which way to turn...

[ironchef]

yes it is hard,but like in everything there is a flip side to it.Trader can be a gambler,risk averse person has problem with gambling.

In my opinion you are not risk averse rather you do not trust that people are honest enough not to steal your ideas. And for pro traders, to say trading is gambling is like saying a guy playing blackjack with a computer counting cards is a gambler.

You know the problem: The winning methodologies are fragile meaning they only work if few people uses them. This is especially true if your method only works for thinly traded instruments. As soon as they become popular, they lose their effectiveness: Basic law of economics.

This is what I would do: I save up some money, or seek help from friends and family, then trade alone live to check out my method. If it is any good, I will do well in a short time. After I established a reputation, it becomes much easier to get funding or negotiate a deal with any prop firm.

Merry Christmas.

 

[Van_der_Voort_4]

In my opinion you are not risk averse rather you do not trust that people are honest enough not to steal your ideas. And for pro traders, to say trading is gambling is like saying a guy playing blackjack with a computer counting cards is a gambler.

You know the problem: The winning methodologies are fragile meaning they only work if few people uses them. This is especially true if your method only works for thinly traded instruments. As soon as they become popular, they lose their effectiveness: Basic law of economics.

This is what I would do: I save up some money, or seek help from friends and family, then trade alone live to check out my method. If it is any good, I will do well in a short time. After I established a reputation, it becomes much easier to get funding or negotiate a deal with any prop firm.

Merry Christmas.

Yes i agree,it is a lot to do with trust.The strategy is all mechanical and it is very good,in range with some of the names that people and myself aspire to.I am outlier to normal distribution so i understand that this may have an affect on me.I was doing some testing by hand and was thinking what exactly was the turning point.This has a lot to do with my personality,when all go one way i go the other,when no one gets interested i pick up interest.So when researching things i had thoughts and ideas that were outside the box.Of course i did not understand this right away,first i spend months and months in Barnes and Noble in Union Sq or up B'way on Upper West Side or in Business Library on Madison Ave. reading all the book i could about trading.I was living in NY at the time access to material was kind of easy,but what was more is first time seriously learning something.
As to gambler,risk taker maybe yes to some degree.I am not a trader yet,i would become one after implementing this strategy and reason i posted in this section is trying to get opinions of the traders in the business and i do appreciate each reply.
I am leaning towards talking to a very established hedge fund for few reasons.One is that if you are established you have responsibility towards continuing your business.But on other hand i also would hook up with a lone wolf like me and never looked back just grow.
Another option i am thinking about is get in contact with some very wealthy business people and do a pitch like Dragon's Den and get them to found my business and be a partner.I would like to manage money of only athletes with office in Budapest.East meets West,no political affiliation.Any sports be it football,hockey,tennis,even poker players.What i would like to do is any profit for a given calendar year send it to them.No pyramiding,no hint of wrongdoing,just back to principal at end of the year.I have a strong conviction that i can be positive and give them that.You see even in this there is my personality,where nobody did something i get interested,after doing some reading and not finding specific "hedge fund" that trades money only for people in world of sports i would like to be in that sphere and nobody gives all the profits back to them each year,so i want to see next Mike Tyson have some money even if he did spend all he has earned from boxing.

 

[ironchef]

Van_der_Voort_4

To each his own. For me I am very happy as a retail trader trading alone at home with all the flexibilities in the world.

Good luck to you.

 

[algofy]

Maybe surf has room at his fund?

 

[NoBias]

Maybe surf has room at his fund?

You didn't get the memo? The fund Goodboy was associated with blew up, didn't go well for its investors.

 

[garachen]

Voort,

Your post is a bit confusing and smells a little of Marsman. I can tell you aren't the same person but there are some similar thought patterns.

It's just too improbable for a lone wolf to come up with something of genuine interest to a trading firm. It's difficult to overstate the importance of execution to the profitability of a trading strategy and anything dealing with proper execution is almost totally ignored in the literature. And you can't hope to tackle execution issues without data that the public generally doesn't have access to as well as intimate knowledge of the competitive advantages of the particular firm you are interested in.

For example, you probably wouldn't know that for various reasons very few firms are allowed to make money on forex. If you want to trade forex you only have 3-5 firms to really choose from. They are fairly large (except one) and have a reputation for stealing strats.

