cool stories from a proprietary trading firm

1a2b3cppp · Jan 7, 2018

Which basically confirm how I thought proprietary businesses traded, by averaging into positions:

bold here added by me

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I worked at a day trading shop for 3 years 2006-2009 straight out of college. I learned that the ups and downs of the job are not right for my mental state and ultimately left to work as investment strategy analyst at a fund of funds hedge fund. However, during those three years I had a span of 3-4 months where I made close to a half a million dollars. Then there were months I made a regular income, 5-15k per month. The problem is I got used to that life style and when I had a span of a few bad months and made nothing, I was borderline suicidal. Really didn't work with my brain chemistry, so I stopped.

The guy that trained me was an animal. He really only traded 4 stocks (the most active at the time were RIMM, BIDU, AAPL, GOOG), and he did it like Tank in the Matrix, he looked at the level 2 quotes and traded solely off of those and "feel" of momentum. He didn't have down months, ever. He barely had down days. He would make 5-10k in a day, then go to the gym, driving range, bar, etc. He made 50-150k a month, every month, for the three years I was there. It was by far the most consistent trading strategy I had ever seen, but the fact that he did it solely on feel, made it very hard to emulate. He was trading with approx 5 million dollars of the firm's money and I never saw him have a day down more than 2-3k. He mostly traded Google, and didn't care about the news, the market, or anything other than those level 2 quotes. He barely even looked at charts, the only time he did was to get an idea of what the levels for the day and for the week were to see where there would be additional buyers and sellers.

There were also others. There was a guy that surrounded himself with like 10 monitors traded on 3 monitors and played poker on 5 monitors all while watching a movie or playing some game on his main monitor. I dunno his strategy because he didn't sit next to me and didn't talk much, but I know he made over 2mil during the first few months of 2008. He was the epitome of patience, and literally NEVER had a position on when I walked by his desk. He just sat there watching his movies and folding poker hands. However, I guess when he saw the right bet (in either poker or the market) he pretty much went all in.

There was also a guy that traded only apple stock... All day. He would rack up 100k shares a day in and out of just apple. I believe he traded it against the QQQ at the time. He essentially took the position that Apple leads the Nasdaq and traded the two off of each other all day. He was the most volatile trader I've ever seen he'd make 300k in a day, then lose 150k in a day, then repeat. I never understood how he slept at night. But, he was consistently a top 10 guy at the firm, making multiple millions a year. There were many others, just not as interesting as the above three.

Overall it was a great experience. I really learned and understood how and why the market does what it does. It taught me that day trading is not for me, but I got a few longer term strategies out of it that I still use today. Just on a much smaller scale and NOT as my sole source of income.
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There were lots of interesting people that worked there. Many people were loners, not sure if that's because they were introverted, because it takes a certain type of personality to be a good trader, or because no one really wanted anyone else to know their strategy. Probably a combination of all of them.

There was a guy that was very mysterious. He came in and talked about his super secret strategy, said he would take 2 new hires, and made us take a test to decide who he was going to take. Very open ended and obscure. (It was a random stock chart with peaks and troughs in a channel that eventually went up. He just said, write down what you think of this. To this day I remember it vividly, and everyone kind of being like W T F should I write, I just want to be picked to be in his fund.) The story was that in the 2005 he made 10 mil, then in 2006, he took 5 mil of his own money and 20 mil of the company's money and made a "fund." He already had one guy, and was hiring two more to learn his strategy. I didn't get picked. The two kids that were picked were rarely if ever seen, and they never talked about what he did. I still never found out, I heard he got huge and just trades his own money now.

The overall atmosphere there was interesting, there were lots of clashing personalities. Not as much debauchery as people would think. There were literally no girls. My year had one girl. She lasted exactly the 12 months then left. The overall mentality was that girls are too emotional to trade. In my experience, there's guys that are WAY too emotional to trade. People kept to themselves, but there were little cliques. Interestingly people gathered based on the strategies they traded. There were the Level 2 traders. There were chart guys. There were "sitch" guys, who traded situations where a stock shot up for some unknown reason. There were longer term traders who were in a different room altogether.

There was a guy who made a team of these "sitch" (situational) traders. They had like 10000000 different alerts for if stocks went up/down a huge % in a short period of time, or spiked in volatility, or had too many shares trade in a short period of time. Then they'd have guys in the news to figure out if there's something going on. If they didn't find some news they would take the other side of the trade and wait to see if the trades either get broken up by the market for being erroneous, or if they stood. Most of the time the trades got broken up and no one was harmed. What sometimes happens is people make some dumb mistake, mistype a ticker, think the name of a similar company is related to one that is in the news. They would load up on the wrong stock trying to beat the rest of the market, and we'd short against it. Over the course of the next few days the stocks would go back to normal, and they'd make the difference, on a HUGE amount of shares. Some guys made a year on a trade like this alone.

