I smell bullshit. First of all a significant number of small to midsized momentum funds are headquartered in Florida. They have performed very well and if I would entrust my money to anyone then those guys. Secondly if your story about the exotic derivative was remotely true then the client would have easily sued the wealth management unit, especially when a trade goes sour by such amount within days. Sorry but fun story but that's all to it I feel....
(credit to Rearden Metal) Now, I am supposed to be many things which are not complimentary. I am supposed to be capricious. I have been called a playboy. I've even been called an eccentric, but I do not believe I have the reputation of being a liar. ~Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, The Aviator Care to make a friendly wager or two? The first requires the cooperation of the gentleman who lives in Florida confirming that he indeed does not do business with brokers or other money people in the state due to the general lack of honesty. He was a decent sized local in the grains, owns a couple of seats, traded successfully for decades and has posted here the odd time. Put up enough money to interest him and I'm sure he'll confirm it. This has nothing whatsoever to do with whether there are honest/successful individuals and firms doing business in the state. Just that a fairly successful guy thinks that doing business there is a bad risk. The question from the OP regarded "brokerages you won't go near" and I merely related that the answer for one trader would be "anyone based in Florida". The second: Just because there would be a lawsuit doesn't mean that you would have heard about it or that the story isn't true. It was litigated - I'm not going to identify the parties in public, but make it worth my while and I'll get you either a copy of the court papers or confirmation from the attorney acting for the guy who did the bad trade with the bank. Posts like the above quoted contributes to ET being a less than fun environment to participate in.
This post is so misinformed and generally bullshit. If your friend feels that Florida is no good then he'd better stop doing business with people in NY as a good part of the population in Florida is from that area. Are their scams down here ? Sure. But to be honest any of the stories I have read down here where people are scammed it was because of a of laziness or lack of due diligence on their end. Some of them were so laughable it's amazing anyone fell for it in the first place. As far as the reverse engineering of traders strategies? Newsflash, a lot of the prop firms do this stuff already. Some of the bigger ones as well. They do it without the traders consent. These are NY and Chicago based firms. Been going on for a long time. As far as clearing firms doing it? That I have not heard. Which Florida based firms is your friend talking about? As far as I know, there are not too many, if any, located down here. Tradestation being the only one that comes to mind. He sounds like he's talking out of his ass.
So the guy thinks Florida is such a bad place, but he lives here. Priceless. Thanks for helping validate my last post as saying your friend is talking out of his ass. He has had a problem with a bank down here, ergo.....the whole state is bad and everyone down here. I hope Paul Tudor Jones reads this and has time to get out of his new huge office down here.
I've had some friends in FL tell me that they feel the same way...that Central/South America starts just south of Jacksonville.
I've read that about Florida before, at least in the commodity area. For a while, it seemed that a disproportionate number of CFTC enforcement actions were brought against FL-based firms. These firms often advertised on talk radio about the great, limited risk opportunities in precious metals and grains or can't miss seasonal patterns in natural gas, gasoline and heating oil. There were a lot of shady introducing brokers that would over trade or get the investor into a ton of call options that had next to no chance of making money. Why were the commodity businesses in Florida, which never had an exchange or much of a connection to the physical trade (orange juice excepted)? Probably sunshine, beaches, low taxes and, IRC, a favorable bankruptcy environment that allows a person to keep a home of unlimited value.
Why do you inject yourself in discussions that are not yours. Please ignore my posts if you don't like them.
A huge percentage of the fraudulent IRS refunds went to FL businesses as well. There are a lot of places down there where you see large numbers of "tax prep offices" within a fairly small area. Lots of "doc in the box" disability fraud shops down there too. Of course FL has mostly legit operators and tens of thousands of honest businesses run by hardworking, ethical individuals. They just have a disproportionate number of con games there as well. I guess those on the dark side prefer warm weather.
You "infect" about every thread on ET by injecting yourself everywhere, you are the expert and all the others are idiots? And now you even pretend to be the boss on ET. Is volpunter a nickname for Baron? For as far as I know he is the boss, not you.