Proprietary Trading Firms – Should You Pay for Training?

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Proprietary Trading Firms – Should You Pay for Training?

Finding a seat coupled with a good training programme on a trading floor at a reputable proprietary trading firm is increasingly competitive, since the majority of firms only have a hand full of vacancies and these are frequently only opened to graduate students with an exceptionally high overall performance in education.

Right now there are rising numbers of prop trading companies who have “self sponsorship” training tracks that enable any applicant who does not fulfill their typical recruitment criteria to pay out a fee that may vary from a couple of thousand pounds/dollars to as much as ,000 or even more, in order to go through the company coaching programme. Applicants submit to this procedure in the hope of being profitable enough to be offered an elusive “backed deal” allowing these individuals to trade company money for the firms account. Live trading with real capital may possibly constitute a part of the coaching syllabus and this may well get marketed as part of the opportunity to prop trade with a company funded account, on the proviso that you pay out in order to do the coaching programme.

To many, this particular “pay to train, and then trade for us” model sounds doubtful at best, or perhaps a scam at worst.

The business model in which a proprietary trading firm charges a training fee before a trader can join the company is a route full of probable complications and conflicts of interest. Exactly how this process is carried out in practical terms makes a huge difference.

Prop firms offering trader training generally bundle a course which may be anything from a couple of weeks upto a number of months in duration. They will provide a period of time on a simulator, and may claim to later give a substantial sum of capital in the trainee prop traders’ account at the firm, though in fact these prop firms actually strictly restrict buying power and have tight loss restrictions – the cut-off point following which you must stop trading for the day/week/month. Typically, the entire amount of money a trader is allowed to lose is in actuality only a modest amount of the training price charged for coaching and there should really be no false impression in which the trader, once trading “live”, will be trading with company capital – the truth is that you will be trading with just some of the money from your training fee. When commissions, software package costs and losses consume this limited capital base, or your fixed period training contract expires (whichever occurs first), the trader’s prop career is finished, the trader “terminated” and the prop firm, which never intended to make income by means of the traders’ trading, pockets the fees and whatever is remaining of the trading account funds. In our opinion, this is a sharp practice and inherently unfair because it enables less scrupulous prop firms to profit handsomely from the considerable over-supply of those who are determined to gain an opportunity within the business.

Use due diligence, research and common sense any time such organizations indicate they are ready to make you “an offer” following merely token qualification on their part. If a prop firm provides solid training for a fee, this may be a sensible investment decision. Nevertheless do not let unreliable promises of prop trading using company funds talk you into payments for training that you wouldn’t be making in any other case. Significant training charges may be a signal that this is really the way in which the “prop firm” is making the majority of its money. Whenever this is the situation, the firm may have four or five-figure training fees as a rule and will allot particularly small trading size to traders. The organization may probably also charge traders substantial commission costs. If the trader hits a predefined, low, loss limit – and the largest majority will due to the limited size and the microscopic margin for error, the trader will in due course either lose their “job” or is going to end up being required to forward more money.

This type of set up is a scam, in our opinion, comprising of a training company masquerading as a trading firm; a false impression created to entice wannabe traders into having to pay for their highly-priced training programs. Quite often, these efforts at trader training are quite thin, composed of practically nothing more than simple technical analysis, support & resistance, the type you may discover in numerous trading discussion boards and also in any trading related introductory publication. Generally there tend to be no skills building initiatives, no substantive mentorship or clearly outlined trading tactics. Usually, these types of watered down programs are proposed to traders who trade remotely, from their home locations. That’s actually a cautionary signal: genuine prop firms value teamwork, hands-on mentorship, and the best trading technology; it’s difficult as well as time-consuming to be able to effectively coach those traders that are remotely located.

In the event that you intend to join a prop firm, you should be in a position to view the trading floor, interact with the traders, and see first hand exactly who is actually earning their living from their trading. Do these people have a transparent rule based technique or is it more imprecise, about “feel”. Everyone should certainly inquire how many of the trainee’s have progressed on to become profitable traders – after all, in the event you are going to pay for training in trading, your expectation must be that you should have a realistic probability of becoming profitable if you are paying for their assistance. Exactly how much of their business revenue is made from trading profits as opposed to training charges. Don’t permit them slip out of answering these important questions for you; In the event that they really don’t have a clear framework to make profitable trading possible, you are probably far better off keeping your training fee and simply training yourself, and in the event that their business makes a lot more from training than it does out of trading… well, who would you prefer to be trained by?

There are of course, two sides to any story.

Having to pay a charge for the slim chance of being kept on as a prop trader is one thing, it is actually completely another where a business asks a reasonable fee for a standalone training package. Generally there are not very many reputable prop firms that make their own internal training program available to external traders. For example, it really is very difficult to track down legitimate instructional programs for traders who would like to learn inter-market spread trading methods, order flow or market depth. Where a trader is aware of exactly what they really want to achieve with their training, the traders can weigh up the cost coupled with the content of the program and then establish if it’s a reasonable deal for them, in line with their own individual objectives.

As a general guideline, if the training features a structured curriculum, methods for skills building and not merely informational content, and where the training course last for multiple weeks or months, rather than a couple of days or a week, then they have the potential to shorten the duration of your learning curve if you are a beginner. Short training courses proclaiming to train traders to profitability in a week (or even just a weekend) are lacking credibility, as there is simply too little time to develop the broad range of needed skills.

When a trader is expected to go through the training course (at a price) as a prerequisite to joining the company as a proprietary trader, it is important to separate what is being presented into two defined elements. The first aspect is the coaching portion; the second is the prospect of prop trading. It is conceivable that you might possibly like the prop firm with regard to their training, but not necessarily for it’s actual trading (style, facilities, software, commission, or otherwise)–or vice versa. By separating out the training from the prop trading opportunity, you can evaluate each of these on its individual merits.

Would you pay a fee for the training by itself, risking your own capital in the market, in the event that the training did not result in an offer to trade for the company? If the answer is no, look elsewhere. If the response is yes, then it makes sense to examine the training programme in greater depth. But no trader, in our opinion, should be required to “pay to play”. The training course has to fully stand up to scrutiny on its own.

All of this means that signing up for a prop group calls for significant due diligence. There are serious scams around, and there are genuine companies that give you a teamwork, learning-based culture along with solid training. Just make sure that the organization is reputable, and selling you a thorough training package, not simply selling you hopes and dreams.

And remember, you can’t pay another person to train you and expect them to somehow transform you into a profitable trader. YOU are the only person who can learn, absorb, practice and teach yourself everything you need to know, which in turn is precisely the same process you would have to go through if you paid a company to present the required information and facts to you.

We believe it is entirely possible to take the capital you would otherwise invest in training and instead use it to obtain the resources, books and knowledge you need and to then fund a trading account for yourself with the remainder.

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