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Bruce Russell wrote:
>
> Any one have any experience with Block Trading, which is opening Day Trading
> offices all over the country, or other such firms? I'd be interested in
> your impressions as Block is opening an office locally.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bruce
Bruce -- I did some trading with a company called Bright Trading which
was similar to Block, except that it focused mostly on NYSE stocks and
they provided access to trading capital, too. The deal was this: you
had to put up a minimum of $25,000 into an account, and then pay an
overhead charge of $600 per month, as well as approximately 1 cent per
share commission. They'd give you access to a DOT machine (which means
superfast executions) as well as superleverage, like something like 10:1
easily. They also gave you volume discounts off your overhead charge,
so if you traded something like 500,000 shares a month, you wouldn't
have to pay the entire $600 per month overhead.
With the leverage, it would be possible to have multiple positions on in
two or three stocks equalling an aggregate value of $1,000,000 or so.
A few caveats: they don't give training, you can't hold large positions
overnight and they take out 25% of your profits but you keep all your
losses. At least in 1997, however, they gave the remaining 25% back to
you as a bonus at the end of the month, so you really got to keep 100%
of your profits; I dunno if they're continuing to do this in 1998.
I only traded there for a couple of months while I was going to graduate
school full time before I decided it would be better to focus either on
trading or graduate school, not both. However, I will say that the
people I worked with in their Chicago office were top notch people, no
jokes, real traders. What was cool was that the managers of the offices
are trading along side you and so really have first hand knowledge of
the trials and tribulations that you may experience.
You can check out Bright's homepage at: http://www.stocktrading.com
I am no way affiliated professionally with Bright, although I would like
to go back trading there once I finish with school later this year.
Michael Strupp
Chicago, IL
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