They offer you a membership into a JBO. You trade on risk based haircuts, not Reg T or CPM which is crap. No margin calls, no forced liquidations, borrow trading capital from the JBO, no cancel fees on options, cross margins between futures and cash options, better tax treatment. What else do you want to know?
Thanks! What is needed in terms of education and money to use those more sophisticated margin requirements? From Cassandra Trading's website, they say accounts need to be funded to a minimum of $50,000: http://www.cassandratrading.com/faq.asp Do their requirements seem representative of other prop option firms?
Well, you really need to know how to trade options. These places don't really bring you in to teach you. You need to be able to bring that to the table. Most those firms are populated by ex-MM's. If you are looking to trade iron condors, you are going down the wrong road. I would say 50k to 100k is pretty standard in terms of capital.
What are the strategies used by people going down the right road? I'm interested in the types of trades employed by long-term successful options traders. I've learned about how option prices work - and I've learned by experience some things _not_ to do. My impression is that most successful strategies are either learned while on the floor somewhere or are "homegrown". What information can I find that comes closest to describing real-life strategies?
I've said this time and time again on this message board. I'll save you the trouble of using the search function. There is no such thing as a good or bad strategy, only good and bad traders. Stop looking for the secret strategy and start working on becoming a better trader. Some helpful hints in that area are avoid strategies that have unlimited risk and be very pro-active in trading. In other words, no set and forget strategies (iron condors).
The following link provides an example of the type of trading you are asking about here and is in line with the type of proactive trading mav speaks of. http://www.vtradergroup.com/VTraderPro/EducationCourse1.aspx
Sure, but you will need about 250k minimum to open an account directly with a clearing firm. You are still not getting the benefits of a JBO though unless you start your own JBO which will cost you about a million to do and about 150k a year to maintain. This is very similar to a thread started a while back about a guy who wanted to by pass the prop firms to start their own non for profit prop firm. I believe Don Bright jumped in there and gave a breakdown on what that entailed.