Trainee Traders JobEditors note *** This is a cut and paste of a post I made almost a year ago on one of my trading blogs I used to run whilst I was perfecting my own trading education - you may find the infomation useful.
How to get a traineee forex traders position.
Not me personally but my nephew is and I know there is a glut of graduates looking for career opportunities at the moment.
In my constant trading research I stumbled upon a very useful thread on forexfactory about how to get a job as a trainee trader. Very interesting thread with some very interesting people and comments. Many have hands on experience either working within the institutional trading arena, some even with recruiting experience.
Well worth a read if you are trying to get a job or career in the real world of trading for a living.
Go have a read. Trainee Traders Jobs.
Below is the question that started the thread
Hi, wondering if you can help me. I’m a 27 year old graphic designer, based in northern ireland and I’ve been trading from home (end of day) for about a year now with mixed success. Trading is something that fascinates me and I love watching how markets react etc. I am really keen to pursue a career in trading, learn the ropes, and wondering if you guys would be able to recommend any companies I should apply to to pursue my career in trading? (I’m prepared to move to London)
Any advice from experienced traders would be greatly appreciated?
Some good answers below
I got my first internship when I was 16 working over the summer at Greenwich Capital Markets (since acquired by RBS) in their IT department. My job was simply to break and report errors in the trading platform to the IT group, and gather feedback from the traders whom I supported. After three months working there, I knew everybody on the trading floor, and everybody knew me. I was there from 6:30 every morning to 7-8 at night. Other interns were there from 10-3, these were people from ivy league schools who I was competing against. When I wasn’t working on an assignment, I was studying the various securities which I was supporting at the time, I frequently ate lunch with traders and tried to learn their craft.
That internship was paid, but I could’ve just as easily not accept pay as I had the savings from my first business with me, I was still trading options profitably, and I was on the verge of mastering my forex coin toss exercise.
Getting into Wall Street is very possible. What’s holding you back?
The qualitative degree which you mention is very useful if you want to join the modeling group of a major bank. Banks don’t necessarily delve into quantitative trading, they’d rather find a hedge fund that specializes in that and give them the money.
Not sure what it’s like in the UK, but in the US, what matters more isn’t your track record, but how well you execute orders. General rule of thumb, fund managers make the calls, traders execute those calls for the best price possible. And there are ways to get the best price (google it, I’m not doing all the work for you. )
YES! Google! What a great start. Ok, so now you have not found exactly what you are looking for. Dont give up. Think outside the box. You are looking for ‘how does a trader find the best possible price for his manager’. Well now lets take it a step further. You likely found hits on “trader”, “price”, and “manager”. the rest of the sentence was dumped by google to reduce irrelevant posts. This likely resulted in a bunch of spam looking pages because that is essentially what you told google you wanted.
Lets take this just one step further. A fund manager probably works for a large institution, and you want to find out how orders are processed by the traders at the best possible price.
Institution (also sub in institutional), fund manager, order management, trade processing techniques, these are (among many others) professional industry jargon and will help eliminate the scam sites as they dont know how to use big words like this. (Itd be interesting to see how many of these words were on those scam sites too). I substituted in some of these words in my own google search and found a few slightly more interesting pages. Is it what you are looking for? I dont know, Ill let you make that determination.
I never thought Id write a quick tutorial on a trading forum about the use of google, but hopefully itll help someone.
I’m only doing to do this once: http://tinyurl.com/yz7a9qx it takes a lot of googling to learn the jargon of the industry, but ultimately, I would’ve expected you to hit that.
traderjai_inhi did exactly what I expected you to do.
If you know anything about wall street, you’ll realize that there is a world of difference between us (retail trading) and them (institutional trading). Trading as a career is not a walk in the park. Before you even consider applying to these firms, look at what you’re getting yourself into. If the only reason you’re looking to get in is because of the multi million dollar bonuses, get out now, or I will eat your lunch for you.
Reading this thread, i see some good points and some utter crap. That last poster will never get a job, he’s already admitted defeat.
I was an interbank fx broker for decades, i also broked in the otc options mkt.
How did i get started? Pure perseverance.
There were 5 brokers in london when i started, i wrote to each one, every week, without fail. Eventually their hr depts used to write back on first name terms, telling me they had no vacancies. But i still kept writing, and eventually, got some interviews.
I also got hold of a hambros directory, not sure if they still do it, but it lists the staff for every banks dealing room, worldwide, So you can get a name for the trader who trades gbp for barclays, in london, and new york etc.
I also used to send weekly apllications to the head traders, and more than once i got a phonecall telling me to f**k off and stop writing letters.
Unfortunately, for most people on these threads, be careful what you wish for. You really ready to work 80 90 hour weeks, to the detriment of everything in your personal life?? I doubt it.
To the threadstarter, i admire your ambition, but to be honest your age is against you, but hope you prove me wrong.
Quote:
That’s going to require a quantitative degree from a top 20 University. Nobody is going to employ a guy to be a trader who has no qualifications and no track record, it just doesn’t happen now like it (allegedly) used to.
I have to respectfully disagree with the above statement. I hand out on average between 3 and 6 internships a year at my firm. Most will have no experience. Most are current MBA students at Columbia and NY Universities. But that is only because these schools make it easy to find recruits looking for interns here in NY City. All will be assigned basic office duties and then procede to participate on on-going research projects. Those that stick it out than will be given a chance to become an order monkey. This is in line with most of the other firms I know of. There is no special license or degrees required. It’s all about networking and getting your foot in the door. Once in you try to learn the trade and make a position for yourself. Most will move on to other endeavors. Some will stick around amd become permanent researchers and analysts. Only a hand full learn the trade and give something worthwhile back to the partners of the firms. Those that do will be give the responsible to manage various amount of funds. In time these individuals will particpate in the profits of the firm. Most will earn between 170000 to 300000 per year when all is said and done, not counting bonuses. I hope this helps.
