Swifttrade anyone?

[snoop101]

Does anyone here work for swifttrade in canada? Im thinking of getting a job there. Hope someone can give me some thoughts on it.

[Canmorite]

Looks interesting.

[Manhattan]

What's the position?

If it's just a trader then forget it. I went through their joke of an interview process with a FOB chick that could barely speak English. They'll have you train for 6 months without any pay. They'll hire just about anyone. So unless you don't even have a high school diploma, don't waste your time. There's no base pay. 100% commission. It's like gambling for a living. Unless you want to gamble for a living...

[snoop101]

Day trading, but for a company.

[Canmorite]

It sounds sketchy. Looked into it a bit, and if you have no previous experience it sounds really hard to make it. A lot of guys went for 6 months, learned a shitload, and then left and traded their own money.

[snoop101]

From what I have seen its a pretty big company. Does Calgary have any other Prop firms that offer the same thing?

[Canmorite]

I e-mailed them a few questions last week, haven't heard back.

[snoop101]

ya i emailed the employment email and heard nothing.. so i then emailed the info one and someone returned my email.

[Canmorite]

What did they say?

[snoop101]

Woot I have my 3 rd interview next week... The second one was questioned that they emailed me and I had to answer them. different questions though, but I could see where they were going.

[Manhattan]

Sorry to burst your bubble but they will hire just about anyone. I've been through it. It's a complete joke.

[Whitetiger]

What's it all about? And how do they work? Fill us in.




Originally posted by Manhattan
Sorry to burst your bubble but they will hire just about anyone. I've been through it. It's a complete joke.

[Manhattan]

You learn to buy and sell stocks as a day trader. Not far from being a professional gambler. Zero base pay. Zero pay regardless of how much you make for the company the first six months.

It's similar to driving a taxi for a living except you're holed up in a seedy internet cafe all day. Glad I never got suckered in.

[Whitetiger]

How do you make income though?

And what happens when you LOSE their $$$?




Originally posted by Manhattan
You learn to buy and sell stocks as a day trader. Not far from being a professional gambler. Zero base pay. Zero pay regardless of how much you make for the company the first six months.

It's similar to driving a taxi for a living except you're holed up in a seedy internet cafe all day. Glad I never got suckered in.

[Canmorite]

Originally posted by Canmorite
A lot of guys went for 6 months, learned a shitload, and then left and traded their own money.

I keep hearing this on different message boards. Seems to be the way to go if you want to work for/with them.

[Rav4Guy]

are these "traders" even licensed? I don't see anything on their webpage about it.....

[snoop101]

im confused. first you said that they dont pay you anything for the first 6 months... then you said you have never worked for them? where are you getting your info from. I have talked with guys that worked for them and in the first month they were making a little bit of money to survive on.

[Manhattan]

I went through their whole interview process and got "hired" but had enough common sense to not work there. I have hired in quotation marks because they will "hire" anybody and everybody. They tell you straight up that in the first 6 months you wont be making any money in the training process.

[Whitetiger]

How do they expect you to "live on" though???


Originally posted by Manhattan
I went through their whole interview process and got "hired" but had enough common sense to not work there. I have hired in quotation marks because they will "hire" anybody and everybody. They tell you straight up that in the first 6 months you wont be making any money in the training process.

[Canmorite]

Originally posted by Whitetiger
How do they expect you to "live on" though???



Especially in Calgary...

[snoop101]

Well i was thinking of getting a part time job to help out. From what I got is that starting out you make 35% of what ever you make. obviously you dont make to much because you dont get to much to work with. As long as I can bring in around grand a month to start i'll be able to do it until the big bucks start flowing in.

[Canmorite]

Do you have any previous market/trading experience?

[snoop101]

Yes with my own money. Would that make a difference?

[Rav4Guy]

Well, it'll help. Except that trading your own money and trading someone elses is a lot different. Swifttrade I believe will "train" you to become a "trader" so you could probably go in with no trading experience and be just fine. There's not a lot of terms but you do need to follow trading regulations and compliance procedures. Besides having trading experience, the person needs to be QUICK and be able to multitask trades screens without making errors.

best of luck and let us know how it goes.

