As far as I know Bright won't let you open under an LLC either? A BD is not allowed to pay overrides to an LLC, only a registered person, they just give the overrides off the traders you bring in directly to you. I think that is how this guy was saying he can do it?
Clearing Merrill Lynch, using Sterling & Bloomberg, blah blah blah. Sounds like you guys are trying to be a new copy of Echotrade. You copied Echo on all except your traders can pay $1000 a month to not have to get a Series 7. I took the series 7, it wasn't that tough, I don't know why guys wouldn't just go to Echo and get everything you offer and save the $1000 a month? And no disrespect, because I know you say you have been doing this for a long time and all that, but if that's the case why are you having to introduce yourself to us like the next Johnny come lately now? We've all seen so many Johnny come lately's like yourself come here with a big hooplah, some big name backer, and all this supposed experience then two years later vanish with a bunch of people's money. I'll wait to see if your "MTO" is still around in 3 years before I'll consider you as anywhere close to a solid place to put my money like an Echo, Bright, or Assent. Nothing against you in particular, have no clue who you guys are, just learning from history here.
The primary difference between us and other firms mentioned is we run our own proprietary trading business. If we end up with zero MTO members we may have less people to hang out with in the game room, but we are not out of business. I do not believe that is the case of the other firms discussed. We don't invest in our infrastucture relative to how much we can 'sweep' the execution of our members. We invest in our infrastructure to support our own trading operation. Our MTO members piggy-back on that infrastructure. I would guess we spend more in a month on our infrastructure and the support of it than other firms spend in a year. We have a full technical support staff from desktop guy to senior network engineer available to fix problems immediately. We have full time developers that create software for both our proprietary group and our MTO. We encourage members to provide ideas for developent that will help their trading. We have signficant market research resources in house, including 20 years of tick history. We cross connect with Activ (the data feed) in the Equinex Data Center in Chicago. So if your thing is writing to APIs you can use the real thing- not some crappy DDE server off the back of a trading front end. We have excellent resources beyond trading. We have a full time office manager and secretary to handle your mail and calls. Of my partners one is a Securites Attorney, one is a CPA, and one ran a hedge fund that specialized in specialized in option 'special situations.' They are all available for consultation. We have relationships with many top wall street firms. This provides our members access to cutting edge execution and research (some of which is actually worth something). We believe getting all this for $1000 a month and very low execution is for the right trader something worth considering. If this isn't worth $0.10 to you let alone $1,000. I understand. I do not want to convince you we are 'the best.' We might as well argue over the best smoothie flavor. It comes down to indvidual needs and preferences.
Before you make these claims, upon others, I suggest you RESEARCH your competition before making assumptions. There is nothing you offer that makes you stand out from the rest. Your "top relationships" mean nothing. Your "experts" available for consultation mean nothing. Any trader can get access to that on his/her own. Your claims of superior execution, API and blah blah mean nothing unless you are willing to guarantee it & back it. Let me try to point you in the right direction by making a certain inquiry. Which markets do you have access to and please be specific.
My opinion only...but fuck................ would you day trade pikers please stop badgering a guy who is doing some marketing and just breaking down his firm offerings. His model is not bad and if you trade any size at all than this Costco model of membership fees with rates around cost is good for a professional upstairs trader. Look......I was in the same business for the last 5 years as a principal and I got the same shit thrown at me from you small time pikers. You get what you pay for and if your deal is one sided and the firm does not have any upside than you think you will get the service that you want.... You are not that stupid? Your trade account will be divvied up by these professional group quicker than you can click the exit button on your 100 shares of GOOG. Those that do not understand the benefits of JBO leverage and what cross margin can do to your returns along with the ability to generate very large returns on many unscaleable systems is quite powerful. This is mainly thrown out to all those stock traders who need $1 per 1000 shares to make a living and complain when someone wants to make a few bucks per trade to take on the risk that you as a trader can generate. Example.......one of my traders went around the Xtrader terminal and limits and got a hold of the order desk phone number at Fimat where the one of the JBO's was housed and doubled up his short position on ER2 to 200 contracts and 30 min later he was into me for $260K even before the real time position screen updated the order put in at the desk. This desk takes about 15 min to hit the systems and than be flagged. This is not a risk free business and those of you that want to go bust your ass to make $500 a day trading stock and do not think about other products and asset classes that will lower your risk and open up more opportunity into scalable products need to look around as most successful equity traders who try to progress and eventually move to products that can take $10M to $100M and not be stuck trading a $100K stock day trading account for the next 10 year. This may seem harsh but I have seen more than 200 traders through my group and only 10% even get the game that we are playing everyday to extract money from the weak and greenhorn traders and managers. Trade well and good luck.
I've read this thread over and it seems to me all Steve is really offering here is a JBO. Nothing wrong with that. I trade in a JBO as well. JBO's are nothing new and there are plenty at the CBOE. By charging the $1000 vig up front they guarantee their money up front whether you trade or not. Sweet deal to them. Their really is no difference in what they are offering as a JBO. Same as VTrader, same as Cassandra.
Same crap diffrent day....Sounds kind of grifty. Any firm that would let a trader override and call the order desk and trade 200 contracts without them knowing for 15 minuutes sounds like there asleep at the wheel, wish i felt sorry but dont. Thats risk management 101.Taught first day on the floor. Also In order to progress as a trader you dont have to trade futures,plenty of great traders that stick to stocks throughtout there careers and make 7 figures.
Where do you get those rates without being licensed, with so little down, and yet getting decent buying power? PM if you'd rather not post it for some reason.