Mr. Don wrote: I think we had agreed earlier in the thread that Bob's the shit. (unless you're a busboy )
ga trader that's not true. ask bob 95% or more of brights traders trade nyse. .007 is an awful rate for nyse. for 1 mil a month many firms will give .0025 or less for that type vol on nyse. if bob will give .004 all in for naz thats a great rate if you bang the bid and ask. but you're right if you;re at .0035 and hit bids and ask's all day long you're at .006 avg or more inlcuding sec fee. there's guys with echo at .0025 getting 100-1 or more intrady for a few million a month or less vol. echo hold etc will bacially give a seasoned trader they trust unlimited intrady at 1/2 or less brights rates
Great traders come from many different backgrounds, from Wall Street to Main Street. If a trader is "home schooled" but is consistently profitable after several years and putting up good numbers then that's all that counts. Some of the great traders from the Market Wizards books were home schooled. Losing money in the markets and understanding and learning from your mistakes is the best tuition out there. The problem is that most traders are undercapitalized and won't last until they can turn the corner. 90% of new businesses fail because of undercapitalization, and trading is no different.
Sorry, but I have to step in here....Recently, I have gotten several traders from my friends at ECHO..coming here for various reasons (nothing bad about Echo, and traders do move around at times, both ways)...and most are within 10% of the fees we gave them. Those .0025 rates are a thing of the past (there may be a few "grandfathered" in for some reason). Heck, having a "loss leader" price is just not our style. GAtrader is pretty much right on with his analysis. Pricing is a variable, simple as that. .004 for all shares above 1,000 on any trade...the bigger traders are not complaining at all. Don Oh yeah, I forgot... Quote from Maverick74: What about the balance sheets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One more thing....I really have to thank everyone for keeping the "Bright Trade" thread up....I've had a bunch of calls from people reading it....so, at the next ET get together, drinks are on me!! Don
And yet, there is always so much talk about paying your "tuition" in terms of losses in the market. But if the knowledge that you learned paying the tuition is useless, then why pay the tuition at all? Its like puring money down the drain. When you pay your tuition in terms of blowing up, you learn (hopefully). when you learn, you gain knowledge. Somehow something deosn't make sense here.
I tend to agree...let's review this "knowledge" question a bit. I have had hundreds of traders in front of me over the years, and 99% did not have the "knowledge" to trade at first. They did not know how to evaluate fundamentals properly to determine the bias of a long short pair...how to determine valuations for Mergers, how the floor traders arb their futures/options/equities/interest rates and all the rest. They did not know how foolish it is to use market orders for "speedy executions" on the NYSE...They didn't understand the "crowd psychology" of pivot points, or the "self fulfilling prophecy" aspect of TA. They didn't understand how to value conversions and reverse conversions on options...and the difference between historical and implied volatility in Black Scholes modeling (or the greeks involved for that matter)...they didn't know about "trade throughs" or how to trade on the same side as the Specialist when it happens with price improvement...... (I'm just taking this off the top of my head, you get the idea)... Is any of this of value...absolutely.....is knowing all of this going to guarantee trading success....absolutely not. A mechanic has to have knowledge, tools, and a good ear to fine tune a race car....a trader needs knowledge, capital, tools, and some good intstincts to make money. The "knowledge" can be explained (hopefully even learned, LOL).. and how you get it is up to the trader...on the floor, part of a trading group at Goldman...sitting next to IndexArb...being an "understudy" ... but I have yet to see it all put together in any book or set of books. Everyone learns differently...some pay a little, some pay a lot... some just don't try or care and think they can just dive in... which may even work at times. (OK, enough rambling, I think you get my points). Don
OK, let me jump in here. I could not disagree more. First of all, knowledge is far too ambiguous a word to have any relevance here. True, when one blows up, they do gain knowledge and wisdom. But this does not mean it will lead to profitability. How do I know this? Because 90% to 95% of all traders fail and they all gained this so called knowledge or widsom by paying their tuition or blowing up. So this cannot be argued with a sraight face that knowledge leads to profitability. When people talk about paying your tuition in terms of losses, this can only be said in hindsight after a trader has had such losses and has become profitable.