Hi! I wonder that if I am a good trader and assume that I have $300,000 buying power at Swifttrade. If I lost 30,000 for a month, am I responsible for the $30,000 loss?
Let's assume if you take a 10% loss day trading in one month you are not a good trader. That's a BIG loss for a day trader!
You are reponsible for all your losses. Although your account will be probably liquidated once your looses are "almost" close to "you capital contribution = losses". You do not eat up the company leverage ...
Except for thats now how swifttrade works. There is no 'capital contribution'. More likely, you would start as a trainee with a $50 stop and when you hit it a few times in a week, you would get fired. If on the off chance you actually succeeded to the point of a $300 stop, you would most definitly be liquidated at a $600 loss, and if you are allowed to continue your employment, any other sign of disobediance or a blatent disregard for the rules would have you terminated immediately. Its not rocket science, swift succeeds on the same principles as good daytraders.... discipline and risk control.
Seems like it is difficult to make it at Swifttrade. I wonder how many percentage of trainee still working after 6 months? 30%?
if you think that is difficult to achieve then you will never make it because you are probably risking far too much.
There is a problem in your training by focusing on profit and loss. If the trainee consistently loses $10 a day, what would you do? Fire him or keep him? If the guy makes a right bet and makes $100 on a certain day, what would you say to the guy? "Good job"? If he decides to do it again and ends up on the wrong side and loses $100, what would you do to him? Fire him?
After a short while of seeing people come in and out the door of both a place i dont run and a place i do run, its very very obvious to tell who gets it and who doesnt. Having said that, i think im more than lenient at first given the fact that its normal to suck a lot. Losses are expected. Its very obvious looking at riskware and the trades a trainee makes day in and day out if there is any sort of thought process taking place in their brain prior to placing a trade. As such, theres a big difference between the same $loss amount. Its quite possible losing $10 was a great job, just as its possible that making $100 was lucky and reckless. Learning from the loss or gain, and gaining experience is all you can hope for at first. But if you want to stick around, losing everyday is just not acceptable or possible. 50% of trades should in theory be non gross$ losing trades, no?
see, that's the probelm with chop shops. They force you to make money by increasing the % of winning trades, and trading small and often (basically, scalping). The way I know how to make money in markets-swing/position trading with an assymetric payoff. I load up on idiosyncratic risk, but hold multiple long/short positions, with no beta exposure, and over time, I generate serious alpha. On a short time scale, any prop firm with riskware would force me to get flat most of the time. But my lack of short term risk aversion is what make me money. Is there any firm that will give me this autonomy? Or is a hedge fund structure the only way to go?
Dont forget the context of this thread. Theres a difference between walking in off the street having never traded 1 share and having a real strategy that you can prove over a history of trading your own money. I think pretty much every prop firm out there except title and swift are set up exactly like you want. If you put up enough cash and follow the straightforward risk constraints you negotiate with a firm, you can do whatever you want.