Best college major for trading

Do what i did, study sociology/criminology, work at a nice hotel as bellmen on weekends & evenings - use your days to trade....
Flirting with hot 'cougs makes the job all worthwhile
 
Quote from CalTrader:

Not at all how we think in any of my companies ..... This is a great way to get a company full of dead wood. If your companies can thrive on simply repeating the same idea over and over and over then these are exactly the type of people you want to hire.

The ability to navigate office politics is antithetical to creating value in any company or business process. If you ever actually worked in a large organization on mission critical projects you would quickly come to realize that most of the people on most projects could as well not be there and about 10% of the project team are the people that actually get something done and more often than not these people dont play politics well.

I have hired many people that did not come out of a top school or at the very top of their class and I have worked with many top management at fortune 100 companies that did not satisfy these criteria. Smart hardworking creative people are difficult to find and using the criteria mentioned will only get mediocre hires IMHO.

=======================
Trade Ranger;

Good point about trading experience being greater than college courses.

Went to a business seminar in the 1970s & remember the perspective of the PHD speaker/ home business king ;
PHD speaker said with disgust -public education wasnt the key to sucess because it teaches you to work for some else.:cool:

Professor/trader Jim Rogers & such are an obvious exception.

Of course the educational backgroung of the top traders does rate about 1 or 2 sentences in a book chapter of Jack Schwagers books.

:)

Interesting additional practical requirement of an '' institutional sales trader '' the elite trader /headhunter wote this year, was daily reading the Wall Street Journal,[ section c I think].
 
A major in any of these...

Music, Philosophy, Art History, Literature, Roman History, any language, Religion

And a minor in Statistics or Physics
 
Had a conversation with a PHD in econ/finance a few months ago.
So I brought up EMH, and his eyes lit up since he TEACHES that course! LOL.

Anyway.... started talking trading, and after just a few minutes
of digging, I was completely STUNNED at how little he knew
about the markets.

This guy did NOT know what a specialist is, or the bid/offer process
and how price is determined.
Didnt know what a MM is, or all the games these guys play.

Knew nothing about block prints, or trade throughs, NADA....

I suddenly started seriously considering that the college PHD
guys really were 100% theory, and totally clueless when
it came to the real deal.

At least in computer science, I had *ONE* teacher that really
knew his stuff.... ha ha..

My adivce: Statistics and computer science. The rest you cant
get in school.


peace

axeman
 
Quote from axeman:

Had a conversation with a PHD in econ/finance a few months ago.
So I brought up EMH, and his eyes lit up since he TEACHES that course! LOL.

Anyway.... started talking trading, and after just a few minutes
of digging, I was completely STUNNED at how little he knew
about the markets.

This guy did NOT know what a specialist is, or the bid/offer process
and how price is determined.
Didnt know what a MM is, or all the games these guys play.

Knew nothing about block prints, or trade throughs, NADA....

I suddenly started seriously considering that the college PHD
guys really were 100% theory, and totally clueless when
it came to the real deal.

At least in computer science, I had *ONE* teacher that really
knew his stuff.... ha ha..

My adivce: Statistics and computer science. The rest you cant
get in school.


peace

axeman

Not knowing how the MMs work doesn't mean an economist is clueless aobut ht e"real deal." Games MMs play is not really relevant to economics, its not even relevant to the intermediate term price of the stocks, so there is no reason this econ prof should care. That's like ripping on a sports therapist for not knowing the rules to playing stick ball.
 
Well you can focus on a single aspect if you want, but a
mentioned several.

I think its more like ripping on a football historian, for
not knowing how the game is scored.

You teach efficient market hypothesis and dont even know
how a trade occurs, how a market actually occurs?? :confused:

In either case, it seems like the econ/finance type of degree
is somewhat worthless for trading.

peace

axeman



Quote from I Missed Boat:

Not knowing how the MMs work doesn't mean an economist is clueless aobut ht e"real deal." Games MMs play is not really relevant to economics, its not even relevant to the intermediate term price of the stocks, so there is no reason this econ prof should care. That's like ripping on a sports therapist for not knowing the rules to playing stick ball.
 
I am finishing my MS in Finance, and the class that I am taking is called "International Finance", which is supposed to be a culmination of the finance program. The professor is a PhD in Finance and a CFA. He never had a real job outside of academia as far as I can tell. He was going through interest rate parity, PPP, etc... So one of the guys in class asked if current decline in Dollar was attributed to any of the theories that we just learned.

The professor replied: "Dollar declining? I've never heard of that. I will have to look into that to answer your question"

I fell of my chair...

DVB

Quote from axeman:

Had a conversation with a PHD in econ/finance a few months ago.
So I brought up EMH, and his eyes lit up since he TEACHES that course! LOL.

Anyway.... started talking trading, and after just a few minutes
of digging, I was completely STUNNED at how little he knew
about the markets.

This guy did NOT know what a specialist is, or the bid/offer process
and how price is determined.
Didnt know what a MM is, or all the games these guys play.

Knew nothing about block prints, or trade throughs, NADA....

I suddenly started seriously considering that the college PHD
guys really were 100% theory, and totally clueless when
it came to the real deal.

At least in computer science, I had *ONE* teacher that really
knew his stuff.... ha ha..

My adivce: Statistics and computer science. The rest you cant
get in school.


peace

axeman
:confused: :confused:
 
That's why they teach, not trade...

Frankly, a good futures trader doesn't need to know a damn thing about specialists, block trades, L2..
 
Back
Top