Floor trading and fintwit share an overlapping dynamic

"cooperative competition"

It'll be fun to lay out some basics of the floor trading ecosystem and you will spot analogies.

First an fyi.

The floor gave traders what was known as "time/place advantage". It was the first place an order became public if it was not an electronic order.

Let's classify the traders on the floor:

"Locals" and prop firms

"Locals" are independent traders.

They trade their own money and secure the right to trade on the floor by owning or leasing one of the limited seats which represented an ownership stake by the exchange's "members" (this was before demutualization)

You know prop shops.

Names like Group One, Timber Hill (IBKR), Jane Street, CTC, DRW, Cooper Neff, O'Connor, Cutler, Wolverine, and my alma mater SIG.

Traders representing these firms usually have a salary and bonus (discretionary, formulaic, or hybrid)

A little digression. There's a 3rd class of trader which is a "backed" trader which blurs local and firm.

These firms were usually tied to clearing firms and offered economies of scale in risk management, software, data, clearing rates.

I left SIG in 2008 to get backed...