Thanks Mav for this concrete information. Not one - wow! It really puts me in a more sober mood After reading above, it seems that opening a CTA and raising 1-10 MM is easier than getting capital from a futures prop house to trade purely directional strategies. Edit: I think and this is purely a guess - that getting into a prop futures house for a pure directional player might still be possible - but probably not in US. Maybe in some other country where financial markets/mindset is not this developed ....probably BRIC countries, maybe even Singapore....just guessing at this point.
The OP and thread concerned the prop futures business model, and in that regard you are a bit naive in terms of what kind of trade appeals to them in terms of a potential new hire off the street.
Let me repeat this: "I have many friends in the hedge fund world as well as CTAs." Do you see the word prop in that comment?
This has always scared me about approaching any futures prop firms. They'd love to steal your idea, program it into an algorithm and leave you useless to them. If you have good techniques & methods, better to raise private capital. Just my opinion.
But in reality they can't, especially if your trading illiquid electronic instruments like FX E-mini Dow, most grains, metals and energies. So if your strategy trades ES, ZN, or FESX to name a few, size won't disrupt the market.
Huh? FX is illiquid? The Dow? Metals? Have you heard of the LME? Energy? The most liquid contract in the world. You realize the cash markets for these products dwarfs the futures markets right?
I'm speaking of FX futures such as those traded on CME; ditto for the other instruments. There is little liquidity in YM, CL, SI, ZW and many others. The OP is talking about FUTURES as far as I can tell.