i may be mistaken, but i am just read it on their website under "About Us" under "Paul G. Gappa" where is states "All order entries are, as necessary, subject to his control." So how can one posssibly stream market under those circumstances? Correct me (well, continue correcting me) if I am wrong.
Here is a wonderful suggestion. Pick up the phone and call them. I know this is the internet era where we do everything we can to avoid actual human contact, but in this situation, I think it would behoove you to make the call and speak to them directly. That's the best advice I can give you.
Maverick - thanks for what you've posted on this topic. I've been trading options and, after mistakes, I'm getting more familiar with the greeks and a better feel for the dynamics of option price. I took a Finance class recently and, after learning CAPM and recognizing that Options have a negative Beta, I am more interested in sophisticated strategies - selling what I judge to be overpriced in a risk-managed way. I'll be taking a class at school (MBA) in the spring on options. What does a prop options firm offer in general? I'd love to get more into the nitty gritty of option pricing. I think the more sophisticated option traders are basically market makers? I'm playing with excel - pasting in an option chain and doing some simple analysis of what's trading at each strike. For fun, I had it evaluate all the possible combinations of box spreads in the chain - as expected I didn't find any "free money" but I found some boxes that came close. For example, a box with a terminal value of 10 that I could buy for 10.10 -- close but no cigar and no surprise. Can you recommend software that helps get a "big picture" of all the combinations of positions? As a programmer, I might enjoy growing my own - but I'm also not one to reinvent the wheel. Again, thanks for your input and I'm enjoying this thread.
I called a guy at Cassandra, and asked him about possible career with them, when he explained to me that at the time they only open retail-like trading accounts (I guess sub-llc prop set up). So I'm confused. Oh well, back to job search.
OK....here's one. G-Bar. http://www.gbar.com/about.html But before you go into the lions den, you better know your stuff. Better know what you want to trade, how you devise your strategies and how your going to accomplish your goals. They've been around for a while, so they know they're stuff. They are market makers. So either your going to go through the membership on the CBOE or the ISE. I know for sure they trade equity options, but I also believe they dabble in index options. They back you up all the way. No need to put your own funds. On a personal note, I haven't heard great things about the company when I was on the CBOE floor for six years. But things change. Another one you may want to check out is http://www.archelon-us.com/. High turnover. Crappy deal for the traders coming in. I'm not sure where they want to go, but it's an arcade. Unix based trading system.,which is ot very good. Trust me, I was there. They couldn't get anyone from here to work, so they started to bring in their traders from Germany. Now they're leaving. But you better have options trading experience also. good luck,
Thanks for the info, checked out G-Bar, sounds inviting, I will send them my resume and hope for the best. The other one you mentioned, Archelon, says "solid trading track record is a must. to apply so I lose right there. I've been out of trading for couple of years (done some brokerage + stay home dad thing) while trading small positions from my home country (call it emerging market), so what could I possibly offer for a track record? Eh! thanks let you know if anything turns up
Thanks a lot for the input everybody. I guess I should've been more specific. I'm looking for "pro firms" where I can put up my own capital and trade. And has anybody here heard of a firm called JC or JS trading that offers options trading? And another addition to the list: Genesis Securities is supposed to offer prop options sometime soon.
What do these firms offer exactly? Less stringent margin requirements? I'd be interested to know what some of the deals offered are and what levels of contribution are necessary.