I know several funds that cater to athletes. It's all about relationships. Nobody cares about your strategy or your philosophy or how honest you are. You've either cultivated those relationships or you haven't.

Legit firms already have a basket of strategies and a basket of competencies that they are constantly iterating on and improving. They like to hire new people and train them but when looking for strategies from outsiders they want to ensure that it either dovetails nicely with what they are currently doing or it's somewhere in the roadmap for expansion in the next few months.

In order to get anyone to care, your strategy needs to have made at least $1m in the prior year. Real money. There should be max 1 negative month in the past year and it should be less negative than the best month was positive.
$10m is better and you can expect them to do a very thorough vetting if that is your claim.

My knowledge is of the US and some Brittish shops. Eastern Europe might be a little different but it's hard to really change the economics.

 

[ironchef]

Voort,

Your post is a bit confusing and smells a little of Marsman. I can tell you aren't the same person but there are some similar thought patterns.

It's just too improbable for a lone wolf to come up with something of genuine interest to a trading firm. It's difficult to overstate the importance of execution to the profitability of a trading strategy and anything dealing with proper execution is almost totally ignored in the literature. And you can't hope to tackle execution issues without data that the public generally doesn't have access to as well as intimate knowledge of the competitive advantages of the particular firm you are interested in.

For example, you probably wouldn't know that for various reasons very few firms are allowed to make money on forex. If you want to trade forex you only have 3-5 firms to really choose from. They are fairly large (except one) and have a reputation for stealing strats.

I know several funds that cater to athletes. It's all about relationships. Nobody cares about your strategy or your philosophy or how honest you are. You've either cultivated those relationships or you haven't.

Legit firms already have a basket of strategies and a basket of competencies that they are constantly iterating on and improving. They like to hire new people and train them but when looking for strategies from outsiders they want to ensure that it either dovetails nicely with what they are currently doing or it's somewhere in the roadmap for expansion in the next few months.

In order to get anyone to care, your strategy needs to have made at least $1m in the prior year. Real money. There should be max 1 negative month in the past year and it should be less negative than the best month was positive.
$10m is better and you can expect them to do a very thorough vetting if that is your claim.

My knowledge is of the US and some Brittish shops. Eastern Europe might be a little different but it's hard to really change the economics.

Looks to me like you know the business very well. You are one of the professionals around here, so can you give him some hope and some suggestions how to start?

Perhaps he can get a foot in the door in some lower level non trading position and works his way up? We all have to start somewhere and that somewhere is usually not at the top. I started my career as a temporary summer student hire, a job that was supposed to end at the end of that summer, ended up I worked for the firm for a decade.

Best wishes and happy New Year.

 

[garachen]

I thought about doing that but I really can't think of a way in that has much better odds than winning the lottery.

First step would be to ditch the "I have a strategy" approach. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't but it's off putting. An analogy would be the drug industry. If you live in a western country, drugs are developed by drug companies and others with access to research and testing facilities. They aren't developed by outsiders who are self educated who have concocted something in a high school lab. It doesn't matter how smart the person is or even if the drug actually works. It's just going to smell fishy.

Alternatively, it's really difficult to get into even an entry level job. @cjbuckley4 has talked about this. A friend of mine who runs another mid sized firm told me he gets over 1000 applications for 3 unpaid internships every year. Odds of making that cut while living in Eastern Europe are super low.

So that pretty much leaves marketing to unsophisticated people. Maybe the athlete thing isn't such a bad idea. But his post didn't really convey that he has the swagger and connections to pull that off.

I guess I just don't see a path forward. Hard for me to say that because I'm generally optimistic in these situations.

 

[propwarrior]

For example, you probably wouldn't know that for various reasons very few firms are allowed to make money on forex. If you want to trade forex you only have 3-5 firms to really choose from. They are fairly large (except one) and have a reputation for stealing strats.

that's interesting can you provide more colour on this?

 

[jj90]

As someone who traded real money, had a decent track record with decent account size and tried to raise AUM I can tell you unless you have the pedigree(read you came out of MIT with perfect GPA or Harvard grad with family connections), your not raising anything with an idea. I fully back garachen's posts