Prop firm vs. trade on own

[Steakeater]

I was wondering what are the advantages of trading for a prop firm compared to just trading at home with your own account?

I can see quite a few advantages to trading your own account such as no desk fees, 100% of the profit (if there is any) and not having to pay big rent in London (assumming you are not from London).

Apart from initial training why do people trade at a prop firm then? Is it simply access to capital?

 

[Steakeater]

Bump

 

[timsk]

Hi Steakeater,
Never having traded at a prop' firm - I can only guess as to what the advantages are. The biggest incentive for me would be to have access to people who, in theory at any rate, are professionals who know exactly what they're doing. Of course, there are prop' firms and there are prop' firms, so care needs to be taken when choosing which one to go with. If you're doing okay under your own steam and aren't wanting / needing mentoring of any kind, then the only other big plus is access to capital which will enable you trade in size. If neither of these two benefits matter much to you, then the next option is to share an office with other traders - just for company and to bounce ideas off etc.
Tim.

 

[Steakeater]

Hi Steakeater,
Never having traded at a prop' firm - I can only guess as to what the advantages are. The biggest incentive for me would be to have access to people who, in theory at any rate, are professionals who know exactly what they're doing. Of course, there are prop' firms and there are prop' firms, so care needs to be taken when choosing which one to go with. If you're doing okay under your own steam and aren't wanting / needing mentoring of any kind, then the only other big plus is access to capital which will enable you trade in size. If neither of these two benefits matter much to you, then the next option is to share an office with other traders - just for company and to bounce ideas off etc.
Tim.

Thanks for the reply, I have been offered positions at a number of prop firms the last couple of months but am unsure as to whether I should take them up on it?

 

[rawrschach]

havent we already gone over all of this

 

[neil]

havent we already gone over all of this

RAW - You are correct. If Steak had done a simple Google search and/or typed in "prop" into the search facility at the top of the T2W site he would have got a lot of info.



Trade2Win Forums - Search Results

and

BT Yahoo! Search Results

 

[rawrschach]

worse than that - it was in his last thread a couple days ago

 

[Steakeater]

The last thread was about taking trading as a career and the outcome of that was that you are better to stay in a real job and trade from home in evenings etc.

The basis of this thread is that if you generally would be better off staying in a real job as mentioned why would you ever trade at a prop house with desk fees etc.? People mention access to capital and so on but from what I can see at a prop shop you don't get massive access initially but you have to build it up, surely you can do this with your own account and not have the challenge of desk fees each month and profit split?