I've looked at a variety of different shops, and looked at different offers. I'm going to see what Susquehana is offering. But I want to call my own shots. I'm not interesting in sitting around taking ticket orders, and trading order flow.
Although I've never day traded before, I have been heavily invested in financial markets for close to ten years.
If you are getting into the business of proprietary trading, you need to think of yourself as your own company. If you want a job, go work for someone else. As for myself, even working at a hedge fund or proprietary desk at a larger investment bank. You are more of an order taker than making trading decisions.
Make no doubts about it, trading within a day window will be difficult. Technical signals are useless in the first hour of trading if the market gaps up or down. If you're like me, you have a $4 ticket round trip, $.03 commision round trip, $.08 spread to cover round trip, and $.02-.04 slippage. The larger institional houses have a better deal for traders because (1) they're usually the market maker, (2) get to front run the order flow, (3) get the analyst news ahead of time, and (4) commisions are just ECN fees. However, the payout is completely arbitrary, and if you hose a trade, you're done.
Now I read that people with 5K in a capital account get 1000 share leverage? Suppose you are trading a $50 stock. That is $50,000 notional value. And you have 4-5 positions open? That is $250,000 notional value. And I've seen people with larger capital account trading 10k share blocks?
But again, based upon the research I've been doing so far. You need to get at least a $0.15 jump on the share price. Less if you can good fills on your limit orders. But if you're getting good fills on your limit orders, chances are you're probably betting the wrong way. Does that mean I'm going to take losing 1/8 round trip on a trade? Calculating for slippage, probably. If I take less, great.
The strategy I'm taking is taking positions on the longer day trend, and building strength on the market pullbacks. Reversing positions when the longer trend disappears. So for the scalpers out there, our strategies are diametrically opposed. You're going for high percentage, low margin wins. (e.g. $0.04-0.05 on 70%) I'm going for low-percentage, very high payout wins. (e.g. blended $0.45 on 30%). Can we both make money? Depends on controlling the losses. I personally am not going to compete against the market maker that knows the order flow. I'd rather bet the trend which the market maker is trying to fade, because even he can't fade it forever. At least not with companies, like GE, IBM, AMGN, and PFE.
If you're a day trader, you're a short term speculator. This is a high-risk, high-reward type of a business. And in these endeavors, most people don't make it. Am I going to make it? Well that depends of my discipline, my intelligence, and my ability. I think so.
Anyways, flame me if you want. I don't care.