Don has sugercoated the facts for yrs. For instance don has defended his 2-3 fold greater than industry commision rates as competitive, Don makes it sound like its an honor for a 2-3 mil share a month guy to go to bright and spend an extra 6-12k a month in commisions.don has always acted like commissions aren't a big part of brights profit and the truth is they have been a huge part of it, now don has the balls to say he' providing"free capital" for the honor of still taking 10k a month extra of commissions and TAKING 50% OF THEIR PROFIT. What i find incredible is that don says some of his traders keep millions in there bright account. If thats the case why do they need bright?Having to take part of the profit is the last straw for many prop firms like bright and i expect a dieing industry as regulation kills it. Ita time for true traders to put up there own money and trade retail like the good old days. all this leverage is whats destroyed wall street,
Interesting as always. The higher volume guys pay .003, pretty competitive (unless compared to Canadian Swift business models). And, if you read my posts...we do suggest that the guys with an extra few $million move a lot of their trading to retail. Not sure how to react to the "extra commissions and 50%" comment, since it is not factual. The 50% given to those with our zero risk plan is the only thing at 50%, and their commission can go as low as .002. Just keeping it real.... Don
Hi Don, Regarding the "top people (some who had fewer than 7 losing days this year..)" you referenced below, what type of strategy do they use, are they pair traders? Also, what kind of risk:reward are such traders experiencing. Given the few losses, either they are infrequent traders or each loss consumes a month of profits... Assuming that their wins are several times higher than the losses, I guess pair traders that average-in (layer-in) several times over the course of a few months would have have such an exceptional win:loss ratio. thanks, Walt
We, obviously, don't share any of our traders proprietary trading strategies. We do, however, share the general of "what is working now, and what is not working now" in general terms. And, yes, most of our top people focus on pairs in one form or another. Don
What is the "opportunity cost" for a day trader who has to put up their own capital and take ALL losses against their contributions while also having to give up 20% of the profits? Unless this 80/20 payout becomes the standard model for the prop industry, there are other options, such as joining a CBSX (where .003 is common, and without volume minimums), or as mentioned by another post: "trade retail like the good old days."
Don, I'm curious why you have the 1000 share threshold on your rates? For these smaller traders, you are encouraging them to trade size that maybe they should not be trading. Hell when I started trading at Worldco back in 2000 I had a 100 share limit to start. And even when I was trading 300k shares a day, I would say 75% of my traders were under 1000 shares per order. In fact many of them were 100 share orders when I carried 5k to 8k share positions. The reason for this is we liked to tick the listed stocks. Do you think it's smart to incentivize newer and smaller traders to trade that kind of size? BTW, I got your messages.
Trading 1000 shares today IMO is a lot less risky than it was 15 years ago when I started trading full time. First, back then you were looking at spreads of 1/8 or sometimes 1/4. Right off the bat you could lose $125 or $250 if the market moved. Today with penny spreads your risk is less; you have more time to bail, and minimize losses. Second, back then commissions were much higher than today, so you have another advantage today. Finally, no one forces any trader to trade 1000 shares. Trading less shares may result in higher commissions but that's really not a big deal IMO. Last, one need not trade 1000 GOOG -- there are plenty of lower priced stocks that can have great intra-day movement where 1000 shares isn't a big amount of capital to have on the line.
I don't think Bright's model is in danger (i'm not exactly sure why Don hasn't mentioned it, although I can think why), one word - haircuts. I think bright's made more off me in haircuts than commissions and if not it's pretty damn close.