Interesting Story About Traders In My Country

I’d like to give an interesting story here. It’s about trading career in my country. I live in developed country, where day trader seemed a strange career, and sometimes a lowly career. Well, I can’t blame that. Lack of knowledge usually invite suspicious. And I will give you short story about it.

As to my surprise, there’s a lot of prop firm here in my country. Most of their trading instrument is Hang Seng Index and Nikkei, because it’s convenience with the hour here. The prop firm have the sales forces to attract money from public. They will aggressively ask you to invest money at the prop and trade the money at the index. Usually it took minimum $10.000 per account. Hang Seng Index worth $5 per point, just like Mini Dow. Everything seemed normal, right? Now here’s the bad thing. Let me breakdown it to numbers:
1. The sales force is also the trader. They trade their customer’s money. Usually they will ask permission for entering position, or just doing what their customer want. They took commission for every trade. Now, we have a broker doubled as a salesman. Not a trader.
2. The turnover is very high. The prop will recruit every person who can give the company’s money. The prop have little interest with your background, education, personality, or so on. So the sales force will consist fresh graduate college boy who doesn’t have job yet, or difficult to have the job. The prop only care for how to get the customer and create money for them. Now, we have a not competent human resources. At least most of them.
3. The commission is very high. Around $20 / contract per round turn. And the other thing is the spread. The firm give a huge spread, around 10 points. I forgot the detail. But it’s around $100 per round only for commission. Now, we have high commission.
Good Sales Force + Low educated trader + High Comission = Financial Disaster for Customer.
That’s make my career as trader seemed very low in public. I am not saying those prop firm guy all of them is a scammer. Maybe some of them became a great trader. But I am very positive there will be only a fraction of them.

What a bad name given to traders. I remembered one of my long time no see friend saw me cynically about my job as a full time trader. I really want to ignore it but the one you resist, persist..
Keep the job right, persistent, discipline, and patience, I believe we can have a better life than most of them who pursue career at the corporate world. Maybe not on authority or money, but freedom, fulfillment in life. I want to travel around the world while trading. Not just vacation, but temporary stay while learning something there. One of the thing that most if not almost all job that can't do like this. Just take the advantage.