retail don't know being a broker is a very very tough business, competition is brutal to sign up new accounts, and you have to treat all of them with same respect cause they don't really have a clue how much customers have or going to invest with them. Some could be testing "out the waters" before depositing a large amount, cause if they not helpful with smaller accounts, why drop a huge account on them. Often times the smaller accounts are the biggest pains in the ass cause they often times smaller traders that need more hand holding, answer tons of questions and often "Time Bandits" and expect to be treated commission wise of trading 100k lots a week on their 3 lots. But again if some person just sold their multi-million dollar business, retired to Florida and is bored, yea you spend as much time as possible to help him get profitable. But ultimately, brokers need customers to take trades- get some volume going, putting it all into IBM not going to pay the rent of a brokerage.
 
traderslair said:
UBS is $300mil and they are looking to raise it.
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They don't have to raise it. They are crooks, at least those who made me propositions. The propositions they made were only good for them, the big risks were for me. I ran away from them, they did not have to chase me away.
I read in another thread that in the Bahamas people got in trouble too with constructions proposed by UBS.
 
wrbtrader said:
A relative that's an institutional trader once stated he would be impressed by a retail trader that had a 5mil trading account.

In contrast, a broker once stated he would be impressed by a retail trader with a 1mil trading account.

Yet someone else that's different...in another country and a broker...she stated she would be impress with any retail trader with > 500k for trading purposes.

Not sure what you meant by "all" as if someone would actually know what every broker on this planet, country, state, city or whatever would be impress by the size of the trading account by a retail trader.

Why should it matter ???

Reminds me of this strange girl in college that said "drop your pants...I want to see how big it is". :wtf:

I replied...you do the same. She got up and left.

wrbtrader
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in cosmopolitan cities like ny, london and paris you might have gotten a surprise a la opera madame butterfly if she dropped her pants.
 
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traderslair said:
UBS is $300mil and they are looking to raise it.
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What do you mean, please? We traded with UBS with 700K account and the minimum was 500k, in order to access their famous service and fast executions, which has never happenned.
 
Handle123 said:
Most of retail don't know being a broker is a very very tough business, competition is brutal to sign up new accounts, and you have to treat all of them with same respect cause they don't really have a clue how much customers have or going to invest with them.........
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Your observation is very close to reality. The challenge that both customers and brokers face today is the enormous amount of choices for trading with platforms and data feeds. Effectively, if a good match is done from day one it saves the customer the learning curve. We often can narrow the needs to one platform instead of having numerous software for charting and execution. This can reduce costs and could potentially make your computer work faster as software and unnecessary feeds could slow your computer.
 
rb7 said:
It's not the size of the account that matters, but the traded volume.
An account of 1m could trade more than an account of 100m.
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That’s what would make sense but that’s now how many brokers think. At td your are only qualified by size. Same at Schwab. At ib it is mostly by volume but >1m also gets you lower rates even with only a couple small trades a day. At least that’s my experience
 
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