If you have verifiable experience and 30K you will probably start with 1000 shares, after a week or two, assuming you are profitable, it can go up very very quickly. Some of our biggest traders only have 30K in their account, and they routinely take on 5-10K positions, some even hold that much overnight.
The amount of capital usage is not as important as the overall risk involved. We monitor the risk of every trader, during the day, and make adjustments to their profile as needed. For example: If you are placing 20 x 3000 shares of $50 as "opening only" orders, there is no problem. If you went straight long or short that many, there may be a problem. We try to give as much latitude as we can, within common sense paramters of course.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but why in the world would anyone plop down $30,000 of thei hard earned money. First of all and once again correct me if I'm wrong but that $30,000 technically is not your money anymore. If for any reason Worldco faces a financial problem or goes belly up you can kiss that money good bye. Gee with $30,000 you can get $120,000 in buying power at home or wherever and you get to keep 100% and it's all protected and it's yours. Sure after you trade at home or whereever and you are consistently profitable then you can be allot more selective on where you want to go and name your own terms. Yet to put $30,000 down and have a firm tell you you can oly trade 1000 shares and only keep 90 or so percent of it just doesn't make sense to me.
"As for capital, let's just say that you can trade as big here at Worldco as anywhere else, I mean, we would be stupid to not let you go as big as you want to if you are making money. If you are a profitable trader you will make more money at Worldco than Schonfeld period, the difference of the payout is too big to overcome." - Hitman Tell us, do you recruit swing traders, and intermediate term traders? Do you recruit people whose strategy involves taking major position trades (major relative to thier buying power)? Is WorldCo just a daytrading firm? And if so,why?
Because 30K is not nearly enough to make a living with? Because a 5K loss and you are out of the game? Because 30K when max margined is just 2400 shares of a $50 stock, which is less than what traders with 30K at my firm trade in a single position? Because the 1% payout or whatever you give up at top tier is worth the equipment maintenance/software/free up of your own capital/bullet . . . As much as people talking about successful homers, your chance is much better with a prop firm than starting out on your own with IB. The golden age of day trading is behind us and you need to get everything in your favor, you need a firm to take hits for you. Trading from home is something you should shoot for AFTER you become profitable, when you are starting out you should be working in a professional environment and fight for your life. As for commissions, I still say if you are a new trader you need to take as many shots as you can within some basic parameters. When you are a newbie you don't know what is a good set-up, and the more shots you take the quicker you will learn the ins and outs of the actual execution which no one else can teach. Achieving a high profit to commission ratio is something you shoot for AFTER you become profitable, quality over quantity is the higher level of the game. You can waste a year away without learning anything if all you do is take 3-5 trades a day.
In my post "Five to One" - Doors (Trading), I show that a 1:1 trader doesn't need such a high win ratio, p (as compared to, say, a 5:1 non-churner), and that for one particular subset of churners, p can be approximated to (16*C+1)/2, where C is the commission rate per share. Traders with low commission rates could be looking for a p of 0.55 or 0.56. But you hit the nail right on the head by using the word "maintain" - if they lose a bit of their edge, they're toast.
"Tell us, do you recruit swing traders, and intermediate term traders? Do you recruit people whose strategy involves taking major position trades (major relative to thier buying power)?" I believe you must meet three requirements before you can trade or be recruited there and they as follows: 1: you have to have some money to put down 2: You have to be breathing 3: You have to have a few fingers to be able press the buy or sell keys. Requirement # 3 can be negotiated depending on how much of requirement # 1 you have.
***Tell us, do you recruit swing traders, and intermediate term traders? Do you recruit people whose strategy involves taking major position trades (major relative to thier buying power)?*** Yes, but you will need to have some serious capital (say you have 100K we will give you a million something of that nature) and a solid record. I just talked to a guy who is more swing trading than day trading, who started out with substantial capital but went deep into firm capital late last year (went short about the same time Pejman Hamidi posted about it on this board) but making a killing since the start of New Year. Our risk management discussed it with him in depth and basically allowed him to hold on to his positions (we are talking about multiple 10K positions overnight here). And if swing trading is too small potato for you, we have a hedge fund division. So yes, sky is the limit. ***Is WorldCo just a daytrading firm? And if so,why?*** 95% of our operation is done intraday trading, because intraday trading generates higher commissions and overall, lower risk especially when it comes to leverage.
Tom_p, yes, I definitely agree on maintain. In addition to profit-to-commission ratio, you might want to run some formulas for risk-reward ratio, then combine the two and create a formula that analyzes p for both reward:risk and profit:commission.