Is anyone else having problems viewing their P&L and Trade History in WTS's portal for the last day of July (07-31-2012)????
Here is WTS's financials (just talking about the US prop broker dealer) from 12-31-2011 from SEC.gov. They came up a few months late compared to when other firms data was posted. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/vprr/12/9999999997-12-010053 The member's equity ($2.4 million) is about the smallest around for a prop firm. And they still won't disclose how much is actually the owners capital versus the trader's deposits, so this thing could be running 100% on trader deposits for all we know. Another red flag is paragraph 10 in the notes. "In February 2011 the Company received notice from its SRO self regulatory organization the CBOE Stock Exchange that the Company accepted capital contributions from some of its members that were not subject to the one year lock up period and should be treated as customer funds If finalized this would be considered violation of Exchange rules as the Company is approved only to trade for its own account The Company strongly believes it has not accepted customer funds and has responded accordingly The case remains pending." If the firm is being run on trader deposits, and the CBOE hits them, or they incur large legal fees fighting it (and the class A owners don't feel like putting money in), then people may not be getting all their capital contributions back. So make sure you ask extra questions before doing business with them to see if the compliance stuff is resolved and whose capital (owners or trader's) money they are using to run the firm. Again, the US CBOE broker dealer is what I am referring to. Not sure what goes on out of the US.
That doesn't distinguish between Class A members (ultimate owners) and Class B members (traders or group leaders usually). In the eyes of the SEC and CBOE, they don't bother asking, which is why you need to be so careful. It literally could be zero Class A capital and the rest trader deposits, then they'd be running the company's operations (rent, legal, compliance costs and fines) on the trader's money. See T3's, they broke it down on theirs, and its ugly. The Class A members in that case LOST $998,000 last year. See page 10 of the PDF from SEC.gov. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/vprr/12/9999999997-12-004838
I have looked at the entire history of your posts SgtSlottter. You seem to be anti prop trading across the board. Now I am not holding that against you because you clearly know how to research the internals of a prop firm. In a post MF Global and PFG world the fact of the matter is that no one can truly trust where their money is at in a non SIPC account. Do you trade at all SgtSlotter? Or did you blow up your account in the past at a prop firm? This is part of the risk of being a prop trader. I need WTS for their lower than retail commissions, direct access trading and most of all intraday leverage. If I did not have an edge in stocks then I would trade futures at this point without a doubt. Trading stocks is not enjoyable due to all of the fees that get tacked on like FINRA fees and mainly SEC 31 fees. The game is tough. The only real solution for those who need extra buying power like me is to keep the most minimal amount in any trading account at all times. By keeping your account size at any firm to the absolute minimum you are protecting yourself and being in the game at the same time.