[mwmhong]

OK, I'll pipe up because I used to work there. I'm not trying to take a side on whether Swift trade is good place to work for or not, just read through and see if it's for you. The one good thing about Swift is that you don't have to put up any risk capital like other firms. You may have to pay $100 or so for 'training.' Plus a monthly desk fee of $50??, some $$ for charts (if you want, you can share with a buddy) and $ for workstation rental.

It is NOT true that you work for 6 months without pay, if you can earn payroll by making 3K (it could be less now, maybe 2.5K) in one calendar month, you 'make payroll'.
Then you make money, 30% of your net and upwards depending on how much. By the same token, if you are not at least profitable after 6+ months, you get nothing and may get the boot.


During the Fall of 2003 there were about 6 traders from Calgary that started off in Kelowna (1st gen). The 1st gen joined the Calgary office when it started in Jan 2004. There were about 20 traders added in Jan 2004. (2nd gen). Most of this group made payroll in 4 months. Some (like myself) in 5. Some took 6-7 months. Only one or two out of approx 25 did not make payroll. Subsequent generations of traders seemed not as good or quit very fast. Maybe less dedicated, but there % success rate dropped VERY dramatically. Maybe 1 in 15-20 made payroll?

The type of trading that goes on here is VERY different than what you do from a retail account at home (market order, limit order, etc). You have direct access to ECN's such as Island, Archipelago, BRUT, SIZE, ATTN, etc.
You use a keyboard to execute trades, F1 to F6 are your 'sell' keys and F7 to F12 are your 'buy keys'. Each does a different ECN or type of order.

Alot of it is tape-reading (Staring non-stop at Nasdaq Level II and time and sales windows). Some people use charts with candlesticks and moving averages, etc.

You generally are playing with very small stop loss allowances like a few pennies on the NASDAQ, not alot of 'flex'. It goes the wrong way, you have to cut your loss. Basically you are scalping.

Alot of the traders there are rebate traders who capitalize on the spread between the bid/ask on NASDAQ Level II. The reason this strategy works is because the firms commissions are VERY LOW. Like $0.20 in and $0.20 out, plus the ability to collect ECN liquidity rebates. You can get filled by posting bids and offers and making zero gross profit (eg. Post a bid for 2.00, get filled, then post and offer for 2.00 get filled, make zero gross). However, because ECN's provide liquidity rebates to encourage traders to post bids and offers (make the market more liquid) you can make money even through you bought and sold at the same price. The ECN's charge the person who removes liquidity by hitting the bid or offer (like $0.003 per share), BUT they provide a rebate (like $0.002 per share) to those who add liquidity by posting a bid or offer. So for example, if you get filled (add liquidity) in and out flat (no gross profit) for a puny 100 shares you make a lousy $0.20 in rebates getting in and a lousy $0.20 in rebates getting out for total of $0.40.

BUT if instead you have 10,000 shares are do the same thing, you make $20 getting in and $20 getting out for $40. If you do the same thing but make a penny gross on top of it, you make $100 gross plus the $40 rebates for $140.

Generally when doing this you'd want to find stocks that are liquid and slower moving with thick price levels and you get filled as the stocks price movement comes towards you and get out of the position either flat or a penny or two positive gross and collect the rebates. You can post real/fake bids and offers high and low to try and create an illusion of a 'channel' to keep the price within a certain range and absorb any upwards or downwards price movement while getting out on the other side. Everyone can cooperate, but if it blows through this corridor and fills everyone, LOOK OUT!

If/when you are hired :D ......you do a few days of learning very basic Level II and how to use the software, what buttons to hit. It helps to borrow a few books on daytrading which covers Level II on NASDAQ (the one by Misha T. Sarkovich is a good one). Downloading a simulator like Cybertrader and seeing how Level II and time and sales works is VERY helpful.

You start off trading with puny 100 share lots and work your way up in share lot size when you are profitable for the day (eg. 100 to 200 to 400 , etc). You need to get up in the 1000+ share range to start making any decent money.

