We’ve all heard the stories of great companies that got their start in a garage or among friends in a college dorm. The SurgeTrader origin story isn’t all that different and began with an innocent conversation in a sushi restaurant.

As it often does, the conversation turned to the markets and business and, finally, a discussion around why most speculative traders fail. The group realized that the reason is not lack of talent or poor risk management, but the need to overleverage trading accounts to make a meaningful return for the time invested by the trader. Sure, a 30% per annum return on investment is great for your retirement portfolio – when it’s passive. But a 30% return on a $5,000 trading account is just $125 per month – and it takes countless hours behind the screen to make that happen. So, traders resort to utilizing massive leverage, as high as 500:1. While this can allow the trader to make an outsized return on investment, it leaves almost no room to take losses and avoid margin calls.

So how do we solve this problem? How can we harness the talent of good traders and put them into a position to succeed at trading for a living? The answer is not with gimmicky strategies or promises of a holy-grail algorithm. It’s capital. If we can identify traders that possess a talent for navigating the markets and displaying sound risk management, the only missing piece is enough capital to keep them from overtrading.

Thus, the SurgeTrader program was born. Backed by venture capital and developed by experienced market professionals, the Audition and funding process that is SurgeTrader began to take shape.