About to graduate, what should I do?

bone said:
Which is why I suggested the Microsoft Certifications link this morning. Trading firms and banks are looking for Developers and AI Engineers.
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Your heart is in the right place but you are showing your age and/or ignorance. That link you posted here:

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/posts/5373162

Only one of those certs are relevant and it's no substitute from real world experience. Taking a MS course does not mean you have production ready skills @Amatrue
 
At Barclays, DB, MS, JPM, GS and quite a number others in London, Tokyo, HK, Singapore, new grads end at trading desks about 3 months into the job. Not that they take on trading positions but they start to be exposed to risk very early on. Not sure of NYC but I can't imagine it would be much different. Being Analyst is a title it does not mean they sit in some corner and analyze data. The new grad classroom training is about 3 months or shorter and then analysts are placed at trading desks.

bone said:
All new hires fresh out of school at Goldman Sachs go through orientation and start out as Analysts. No exceptions. 100 hour work weeks. After a year they get evaluated.

Pretty much the same for Citadel or DRW or Morgan Stanley or take-your-pick.
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3 months yes that is EXACTLY what happens. If you suggest that the puppies from UPenn need a year soft touch and hand holding before they are placed at a trading desk in the US then that speaks to the preparedness of grads from US universities. I can assure you that today new grads in Europe and Asia end up at swaps, equity options, structured products, and other desks around 3 months after their classroom training.

bone said:
This idea being floated around that DB or CS is going to take a fresh faced kid straight out of the LSE and straight away put him or her on a swaps desk to make markets for clients is hilarious. :rolleyes:
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Thank you, someone with real world experience. Happened to me exactly the same. Was flown to London and NYC for 10 weeks of classroom training and then I started pricing interest rate derivatives at the options desk right after. Will never forget how the senior trader colluded with the sales guy and while the senior trader was out for lunch I got a call at the desk and the sales guy couple desks away pretended to be a customer and asked me to price a swaption of insane notional. I tried to reach my boss but he did not answer the phone (surprise) I really freaked out and widened the spread as he was asking for a two-way and I had no idea where he was leaning. He pretended to be pissed off because of the spread and I sweated like a pig just hoping he would not take the trade because at that time I had no idea whether the position suited the book of the desk and because I would have had to definitely split up pricing requests with inter dealer brokers for swaps to hedge. Suddenly a loud laughter broke out a few desks away and I figured out what was going on. Pigs. But it was a great time, a few months into the job and I was making markets and calibrated the vol surfaces and cubes for the desk. Sabr was all the rage back then. I hear placing new grads at desks early on still happens today.

newwurldmn said:
Unless things have changed the bank I was at hired a ton of people, put them through training for 8 weeks (which is really just indoctrination fueled with alcohol and sex) and then put them on the trading desks. The analysts were delta hedging within a few days and making markets within a few weeks under tight supervision of the senior trader. No one in the sales and trading division worked 100 hour weeks. That was just the coverage ibankers.
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DiceAreCast said:
3 months yes that is EXACTLY what happens. If you suggest that the puppies from UPenn need a year soft touch and hand holding before they are placed at a trading desk in the US then that speaks to the preparedness of grads from US universities. I can assure you that today new grads in Europe and Asia end up at swaps, equity options, structured products, and other desks around 3 months after their classroom training.
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This is why we need more hands-on internship/co-op programs in universities for them to learn and to see how they apply in real-world work environments. And when they graduate, they can hit the ground running instead of still having to make all the necessary adjustments.
 
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DiceAreCast said:
Thank you, someone with real world experience. Happened to me exactly the same. Was flown to London and NYC for 10 weeks of classroom training and then I started pricing interest rate derivatives at the options desk right after. Will never forget how the senior trader colluded with the sales guy and while the senior trader was out for lunch I got a call at the desk and the sales guy couple desks away pretended to be a customer and asked me to price a swaption of insane notional. I tried to reach my boss but he did not answer the phone (surprise) I really freaked out and widened the spread as he was asking for a two-way and I had no idea where he was leaning. He pretended to be pissed off because of the spread and I sweated like a pig just hoping he would not take the trade because at that time I had no idea whether the position suited the book of the desk and because I would have had to definitely split up pricing requests with inter dealer brokers for swaps to hedge. Suddenly a loud laughter broke out a few desks away and I figured out what was going on. Pigs. But it was a great time, a few months into the job and I was making markets and calibrated the vol surfaces and cubes for the desk. Sabr was all the rage back then. I hear placing new grads at desks early on still happens today.
More...

I was also on a trading desk (also swaptions, and exotics) after a 3 month analyst training programme. I was actually *on* the desk before then, but I wasn't allowed to actually trade until the programme was up and I'd passed my FSA exams.

It's not easy to get an IB front office trading position straight out of college / university (there were only two slots the year I did it - the other guy worked on the cash swaps desk and is now in jail). And the OP has almost no chance with this route. But it does happen.

GAT
 
globalarbtrader said:
I was also on a trading desk (also swaptions, and exotics) after a 3 month analyst training programme. I was actually *on* the desk before then, but I wasn't allowed to actually trade until the programme was up and I'd passed my FSA exams.

It's not easy to get an IB front office trading position straight out of college / university (there were only two slots the year I did it - the other guy worked on the cash swaps desk and is now in jail). And the OP has almost no chance with this route. But it does happen.

GAT
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Did this have to do with Libor?
 
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