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Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,057 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,399
Thanks Received: 10,225
I've been clearing through Advantage for almost 5 years. Feel free to PM if you have any questions or need contacts within their organization. Advantage are NOT a small time retail clearer, these guys are a very high volume excection shop. Their back office & operations are excellent and their IT support is even better. I've never used their 24hr trade desk so have no idea what they are like, but if they are anything like the rest of Advantage they will be excellent. (They also have 24hr IT support which I have used and they are excellent).
The rates advertised on their website (as low as 7c per side on >500 lots a day Advantage Commission Calculator) are real, and reflect their clearing cost to you. These obviously do not include exchange fees. They are probably as low as you will find anywhere unless you are HFT or Institutional and moving 'extreme' size. There are no extra's. Your all in rate is exchange fees + your negotiated Advantage rate. And yes, repeating the obvious, exchange fees are lower if you lease a seat. So as a NYMEX trader with a leased seat trading CL and NG your day trade rate could be as low as 62c/side (55c exchange + Advantage Clearing Fee.)
I'm currently considering switching to Advantage, overall impression thus far from the website is that these people are serious professional people.
"The primary thing required to obtain what you want from life, is simply the will to pursue it, and the faith to believe it is possible." - Author Unknown
"The ability to maintain discipline and stick to the rules is the hallmark of the experienced successful trader" - Curtis Faith
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,057 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,399
Thanks Received: 10,225
Very true. Not Advantage specific, but one thing to remember though is that margins are normally based upon positions held overnight and not intraday. Hence while a report like this may be a good measure of financial health in some aspects, it isnt a good measure of volume activity or many other clearing metrics. When you look at some of those huge numbers for the Bank FCM you have to realize that their is bank lending often associated with that and that these are often long term positions. (Think about the margin requirements for a NYMEX local or day trader vs an Oil Producer hedging a 5 year production well. The local/day trader probably has significantly higher volume that requires little to no margin, while the producer has low volume that requires significant margin support). Finally while I suspect an accurate audited report like this would have caught PFG long before they went under, I wonder whether it caught MF Global.
By the way, I just remembered to follow up on this. We decided not to engage them because their main value-add (their IT department) left somewhere late last year to form Nirvana. That left Crossland the only decent player in the space for a while, but they just got acquired by Wedbush last month.
I'd say all semi-professional traders with <$5M account sizes are now stuck with retail brokerages, trading agreements in a fund structure, or a few boutique, institutional introducing brokers that aren't exactly focused on electronic trading. It has never been more difficult to get started in this industry.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,057 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,399
Thanks Received: 10,225
WOW that's a little bit of an exaggeration. Did they lose 2 of their senior IT staff - yes. Did they lose 2 of their longest tenured IT staff - yes. The two that left were definitely excellent at what they did, but this didn't decimate their IT department like you imply. They have a large IT group and they still have the same very reliable trading environment. I suspect the average client is unaware of the change and hasn't noticed any change.
Maybe obvious from my earlier comments but I think Advantage still offer a great solution for people looking for colocated trading solutions.
I just read my post again and it does seem much more heavily-toned than I realized while I was writing it. With the benefit of a few hours of sleep now, I have to say that your description sounds much more accurate. To me though, those were the most important reason to pick Advantage.
Hm, I would say that Advantage's colocation services offer no marginal value-add over any other FCM at this point. KCG will have a lower price point and better technical expertise, and they would be accessible through a few boutique introducing brokers. I think the main value-add of Advantage is now their clearing for CBOE.
I have some conflict of interest here because I work with them on certain things, but I'd say that Jefferies is probably a good replacement for what Advantage used to be good at - stronger financials, a more experienced team on the trading/execution side, and a decent/comparable team on the IT side. Jefferies is also "technology-agnostic" as you word it.
Advantage has been and continues to be a very good firm. They don't prop trade and they clear many professionals that do this for a living. Very good and well-deserved reputation. They also clear many HF's that don't want to go the Bank route just yet.