Any one who has been at the firm this week for training- Could you please open our eyes as to what they are teaching you and if you feel it is legit. Who is training and why are they only hiring recent grads. There really is zero other information out there. Thanks
I would be interested too. I turned down an "offer" to join because I felt that the payout was low and that the description of the training and progression to real money sounded convoluted and vague. The simulator thing is all well and good but working 8 hours a day for 3 months without any chance of making money just wasn't worth it. I also question the logic of only hiring kids right out of school. Sure you can shape their minds, but why wouldn't you want experienced people on your desk? George West did seem quite genuine, but for some reason it just didn't add up for me. I would like to hear some insider info on how it is going there.
Looks like this is the training they are giving. Will be interesting to see how many can actually be profitable if/when they get real accounts. Sounds like they designed it to generate commission dollars rather than to make their traders money. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1997276#post1997276
You actually don't pay commissions out of your pocket. You pay commissions on the profits, if that makes sense. I.E. If you make $5,000 and trade 100,000 shares (about $1,000 in commissions) then you get $2,500 (50% payout) minus $1,000 for commissions...so $1,500. If you loss $5,000 in a day and trade 100,000 shares, you are not responsible for the$ 5,000 (may be fired though) and you are not responsible to pay the $1,000 on commissions. The only thing you actually pay for are the quotes (Nasdaq and NYSE) which is probably about $200 a month. During the training period you don't pay for them though.
What happened? I thought there were a couple of good traders that frequented ET that used Genesis. Wonder where they are headed too.
I can testify that Genesis is basically 90% finished. Several jr. traders still remain and there is a slight possibility that they may be scooped up by the parent company, though that is uncertain. Many of us actually started trading well or at least more consistent by November/December. Unfortunately it got very ugly in January and February. We could also not climb out of the hole that we dug ourselves into during our first several months. For some traders, the stop-loss was much greater in the beginning and contributed to this problem. All being said, trading at Genesis was a great learning experience. Although the firm will close at the end of its office lease, it was a totally legit operation. There was no initial contribution and none of the traders paid any software or quote (NASDAQ/NYSE) fees. We were also not responsible for any commissions or for the loses that we endured. Our boss was more than fair and reasonable. It goes to show that trading has a lot to do with intuition, disciplined-confidence and momentum, considering he was profitable, seemingly effortlessly, around 85% of the days for over half a year (till February that is).
So in the end did you actually make a paycheck or did you give it all back? What are you plans going forward? (I'm also in CT and looking for new opportunities). I actually turned down an offer from Genesis to join because their high frequency trading style didn't suit me. Sorry to hear it anyway...good luck.
I did not receive a paycheck. Although I made money in November, it did not make up for the amount I had lost combined in September and October. No one in the entire firm was even close to being net positive overall unfortunately. Like any hedge fund or what not, the payout structure was set up that you only get paid if you were net positive overall (made up for losing months). Then I had a significant down month in January and another small one in February. Once I heard rumors that we were going to shut down I resigned in the end of February (I certainly didn't want to continue paying rent for no cause)... I was lucky too because other traders with relatively similar performance got laid off shortly after I left. Currently I'm applying for other prop positions, ideally in NYC, though I'm also sending out resumes to Chicago. One last thing about your reference towards the style of trading at Genesis... we actually had total freedom of how we traded as long as we didn't hold positions overnight and obeyed our stop loss. If I had a position of 1000 shares or more, I'll be content getting as little as ten cents (depending on stock and volatility) and then slowly scaling out of my position 200 shares at a time. If I held 200 shares of a stock, however, I may hold that position for up to four hours or whatever.