you never seem to address my questions or comments but i'm a patient man so i'll ask again. when i was charged $600 a month and only supplied redi what was the extra $400 a month going towards? $600 - $200(redi charge i presume). when i worked with you guys and asked this question i think i was fed a bunch of B.S. So here is your chance to make things right......good luck!
[/quote] ...and you save 15% of your profits by paying no FICA or Self-Employment tax... Don Bright [/quote] [/quote] Don, this is not meant to be an attack, but you are incorrect when you state that a trader saves 15% of one's profits by not paying any FICA or Self-Employment taxes. It is actually much less then that depending on your income ... at least according to IRS Form 1040SSE. You pay Self-Employment taxes on 12.4% of the first $80,400, plus an additional 2.9% of your total income. You also get to deduct 50% of the total amount of Self-Employment taxes paid, from your gross income. If you made $80,400 trading, you would pay approximately $10,800 in Self-Employment taxes (assuming your tax rate is about 25%). As your income increases, the Self-Employment tax rate rapidly approaches about 1.9% of your gross income. Paying the taxes, and then being allowed to establish a tax deferred retirement plan, would probably be more beneficial to high income traders. I'm not an accountant, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night. http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/forms_pubs/forms.html Regards, Slave2Market [/quote] My wife was reading over my shoulder when I was reading this thread. She says that Slave2Market is correct, and it doesn't _JUST_ apply to traders. And she _IS_ a CPA/CFO nitro
Don, Actually, I am an ex Bright Trader. That's why I feel it is such a shame that the Manhattan office is being so neglected. Afterall, NYC, not Las Vegas, is the financial capital of the world. There are probably tens of thousands of traders in Manhattan, and Bright should have a flagship office there, with dozens of traders, including a few big guys, not the dark, depressing, no-talent shop that exists there now. Commission is not everything. Having talented traders to work with, supportive management, great technology, and a company that is willing to provide whatever it takes to assist it's traders on the road to profitability are things that make a difference too. Being "penny wise, pound foolish" under the guise of "the lowest costs on the street" is clearly not the way to build a big office, at least not on the island of Manhattan. It's a shame; with the stability of Bright, by putting the the right cost structure in place, and better "local" management, you could have dozens if not hundreds of traders in NYC (repeat: the financial capital of the world). And yes, I do realize that in this business, you never know which firm you may become part of. If that should be Bright trading, so be it. If Bright should get eaten up by a bigger fish, the so be that too, and in that case, god bless to you, Bob and Eddie, who will surely make out like bandits!!! WIth fond regards, Trader4life
Nitro, First, let me say I'm not an accountant, so don't take this as accountant advice. I understand where you're coming from because one night I sat down and did the numbers. I used an income that would allow a person to put the maximum amount of $ into a tax-deffered retirement plan (I think it was a SEP). Whatever that amount was I ran the numbers with the person getting the income as regular earned income vs getting the money as non-earned income. How much would be deffered, how much would be paid in taxes (looked in the tax tables). The bottom line was this: The person receiving the $ as non-earned income would have about $4000 more coming to him (either through regular free cash or in a tax defferred account). Now this does not take into account 2 things: 1. How much he would defer in taxes on the interest or profits earned in the retirement account (as those are also tax defferred). 2. How much he would end up having to pay in taxes when he started taking that deferred income out (then you have to pay taxes on it). Cause let's say invest wisely and have a few million in, you got two choices: take it out in big chunks and pay taxes on it at pretty much the same rate you did when you were putting it in. Leave it in and when you die, your kids will take it out in a big chunk and pay estate taxes (who knows what they will be then). I'm not sure of the figure used, but it was somewhere between $200K and $300K that was earned in a year. If someone else wants to run some numbers who knows more than I do, I'd be interested in seeing the results as I'm under the non-earned income structure.
Shortee, I work with remotes at Bright, so maybe I can field this one. The fee for remote traders is $200/mo. If you trade over 200K shares in a month, you get the fee back. Basically what you're getting for the $200 is: 1. Use of RediPlus quoting, charting, filtering, and order execution software. 2. Access to capital 3. Ability to use professional tools: bullets, conversions, multiple entry orders, opening only orders, MOC orders. 4. Software to help with Pair/Spread trading. In terms of working the same way as at the office, you get everything the in-office traders get in terms of commissions, volume rebates, etc.
I was recently offered this deal by the Heartland Securities NY office. Maximum commission regardless of volume (but they said "will not take people who are simply taking up space") .695 + ECNs + SOES pass through fee It gradually scales down to .45 + above mentioned fees if you trade over 8 million shares. If you do over 5 million shares the entire ammount of shares is charged at your largest volume month in the past 4 months. Very Nice offices, very proffesional. Minimum capital for retail accounts $50,000. They do prop accounts also but that deal is horrible. Lots of traders leaving Broadway Trading in NY for this deal. Broadway and Andover working on deals to top this one. If you do volume there are some great deals out there that you can negotiate and will never be advertised. Kind of unfair but I know others getting even better all inclusive deals. http://www.hrld.com/contact.html http://www.broadwaytrading.com/locations.cfm http://www.andovertrading.com/main/main012.asp?go_url=/andover/branch.shtml
You kind of "forced" a comment out of me on this one. At the volume levels you are quoting traders would save $thousands per month trading with us. The ECN fees alone would double the costs involved. Traders who do 5-8 million shares will qualify for our 4 Million share club, and will pay much lower fees, all inclusive. Just keeping the record straight. Another note from the Heartland website...about when "daytrading started" (they say after 1987), so I assume that they are a SOES house, which puts them in a whole different category, so I wish them well with the SOES traders who are, of course, retail traders. They must be doing something right, I must admit, since I have seen most of the "SOES houses" fade away in recent years. Anyway, a different group of traders, so I wish them success!
Don, just to let you know, SOES is now used for only nasdaq smallcap stocks,while SUPERSOES is used for all the nasdaq national market stocks.SOES is only for retail traders,but SUPERSOES can be used by retail and professional traders as well as market makers.The SOES limit is 500 shares and the SUPERSOES limit is 999,999 shares.Both systems can only be used to take offers or hit bids and trades only with market makers,not ECN's.
I am pretty up to speed with the SOES changes, and we don't recommend using SuperSoes to our traders (since the orders are routed to MM"s who can hold orders if they like). We are making sure that all of our traders have access to everything that can help make them money (our combined purpose), and yet we don't want them incurring excessive costs for no reason. Thanks for the input!!