{"id":37334,"date":"2014-04-30T12:54:44","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T16:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/?p=37334"},"modified":"2023-04-13T16:42:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T20:42:16","slug":"give-me-a-break-smb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/give-me-a-break-smb","title":{"rendered":"Give Me a Break SMB"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike,<\/p>\n

I’m reading your book – One Good Trade – for the second time. In Chapter 3 you describe how your firm selects candidates and how much this process is inadequite. Why don’t you just let people papertrade (remotely from home) with your platform and see who does best?<\/p>\n

I understand your concern trying to select person with the best persona. But as you can see it is not possible to reveal what a person is really like in such short period of time, nor it has significant enough correlation with his trading performance.<\/p>\n

You wrote that “Steve likes everyone”… I think he just knows that you are doing a blind guess and even the best candidates can turn out to be the worst traders and vica versa.<\/p>\n

To give you an additional view from a candidates viewpoint: after I left University (experiencing a ton of injustice) I told myself: “I’m sick of being judged by other people, I will find a job where I’m NOT a subject of their opinion.” So I found trading. It’s an excillent field to compete with no opinion of others. And what do you do at these interviews? Judge people by who their favorite athlete is. GIVE ME A BREAK! Give us some basic instructions, put us on demo and let us trade!<\/p>\n

About a year ago I was at an interview at (deleted) Group. They called me back like 4 times (had to travel hours each time). And in the end they told me they ALMOST hired me but someone else got a bit higher scores in their stupid games. Result? The Budapest branch closed a few months later. (Now we have ZERO prop trading firms in Hungary)<\/p>\n

If you know the selection process s#cks (do you think it could be any much worse if you selected candidates randomly? 1 out of 10 people is going to be good?) why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you change the whole selection process?<\/p>\n

Hope I could make a valid point without getting too much on your nerves! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Yours sincerely:<\/p>\n

George.<\/p>\n

ps: wish me luck as I’m going for an interview to Cyprus.<\/p>\n

——————————————-<\/p>\n

Bella<\/h3>\n

1. What makes you think trading is an activity where you are not judged?
\nI was teaching a class in Austin for the Kershner Trading Group on Tuesday, forgot I left two DDD buy orders in without stops, and the market judged that as stupid. 1k stupid to be exact.<\/p>\n

I held my sticky key down on the same day locking my keyboard and couldn’t exit save by telling the pit boss for an extra 30c of extra loss. The market judged me as sloppy for such a misstep. $300 sloppy to be more precise.<\/p>\n

I made a Trend Trend Trade short with Tier 3 size from 14.50 to 13 yesterday in $GOGO. The market judged me as brilliant in this excellent R\/R trade.<\/p>\n

2. Hiring anyone who wanted a seat would be a horrible idea. Culture is important to us. Those who do not embrace the value of getting better everyday will not fit in. They might harm the culture for the guys we want. Using resources on bad fits takes away from what we can do for the traders best for our firm.<\/p>\n

Moreover we have found those with a demonstrable passion for trading or a history of accomplishment\/competitiveness have a higher success rate. This is best shown from past trading records. As I wrote in The PlayBook<\/em>, when you interview at a prop firm drop a file of past trading on them to improve your chances of being hired. It is best for our firm to hire and train these candidates.<\/p>\n

3. We don’t want to just work with anyone. We spend ten hours a day with our traders. We want to spend our day with elite performers whose company we enjoy.<\/p>\n

4. The future of trading in our estimation if for discretionary traders to be bionic and build automated strategies to play more offense. \u00a0 That requires a firm with traders willing to grow. \u00a0We spend a great deal of effort searching for people with that mindset.<\/p>\n

I hope that helps.<\/p>\n

***Is the reader above right? \u00a0Share your thoughts with us.<\/p>\n

You can be better tomorrow than you are today!<\/em><\/p>\n

Mike Bellafiore is the Co-Founder of SMB Capital and SMBU, which provides trading education in stocks, and options. Bella is the author of <\/span>One Good Trade<\/a><\/em> and <\/span>The PlayBook<\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

No relevant positions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike, I’m reading your book – One Good Trade – for the second time. In Chapter 3 you describe how your firm selects candidates and how much this process is inadequite. Why don’t you just let people papertrade (remotely from home) with your platform and see who does best? I understand your concern trying to select person with the best … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":37347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-comments-2"],"yoast_head":"\nGive Me a Break SMB | SMB Training<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/give-me-a-break-smb\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Give Me a Break SMB | SMB Training\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mike, I’m reading your book – One Good Trade – for the second time. 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