Quick summary.. Swift, co-owned by my friend Charles Kim and Peter Berg has a special arrangement with a clearing firm to have a single price "ticket charge" for each symbol they trade (basically). They have traders who are taught to trade for liqudiity rebates (primarily)...traders learn to play a very quick "video game." Traders keep a small percentage of the net profits. I just had 2 traders from there here for 2 weeks in boot camp, still pretty much the same deal. Echo (formed similarly to Bright).... traders are licensed professionals who put up capital and keep their profits. You might enjoy this: http://www.traders.com/Documentation/FEEDbk_docs/2009/10/close.html FWIW, Don
Thanks for the info Don. So basically it's a difference in business models when it comes down to Swift and Echo? Under the standards according to your article which I read, Echo would fall under the "Professional Trading Firms Category" and Swift would fall under, although rather unclear, "Retail type trading groups". Am I reading this correctly? As far as I'm concerned, determining which model to go with is completely controlled by your market demographics and resources, of which will provide you the most reasonable amount of success, ie; profits. Whether one thinks one type of trading firm is more "honorable" (for lack of a better word) than the other is regardless imo. Integrity comes from the owner/management and can be applied to all models. And also, there's nothing that states you can't start one way, then morph into another. The above paragraph isn't necessarily meant for you, just my thoughts on the subject. You've done well in your business and I commend you for that, as I'm a business owner myself (contractor) and know how challenging it can be. I'm just doing some DD to find a firm that will "fit" my market, and help more than hinder. Cheers.
On a side note, I'm getting a lot of PM's from fresh registered members referring me to other groups. But the more well named firms (other than Bright) have been conspicuously quiet. Hmmm... that might be telling me something.
They batch multiple trades by many traders into one order, hence why they able to offer such low commissions and still make a killing on overrides. HLV used to do the same until Penson said "no more".