Can a Graduate Degree from Oxford U help me get a salaried position in trading?

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I’m unsure as to how it’s done overseas, but here student loan interest is deductible. Defer the loan as much as humanly possible and elect to pay only interest. The interest deduction should afford you a tax advantage at the end of the year while allowing you to free up capital for better use, like trading your account.

Whether or not you were the best trader is somewhat irrelevant. The fact is, you still lost money for your firm. It becomes substantially different when you start to trade your own money. If you can survive your first year and become profitable, than you will probably be able to fulfill whatever potential your manager saw in you. As it is, your account is red. That's all that matters.

In several of the Market Wizards books, many of the traders became analysts or brokers. These are salaried positions allowing you to maintain a lifestyle while building your own account.

Whatever education you have is again somewhat irrelevant because it has no direct impact on your ability or trading skills. You had on the job training and experience, but as you pointed out, you lost money. Your manager’s opinion of you might help you get in the door (you did ask him for a letter of recommendation, right?).

Anyways, you can always go to hedgeworld.com, register for their two week free trial, and go to their message boards. Positions as analysts and traders are available, but from my inspection, the trading positions required experience.

Other options would be to directly contact the big name firms like Goldman Sachs to see if you can get into their program to become a market maker, specialist, or whathaveyou.
 
Quote from lindq:

Quote from FreedomPhighter:



I believe that what folks are trying to tell you here...and what I will say...is that there is probably very little or no value to anything in your educational background that will prepare you to be a successful trader. (A systems developer, maybe. An analyst, possibly. But a trader? No.) And anyone considering you for an interview and/or position is therefore likely to have the same opinion, and won't be in a hurry to write you salary checks until you pay your dues, learn the ropes, and demonstrate proficiency. One of the great things about trading these days is that you can do all of those things on your own, anywhere. So why not get a job where you can earn a decent, regular income, while at the same time you can develop a system and style of trading that works for you? It is always better to leave your options open and give yourself time to learn, and doing it on your own will give you a lot more freedom once you become consistently profitable.

Thanks. There are pro firms out there that pay salary. There aren't many though. I hope I can get my foot in the door of at least one of them upon graduation. We'll see what happens.

Thanks again
 
Quote from cvds16:

Just as a reminder but a lot of traders I personally know are high school or university drop outs. The best trader I know and one of the bigger ones in Europe a few years ago (works for his own account, lost contact however so dont know how he is doing recently) went to school untill the age of 16. Like other people told you allready, its much more than just knowing a lot of things. It's about how you integrate them with your personality and emotions. Start to read everything you can here on EliteTrader; you will need it if you want to become good.

Thank you very much for the response. The only skills I hope to obtain in graduate school are related to discipline and analysis. I hope my education will help me get a foot in the door so I can be in a position to become a good trader.
 
Quote from rolegario:



Wow. I started reading through this thread initially thinking that this guy was being given a hard time for asking an innocent question, but with each response he's just getting more and more obnoxious and arrogant. This last one -- thowing out HBS as a fallback -- takes the cake. Who wouldn't want to slam this guy after that?

Sorry dude, but there are no high paying trading jobs for people straight out of school. Trading, like sales, is a pure meritocracy with little bearing on academic background. If you want to rely on your schooling to get you an "in", then you'll have to get at least a PhD with a thesis on cutting edge market analysis, and maybe then you'll be able to catch the eye of a hedge fund. If you're not up for that, then follow Htrader's advice and get a programming job.

If you feel like you want to hit me you are likely expressing dissappointment with your own accomplishments. Nothing I have said on here has been offensive.....all defensive. If you don't see that, then you are either dumb or blind by envy. In either case, you are to be pitied, not me.

Respectfully,
 
Quote from vanilla2:

if you truly believe what you said, then i can say with validity that you are pathalogically unaware of your true motivations. ...and this is death to a trader.


hmmm, if i believe what i said? It is clear that I was just stating a fact; simply recollecting my experience, albeit very little experience, with trading. So do I believe the truths that I have spoken which make references to what has already occurred in the past? Well of course...lol
 
here is some brief advice:

1. Ignore the negative posters here.. What you did was a little annoying (posting in every thread) but it was a newbie mistake...

Dont apologize for your background, many here are bitter towards Ivy leagers and love to boast that they make shitty traders... some do some dont..

2. Contact First New York securites. They pay a salary ($45K about) and only look at top school grads... They are a bit arrogant in the interview process so expect it if you get one..

3. Also contact your alumni development. Wall street jobs go to those have contacts. It isnt always fair, but that is how the game works....

4. the job maket now is tough. Since you are young, you can always leave your job for a better one once things turn around.
 
Get that education first big guy. It may not make you a better
trader, but It"ll open a hell of a lot of doors. This thread reminded
me of one of my favorite quotes.


When I first came down here, I was Mr. Big Ego. I had a law degree and here were all these ex-cops and truck drivers and people with 200-word vocabularies trading in the pits. I figured I'd make a killing, right? With this competition, how could you lose? Then I got the shit kicked out of me. Then I got the shit kicked out of me again. You know what I've learned down here? Humility. Discipline. You come into this business with any sense of superiority, and you're dead.

Marty Dickman, corn trader
A Fool and His Money
John Rothchild, 1997, p. 184


Best of luck !
 
Please promise us that at the close you'll tell us who you are, and your regular ET screen name. This has been a somewhat interesting diversion, but I can not believe that you are truly this obnoxious and/or clueless. Great flame thread though, so congrats on that...
 
Quote from okwon:



Maybe you should have taken the position. I'm not sure about this, but I would think that having a trading position on your resume would open more doors to other trading jobs than a degree from Oxford would. But, either way, it sounds like you're in a win-win situation. If you found a salaried trading job before your Oxford degree, wouldn't you assume you could at least find the same type of position after you got the degree? I don't really see the point of your post.

After four months of searching for a trading position with salary, I got one offer. I wasn't given much of a choice. I have held all along that I am going to oxford so that I might quench my intellectual curiosity not so that I will get a trading position. The point of the post was to find out if trading firms will likely respect my Oxford degree and whether Oxford can get my foot in the door (or, to be more accurate, doors). Thanks for the reply
 
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