Since > 60% of my trades were losers, my broker must be front running or take the opposite side. Of course I won't tell you how much I made for the < 40% wins.
As long as they pay up on the profits, don't care if they want to keep my trades in house, Forex Brokers do this a lot I'm sure, Last 3months < -$100 = keep in house, fairly simple, otherwise just keep commission spread bit.
first let us know what your performance is, e.g., win/loss ratio, profit factor, trading frequency, holding time, etc. if you have a strategy that trades once per year, no one cares.
In fact you are not paranoid. Of course it would not concern most of us (because of size we trade) - but there are such situations in industry. 1st story - Nav Sarao (flash crash tader, who wasn't flash crash trader but this is long story for other topic). His orders were front-runned very often (all the time after some while). He wrote a lot of complaints (being member) and of course it did nothing. And what was funny - there was no difference if he placed 69 order by clip or 4 lots - he was front-runned each time. What he made then was to cooperate with soft developers and they developed front-end specially for him. I'm not an expert in software or technology so don't ask me how it was possible. But from what I understand - the software was sending order, and pulling it back before was confirmed (ok, we can call it spoofing, but it was no exact that). Using that he just fooled front running algos. Of course "the industry" couldn't agree to someone beating them in their own game. So the guy was "guilty" causing flash crash (even if he stopped placing orders 30 min before flash crash). And he was so sure that he didn't do anything wrong (and so naive hoping for fair trail) that he didn't escape, got lawyer and wanted to win this in court. The rest of story is known. 2nd story - I can't use names here but there was 1 person that after noticing front-running started to collect evidences. Recording screens with examples etc etc. Many months of evidences (about 1 year as I remember correctly). He suited exchange and here is interesting part - there was no trial. Exchange wanted to settle (for me it's obvious why). The guy retired after that, he didn't have to work anymore and he started a prop shop (he was not trading). As the 1st story can be known for some ppl, so I just used name, in 2nd I don't want to specify about which firm we are talking about, which exchange etc. I don't know what were the conditions of the settle. So you can laugh the guy but he is not paranoid The positive (or maybe not so positive ) info is - it doesn't concern most of us.
I wanted to add a poll with a question but it is not possible so I am writing it below: "Would you show your trading screens every day for the entire session in real time on TV/live streaming website?" Please post your replies below. If you look at it this way, it might get you change your opinion of me being paranoid
nav sarao's story was all i needed to know how corrupt the US exchanges and regulators are. 1. the guy is constantly frontrunned by prop firms, which btw the CME can't possibly not know. the CME has algorithms that detect this kind of stuff so they were clearly fine with prop firms doing it. 2. he gets frustrated so he spoofs them. 3. CME tells Nav to stop but Nav tells the CME to fuck off. 4. 2010 flash crash happens but SEC investigation + research done by American academics prove the 2010 flash crash was NOT caused by Nav, but instead due to algos being triggered by Waddell & Reed Financial's large hedge order earlier that day. 5. US needs to find a scapegoat so they pin it all on some brown guy trading in his mom's basement all the way across the atlantic ocean in the UK 6. his sentencing for CRIMINAL charges is now coming up in a few months in Illinois federal court. it's no coincidence you often see senior managment in chicago prop firms like for example, Jump trading, have people who leave to join the CME board and return. there's a revolving door relationship there similar to the one between firms like Williams & Connolly and Main Justice (DOJ). quoting george carlin, it's a big club, and you ain't in it. that being said, you probably only need to worry about this sort of thing if you're daytrading and clipping huge # of contracts. if you're trading daily/weekly timeframes, frontrunning or stop-hunting applies less to you.
My guess is there is a certain amount of money they (the exchanges and their clearing members) let you take without any issues. I estimate it to be about $10M per year max. Above that level they will not like you, to say the least. Unless you are Trump's/FED chairman's family - then you can exploit the power of your words to make enormous profits. Solution which I will implement - trade different exchanges/OTC FX.
do you mean james simons rentec has special relationship with cme, etc like club so that they let james continue to make big profits?
I do not know this particular man. However, I advise you to read the story about Advantage Futures and 3Red Trading (biggest trader on CME???) and what penalties it ended in. I will never open an account there - again, I do not know them personally but it seems to me like a not-very-moral group of cronies