Upswing Trading is the fastest growing prop firm of 2022.
Interview with Upswing Trading Co. CEO Stephen Salvatore exposes major changes in the prop firm industry. Banks an astonishing 438% 2022 return on their portfolio.
December 14th, 2022 by Markus Baker, DayTrader Weekly Analyst
Prop firms have been around since the early 1980s. Some traders remember the days when you would enter a large office building with hundreds of traders glued to thousands of screens all over the place. But with online trading booming in the 90s and 2000s, the retail trader found themselves with opportunities to trade from home. Quickly grew the at-home prop firm industry.
For decades now, hundreds of thousands of traders around the world found themselves with the ability to access trading capital if they could learn to trade and pass trading evaluations. Upswing Trading, founded by Stephen Salvatore in 2021 isn’t much different when it comes to trading evaluations. However, modern technology and merging the portfolio management business into prop trading has posed unique opportunities for new companies like Upswing.
“I never intended to start a prop firm” said CEO Stephen Salvatore as he sat in for his zoom interview with Benzinga. “I was a two year full time trader at that point and had full plans to start a small hedge fund and run my own family office”. “I had successfully profited significantly 11 months in a row and I felt I was ready to take things to the next level, my programming background inspired me to build a trading system that I would use for myself, it just so happens that it fit the perfect profile for a prop firm as well.”
In Mid-2022, Upswing Trading planned a soft launch, and picked up an astonishing 275 traders in just a few months. “The growth rate was like nothing i’ve ever seen. The demand for trading rose 20-30% due to the Covid pandemic. We were growing so fast I had to slow things down and turn traders away so we could continue building our software to handle the volume.” “We have big plans for 2023, the proof of concept is there, now it is time to make sure everything gets done right.”
Upswing Trading owns the rights to a Patent Pending Trading Management Software. “The key is in the software. When I originally started developing the software, it was to manage my own trades and my own trading system. I quickly realized the benefits it would have when applied to a prop trading firm.” “I have taken the traditional prop firm and I am merging it with the hedge fund industry.” “Using the steady stream of profits from a prop firm significantly hedges risk in a portfolio. The returns this year were nuts, we only had one bad month, but that was due to our growth rate getting out of control, we had to scale back.” “We are finishing the year off very strong, we plan to start off the year slowly as we are launching some new updates to our software, we plan to be running at full capacity in February of 2023.”
Upswing Trading gained and impressive 438% on their portfolio for the year, which includes both their own positions and prop firm gains. “We are slowly taking on new investors. A lot of investors take an interest in what we are doing. I have daily phone calls discussing market data with most investors. We make it a fun experience for everyone and we all learn from each other in the trading communities we have created online”.
“We are launching StockSwingers.net in January. It is a byproduct of Upswing. We want to attract non-day traders as well. People that just want to be a part of big moves in the market. Stock Swingers will be a subscription model providing a way to follow our portfolio and receive technical data on longer term charts, 2023 is going to be a lot of fun for us”.
By: Markus Baker
