the key is the 17 cent a trade. the note from 2002 is correct. penson has something called batch clearing thats why swift gets there guys to hit in and out of a few stocks all day long. penson charges 1 small fee per stock per day. they might charge 35 cents for each trader that trades aapl. so if i trade 100k shares of aapl thats 35 cents commission per day and they charge me 17 cent a trade.try trading 500k shares at .003 plus sec fee's. you're talking 2k a day of commissions which you'll never overcome. man those fat ass company's like amtd trading $10 a trade are killing it. also remember these ecn rebates. all these prop house are screwing people charging .0005 to use nyfix or other sdot routers plus if a firm like hold is trading 20 million or more a day on inet there's some extra rebates not being passed to most traders. everyone's screwing the heavy trader
Well, there is also a 6.5 cent per 1000 shares clearing fee, so if you think they get the 17 cents as profit then they are also getting that fee too, which they would therefore be incorrectly calling clearing fee. Also, many people trade more than 50-100 stocks a day. Lots of blotters are not focused on just a few stocks. Although that could be less of a problem just due to the number of trader they have trading now. Swift, and many other firms, pass on .0025 inet credit. (I hate defending swift, but i like to try to make sure the info on them is correct)
Why don't people quit and do it on there own you ask? A) Buying power B) Some people arn't greedy and they are happy with the $ they make there ( I know I'd be happy with 10K a month ... don't get me wrong tho more is allways better) C) No Risk D) Fun environment E) Not really why they stay but a good reason to start there FREE TRAINING ....btw top guy brings in 500K a year (or so I've been told) - Let the Flaming Begin... errr continue!
Have to post once in a while when another one of these 'clueless' threads starts and the trash talk begins in particular by some people who know nothing about Swift or sat there a long time ago or were in a branch that wasnt very profitable. I've been with Swift for almost 2.5 years now and you can call me a 20 year old kid off the street (that's fine with me), but I am one of a few Swift Traders (who actually make some money) will post here and say that with all the threats of sub-penny shaving (which was discontinued at the beginning of the year), rebate trading removal as well as other threats Swift is doing better than ever (whether u or I hate it), but it's true. No trader in our branch makes 30%. Minimum is 35%, and top traders make upwards of 55-60%. In terms of numbers, top traders make about 20k/month profit, and we are far from those really profitable branches such as Hamilton. Obviously many will wonder why not earn 100% or close to it, but this was covered previously by me and other profitable traders from Swift, and is the reason why some 1300 traders will not leave Swift for another place...
Actually, no it wasn't covered. The original argument for not leaving for a 100% payout was that no other place offers rebate trading and they would not make any money under any other model. Now you are saying they don't do that anymore. That refutes the very reason why they should stay. If they are not engaging in rebate trading, then what other reason would they possibly have to stay at Swift?
The guys who make big dough make over 1000 trades a day. Very few models they can make money on (although they exist). Also, when you learn from scratch at one place, there is extreme pussy issues about leaving to go somewhere else. Lots of people can make money at swift, but they leave, and cant do shit anywhere else (read: addition to close to 0 commision). Plus, dont forget the magic ecn connection which lots of places dont have. Genesis doesnt have attain either. In addition, lets get real about the guys who are making 55-60+%. These guys have made over 1 million for the firm. They started receiving their first 10k at 35% just like everyone else. How many people are at million dollar payout... 10? 20 maybe? 20/1300 = 1.5%, so giving off the impression that you just show up at swift and make 60+% is ludacris. When i was at swift i was ok, not great, not crappy, but ok. My highest payout in a month was 47% on 45k at the second payout level. Swift and my BM split a cool 12k each. Not a bad business model eh! So when you sit there for however many months/years to get to million payout, the damage has already been done with the lower payout on the firms million you made. Thats not chump change, 10% more on that million dollars is 100k.
how many shares is swift doing a day? i read on here 250 mil? that seems impossible as thats 1 out of every 8 or so shares of the total us market. again swift has addicted people to huge vol to make money and its hard to do that anywere else and make money
i was just looking at swifts site. this company will collapse down the road. they're going to have like 40 offices in china alone? hell with 2000 traders doing 500k each vol a day thats 1 billion shares a day or 1/2 of the total us stock market. thats impossible to get to. are all these offices in china,russia,korea etc trading all us stocks?this is a huge churning chop shop. the parent company must be making 100's of millions a year profit
I echo what Szeven and others have been saying. The majority of people aren't "rebate trading" anymore. The company has definately become more diversified and they're getting access to more products/ECNs/Dark books all the time. Soon they'll be starting on Toronto and there's supposed to be cross-border arb by the end of the year.(apparently TSE has been begging them for years to start trading there) Not only that, they just lowered the execution fees to 14.6 cents per trade and if they grow large enough, it will eventually become zero due to the fixed nature of their costs. (btw, they make nothing off execution fees which is why they keep lowering them) Ya wanna see some big numbers kids? Go to Haifa, Israel. That branch did 2.4 million in May. They're definately not rebate trading...LOL EDIT: to answer above, Swift trades US and London right now..soon to have access to Euronext and TSE.
During my interview with them I asked what the top guys were making. There's a guy who made $2 million last year.