Agustin Lebron
@AgustinLebron3
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➡️ How to tell if the trading company you're interviewing at is actually a scummy bucket shop that will take your money. ⬅️ 🧵 👉
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I'm sure I'll get attacked as "gatekeeping" or some other shit. I don't care. Use your own judgment but if anything you're seeing looks like the above, tread very very carefully. @KrisAbdelmessih @therobotjames @bookdepth @DeepDishEnjoyer please spread the word.
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8. Some scams don't even have you trade in the real market at all. They tell you it's real money, but it's all faked inside their own systems. It's much cheaper for them this way.
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7. Payouts are small, slow and/or never happen. Many stories are out there if you search. Even if you get lucky and make money, you'll never be able to cash it out. - Post-facto fines for "bad activity". - Slow payouts hoping the person gives up. - Withdrawal fees. Etc.
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Example: Make $20k on $100k with 8% drawdown and 2% daily limit. Clear scam.
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6. Extremely hard "evaluation tests" and profit thresholds. Scam bucket shops make newhires go through a trial eval period where (a) you're paying for the privilege and (b) the "passing" grades are so stringent that almost no one passes. But don't worry. You can "try again".
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5. A "great" training program. That you have to pay for. Legit prop firms don't make you pay for training. Bucket shops will advertise the names of the "senior traders" who will teach you "everything they know", but it's all bullshit. What they know is how to scam you.
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If you don't know whose -ve edge trades you're trading against, you're the one with the -ve edge. The machines you're trading against react in under a microsecond. And absorb MBs of data per second. You react in 200ms and look at a few bytes of information. Not a fair fight.
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4. Emphasis on high-frequency click trading in super-liquid markets like CME futures (ES, NQ, etc). In 2025, I'm quite confident in saying you can't teach someone to click trade ES for edge in a few weeks or months. Or ever probably.
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3. Unrealistic promises of huge leverage and job autonomy: - Be your own boss! - Trade with 100:1 leverage! - Unlimited earnings! No legitimate firm advertises the amount of leverage they'll give you. At every legitimate firm, you'll have a boss.
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By way of reference: In 2025, tier 1 prop trading firms pay their new grads $300k base and $200k guaranteed bonus in their first year. They're running a business and that's the going rate. The firm you're looking at can't pay you a dollar? That's cuz they don't 👏 have 👏edge!
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Meanwhile, the shop makes money off you: - Platform fees - Exorbitant commissions - Service fees - Cashout fees No matter whether you make money or not.
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2. Minimal or no base salary, only profit split. Bucket shops commonly classify traders as independent contractors who live off trading profits alone, often after splitting those profits with the company. So if you don’t make money, you earn nothing. And lose your own stake.
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1. They make you put up your own money or pay fees or both. - A genuine prop trading firm will NEVER ask you to deposit your own capital to trade. - A genuine prop trading firm will NEVER make you pay for a simulated account as "talent scouting".
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Question: What's a bucket shop? Answer: A so-called trading company whose revenue primarily comes out of the people who think they're employees of the company. A real trading company makes money from profitable trading.
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➡️ How to tell if the trading company you're interviewing at is actually a scummy bucket shop that will take your money. ⬅️ 🧵 👉
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If a 67bp move in ES blows someone out of their job, maybe one should consider that something *else* is wrong with the risk management.
Last night one of our newest live traders left the desk with a working sell order still in. The order filled short at 6,816 just before ES rallied. Our risk manager spotted it and immediately called the trader. No answer. Started working them out of the position. Without that
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What analogous thing can OAI have that can't be replicated with a few billions of dollars of investment? Looking for actual positive arguments, not just "they're a scam" or whatever.
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- AAPL: Ecosystem and the highest status in a $600b/yr mkt - NVDA: Obvious - MSFT: Owns Fortune500 IT which is v sticky - AMZN: Scale economies and scaled exec speed - GOOG: Browser, AI, other infra stuff - META: Most important social media properties and huge network effects
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