Setting Up A Trading Arcade

A contact of mine is considering setting up a prop house in London, UK to further expand to Asia. He initially wants to setup to cater for a few senior traders who are already contacts later to extend out more.

Can someone with experience give details on setting up such a place and provide any plans etc.

Any information or help will be fully appreciated

Someone else can surely advise you better, but a few points you'd need to consider:
Clearing relationship with a clearer such as Fortis
Exchange gateway connectivity
Power backup - uninterruptible power supply for all critical services
Software Leasing relationships with ISV's such as TT, CQG, Reuters etc

You'd need to give thought to what will make traders want to take the trouble of changing from where they trade right now - for me, network reliability, latency and data speed are key points, followed by commission costs... with no clear advantages to change, why would a trader move to your new, unproven venture from wherever they are now?

star-trader said:

A contact of mine is considering setting up a prop house in London, UK to further expand to Asia. He initially wants to setup to cater for a few senior traders who are already contacts later to extend out more.

Can someone with experience give details on setting up such a place and provide any plans etc.

Any information or help will be fully appreciated

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If there is sufficient volume with the senior traders then a clearer may well set you up in your own office and cover costs providing you put the business through them. Office costs depend on where you are based. Regulation will be covered by the clearing company.
Try following clearer's for information:
ADM Investor Services
Kyte Group
Fortis Bank

twalker said:

If there is sufficient volume with the senior traders then a clearer may well set you up in your own office and cover costs providing you put the business through them.

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Thanks for the info. I will pass this along.

TWalker, could you explain further what you mean by the above point.

twalker has mentioned in other threads that if you have a group of traders doing around 1m+ RT's a month then you can approach a major clearer and get a deal where they provide infrastructure and desk space for you providing you put all your trades through that clearer.

Ah right i understand. What this person is looking to do is setup an office startign with a few traders to expanding to supporting new trainees as well as other backed traders. ie a complete new prop house rather than trading at Fortis.

Therefore, any info would help.

PS i am considering about joining Fortis as i am currently stuck in Refco

star-trader said:

PS i am considering about joining Fortis as i am currently stuck in Refco

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yep - a few guys have already gone there from what I hear, and quite a few in discussions depending on what happens here - I'm at Refco too.

There was a website that offered all the services to set up your own office, staff, etc. etc,
I can't remember it's name offhand - perhaps someone knows them OR if anyone is really interested I could try and find the address in these pages somewhere ??

star-trader said:

Ah right i understand. What this person is looking to do is setup an office startign with a few traders to expanding to supporting new trainees as well as other backed traders. ie a complete new prop house rather than trading at Fortis.

Therefore, any info would help.

PS i am considering about joining Fortis as i am currently stuck in Refco

Click to expand...

Something you must consider is the direct connectivity issue, very few clearer's, Fortis included, will allow outside offices to have direct connectivity too the markets as this under FSA rules means it would have to be a branch office.
What this means is that if you set up an office you have one big pipe into the clearer who then links you too the exchanges via their hub. This encourages people to "give up" and actually take space in their arcade as in theory the nearer too the server and hub you are the quicker the connection.
Also this means you are not masters of your own destiny in so far as if the clearer has IT issues or a slow down you get sucked down with them.
If you want to set up an office and be completely in charge of you own destiny and, as some have, implement your own trading software you have to either take membership of the exchanges or find a clearing member who is happy to extend branch office status(very rare). If you want to know a few names drop me an e-mail.
In any case if you set an office up and pipe into a clearer remember, they dictate what exchanges you connect too, what trading software you can use, how many traders are allocated to each server etc.

hi, sent you a private message. hope to hear from u soon!

star-trader said:

A contact of mine is considering setting up a prop house in London, UK to further expand to Asia. He initially wants to setup to cater for a few senior traders who are already contacts later to extend out more.

Can someone with experience give details on setting up such a place and provide any plans etc.

Any information or help will be fully appreciated

Click to expand...