Friends just came over. I can go on for days. Will be back tonight.
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Some guy's comment just reminded me of this. So when Bear Stearns was going to 0, I was trading. I remember vividly what was happening that day because it was a real shit show. The numbers are probably off by this point, but the idea is there. I believe this was a Friday, and pre-market we all got the update that BSC (their ticker IIRC) hat some unusual options activity, and went up then down, and was dropping. This was after a week or two of going out every day. Its possible that it happened over two days, and I'm confusing it now. Not sure. This was on the day heading into the weekend. I know that for sure.

One of the main strategies that MANY people traded was what we called the "rubber band" basically, stocks move like rubber bands, they can stretch out really far, but usually will spring back at least some. Others call this same thing by different names, I believe the whole fibbonaci / golden ratio is based on this. I won't get into the underlying theories.

Naturally almost everyone at the firm started buying at the open. Instead of going up, the stock spent the day going from 60 to 30. By noon, half the firm was stopped out of their positions on the way down. Essentially the whole place had a horrible day because most people kept buying on the way down ("catching a falling knife"). Even the seasoned traders were adding to their positions on the way down saying that this thing HAS TO BOUNCE, it just went down almost 100 points in a day. News or no news, most of us had never seen anything like this with a "legit" company. So by the end of the day, the stock is in the low 30s, and most of the firm is just sitting around dumbfounded watching CNBC. At this point the only people with positions in BSC were the best traders at the firm. They were LOADED UP, like millions of dollars long, and all essentially TELLING their managers that they were going to hold the position over the weekend. You gotta understand, these are guys that all have made in the millions of dollars to that point in the year, and who the fuck were these managers (many of whom didn't even really trade anymore) to tell them that they couldn't do whatever they wanted.

So its like 3:30-3:45 and the old-head Master Splinter type manager of managers comes out (well call him Master Splinter), and starts arguing with the traders. He was very well respected, usually whatever he said went. He came out and said anyone that is still alive (not stopped out) with a BSC position, is NOT allowed to hold it over the weekend. So these traders start losing their shit, like I'll put my own money up if you need, I know its gonna bounce, its been in the 30s for a while, how much lower can it go... We already down howmany ever hundred thousand, how can you make us take these losses on paper, this fucks our whole year. etc.

So after a few minutes of protesting, master splinter gets real quiet and goes, I don't give a fuck if you write me a check for a million dollars right now, if you want to work here on Monday, you will have 0 shares of BSC in your account by 4pm. If there is 1 share in anyone's account of BSC at 4:01, that person has no job on Monday. Don't even bother coming to work, I don't care if you were #1 in the firm last year or if you're up $5mm year to date. No more discussion.

Over TONS of protest, every last trader sold every last share of BSC. As you all know by now, we came in Monday morning and the stock was at $5. Master splinter really earned his stripes that day. The CEO came and praised him for saving the firm millions of dollars, he probably got a couple hundred grand bonus for it. Shit, these traders brought him bottles of champagne and other gifts for saving their asses/years. Master Splinter sat everyone down that Monday and explained that in the end there's only one thing that's important in trading, and that's living to fight another day. When shit like that goes down, its almost always not like anything you've ever seen before. The goal might be to make money, but not that day. That day you should be learning, you should be fluid, and you should not assume that what was true yesterday, and what might be true tomorrow, will be true today.

For those that say that you only hear about the winners.... That day was my second worst day ever. I had something like 3000 shares that I bought throughout the 50s close to the open, it was on its way down and I was thinking it was about to be done going down. Sometimes stocks start volatile down, then shoot back up, especially after news, and weeks of going down, etc. Anyway, it wavered there for a bit, even went up a touch to the point where I was up. Then all the sudden, BOOM, a huge order came in and the thing dropped like $2 at once. I hesitated, because I was pretty much even, just down a bit. I even thought about buying more, then in a few more seconds it dropped another $1.50. I hit the sell button but by the time I got printed, it was down another couple of dollars. I lost like $9k even though my stop limit was $5k. I felt like shit, this literally happened in the first hour or so of trading, and I had to sit there getting barraged by my manger for the rest of the day. It was an example of trying to sell, but the market falling out from underneath you. I hit the sell button on the way down, but by the time I got my print, the stock was wayyyyy below where I pressed the sell button.
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Because you're not just sitting there with your entire book full of stocks all day. Quite the opposite actually. More like I see a $30 stock that I think is going to move, so I buy 100 shares, it moves .20 cents against me, I buy 100 more, it moves another .10 cents against me, so I sell both lots. That's down $40 from one trade, plus lets call it $3 in commission. Assuming you don't lose all trades all the time, you can actually go for a while with a $250 stop loss.

