The Prop Trader's Chronicles: Short-Term Proprietary Trading Strategies for Both Bull and Bear Markets

CHAPTER 12

Strategy Diversification

The company that will be referred to only as CTNY was a relatively new proprietary trading firm in North America but it had expanded rapidly by offering extremely competitive deals to its branches through a franchised business model. In turn, its branches were able to offer some of the best terms and conditions available to proprietary traders who trade on the U.S. equity markets, including a large number of former senior traders from Swift Trade Securities. While it's a fairly commonly accepted principle among partners at many of New York's proprietary trading firms that poaching experienced and profitable traders from competing firms is overstepping a mutually understood boundary, CTNY had no problem aggressively poaching many of the top profitable traders straight out of established competitors' trading floors by offering deals that were nearly unheard of at the time.

Shortly before the branch of Swift Trade where I had been trained moved to a new building a few blocks from the core of Toronto's Bay Street financial district, it turned out that Jack had kicked the walls of the old trading floor one too many times. In spite of his impressive trading track record, the owner of the Swift Trade branch, Darrell, had been fed up with the noise pollution and the damages to the walls of the building. Sure, the profits that Jack brought in were more than enough to cover the cost of repairs, but Darrell had decided to put his foot down. After all, ...