There are 36 trades on that demo. Usually traded Crude Oil (Brent), Gold, Natural Gas, and Emini S&P. Random throw-ins of corn or another commodity. I take it by a lot, you mean ~60+ trades? My strategy isn’t to scalp trends. I usually swing trades, but if I were to scalp, I need to make sure the breakout is there or the trend isn’t a red herring.
You have enough financial education to be suspicious of this kind of performance, no? Why would you ever need to get to prop firm with these kind of results? Contact @Earn2Trade-Ryan
1. Transferred from a state school to an Ivy. For what it’s worth, on average the kids at the Ivy tried a lot harder. I think this is the primary distinction. The subject matter of the classes remains approximately the same—what it takes to be competitive goes up a notch. 2. If you really believe your demo account success will translate then what’s wrong with a T3? The sort of strategy you can do in a ninja trader demo account isn’t the sort of strategy most OMMs do, it’s closer to what these guys do. If you think the demo results will translate why not swing for the fences at one of these firms? I feel remiss suggesting you should take a job without benefits or a salary on the hope that your strategy works, but you went to Pitt and your username appears to be a hockey reference, so to presume a bit too much about you I say “why not swing for the fence while mom and dad still have your back and you don’t have kids or a mortgage?” We can sit here and say prop firms are wrong to be so selective, but at the end of the day the market doesn’t care if you studied printing blue benjamins at MIT or lit at Pitt. Go prove us wrong. The big flaw in my argument above: opportunity cost in terms of professional education. I have a few suggestions there but let’s see how this is received. Rest my weary fingers a bit...
Of course... but it wasn’t 100% all luck. The only thing about prop firms that I really like is the training... specifically live classroom like training. At my stage, albeit a little raw, I have room to grow and I feel a mentor would be the best pursuit to tap said potential. I would do TopStep, Oneup, or Earn2Trade once I have a little more experience and capital. I laughed at the hockey reference. Although I am an avid fan, it isn’t a reference lol. Actually, after an interview I had with Chimera, I got food at this hole in the wall coffee shop/diner. A guy next to me and I started talking and he talked about how he made his money trading SIN stocks (Beer, Tobacco, and stuff like that) along with an Australian stock called Bin (Bingo). He kept saying SIN BIN and I liked the ring of it haha. Back to the post, I’m not sure if my strategy correlates as well when live. Everyone that I’ve talked to said it’s good because it works for me and is contextually deep in discerning price action/movement for each prospective trade. Problem is... never been live so I don’t know if I can make that comment saying what I’m doing now is good enough. My main point was the road block between a desk and myself, according to the partners/recruiters, was my educational background. Like I said to the post above this, I feel like the best step in my career (when it starts) is to have a mentor that can really refine what I may be doing wrong in my analysis or what I may be doing wrong in general. The logic of having experience is 100% sound. I get that. Sadly, financing myself since I was nearing the end of High School hasn’t left me with much. I get that leaverging could solve that problem, but if I’m wrong, I can’t take on that risk at the moment. I only did a couple trades on Robinhood to see “live”, and I use that loosely, trading.
Okay, so I was wrong about you being a spoiled rich kid like me and all the guys I grew up playing hockey with, but was I right about your primary concern being the professional development aspect of your first trading job and what you'd lose as a result of not being in a "proper" prop shop. I have a somewhat contrived response, but work with me. There are two sources for the kind of mentorship you'd get at a prop shop that don't require making the cut: 1. the right corners of the internet. There are some really good old posts here. garachen has to date been my best mentor in this space and we've never met face to face. I've met a couple other guys from this site in person and you would be surprised--some major sideshows around but a couple of very successful mentors who are worth listening to. Nuclear phynance is even better in this regard. I don't know how quant or high freq you want to go, but NP has some polymaths who I guess are just too bored with working out the edge cases in their own trading systems and want to help out/show off how smart they are. If you find the right guys and build their respect they will help you a lot. The thing about the internet though is you really need to know where to look. I just got you halfway there. 2. Again, kinda depends on what you want to do, but be aware that the heads of education at two pretty major OMMs have written books. Everyone has these books--probably less than 1/3 of people I've met on wall street have a mastery (I'm in the 2/3rds too). Once you get some context in prop trading you realize there are basically three ways to make money: 1. arbitrage 2. information asymmetry 3. quoting W/r/t 1 and 3 you will get a good chunk of what you'd get out of a mentor by reading the books. What you won't get is the infrastructure or operational capabilities to do these trades--that's a totally separate battle and that's where a prop shop achieves its economy of scale. That doesn't mean you can't learn from these principles and incorporate this knowledge into whatever else you're doing to become a better trader though. I don't screen resumes and if I did they wouldn't be for option market makers, but I could imagine if a candidate claimed to have mastered Natenberg front to back as an interviewer I would at least be interested in attempting to call their bluff.
Awesome! Thanks for the write-up. It helps a lot. One thing about a mentor that I like is the structure and discipline. It’s not that I can’t do it by myself, it’s just more or less a preference. Still have a long way to go to be where I want, don’t think OMM is the direction, but just have to get that first step!
No worries. One thing I should mention as well is that in my experience prop firms are not super interested in swing trading. Maybe someone with a bit more diverse experience can confirm or refute that, but in my experience there are kinda four flavors of prop firms: 1. OMM: Belvedere, Akuna, CTC—a long list 2. HFTs: HRT, Citadel, Jane Street, etc. 3. The guys who I don’t know much about but *maybe* would do some of this: chimera, kreshner, SMB 4. physical commod: EDF, Trafiguria, Vitol, etc. Really I don’t know that swing trading is that common in the prop community. I think swing trading is most applicable to: 1. Retail 2. Hedge funds/CTAs 3. A risk management approach that is similar to swing trading is applicable to dealers in illiquid markets or with huge balance sheets. Again, I’m not a Wall Street veteran, this is just the lay of the land I’ve gotten.
To add to what @CME Observer said, this business is an odd mix of an apprenticeship and education. If you find the right guy to work with, it will take you far but in the end the education comes from within.
Thank you! Chimera and a couple others listed are intraday trading. I’ll only swing if I see upside, but it’s really hard to scalp and be right, from your backtests, in the futures market. The numbers usually don’t equate if you don’t do it right lol. I haven’t tried Citadel, Jane Street, or any of the phys. Comm. firm listed. I’ll do some research on the p.c. firms. Won’t send out the resumes yet, but will continue to refine my strategy and so on.
Nothing new here, just nice article. Anyone has anything to say about Maverick? Are they part of T3 (otherwise, why are they praising competitor)? https://mavericktrading.com/what-is-proprietary-trading/