I’ve worked at a proprietary trading firm in Canada for about 12 months. Getting in wasn’t so hard as long as you can past their profile test in the interview. You only get paid by commission, so if you don’t make money, you dont get paid.
They were always looking for new people because this business is a revolving door. Most people can’t survive more than six months without a pay check and it is rare for traders to start making money within six months.
I’ve seen so many traders crash and burn. This is not an easy business to be in. Only about 5% of traders are able to make a living in the long run, and from my experience at this company, that number is correct. The few guys that did make it put an enormous amount of time after hours studying the market, and it still took them 1-2 years to figure it out.
Trading for a living is like playing poker for a living. If you’re hoping to have a company hire you and pay you to become a trader, good luck. How many professional poker players are willing to train and pay you at the same time to become a poker player? None that I’ve heard of.
Best advice I can give is to keep your day job and trade on your own in your spare time. Unless you have blood connections in this industry, getting paid to learn to be a trader is rare.
I’ll add my two cents to this forum as well. It’s true you can’t put a price on time or lifestyle. I have met a few prop traders working in the banks, most that you will meet have been doing for quite a while, probably all they have ever done. The guys I met in Singapore were making about 200-300, bonuses and all, so, not every bank prop traders is making the seven figure income. Also, from what I observed, many were old enough that when they started out, the whole concept of trading independently from a screen wasn’t even in the realm technological possibility as it is today. Furthermore, most are quite elitist and wouldn’t succeed without the inside flow information they’ve been brought up with, the company badge, and god forbid they would have to risk their own money. Most just couldn’t imagine being independent nor would they have the hardened determination and skill the indy trader develops going up alone and self-taught, taking the hits and learning lessons the hard way.
As for Raw Intelligence. Well, that isn’t necessary either. More important is the white shoe education or upbringing, the connections, etc. One of my classmates from my undergraduate has a basic degree in history, nothing special in the way of marks, no math skills to speak of, and today he is an MD with DB in derivatives sales and trading. What he has is a remarkable ability to schmooz and manipulate and to dig the knife in when he needs to. When you get into the higher positions it’s all about status and image. A general intelligence in the science of greed is about the only truth you need to fully understand and study. Nobody cares if you add two plus two.
The smartest traders, I mean the really brilliant guys I did meet were mostly the Market Makers and the OTC options traders. And there aren’t many of them, and they get paid. If you want to go into funds management, it will again come down to who you know and how well you look and act the part.
The reality is that any home based independent trader can make as much as any bank prop trader if they have three things. One, a well defined game, that is, they know what they trade and what their setup is. It’s all about focus. If you focus in and you have a probabilistic winning edge there is nothing to stop you but you. Supposing, you have the proper technology to access a fair market, which excludes each and every online broker in existence, then two, you need the psychological discipline to adhere with absolute precision to your plan. If you can’t do this, the edge and all the work you have done to develop it is meaningless. This is the one and only thing that separates the millionaire traders from the rest. If you have the focus, the edge, and the psychological ability, and if you understand what compound growth and expectancy will do for it, you can have all the money you want. If you are looking for power and prestige or some other measure of success, if you want to dawn the suit and go into the highrise and act like a big shot, working from a pc at your home office obviously won’t get you this. As for me, I’ll take the money and the time and I’ll be sharpening my skis everyday next season….
thinkman,
I was in your position about two to three years back and was 24 then. Here is what I have learned:
1) First is location, as many firms located in financial centers. I live around Chicago area and believe me there are a lot less postings than NY for example.
2) Usually not what you know but who you know, networking is probably the biggest plus. As I did not know anyone this wasn’t an option for me.
3) Name of the school counts, most of the time will get you an interview if you went to an expensive school. I did not have that so not an option.
4) Age is not your friend at this point as most want fresh out of college kids, without all the clutter and no trading experience. I guess they think it is hard to teach old dog new tricks. Although there is still hope.
5) Search, search, search there are places where you will find firm directories, contact persons and so on, although not so easy to find most of the time.
6) Once you do get that interview don’t be surprised by some tests as firms give you that right away without any warning. Research the firm you are going to and most of the test logic you will find online.
Finally let’s say you go through interviews and get an offer, most of the time it will be a measly salary + what profits you make for the firm %. In other words you might have barely enough money to get by before you become profitable. In my case they gave me 17k usd salary + profits, in which they mentioned most traders make nothing in their first year but just that salary (so 17k a year).
I passed the opportunity as at that time could not afford such a salary change (plus working nights) and moved into learning to trade from home. Still learning, but hey it is better to trade and learn yourself than give up. You will find plenty systems here in this forum so just start there.
No education is required. Prop firms such as Swift Trade (they have an office in London) and Marex, also in London (not sure if they still hire new traders), will give you 10k account and let you trade for about 4 – 6 months. Swift Trade trades only stocks, Marex trades everything. Build a nice trading record, and it will become your pass to any place you want. Big dogs don’t want your education, they want your skills to take money and multiply them. I got landed a nice job as a forex trader for a firm in my city simply by walking into the manager’s office and showing him my trading record on my fxcm trading account, simple as that. (due to family matters had to quit, very unfortunately) |