I should add that just because you could trade up to $250k, doesn't mean that you wielded that much at once. If you were a relatively new guy and had all $250k invested at once, you better pray to whoever the fuck you pray to that a manager didn't see you, or that you didn't have a tick go against you that forced you out of your position down significantly more than $250. Oh boy. That would not end well for you.
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There are situations where you can load up on a good risk/reward trade and not stand to lose much if you're wrong.

For instance. We would trade large round numbers, like Apple @100. If its trading at 102-105 for the past few days, and it looks like its going to touch 100, its a pretty good bet that it won't go below 100. So you can buy shares at 100.25, 100.20, 100.15, 100.10 etc. Then it may come close to 100, touch 100, but not go down below 100 because there were so many buyers there. So sometimes you would get 2000 shares at 100.13 knowing that you would sell them at 100.03 (or 100.00 if you lived dangerously) if it looked like it was going to have the momentum to push through. This is where knowing how to read a level 2 book is extremely useful. You are risking 10 cents x 1500 ($200) for the possibility that it goes down a bit, doesn't go through, then pops back up to 101, 102, 103, etc. In which case you make a few grand.

Its worth noting that over the years that I was there, the computers started outsmarting people in these trades, and pushing the price through 100, just to force others to sell. It was always a game of think 3 steps ahead of your opponent, but try not to outsmart yourself. You also had to have a VERY fast machine and market feed. If you got frozen up and the stock blew through 100, you might not get to sell your 2000 shares until it was at 99.30, in which case you were fucked with a
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1a2b3cppp · Jan 7, 2018

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Fools are upvoting anecdotes instead of real data.

Your real data showed that more than 80% of daytraders lost money. So just like poker, only less fun.

There is a tiny group of daytraders that do consistently beat the market, by 0.62% per day. That is huge, but it is before transaction costs. This small group of truly successful daytraders should be given capital, to amortize their transaction costs, and make great money. The rest should get out.

Thank you for your post.
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What percentage of traders consistently beat the market?
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0.77%. 393 out of the 51,347 they looked at.
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lawrence-lugar · Jan 7, 2018

Some of those stories are weird/crazy/sloppy.

You really have to be just a Master of One thing...Japanese traders CIS and BNF come to mind here.
They only follow and trade the broad index on a daily, or overnight and/or a swing basis.

If you can master the broad market, the big game, you got something powerful...that's not fleeting like a temporary strategy.

sle · Jan 7, 2018

1a2b3cppp said:
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I wonder how many of them retained their edge through the years and what fraction of people is successful in day-trading manually today.

Bobbybax · Jan 7, 2018

If you are a market maker or trade like one then of course you average. What makes a great market maker is recognizing when you might be in the middle of a multi-sigma event.

SoesWasBetter · Jan 7, 2018

Everything crypto or chinese is a multi signma event today

rolando87 · Jan 7, 2018

Loved reading those stories keep em coming if you find more.

Dan4455 · Jan 7, 2018

I traded with a former NYC prop shop trader who claimed to be a master. He has written two books . He had his trading students read his books as the training. His books read like grade school book reports. He didn’t follow his books rules in reality. He charged 6k to be a trader with him and I have to say he made the 6 k back ina short time once we got going . At first traded were profitable md he really seemed like a master. He never used stops, used his “levels” as entry/ exit points . He traded against the direction of the market and leveraged trades to the hilt . I went through many many maintenance calls with him nd often got forced to sell while waiting for his level to hit for an exit. After six months my account dwindled from 200 k to under 100. His response was “add more capital”. His worst pick was uvxy long as he expected the bull run of 17 to drop all summmer. What I learned: use stops. Dont allow more than 1% portfolio value loss on any trade which goes back to using stops. The quick and the dead day trade. Which one will you be? Move stops up to protect profits. Don’t put all your chips on one position. Or if you do either celebrate when you win or be prepared to look for something else to do if you don’t control losses with strict stop loss placement. Don’t chase a stock that’s too far out from a breakout. Penny stock breakouts are lightning fast and mostly followed by a 50% or more pullback and may.not ever retest the high of the breakout. If you missed the breakout don’t expect history to repeat itself the next day. Find another trade to take. Trade with the trend. If your account isn’t growing monthly then consider changing your method. Last I heard the master lost most of his traders . Bla bla bla - my 2 cents. No lies or bs. This is a true recent story

SoesWasBetter · Jan 7, 2018

Whenever mentor guru scum call it capital and not MONEY, you know you're dealing with a shark.

Come to think of it, anyone calling themselves a mentor or guru is already a shark.

We have quite a few here

sle · Jan 7, 2018

Dan4455 said:
He charged 6k to be a trader with him
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Wait, what? You worked for him and he CHARGED you money? Am I missing something?

SoesWasBetter said:
Come to think of it, anyone calling themselves a mentor or guru is already a shark.

We have quite a few here
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I assume I made that list of sharks? On a serious note, anyone on the institutional side of the business eventually has to become a "mentor". After a certain point, you need to hire people and train them, otherwise you end up doing everything yourself.