LOL! It is my trading results 3-4 months ago!!!! I could not recognize myself! Well, it was MB trading. My strategy is absolutely different now. I am with Oanda. I am still in the process of improving mostly money management/ risk control, but my account is up +22.5% in less than 4 weeks. I demo traded Oanda August-September and went live in October. Spread is great, no commissions, execution is good and they have chart which is also good.
commissions with MB trading is like 4 pips spread. Their software is very unstable and too complex for scalping. There were almost daily issues with their platform. I have been in daily contact with live help. with Oanda, i have not contacted them even once. Knock the wood.
I was "interviewed" at the Toronto office. It wasn't so much of an interview than the hiring manager looking at my resume, saying I was over-qualified, but saying he'd let me in anyways. I left after 3 days (that was the extent of the "training" actually, on the fourth day we would have learned the hotkeys, and the fifth day would have been trading live). I'm not knocking Swift, the business model works. Funny enough, they hire traders the same way they trade stocks: pick at random, ride the winners, cut the losers. From an HR perspective, the problem with this is that sometimes when you put an "over-qualified" person in a room full of under-qualified ppl, the over-qualified person begins reflecting on his/her life and determines that Swift can't be taking it in the right direction. In my case, I went to a top school, got an analyst job on Bay St. right way in 2007, lost my job early this year for obvious reasons. So, I decided to give Swift a try - but realized it was the wrong decision when the guy behind me was some retard that didn't know what an IPO was and even once said "I don't see how any stock can go down if someone doesn't short it" WTF! I lasted 3 days. To prove my point further: one guy lasted only 2 days - why? Because he worked as a quant for Goldman Sachs London before losing his job and trying out swift. Point is, the Swift hiring model works, but also alienates some otherwise good candidates who are scared off by dumb people.
Well... the dumb guys usually don't last too long and they're gone in a matter of weeks, or months at the most. But the guys who get the grip of the risk system, they're able to make good money for themselves. There isn't much trading provided at Swift offices cause there's no substitute for screen time. You can sit in a class for 3 months and you won't learn a fraction of what you get looking at the screen for 1 day. But then again, it can be very frustrating to learn how to trade purely from the screen as it takes a good 4-6 months to even begin seeing patterns there... but it can't be taught otherwise, as every trader sees different things in the same screen. The manager's job is to guide the trader towards his own style of trading... but that's done as the trader starts understanding the screen and starts figuring what he likes o doesn't like to trade.
That's exactly what I'm saying is the problem with the swift hiring model: it weeds out the very brightest AND the very dumbest. The former leaves early on and the latter eventually gets fired for incompetence. What swift is left with are those in the middle: those smart enough to be moderately successful but too dumb (or uneducated or not well connected or whatever) to seek out better employment. Anyways, the swift model works - I just think it could be improved by finding a way to retain top talent and making sure that they NEVER end up in the same room as someone who doesn't know what an IPO is.
Well yeah, you might be right on that. But my experience is that I've seen really smart guys, including guys who hold series 7, 63, 55... try for months and fail to adapt to the risk system... And I've seen pretty dumb guys who think they're trading Intel when they're looking at INTL... and they adapt to the risk system and make some money (not the best trader, but ok $) So the million dollar question is, how do you figure who's going to make $ and whose not gonna make it... simplest way... give em all an account and let the market sort em out. But well, too bad to hear you didn't like swift; hope you find a good place to trade that fits your personality/trading style. Peace. Edit: hmm... I just noticed INTL is not even in the market anymore... :O I must be getting old... : /
That may be so, but I can only speak for the Toronto office - and they are definitely still hiring anybody. I've recently relocated from Toronto to Montreal to join a prop firm - very different from Swift, much longer training and more solid quant-analysis-based strategies instead of just scalping. Strangely, there's not too much buzz about them on these forums, so my intention to the start a new thread about them, their strategies, training style and corp. culture whenever I get my first pay...stay tuned!
I've only moved here 6 days ago and already it seems like a great, sexy party city - ideal place to blow some cash Send me a email sometime