Bingo! See, that's where I was hoping this discussion would end up at, a business need that is lucrative and yet unfufilled. Rock on jason_l.
Hi Waterloo, In my rather curt reply, I wanted to indicate that in spite of the habitual ET loads of friendly advice, nobody can really help you much with this but yourself. You are the only person who can determine what you really want to get into. Once you have this sorted out, the rest will fall in place almost by itself. As you said, you now are faced with decisions that other people used to make for you. Although our environments and aims are probably quite different, I have to solve exactly the same riddles as you. This took a lot of learning and growing into. Equipment problems have always been a small part of my worries. Be good, nononsense
Now this is my turn to ask a question. Would you prefer to make $1MM a year trading or doing contract / consulting? Of course, ignore the obvious background questions, i.e., how much capital? for instance, making $1MM on 10MM is nothing, but making 1MM on .5MM is impressive, etc. And how many hours in contracting, let's put down the regular 2500-2700 hours.
Both. (I do the trading, my monkeys do the consulting). Try to grow the business into something that is more than just me. That's all.
This is exactly what some of the prime brokers provide, GS, BofA, etc. I was with both for some period of time, in both setups, all the tech support, feed management (access to Reuters RMDS, ticker plants, etc), space, cable, etc, are provided by the prime broker. All I pay was rent (which is only slightly above market for built-out space). Of course, none of the setups provide any sort of custom server / rack space / compute farm type of setup. For these type of services, you are on your own.
I'd prefer doing it trading. I personaly bill about 2000hrs a year at 75-100/hr, which is no where near the 1MM. I've hit that in revenue when I've had a few more contracts that I sub'ed out to independents. There's also times when the IT market has slowed down to the point that I've accepted salaried positions at other firms and let my company "hibernate".
Did I miss it, or did anyone ask what markets were involved. imho a solution for equities is much different than a solution for futures etc... Anyway, waterloo, if you have any questions about equities or futures solutions I have built more than a few. The current futures platform we are running on is my best yet, by far, and I feel it is VERY competetive in the marketplace. -The New Guy
I guess in a way figures are irrelevant, it is if you would prefer making $200k trading or $200k as a consultant. Problem is time and energy, building up a good consulting rolodex takes time, and building up a good trading strategy also takes times. Both of them are full time endeavers and requires a lot of attention.
Yes except consulting has becomes a terrible business in general - as another poster suggested when they had to "hibernate" the company and take a salaried job. Do a detailed market study of the IT consulting business and you will quickly run away from it. The dynamics of this business have shifted from great (1980 - 2000) to extremely poor (even in 2005 where we have seen a partial recovery). Trading has not changed much over the last 25 years for the indivudual - basic considerations are still the same and you can still make money although not as easily. Consulting in IT is supersaturated and commoditized with players at nearly all market niches and levels. Only very, very specialized niches still exist in the private sector: Basically if it has been written down in a book the niche is not worth the pursuit ... only average returns at best.