i now trade on laser mainly, and have made much more cash in the last year. i was a graduated trader at swift for over 2 years
you know what I see here? A ton of name calling and exaggeration. Swift Canada is not dead or even near death IMHO. There are those of us who have been here for years and will probably stick around here for years to come. There are advantages to swift and there are disadvantages. If you don't like it there anymore you should move on. Plain and simple. Guys let's stick to facts here and stop sensationalizing everything. capiche? - mnx
i don't think many comments have been exaggerations but your right swift is good for some. If you trade the millennium strategy and rely heavily on that for your income than i do think that swift is the place to be. I also think that strategy is a crutch keeping traders from reaching their true potential, so if anything completely eliminates it's effectiveness than i don't know where swift will turn to. Maybe there are some other strategies that are better at swift than elsewhere, but i am unaware of them and would be surprised to hear about them. You did well in starting the mln strategy for swift and i believe you personally saved swift because lots of branches were hurting real bad, but unless you got something else in the works that only works on the swift model i don't think there is so much of a future in swift
They are doing well on LSE, but how long will those advantages last? 6 months, 1 year, as soon as one prop in NA gets access to the markets others will follow. But they were always good on being the first and pioneers on almost anything so they will still be around for awhile, Peter Beck and Charles will sell out to another company sooner rather than later. This is exctally what was happening durning their Long Distance days and gay porn days. They were making good money till competition arrived and sold out ASAP, same thing will happen here, no doubt.
I don't post on this forum too often but I do enjoy reading it. I actually started as a client trader at swift back in 2000. I have seen it change to prop and go through many changes. I knew nearly nothing about trading when I walked through the door. I paid 5k for the course to learn to trade (by a branch manager that to this day cannot make money) and lost nearly 70k. I was told to hit buttons...that was basically our training. I was lucky to last until prop trading came around. They hired me as a prop trader with medical benefits and minimum wage if we didn't make at least that. Needless to say that didn't last and it went down hill form there. What Lippy, MM, Red Ink and all the others say IS fact, not speculation or exaggeration. I have seen Charles Kim and Peter Beck speak in our branch and heard Kim say that the traders are totally replaceable. I could not believe the words that came out of their mouths...talk about a pep talk. I was there, it happened. I have traded on good ole prosper pro and have been down for hours, had mystery positions and grey boxes. I was there, it happened. When I first walked in the door at swift back in 2000 I was filled with illusions of grandeur. I was promised a 6-figure salary in 3-6 months. It took leaving swift to reach that goal. A far far superior software and over double the pay and last year I did it. I learned a lot from swift and I learned a lot about swift, hence my leave. MNX, 99% of what is said about swift on this forum is true. To all who read this there is a much better deal down the road and from what I have seen swiftâs days ARE numbered in Canada. From what I have been hearing in China about Title expanding and taking swift traders perhaps swifts days are numbered period. I'm pretty sure Beck doesn't care either way, since we traders are so easily replace!
98% of what I read about Prosperpro on this forum is either out of date or exaggerated. Traders seem to remember the worst about swift's software platform. Yes it has had some downtime. (zero so far in 2007 that I can remember). Yes there are grayboxes, (some branches are much worse than others, they were never really a problem here in Hamilton. I can count the gray boxes I've had in total with my fingers. I've been here more than 3 years now.) Phantom positons... Yeah that's tied to the graybox issue... I've had a couple, but it's almost always when I'm doing things with ppro it wasn't designed to do. I don't think I've ever seen a 30 second delay if our connection is up and working ok. On the worst volume spike I've ever seen (June 30 2006 LVLT @ close, 4 million share offer stepping down) I had a 5 or 10 second delay. If you have 30 second delays, it's because your BM is cheaping out on their connection to HO or you have a crappy PC that you're trading on, or perhaps a combination of both. Sticky book quotes are something that has plagued prosper pro on and off over the years.... The switch to nasdaq single book and the re-introduction of arca book here caused major problems initially... They seem to clear those very fast now. (Although I wish they could fix the problem entirely so it never happened.) The single biggest weakness of ProsperPro is that it has no API. Anything I do here automated has to be done without any feedback from the software to my scripts. That is something I'll willing to do without for now. my $.02. - mnx
I don't know about anyone else but I can say my foozeball skills became much better when i joined swift.