This post about TCA is anonymous. I will not mention any names, or disclose anymore details beyond this post. Period The mentors on the remote program are not live traders. Each mentor was a profitable trader a few years ago trading mainly eurex products in the form of spreads. However these mentors have been out of the game for a long time and are on a salary to mentor. They do the odd bit of live trading once every blue moon on very small size such as 5 lots with very mixed results. A few of them made very good money back in the day, but a lot of them spent the money they made made a few years ago when they were good a trading. A lot of them are actually skint now. All fur coat and no knickers... Headway Trading was setup by one of the remote mentors from TCA who was a mentor on the bund. He lost over £80,000 for TCA before leaving to setup Headway which was funded through his girlfriend. He folded a few months ago. During his trading career he had 1 good year. Amplify was setup by another failed trader at TCA. After losing a load of cash, he was just doing admin work in the office. The owner was pretty much regarded as a bastard by most of the staff. His main strategy for profit was ripping people off, including many in office traders. He treated people in office very badly and as a result TCA had a very high turn over. I never got ripped off by him. TCA was kicked out out of 25 Copthall Ave due to not paying the rent. This was down to the owners inability to run a company and nothing to do with the traders there. TCA owe Pro Real Time charting over £20,000. Pro Real Time was the charting package that was used for people on the remote mentorship. In office traders who payed desk fee's mainly used CQG and TT. The owner never paid the bills. This is just one example of the many debts ran up by the owner. The debts are over £1,000,000 The owner eventually ran the company into the ground and when the house of cards came down, no one got paid their salaries, and the live traders in office didn't get their profit share from their trading. The owner gave what was left of the company to senior management. However it was in such a mess that the management that stayed opted to start from scratch again. Many traders/mentors left the company at this point and are currently sueing the now previous owner. One mentor who was in NY didn't recieve his salary and had to do a bunk on his apartment in NY and return to London. Many of these people are now just working in regular jobs as they no longer make money from trading. The new owners/management of TCA are good guys, however, as mentioned above, they haven't traded for a long time as they are unable to make money out of the markets anymore. They did all have their moment of earning good money from trading, but as stated, this was many moons ago, and many spunked their money up the wall during the good times. Pretty much most of the firms out there offering remote mentorship and trading a company account have been setup by a previous TCA employe who was a failed trader. As mentioned above, the owner treated his staff like shit and ran the company in a very poor fashion. Many of the employees saw the potential profits from the model and thought the owner was an idiot, hence why they left and setup their own replica company. However most have failed as they haven't been profitable traders for many years now. TCA is still offering remote trading, however it's important that you are under no illusions that the mentors are profitable traders and that they are on a salary. As mentioned, the new owners and management are good guys, but what is offered through mentorship is stuff most of you will already know or can read in a book off amazon for £20 I was a live trader at TCA in office. I wasn't a big hitter or anything like that. I left TCA to trade from home due to the cost of desk fee's and the owner being a dick head. I'm still trading now through a retail broker from the comfort of my own home. I think it's important that someone from the inside actually lets you know how it is before you hand over your money. Just because it's a prop firm with an office in the middle of London, doesn't mean they actually know how to make money. The model is pretty much based on the customers assumption that they are good traders because they're 'city traders'. This is not to say that they know nothing, but as mentioned many times in this post, non of them have made money out of the markets for a long time now. The profitable traders in office are not interested in mentoring people massive groups of people. They go to their desks, make their money and go home. They're not going to let hundreds of people know their strategies that make them money. It's also important that you know that you are not actually trading a company account. The £2000 that you start with when you go live is £2000 from the fee that you paid when you signed up. Also for those of you that opt to trade U.S markets on the remote scheme. The mentors don't actually have much live trading experience on U.S markets. Most traders in London focus on European markets. Eurex markets are completely different to what they were a few years ago when every man and his dog was earning £1 million a year. There are still people making a lot of money day trading Eurex products, but no where near the number of people that were seen a few years ago. When you're trading in the city, after a while, you realize that a lot of people talk out of their arse. There are just as many traders getting on the tube every morning in pin stripe suits who are just as useless as most rookie day traders. That is all i'm prepared to say about TCA.
If any traders are looking for office space in London there is a nine person office available in the building I am in near Hanover Square on a not for profit, co-op basis, £60 a week plus vat if it can be filled, more if it cannot be. pm me to arrange a visit.