jsc? yeh, if i had to name one "best" it'd be that my castrated crony

Optiver is a fucking joke give me a break. the only legit ones are jsc sig and Getco

To resurrect a highly cliché quote: "Opinions are like assholes- everyone has one."

In terms of selectivity and compensation, the top two prop firms are Getco and Jane Street. Right behind them are DRW, SIG, Jump.

Optiver is still good; they give a base salary of $80K/year to first-year traders, but they've been struggling lately and have fired a lot of people. I recently met an ex-Optiver trader who left, and now he's playing professional online poker. He said it was fun working there initially, but after algorithms took over, the job got really boring.

How on earth would you know performance/ability to outperform the market at multiple firms? Prop firms guard this info like the CIA does state secrets. Slight hyperbole, but you get the picture.

Also, there's been debates on this, but how do you define "performance"? You can't compare companies who do true arb strategies to companies that bet outrights on futures.

This is the stuff that makes me skeptical anytime someone wants to rank on "performance"

The ROI is off the charts but in the end all he was left with was $3,000 if in fact he had a 15-bagger. This is a big deal somehow?

It's a big deal because he's the best proprietary trading firm in terms of returns in the country.

He's fictional, but if it were possible to verify the outcome, I'd stake money on 50:50 odds that the best proprietary performance last year came from a random non-professional- probably some kid who wants to study Agriculture at the University of Wyoming- or some grandma who didn't know what she was doing with a personal account and stuck all her money into a small-cap oil driller- who just got lucky.

The bottom line is that trading would be a lot better if people stopped focusing on how everyone else was doing and focused on how THEY were going to make more money. The guy at the top doesn't waste time on that- that's why he's at the top.

Most people aren't even sure what business model these firms follow. For instance, I thought I knew Getco's model- until they bought a large specialist operation on the NYSE. But in the aggregate, you can take a look at the friends who've gone off to different firms and talk about how smart they are, irrespective of the firms' main business model. All of the big firms do algorithmic trading; all of them do trading by hand. Most of them stick to exchange traded stuff, although there can be exceptions.

That said, I think the point of ranking firms based on prestigiousness- or even how they did in a single year- is kinda silly. Many of the prop shops have owners who might actually be pretty disgusted if their firm got ranked the most prestigious in the business.

In the long term, it's better to work for a brilliant prop trader- and learn a thing or two from him- at Charles Schwab than it is to work for an idiot at DRW. So the real question you should be asking yourself is "How smart is my manager? How much can I learn from him?" Long-term, you find that your compensation and marketability is tied more closely to competence than you think, and competence is affected more by how smart your manager/team is than your firm's reputation.

Why are you concerned about leaving the company if you were to get an offer when you haven't worked there? Illini is on point on this. Going to bigger firms doesn't guarantee better training and it definitely doesn't guarantee more money--they are just different.

And I can attest that some of these top prop places have people that, like Illini said, are quite unusual. Some people are literally on medication crazy and others just have very unusual appearances, but they get it together enough for work and are good at what they do and are kept around.

Can we get a ranking here? Any ranking will be inherently speculative. These top 25 firms are all great.

Nevertheless, I'll post my own ranking of firms employing strategies across algorithmic trading, market making, speculative/fundamental trading/HFT, excluding banks/IM/hedge funds (e.g. Shaw/Citadel/Goldman/AQR):

1. Getco
2. Five Rings Capital
3. Jane Street
4. Hudson River Trading
5. Jump Trading
6. Optiver
7. SIG
8. DRW
9. IMC
10. Tower Research
11. Spot Trading
12. Tibra
13. Allston Trading
14. Madison Tyler
15. DC Energy
16. Louis Dreyfus Commodities
17. Flow Traders
18. Timber Hill
19. First New York Securities
20. Chicago Trading Company
21. TransMarket
22. Consolidated Trading
23. Group1 Trading
24. Trillium
25. Wolverine

Honorable Mentions: Ronin, Cheiron Trading, Gelber Group, Aardvark Trading, Geneva Trading, Eldorado Trading, Archelon, Marquette

Please feel free to correct this list, just something to start with.

Where possible, based on information/hearsay about base salary/compensation and/or selectiveness/rigorousness of the interview process.

Ahh gotcha, I would be tempted to say that, if you wanted to rank them you would be better off breaking them into tiers simply because the selectivity between Jane Street and Optiver for example is a wash, there is no real tangible difference between the two. I would also bump Tillium up a bit

I've talked to a few people who have interviewed there/have information about the firm, and according to hearsay at least the firm pays extremely well and is very selective.

In terms of Jane Street vs DRW/Optiver, most of the traders/wannabe traders I talk to tend to put JSC on a higher pedestal. Also, their interview process seems more selective to me. Both great firms, obviously.

Five Rings Capital? WTH? Who are they? And where's the ring to rule them all?

The main problem with making lists is you come up with the questions then, what do they trade/how do they trade/what markets do they trade in/etc. I mean, comparing CTC versus a place like Getco would be ridiculous simply because of the lack of similarities between the two. Even looking at your smaller firms among the honorable mentions, Gelber has a presence on the floor with a number of old school guys and is involved in option MM, while Geneva is a pure algorithmic shop.

And if we make the list in order by compensation, it will be hugely different as well. Some of the 'best' and 'most prestigious' shops don't pay shit in comparison to some smaller shops (many of which are not even on this list) and while you will have a higher degree (relatively) of job security and likely base salary as well, your bonus potential is substantially smaller.

I think the best list is base on compensation, reputation, and size of firm. Compensation for obvious reasons. Reputation because if you do leave, although that might not be your goal, you want to have a hit on your resume. And size because 1) the larger firms hire more so you have better chances most likely and 2) the larger firms, at least in terms of capital which hiring is a pretty strong signal of, are less likely to fold.

As far as what they trade or what they're strategy is, it doesn't matter. For someone at a junior position, unless you really feel strongly or have good information about a sector or a strategy you aren't going to be able to make an educated decision about this stuff so it just doesn't affect your application strategy.

Oh yeah sure. You can't apply to Ren Tec or Getco and have never seen a computer before. I guess I was thinking about places that have trading roles that are not programming. For that matter it would be interesting to know which firms have purely CS driven trading and which don't - I'm not sure if I know that for all firms.

Huh.....good to know about five rings.

Monkeysamas chance of getting in: 0

Oh well.
You have any other gems vectorkid?

Dude, nearly all of the firms listed there that aren't purely algo/HF shops are option market-making firms for the most part--the 'strategies' aren't exactly rocket science. Many of the firms listed there, however, are quant and algo based and will require you to be exceptional @ CS. That is why it is baffling when I see these lists--could you see some geeky kid from Jump trying to survive and thrive in the SPX or VIX pit?

Wait, you made this list based on what you perceive to be the ones with the best compensation? Oh boy.... I think that is a bad way to go about it to begin with (median compensation @ a trading firm.... really?), but this list would be substantially different. The salaries vary dramatically, even within the same firm, as do bonuses, which vary dramatically because of the amount of risk allowed to be taken, trading environment (group versus individual), strategies, individual skill, and more. It is just a silly way of going about it.

Of course the compensation varies dramatically. I think the IDEAL list would be by median comp/hour of the traders, or maybe a weighted combination of individual trader compensation, but there's no way I'm getting complete data. Still, from hearsay/info it's possible to know what the entry level base at say, Optiver or Trillium is, as well as some idea of bonus potential.