The Perfect Prop Firm
- Thread starter Maverick74
- Start date
Quote from kcgoogler:
hey gmst,
i am going to put out an idea to see if someone can come up with anything better. I am doing something similar to you. I have been trading ES for just about 2years now using a handful of intraday strategies. And been profitable.. so i tried to expand; first i looked at other liquid futures markets - other than bonds and maybe euro most of the other futures markets are a little less liquid for my taste (see my edge intraday is good to give me good risk adjusted returns but not enough to trade most of these markets).. so i then looked at stocks. But always cost of carry and commisions have kept me out of equity markets.
Recently about maybe 9 months ago i found out about the prop model - where you get leverage and cheaper commisions than on the retail side. It works out well for me; i put up 30-40k and get to trade close to a million. Slowly i will grow but this is plenty for me for now.
So if your strategy is not hardwired to forex (which it should not), why not look into expanding into equity markets? and just use prop firm as a partner who gives you good intraday leverage and good commisions (specially if you add liquidity most of the time - i do about 90% of the time).
The way i see it, if i am with a firm that only takes my commisions and gives me leverage, its like a hedge fund where you keep 100% of profits.
-gariki
Thanks gariki for your suggestion. I have never traded stocks, and have 0 screentime with stocks. So, I have no idea if my fx strategies will move to stocks world. However, developing strategies for sometime now, I have a fairly good handle on the approach to develop strategies. So, I am pretty confident that if I do take stocks data and start working on it, within 3 months I should have something that will work. Also, looking at Lescor and Dustin and Szeven and EricP pnl its pretty clear that there is serious money to be made in stocks world (from high 6 figures to 7 figures per year). These guys make that kind of money with a BT like prop firm. So, yes I do see the benefit of a BT/Echo type prop firm from a trader's viewpoint - for sure.
Most of my current trading is done in futures/spot fx market. So, I do get leverage from my IB account, but what I do need is capital at this stage for my fx strategies. See, even if I start researching stocks and figure out things, it is still at least a 3 month thing. In FX world, if I get into a good firm on a profit split basis, I can start making money from Day 1.
Actually, I think I am going to start work with stocks data from mid-February. The idea of trading 30-100 stocks per day in a systematic fashion sounds very attractive to me, because this way you get benefit of a smoother equity curve due to diversification and less market risk, which is harder to get with few fx pairs. After all, lescor is market neutral. I can trade as much fx as I want for directional trading. Thanks gariki for encouraging me to try this out.
how many times must a trader tell you 20% of a few thousand isnt shit? in a month.. over a year? buddy...are you serious? what are you saying? that on a 25k account the most you can muster is a little over 5k which takes one year to complete? sounds to me like you have issues taking on size. Good prop traders can make thousands of percents in a year. Now if you take 1B to 1.2B that is doing something. or even 10-12M that is a track record that will get something.
It was hypothetical but beside the point.. most firms will only consider track records where the trader is trading 10's of millions of dollars. 500 million is not uncommon.. So you won't get reviewed without X asset under management.
you could do 1000x return.. nobody cares. this is opportunity.. the biggest traders aren't the best.
you could do 1000x return.. nobody cares. this is opportunity.. the biggest traders aren't the best.
Lucias, I really tried. Don and I have a good relationship. I may have gone too far in the negotiation process by asking for that complimentary dinner once a month. I thought Don would come through for you. Maybe we should bypass The Don and go straight to the Big Bob as in Bob Bright. Can you play poker Lucias. Maybe I can work out a deal if you beat Bob in poker, he has to stake you.
What I would want in a prop firm:
Someone that will show me soup to nuts how to trade a strategy that is profitable. Go over all it's ins and outs and why it works.
Then show me another one, after hours, while I trade the first one.
Then just experiment on other ideas after hours that could make everyone more money. (I now trade the two during market hours)
What I get paid doesn't matter if I get NO leg to stand on. (Leg = ONE profitable strategy that you can make work IF you have a decent chance of becoming a trader. If not, easy to fire me.)
Do these exist?
Someone that will show me soup to nuts how to trade a strategy that is profitable. Go over all it's ins and outs and why it works.
Then show me another one, after hours, while I trade the first one.
Then just experiment on other ideas after hours that could make everyone more money. (I now trade the two during market hours)
What I get paid doesn't matter if I get NO leg to stand on. (Leg = ONE profitable strategy that you can make work IF you have a decent chance of becoming a trader. If not, easy to fire me.)
Do these exist?
Lucias, you are wrong in your assumption that you need 10s of millions in real capital trading to get noticed.
If you have a 100k real account and trade it for 1 year, and say return 100% on it with 10+ months out of 12 positive, and 42+ weeks out of 52 positive, you will get backing. Ofcourse someone might not give you 10 million to start, but might start you smaller say with 1 million and few months down the line slowly increase your size. Important thing is do it with a real account, hypothetical performances don't really carry the weight, unless you have a 10,000 lines of code that does some automatic MM or stuff like that.
Quote from gmst:
Mav I m hoping you can respond to my PM whenever you get a sec. Hope you didn't miss it in all the PMs that you get
Thanks a lot.
Just did.