Best college major for trading

Quote from Sam Mcgee:

If you want to trade for yourself get a degree in Business or something that will help you to find a good job. I believe over 90% of people that try to trade for a living never become consistently profitable. So be practical and be prepared for the statistical probability of never succeeding at it.

Another avenue might be to pursue a career that will pay well to give you savings to get started but will also allow you time off during the day to trade while you're still working. Something like Nursing comes to mind.

Courses that you could include in your studies and that would be useful for trading are Statistics, Computer Programming, Math, Accounting, Economics and Psychology.
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By far best and most realistic advice on this thread.

Guys that wants to trade for a fund or institution are a dime a dozen. What makes you think you would be an immediate success story after graduation?

With todays economic state... in the business arena, job employment after graduation now is well below 20%. Look around and there are thousands of jobless MBA's. All the business courses in college wont contribute to u making a dime in trading. Being unemployed.. how do you expect to have capital to pick up trading? And then again.. having a 9-5 business job wont allow you time to trade and watch the market full time to begin with.

Go become a nurse! Nurses are in big demand and will always be. People will continue to grow old and become sick. You can walk into nearly any hospital nationwide, submit an application, and get hired on the spot. Working night shift will allow you time to learn to trade and watch the market FULL-TIME all the while giving you plenty of capital to learn to trade.

Good Luck...
 
Quote from TradeRanger:

For a young person interested in trading professionally for a fund or an institution, either on or off Wall St., what would be the best undergraduate major? Finance or Economics?
I know that the most important education is gained by trading practice, and so trading all during college may be a good plan. But which one is the best major, with maybe the other as a minor?
Any comments are appreciated.
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Just be sure that the University offers a Bright Trading Internship, with Course credits. If they don't, then find out who there handles interships, and we'll see that they do. We maintain a presence at UCLA, BYU, UNLV (Las Vegas), and have students around the Country involved from other schools).

Most schools don't have a class designed for traders....but a "Banking and Finance Class" is usually helpful. My brother and I guest lecture at times, and offer full trading classes at the College level here in Las Vegas.

Feel free to call to chat about it.

Don
 
No finance degree ever helps trading. In fact, Finance degree is worth about nothing right now. Only value it has is that it touches upon statistics for business.
It may get you interested in stock markets and trading but does not teach anything important about the markets and how they really work. Just broad theories, concepts and formulas. Most of the info taught is pure BS by some professor who still believes trader = stock broker.

Yeah and you got this perception in your degree from...

Statistics the only value in finance? OK quant next time eco numbers comeout don't react ;) When a significant financial event happens, rely purely on your precious quant model

It was stated before. Institutional desks want quants. They want price models for whatever it is they are trading. Heavy derivatives work. A lot of statistics. You should Excel's statistics add-ins because all major banks rely heavily on those (IB also).


If you knew anything about finance degrees you would know you do a lot of financial modeling using excel for IB cases.

Quote from Mecro:




No finance degree ever helps trading. In fact, Finance degree is worth about nothing right now. Only value it has is that it touches upon statistics for business.
It may get you interested in stock markets and trading but does not teach anything important about the markets and how they really work. Just broad theories, concepts and formulas. Most of the info taught is pure BS by some professor who still believes trader = stock broker.

It was stated before. Institutional desks want quants. They want price models for whatever it is they are trading. Heavy derivatives work. A lot of statistics. You should Excel's statistics add-ins because all major banks rely heavily on those (IB also).

Not too exciting unless you're a total math freak. I placed out of college Calc and may like number work but I certainly do not like the level of quants that these guys want. I think they plan to have models start making trades for them.
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Quote from Don Bright:



Just be sure that the University offers a Bright Trading Internship, with Course credits. If they don't, then find out who there handles interships, and we'll see that they do. We maintain a presence at UCLA, BYU, UNLV (Las Vegas), and have students around the Country involved from other schools).

Most schools don't have a class designed for traders....but a "Banking and Finance Class" is usually helpful. My brother and I guest lecture at times, and offer full trading classes at the College level here in Las Vegas.

Feel free to call to chat about it.

Don
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Don,
I am glad to see that you have a presence at BYU. Who is the contact there?

Thanks for all you do.:cool:
 
I don't see why pyschology will help trading. I'm currently in college and took a few psych classes, nothing specific there to help me with my trading. They did start teaching tradestation though, as a course. All computers are loaded with tradestation and is available to everyone. Some even trade on their free time, though they recently banned trading from school. That's a start I guess. We also have a trading floor, and have seminars every now and then where nyse floor traders come and trade.
 
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