Workplace culture is very casual to use the term loosely.
The don't care how you dress, you can curse, yell, work with others, take long breaks, play video games, etc. Sometimes people screw with each other by posting invisible/orders or doing things that are contrary to everyone elses interests and denying it. Can be some cutthroat people too, some leech advice off you and capitalize on it and give nothing in return while doing their own thing and not sharing with you. Almost all male, I think I have only seen one female trader there, major sausage fest.

There is ALOT of trash talk on Elitetrader.com from former traders. Most of it appears to be reasonable criticism and some of it is not. It's just like any business, if you don't make money, they get rid of you. And if you don't like the rules/payout percentages, that is tough; go work somewhere else. There are other companies like Golden Market Management and Bright Trading up here in Canada that you can sign up if Swift isn't your liking. Again, payouts/transactions fees vary between firms. The training at Swift may not be adequate but it should be up to YOU to learn for yourself. In theory, you get what you put into it.

There are however, some 'shady' things that go on, such as the company being based out of Cyprus, etc and a whole slew of things that can go wrong, like the trading system locking up, etc. (read more at Elitetrader.com)

Even though I got fired in the end, there were NO hard feelings, the bosses liked me because I did something different from everyone else there and had some success. I also learned alot about myself and the markets.

You learn to lose and get back at it again and again, day after day after day for quite some time. It really tests your resolve and if you can make money in a market where there are people/firms out there with more resources, more smarts, more capital, more education, etc. THAT is what makes a job like this noble. You fight for every dollar you make. However, trading is TOUGH, it's not easy at all, the washout rate is high. I would guess that there are a few people at the Calgary branch that make very good money, some make a livable wage, others don't make much. Remember they only keep 30%(and up) of what they net. The rest goes to the firm. Alot of traders there had second jobs (restaurant, warehouse, bartender, bouncer, hotel night audit, etc) as a safety net.

Personally, I didn't do the rebate game like 99% of the people who worked there. I played the faster stocks, not the thin and fast stocks like Yahoo or Dell or Starbucks, but the ones with some market depth and liquidity, the Microsoft, the Intel, the Cisco. I couldn't do rebate trading, it didn't suit my personality, seemed too slow, I liked the action plus there was a potential threat at the time that rebate trading would become implausible with pending NASD regulations that would elminate rebates (which never happened). Generally, played a 2500 share default shooting for a $0.02/share gain for +$50 and a loss of -$0.01/share for a -$25 loss. Plus rebates too, but that was not the primary objective.

Right now, I'm not actively trading, but now I plan on trading Eurex futures during the late eve/early morning hours while maintaining my 9-5 Accounting job. Wake up at 11PM, do stressful scalping until 5-6AM, then do some easy, breezy, boring accounting. :nut:

[mwmhong]

Originally posted by Whitetiger
How do you make income though?
And what happens when you LOSE their $$$?


If you lose $$$, you have to pay it back unless you quit/they fire you. One day the office lost HUGE on AMEX exchange like over 100K in a short squeeze. :eek:

One trader lost 42K and was in a big hole, but left and I don't *think* he had to pay it back. Another was down about 20K and made it all back in a few months.

I was down a few K before I got the boot. I didn't have to pay it back. Would be wise to double check though.


Originally posted by Rav4Guy
are these "traders" even licensed? I don't see anything on their webpage about it.....

No, they are not.


Originally posted by Rav4Guy
Well, it'll help. Except that trading your own money and trading someone elses is a lot different. Swifttrade I believe will "train" you to become a "trader" so you could probably go in with no trading experience and be just fine. There's not a lot of terms but you do need to follow trading regulations and compliance procedures. Besides having trading experience, the person needs to be QUICK and be able to multitask trades screens without making errors.

best of luck and let us know how it goes.

You are mostly right, but I wouldn't say they MUST be able to multitask. Some play multiple stocks, some play a single stock. There was a guy in Kelowna who did nothing but play SUNW all day, I did the same with Microsoft. It all depends on personality I guess.

[Canmorite]

Scalping seems soooo boring and meticulous.