Trillium Trading

Trillium Trading bets on people it grows itself: about half its traders started as interns, trained on the firm's own tools before touching firm capital. Nobody puts up personal money, and first-year traders draw a salary on top of P&L, an unusually patient setup for a prop equities shop.

Founded in New York in 2003, its core managers cut their teeth in the electronic equity markets of the mid-1990s, and the firm has traded US, Canadian, and OTC equities, with options as a later expansion, on a platform built entirely in-house ever since. Traders specify the tools, engineers build them, and the two sit together. Trading floors run in New York, Chicago, and Miami, with a back office in New Jersey.