lets strip it back to basics.
corporate chappies=well funded, encouraged to swing bat, salaried, possible inside track via customer flow
local traders=funds limited, no salaries, in and out like flint on a postion, last to know on market flow.
so, why be a local own account trader? the bigger you blow out, the biger job you seem to land the next time.
recent well quoted example is darren soards...ex liffe lad who was an ok, bog standard equity options trader; went to one bank and did a titanic on them; took 6 months out and reinvented himself, puffed in a hedge fund and stuffed them so badly, he elected to walk the plank last month before he ended up under blackfriars bridge. yet, i have more confidence in him walking into a lumpy well paid zero downside job within a year than i have in ftse ending up at 6500 in the same time period!!
earlier example is a dutch chappie called michel, did his coco's on the liffe a decade ago, dynergy (so bad infact one daily trading chart sell off point was known as michel's peak cos that where he went massively long!), shell, deutsche...all big numbers too in excess of 10 bar every time. perfect hedge fund material, just you wait.
so, in a nutshell, forget trading ethics and always making money, if you want to be someone in the trading world, make sure ur p/l goes down quicker than the belgrano and you're guaranteeing a job for life.....ho hum
