If you are placing your trades online, can your broker see them ? The reason I am asking is that if you have a very successful track record & if he can see your trades, he is likely to trade either his account or other clients accounts using your orders ? If yes, how do you prevent it ? Thanks
In the futures world, they can see all working orders ( the Risk Manager for sure ). In fact, some silly futures brokers and certain front-end platforms will treat working orders as open positions and debit your account real time for risk purposes. Yes, it is the nature of the beast. I believe that you should only "worry" about it if your clearing firm and/or brokerage also trades on a proprietary basis, or if you are in fact a proprietary trader. Everything gets stolen at prop firms - whether they care to admit it or not.
I have traded at a number of different firms and found my fills varied markedly at the last few firms that I've traded with in Chicago. Recently I traded with a big non-prop Chicago broker. Seemed I couldn't get a good fill and got stopped out more than ever before in my career. It was my suspicion that my orders were being given/sold to the algos that the firm cleared. I am very cautious to make that statement but the immediate difference in the quality of my fills was significant when I switched firms. Add to that, the depressing atmosphere in the first firms office made me think that I wasn't the only one getting bad fills. One of the employees of the first firm had said to me, in a candid moment, that they believed that 'human' traders were finished. So why not let the firms own algo clients feed off the rotting carcass -would be a logical outcome of this line of thought. So my question is -which Chicago firms are friendly for human -point and click traders? According to bone's post it's best to avoid the firms that have their own prop business, but in my experience there are some non-prop firms out there that should be avoided too.