Thats right, He is worried that you will lose your trading money if you trade remote and then you won't have any more money left to trade and then if you don't trade, he doesn't get his commissions.
None of those offices are open anymore. I don't believe there are any prop shops left in Dallas. Traffic is still bad. It is somewhat better since construction on the high five finished. If someone wants to fight traffic then I all for that, personally I don't have a desire to fight it. If folks really want to open shop then Bright would be a professional group to be associated with.
So you traded at around 5 props in Dallas and now they are all gone? What did you do to them!! Seriously though, what would it take for you to show up in an office? How about your own fridge and bathroom just like home? Maybe we'll bring the wife in every hour to yell at you? You'd be great to have around, with all your experience. Out of all those props you listed and traded at, which did you like the most and why? Better software? better location? Just curious.
Austin is a much better town for setting up a prop from a logistics standpoint.....put it in an office building off 360.
I believe Austin has a couple of prop shops? The thing about Dallas is the prop trading market is basically untapped. The cost of living in Austin is a lot higher compared to Dallas and there aren't as many financial firms in Austin as there are in Dallas. Cost of living plays a factor for newer traders who are interested in relocating. It would be easier for a trader to relocate from Austin to Dallas than the other way around. Also, professional traders tend to gravitate towards where the jobs are because that's often where they start out and learn the business. They may start out trading equities at a hedge fund in Dallas or as a stockbroker in the area. You are more likely to get a better group of candidates who already have some industry experience and are licensed in the Dallas area. There are more trading firms, hedge funds, mutual funds and financial firms in Dallas than there are in Austin. It might be because of the "equities of Dallas" stereotype or it could be because many people grow up here and reinvest in the city. Just recruiting for traders out of the area would seem to be much easier I think. All the firms are in Dallas now. They recently even put up a large Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) office in Dallas. You have Southwest Securities, Fidelity, one of TD Ameritrade's main offices, and a ton of other firms. Not to mention, everything is in Dallas/Fort Worth. All the history here in sports alone. The Dallas Cowboys winning the superbowl, the Dallas Stars winning the Stanley Cup, Nolan Ryan and his no-hitters, and recently the Mavericks in the NBA Finals. You also have concerts, shopping/dining is great. It's a great location to be in.
What I was trying to do was show that if you look at the universe of remote traders, percentage-wise, it will have a very small success rate because you have such a high-percentage of un-trained or poorly-trained traders, part-time people, hobbyists, etc. And if you look at the universe of in-office traders, it will be composed by a majority of highly trained, well-backed professionals such as those people on the trading floors/desks of GS, MER, MS, etc. These people are brought in from the top B-schools, given months or years of intensive training, work side-by-side with other successful traders, and take a nice salary while the majority of their profits go to the firm that employs them. With us, the trader gets 100% of the net profit. We don't get any of his profits, so we don't have the business model that includes paying people 6 figure salaries while they train under our top traders. We would rather our traders be able to keep all their profits than suck them up and only give them a small fraction of those profits like the major brokerages do. And if you read my prior post about Bright having offices, you'll see that it's the traders that want to be at home, not that we want to close offices. There is no benefit to either traders or us as a firm to have offices if traders aren't coming into them and it's not good business to spend money on resources that aren't used. My prior post was more to the statistical value of looking at the entire universe of traders, not specifically about our firm. I hope that clears it up. Cash
The cost of living is in no way higher in Austin vs. Dallas.....very similar imo (and I have lived in both cities). I would also venture to say Austin has just as many traders as Dallas to recruit from (darn traders are all over the place in Austin). Heck, even Don knows there are a ton of traders in Austin. I would bet 1/3 of all the Indian programmers here in Austin trade options alone (they probably as a group make more profits than all of ET's members combined....LOL!). Austin has one of the best sporting events too!!! They have some of the best two legged deer chasing in the country!