as i posted before, i traded there for almost 3 years. I agree with willy, he is correct when he says it is a great place to learn. When you start you are offered a 75 percent payout with a 2000/month draw (not nearly enought to live on in chicago and pay the correct amount of taxes) but they take 25% and put it in the bank as well. Your first year you are not going to make a dime. This makes it hard to make any money after that...not impossible though. The reason it is so hard is because if you do not have a 12 dollar ticket average you are on a 25% gross payout. so after 1 year you are in 24k worth of draw debt, but it really turns out to be 96k in debt because you are only being paid 25% of your gross. It doesnt stop there, because on top of that they take 25% of your payout and put it in a bank for a year. So just to break even your first year you have to gross about 120k. Hopefully this clears things up, my advice is after you learn to break even at this firm get fired and go somewhere else. If you can make 120 gross/year chances are you can net an average salary somewhere else with a 90% payout and no bank holdings working a pretty cool job
" I scratched along for over 9 months, which cost them over 20 grand, and I didn't owe a cent when I left. " You didn't cost them a cent. From talking to other traders that trade there, this place has such outrageous ticket prices that if you scratch by they still make money off your tickets. They prefer to have traders just get by so they don't have to put up much risk. I hear they monitor everyone and make them keep trading even if you don't want to just so they can make money off you writing tickets since that is their main source of income. I almost decided to go there. But after looking around and talking to people I saw that this place was not a good place for me to start my career.
This is true of some but not others. I was a gross scratch, not a net scratch. If I was net scratching on the 6 or even 4 dollar tickets, they would've kept me. I know what you're saying though. I know what they pay compared to what they charge people. Many people in that office are just there to trade. Some get paid on the gross plan (the 25% the other former trader noted above) while others just keep chasing the dangled carrot in front of them. As long as they trade decent volume, they're worth having around. That said, they never directly encouraged churning tickets or overtrading. Keeping ticket counts low was a big teaching point for new traders. Yes, eventually the guys who trade a lot with some success make them money, but they're still always better off teaching people to be disciplined. The business runs on the grinders, but they make the real money from the guys who make a killing, pay 6 dollar tickets, plus give them 30% and a bank.
If they are charging 6 per ticket and their cost has to be one or less, this is their main source of income. Do they pass through ECN rebates to the traders?
It is their main source. My guess at one point was that they probably pocketed 75k a day in ticket charges. Makes the 280k a month in draws paid out easily worth it. As far as I know, they cover the ECN charges and thus reap any benefits of rebates. A lot has changed since I left though so I don't know for sure.
The benefit of the ECN Rebates is to lower costs. How do they get away with charging such high tickets and screwing their traders of the rebates? If they keep the rebates I am sure their cost has to be next to zero. Has anyone asked them what their cost is? Most places will tell their traders what their costs are if they ask.
thats because once the old contract expires, you get a new one with different payout percentages. Don't forget that large 25% unvested pay sitting in their bank.