35% is for the newbs. I start at 45% each month (and work up to 55%)... it's not the best deal (especially for lower volume guys) but I've always been paid on time and for the correct amount. besides I have no per share commissions. zero. and pay just over 16 cents per trade. which makes a a lot of sense when you're trading several million shares per day on several thousand trades. (I'd be losing money on a 95% .0025 deal!!) apparently swift's ETB list is one of the better ones... http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?&postid=998131 no prop firm is perfect, definitely not swift. but I found it to be honest and reliable (since i started in jan 2004.) and I'm not refering to the reliability of their trading platform. lol. mnx
Well i start at 40% and go to 55%, so i think you go from 45-60%. My average payout is like 45-47%, so yours is probably in the mid 50's. And for accuracies sake, there is a 6.5 cent/1000 clearing fee capped at something like 25 or 30 cents a trade. Although daily this is something like 35 bucks a day for me.
with swift do you have to put anything down? thats a good deal for somebody who does 1k or more lots. but i can argue that my scaling i get a better price 90% of the time than buying 1-5k blocks so that erases much of the advantage of per trade at 16 cents. if you buy 2k yhoo at $31.90 and i get it at an avg of $31.86 thats an $80 difference which fat offsets the commish. and we all know getting the low on any stock is 1 out 50 times so the scaling usually has the better price. but its very tedious. with 16 cent trades you must buy in bulk.
well to answer the first question...i work at swift and they have always paid on time...in fact i usually get my check a few days early....my check has never been wrong...in fact a few months ago we all got a surprise bonus because the island ecn gave our firm a huge rebate due to our volume.... which head office could have pocketed and we traders would never have known anything about it...and my bonus was like 3000k for the month of december and im a small fish here.....so people may bitch about swifts "low % payout" to the traders but at least they are honest and reliable about what they say they are going to do... Joeyata1.....no swifties do not have to put anything down.....we have 0 risk and that is why we dont get a 90% payout and why we can have huge buying power.
yes not a bad deal actually. i mean to be able to pay 16 cent a trade with 50% PAYOUT AND NO LIABILITY IS VERY GOOD. so if nuke hits and you're in 1 mil of stocks and market freezes and you lose 500k its all on swift? so you can trade with no fear.were do i sign up?lol
I've talked to so many different prop traders and but your experience seems to be par for the course. It's unusual to see this since a clean, low cost, honest business model would be able to steal greater market share, but you can tell the people behind these firms have no true respect or understanding of capitalism. They place more stock in deception, squeezing their traders in every way possible, while covering their own asses and locking their human capital down. I don't know anything about Bright though Don presents himself very honestly here, and the cheapest and most efficient I've heard of is Genesis (but I had two friends who had pretty bad things to say about the management there). A well managed firm should be able to set a competitive standard that moves prop to a better level if the industry ever matures. That is, before the SEC starts getting involved with the structure and function of prop trading.
i appreciate the individuals on this thread stepping up to recognize swift... which is a great place to learn and if not for them i would probably never made it as a trader. However as I mentioned in my initial post I have yet to see an honest and reliable firm and this includes swift... however this is not meant to be a flame thread on any firm as I've been through even worse firms which I wont mention. It seems as though this is a small industry and there isnt much out here I havent seen I may have to look into Bright as it doesnt seem any other names are being mentioned here...
Well, what happens if there is some sort of geopolitical crisis? If the market drops 10% in seconds, and you are leveraged 4, 10 or 20 times on a trade, you could be wiped out. I live in NJ, to bad or I think I would give swift a try. Joeyata1 is a seasoned trader, he is correct and I second it; 16 cents a trade and no liability, where do I sign up?