Hi All, A little background about myself. I am a former retail trader with the Canadian firm, Swift Trade. I've posted extensively under another username here. This username id now used is to protect my sources and myself. I have never been one to blow the whistle on anyone but I strongly feel that this information is critical for Prop and Retail traders alike at Swift Trade. Read this post and decide for yourself. We all know of the NASD investigation with the wash trades. Charles Kim that genius would do anything for a buck. Well there is now another potential problem. You prop traders will remember signing a form recently regarding the downtick rule. Question it!!! Don't sign it without asking why? This is something big that could eventually blow up. When Worldcom credits were all the rage, I know for a fact that Peter Beck and crew opened up the system to allow shorting and that props were *encouraged* to make money by going short ie. short offering for credits. Before the WCOM collaspe, ProsperPro piece of crap would say something like 'stock is not shortable' or 'cannot short on a downtick'. Does it seem fishy that this message disappered when credit trading was exploding? Anything for the almighty dollar it looks like. Well the NASD has been informed and who knows what they'll do. Shorting without a bullet was easily acheived by going long and smashing the Soes sell button. This was well known but compliance and the "Bridge" turned a blind eye to it. It is almost a certainty that when the NASD comes down on Beck, Kim, etc... they'll try and pin the blame on the traders. My point is just KNOW WHAT TYPE OF COMPANY YOU WORK FOR!!! I have closed my account and am trading with IB. I miss trading with the boys but don't miss all the BS I had to go through. How do I know all this you ask? I have some very good friends on the inside as well as a 'relative' that trades Prop. Take whatever you can from these greedy bastards before the mountain crumbles. I only wish there was some real competition for daytraders, retail and prop alike. And no Questtrade is not real competition, they're a joke. BEWARE
Im not so sure the regulators really care about the whole downtick rule violations...Truthfully, the need for the downtick rule dissappeared years ago when the amount of market makers and ecn's increased 10 fold...Although the rule is still on the books, it's really not enforced that much and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't look at more important issues. I've also heard that the sec is loking at totally doing away with the downtick rule in an effort to provide even more transparency in the market ( at least that's what they thought decimalization would do) good luck to you and keep your head low!
No way, dude. Traders at Swift can not be conscidered as pro's because they don't have pro's licenses. They just a bunch of kids who do what they told and taught by Swift Trade.
What did they do to you that you had to write to NASD? Or maybe you just lost their money and was kicked out, huh? Did you do that "smashing" thing too, huh?
Hi there, I was a prop trader at ST, and left due to a number of reasons, and have gone to trade my own account elsewhere. I am also a large poster on this site, and have also decided to hide my actual identity. One of the main reasons I left had to do with the unethical nature of a number of things that happened at the firm. The downtick rule Fmrretailguy speaks about is true. In fact, I have a copy of this form I could post. I do also have contacts there, so I can get hold of these things still. Anyways, we were also forced to sign sheets a few months ago saying that we would not talk to retail traders about going prop, and if we did, we could be terminated. If someone needed a little 'boost' in their dollar amount to hit a certain number that month, we were encouraged to execute wash trades on very slow stocks out of the market to effectively transfer funds between two accounts. The downtick thing was brought to the attention of some, in that after the WCOM thing, it was still possible to SS on a DT. Well, after notifying managers, fellow traders of mine were encouraged to use this capability like a bullet on all stocks. Traders are also forced to eat all losses that the shitty execution system causes when it goes down (which it does a LOT). Headquarters wants nothing to do with being responsible for their own execution system. And it makes sense, after all, Beck owns Corbita Technologies, the creator of ProsperPro and backend of the execution system. ST pays him a certain amount for each keystroke. If ST loses money due to the system, Beck is still earning money on the other side. A crooked operation. Everything FmrRetailGuy said is true in my experiences at ST, although I was a prop trader, not a client as he was.
Does anyone know if there is a way to get updates on NASD arbitration disputes while they are in process? Does anyone know how long this normally takes?
I sure hope these allegations are false. I've been a prop trainee for about three months now and am getting into the swing of things. The traders at my branch have been struggling lately which gives me a better sense of where I stand. It seems that the $5000 minimum to get paid really messes with everyone's mind. Somebody told me that once upon a time they used to pay a base salary and 20% commission. On one hand I wouldn't be surprised if this crap was true as I hear bad things about the company in general all the time. I only wished they raised the stop loss limit. I find that I'm sitting out alot of the time because I've lost my daily limit (which is small compared to what the real prop guys are allowed). All in all trading has been a great experience. As a new university graduate getting experience was more important to me than getting paid (although it would be nice). Keep the faith everyone--no need to look for other jobs just yet.
Wow Shorting on downticks......and the firm doesn't care, SEC doesn't care as the posters above would have you believe. Yeah right!!!!!!!! Those fines add up quick and can eventually result in the firm losing their license. Robert