do you really believe that it takes a tremendous amount of reverse engineering to separate the trades by contributor?
With the benefit of your response, I am able to put your posts into their proper perspective. Thank you.
i didn't say trades.. i said strategies of those trades. they don't care what the stragegy is.. or if you even have one for that matter. some trader's styles may be 100% discretionary.
Sammy: Do you trade? It seems you certainly have a lot of idle time on your hands during trading hours!
lol, actually, i think it's helping. the time it's taking to type out my posts is allowing my winners to run. normally, i would have dumped them long ago.
This is THE BEST IDEA I ever heard of for a prop firm to implement. I think every prop firm should have this blackbox because then its actually makes it worthwhile to finance and train new traders to become winners so you can start making money off thier trades WITHOUT stealing strategies AND keep commisions as low as possible and payout as high as possible. You see the potential of this program to shift the prop firm agenda from producing the most commision generating traders to producing the most consistantly profitable traders.
How this for a prop firm model: Prop firm finances and trains new traders. Offers the lowest commisions and highest payout possible - so the traders have no incentive to leave even when very profitable. But the firm mimics the trades of the profitable traders without ever knowing the strategies of these traders and keeps 100% of profits/losses from these trades. Now that's a great model for a prop firm - because it aligns the interests of the firm and the trader - the highest profitabilty of the trader is the main goal. Under this model a firm doesn't even have to force a trader to only trade intraday strategies - if the trader wants to swing trade or do longer term stuff (whatever he is comfortable with) - it doesn't matter as long as he is consistantly profitable.
I am assuming that the blackbox will immediately send a order out when I hit the key. If that is the case a market order for 6,000 shs will go out at once and the stock (if thin enough) will most likely spread up and I would get a worse price than if I went market 3000 shs. And what about if I am long 3,000 - 4,000 shs and I am WRONG, not only do I have to work some magic to get out of my shs, but now I have to worry about some blackbox slamming the market as well. I don't trade thin stocks but to drop 8k on the market when I'm wrong would not be a good thing. Also I think that a computer could figure out your strategy if it wanted to, it would not be a big deal for them to do. But if I had a Q's or SPY strategy, trading really think stocks, or had a longer holding period. I might be interested.
2 advices for your friends: 1. They could go to collective2.com and pick a few good systems with verified trackrecords. Their extremely efficient blackbox is NOT needed at all, because the website is set up in a way, that signals can be transfered to your broker and executed immediatelly. See, there is no need to invent things already invented. They would pay probably much less than the promised 20%... 2. They could play a few ETers' trades posted in realtime usually in the Journal section. Wait a minute! It is free, so no 20% offer needed. See? I just saved 15-20% for your friends. I want a postcard for Christmas!!!!