Day traders bullish on expanded office
Firm's $500,000 addition enlarges its trading floor
By JOHN G. EDWARDS
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Bob, right, and Don Bright stand Wednesday on the trading floor at Bright Trading.
Photo by Clint Karlsen.
Stock trader Bob Bright laments the end of the heady days of the 1990s when stock prices were rising and market talk replaced sports as the favorite topic at parties.
Bright Trading, of which he is president, nevertheless, is expanding and prospering. The firm is training a new generation how to make money the old-fashioned way, buying and selling huge blocks of stocks in order to gain from small price changes.
The company, which says it's the nation's largest professional trading firm, broke ground Thursday for a 5,000-square-foot, $500,000 addition at its 4850 Harrison Drive office.
"It's going to double the capacity of the trading room, plus add capacity for training," Bright said. "We're trying to turn this company into a mini-exchange."
Most of his traders work with New York Stock Exchange listed shares. Bright figures his firm accounts for 1.5 to 2 percent of the total NYSE volume.
Although the firm operates 40 trading centers around North America, Las Vegas is headquarters for the company and the place it trains new traders. Don Bright, his brother and director of education, estimates 500 day traders work out of Bright Trading offices around the country and another 170 work in their own homes and offices as far away as France, Australia, Israel and South Africa.
Many newly trained traders stay and make Las Vegas their new home, given the lack of income taxes and generally low housing costs, he said.
"The chamber of commerce should pay us," Bright quipped.
The three-year stock market slump that ended this year didn't hurt, Don Bright said.
"As traders, we don't care which way the market goes," Don Bright said. "We can make money on the upside and make money on the downside."
Day traders typically hold stocks for a day or less, trying to profit from changes in prices. Bob Bright, however, said it was easier to make good money in the late 1990s as a day trader than it is today with the state of markets.
The volatility is lower now. So traders must buy bigger blocks of stock to make the same amount of profit, he said.
"The high volatility of the 1990s was once in a lifetime," Bob Bright said at his Las Vegas headquarters. But successful traders still make six-figure annual incomes, he said.
Bob Bright believes individual investors need to trade stocks often to make a profit, because he doesn't believe the buy-and-hold strategy works well anymore.
Companies that are formed and once took a lifetime to mature today may go from a small booming company to a large busted one in a decade, he said.
"Everything is fast," Bob Bright said. "So (investors) have to watch their portfolios much closer."
Don Bright teaches a trading course through the Community College of Southern Nevada's continuing education program. "Introduction to Professional Stock Trading" starts Oct. 6 at the Green Valley Tech Center.
The Bright brothers started trading in the 1970s but they started the firm in Las Vegas in 1992. Bob Bright, Don Bright and Chief Operating Officer Edward Franco own stakes in Bright Trading Inc., which is the managing partner of Bright Trading.
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