Thanks for reading the whole thread. I was starting to think I was in bizarro world or something. Hopefully this thread can get on topic now.
for what my opinion is worth... I dont see the point in needing a prop shop anyways... (maybe because i trade FX religiously and can get 400:1 leverage if I want) If you can trade you dont need them, and if you did know how to trade and had taken the steps to get there you would know that what you needed to full time trade was a bigger account so that profits through the year is what kept you afloat not streaks of nothing and you werent concerned with not making money.. meaning that its great you worked for a prop shop and have a 3.1 gpa and what not but none of that is important If I ran an upscale prop shop I would know that discipline and money management. I look at volatile equity curves and I think no way is this guy touching my money... I would think this guy went to a prop with 2500 - 50k and wanted to act like this was his only job? maybe somewhere else buddy.. If i saw the strain in your account I would say to myself he didnt get a 2nd or 3rd job to make the extra cash.. he stressed out the account.. so hes not disciplined enough to be a trader and doesnt have the drive.. someone with drive would have gotten a job even at mc donalds. Also if I saw a "decimated"<-- word u used account I would rather than being safe he ruined the account he will do it with my account. not only that But i would look at stats in the account peak to valley drawdowns profit factor average leveraged size.. if a trader cant beat the dow with no leverage he doesnt deserve to leverage... so dollar profit per dollar used. so I would pitch yourself like that... I was trading with 10k capital at X prop shop and worked 2 other jobs because I wanted my profits to help build my account and to relieve stress on my trading because capital preservation is my top priority .. notice my peak to valley draw down is never over X% because I feel that leverage is an amplification factor and without a superior edge like being able to beat the snp performance yearly with no leverage there is no advantage to taking on the additional risk.. so what im asking or searching for is that amplification ability and allowing myself to take my trading to the next level because i can beat the snp underleveraged so my trading is a viable alternative.. and with the help of a top trading firm I know I can enhance my trading ... I would bring in equity curves with low drawdown and high turnover position safety and statements that show smart money management.. I would state it in a cover letter .. find the team manager in the company and send him your resume -cover letter- equity curve- profitability factors- make a presentation of it. then I would call to make sure he got it.. and you have to figure out how to get past the gatekeeper .. also I would bring a large capital contribution the higher the better 100k + ... but probably by the time u have this .. why even use a prop lol.
From the perspective of someone who has been hiring and firing people for nearly two decades, a statement like the one above is an auto-disqual.
Thanks alot, great handle by the way. Your advice is good, but if I had been doing all the things you mention, I wouldn't be in this situation. I haven't calculated the stats that u mentioned, but they can't be possibly be that great this year. Also, profit per share is small but there, however my trading depends upon leverage, no way I could even use the strategies that I use without it. Also, yeah if I could put up 100k then I wouldn't need a prop lol. I would still use one though for the extra BP. Also, a little off topic, but I don't feel that performance relative to the snp is as important as consistency. You could have beat the market by a significant % last year and still been down, how is that better than making money? I do think traders should and do regularly beat the snp though. There is a reason the biggest investors give up 2 and 20 to a HF manager, and don't necessarily pull their money if that manager underperforms one year.
It would be tough without the numbers to probably get anywhere .. i didnt mean profit per share but profit for actual applied amount.. I do about 1.6X leveraged fully positioned into any trade among multiple pairs or singular and i netted 23% this month cut it in 1/2 and I did 10% underleveraged. as for the 100k no time to start like the present right to start building its a hard road but im sure most of the people who were broke like me and traded up an account had to do it. by relative to snp.. i mean in whatever time frame your trading takes place in... if the snp is falling I look as that as profits short... so if its falling and fell 40% last year if you didnt beat 40% then your not out performing the snp. dow is up 6% in my trading month which is ffrom oct23 -nov 23 u dunno why the 23rds its just when i start lol cause some months only have certain amount of days and it works well like this... anyways dow is up 6% from the 26th which is lower than when i started on the 23rd.. and recalculating with no leverage i did about 10-11%.. thats what I mean. my peak to valley draw down was less than 3% my highest drawdown historically has been about 5% I know I have a less than 1% chance of ever hitting a 10% drawdown over 12 months.. my profit per dollar invested sits at around 1.35 per buck invested. I know that i have a X chart of my losses and gains for every trade and my losses hold the most at 1 distance and the rest up to 3 distance units.. while take profits skew heavily into profit at most around 5 distance to 15 distance about 10 or more is rare and it drops after 5 but anyways thats probably what they want to see...
I would completely agree with you, but this single statement is out of context. I meant that the majority of my problems stem from my personnal financial situation, and not trading. In other words, if I didn't have to take money out of my account I would be positioned to survive and pick up where left off, when the market gets better (for my type of trading).
I understand what you mean, but I'm just trying to get into the training program at one of these firms, I wouldn't expect anyone to just back me and let me do as I please. I know that I'm not ready for that. As for profit per dollar applied, that would be pretty complicated to calculate, because my leverage changes somewhat randomly, (value of account, certain days etc.) I'm not sure if there are records of this anywhere... I also have probably had a few thousand positions, so this would take some time assuming I find the records. I just was trying to determine if supplying my pnl was wise or if I should just send resume and cover letter? I figured my pnl would at least show some potential, but I'm not sure. I have looked on the website's of these firms to and I'm not sure I will be able to get around the gatekeeper... but I have some ideas.