since every firm values a $400/$500 per day trader(goal of firm). And since WLDC in no stranger to hiring newbies, How does worldco get a newbie from start to finish? is there a structure of training? describe. or is it the wacky wall crawler approach. throw them on the wall and see who sticks?
Well, that's pretty much to it. When you come to Worldco you are usually assigned to one of the team leaders, and basically he will show you as much as he wants to. Then you are mixed with other traders and you basically do the best you can. I mean, what hell, there is no formula to success, you show them what works, and see if they can catch on and eventually develop their own style. Ultimately every firm comes down to one solution, it is like throwing new born kids into the den of lions, the ones that actually survive are the strongest and will eventually go on to make it. Rule of the jungle.
Hitman: Not that it really matters, but I'm just curious. How diverse is Worldco in terms of ethnicity? I've noticed in my past interviews with prop firms that traders end up getting "clumped" together based on ethnic background. Is this true at Worldco?
We got the Russian Mofias, Chinese Triads, Jewish Connections, etc . . . While the management will never admit it I have noticed that eventually people of similar ethnics are clumped together. When I am running my own team ethnics is the last thing I worry about, but obviously those at top try to mix and match the backgrounds together.
Now that you responded to the question by tellings us that certain ethnic groups coalesce at WorldCo (by choice and personal comfort I presume) do you have any observations on trading styles among the groups that you have noticed?
All sort of styles are involved, what works for one trader, no matter how successful, may never work for another. My goal is to build a team of diversed styles, this way if I get cold it won't mean everyone else will get cold, chances are some people will find something that works at any given time. I have seen a team that trade the exact same style from top to bottom. They only play news stocks, from ENE to CPN to TYC you get an entire team of guys putting the smack down with bullets. It is the only style that can actually bring upon some team effort, in literally any stock I trade I don't think you can have more than 2 guys in there without stepping on each other's toes. Of course, let's just say playing news stocks is one of the hardest styles to get started with, but the squad leader does a great job with some high quality calls and he spend 12 hours a day doing some incredible research (I wish I can play news like he does someday). On a good day, no other squad can beat those guys as a team (their combined P&L for one stock would be 30K), on a bad day, they will be in for some serious hurt. That said, it is very difficult to make rediculous amount of money without playing stocks that move a point or two. Of the top 5 traders at my firm, 3 of them go 10K shares on news stocks regularly. No pain, no gain The most popular style is sector trading and its hundreds of variations, with a few quality go-to stocks that they trade every single day, there are some traders that don't know the feeling of a down day even in this market. You also get people who swing stuff all day long, put up a boat load of open orders basically do or die based on their biase for the day. Basket traders that trades 50 positions at a time. Filter based traders that basically play everything on reactionary. The bottomline is you can do whatever you want, trade any style you want (except overnight until you have your own money on the line), trade as often as you want, here at Worldco. No one will be there to tell you what to do, you have total freedom with our capital (as long as you cut your losses to something reasonable, getting multiple 1 point losers in a day and your buying power will be cut down faster than you can say ouch). You will get to see many many styles in action, but in the end you still have to do what is comfortable to you.
Some (dangerous?), politically incorrect generalisations I suspect Asians are more fearful of failure, as a result of their familial infrastructure... so they would be very defensive in their trading, on average (Hitman, you are Chinese... would you agree with this?) I suspect that Americans, Western Europeans, Canadians and Australians are more aggressive in their style, and would take positions somewhat more rashly and earlier than other groups. I suspect that Eastern Europeans are somewhat more technical in their trading, and would be more likely to be systems traders than discretionary traders.