Thank you Rick,
That is great feedback! Looks like I'll be taking an intermediate course at some stage
I share your sentiment about the conference. I was speaking with Bisher yesterday, one of their "Senior Sales Traders" and got chatting to him about his background which was quite interesting. Apart from the fact he sounds like a very switch on young guy, he was telling me following his graduation from Uni he went down the proper trader path, so he started working for Trade View and trading their money which he has been doing for a few years now, in addition to trading his own personal portfolio - or so he says!
I got the feeling there was definitely a level of profitability. I asked him what sort of reasonable returns do you guys expect, and I gave him an example of running a portfolio of 10 EAs on an account, what could/should I expect from each - his response: as a starting point they would aim to secure a portfolio that could return 2-3% per algo easily, or 20-30% on the account (per year) with an ideal draw-down of 5% but no more than 10%, and build/refine from there. So I don't know what that n-1 perspective is worth, but I seem to believe him when he said it.
Your question as to "why" they do this, I often think that as well, and I agree there are many frauds out there selling products or courses when they themselves are not good traders, however the optimist in me says, if you had these skills and built this platform, why not flog it? It adds cream as you say but also builds a community of traders that you can work with and further develop your strategies and platforms in-house?
I think of in in 3 layers, owners, senior operators, juniors;
Owner = no brainier for them, successful traders (let's assume), build proprietary system that both benefits you plus you can sell it and build a profitable business - pay others to trade your money and also promote sales - feet up and relax.
Senior Operators = probably the guys who are successful and have been successfully prop trading for a while and integrated with that community, even if they are making 100, 200, 500k per year - it may make sense for them to stay, as they keep their exposure to the community and perhaps some people would prefer that rather than isolation.
Juniors = some (most?) of them probably fail is my expectation, but even those who are good have no choice but to work there - let's say you could get 50% consistently each year, if your starting capital is only $10k (which is a lot to uni grads?) you can't go out on your own and live off that, it would take at least a few years if not a decade of trading to really grow that capital and prove to yourself you have what it takes to go solo (if you so wished).
So this is just my thoughts but is the most likely 'why' in my opinion. At the end of the day, even if successful and profitable, many traders are not lazy so unlikely to sit around and retire at 30 or 40 just because they "could".
