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

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Quote from hmap1:

I kind of got bored catching up on this thread, but one thing that you may want to think about is this; Maybe you should look at this thread as one big trade you had confidence in that went sour. Not everything goes as you want it to. Then, step back and examine how you have handled the bad trade (negative comments). The market will show you no mercy and BTW: My best trades when I was a teenager were always the ones I never took and kicked myself. Would have, could have, should have. It's always easy with no emotions attached. It's funny how things change in the real world when you are only used to success throughout your life. The best knowledge you can gain to become a better trader is pain through failure over and over again, not schooling or impressive backgrounds and it all comes in time. I hope you fail many times and you are young to bounce back. Good luck and I sincerely mean that. .
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I need the opportunity before I can do anything. I hope that Oxford will provide me with that opportunity by getting me interviews for trading positions with salary. Thanks
 
Quote from cvds16:

The really sad thing about this thread is that some people here even tried to give good advice but it was brought to you in a way you are obviously not familiar with. And some people were just saying a lot of things you didnt really want to hear, but they were just being honest. Together with your defensive attitude this causes you to block the info. (if you think this is not true go back in this thread: several people allready have said that the kind of discipline you will learn in Oxford has no relation to the kind of discipline you need as a trader; yet you keep on repeating that you want to go to Oxford to gain discipline which you will need as a trader) Get rid of this attitude or it will kill you in trading !
My advice try to find a kind of internship on a trading floor (as close to the pit as possible) for a month (your grades might help to get you in, yes sometimes they matter), you will learn more about the way most traders interact then on any university. If you feel like you have to go to university for some reason, just do it, there are a lot of things to be said for that, they are just not very related to most forms of trading. In reply to my previous post: economics is a social science and indeed probably not very helpful for trading, although that was not my point. But if you think number crunching will just make you whole as a trader think again.
If you really think you have been threated so bad i would also advice you to save this thread somewhere and read all this again in say five year or so. You will probably want to crawl under the floor because of embaressement of some of the things you wrote here yourself.
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It is interesting how so many people think that mathematics is all about number crunching when such thinking could not be further from the truth.

I don't believe I made any references to "discipline from grad school helping in trading" after people told me that a different kind of discipline is required for trading. I don't know if I completely agree with that assertion anyways because I feel as if discipline is not ambiguous. There may be different levels of discipline but I believe that successful progression to higher levels can only be attained by passing through lower levels (i.e. a linear process). So though it may be true that grad school discipline exists at a lower level than trading discipline, I think I have to pass through the lower level before I get to the higher levels (i.e. consider the difference between an orthodox monk and someone who only fasts once a year...try taking the latter and making him fast permanently and how long do you think he will last?....notice that I said "successful progression" in the above for there are many unsucessful, i.e. non-lasting, progression paths possible which may well be non linear). So there is my take on discipline despite the fact that 99% of the people on here may find that hard to grasp...lol

Thanks
 
Quote from candletrader:

For math, Oxford is pretty crap relative to the other options in Europe... Cambridge ranks much higher for math and the Oxford math program is very inferior to Warwick's financial math...

Anyways, what about all the financial math you coulda done at Wharton, Chicago, MIT etc ?... there is absolutely no need to leave the USA... the best financial math programs are at home, dude...

I assume you were not good enough to get into any of the other places, so best of luck at Oxford... not the best of places for getting the subject knowledge to go into derivatives trading, but I suppose it would have to do... wasn't your GPA good enough for the superior universities?

Another thing: if you wanna go into basic directional scalping, spread trading and very simple arbitrage strategies etc, you don't need a math masters degree and it'll probably work against ya, cos its pretty much irrelevant... for that kind of trading (the kind that most of us here at Elitetrader do) your personal traits such as discipline will decide whether you make it as a trader, not some obscure math masters... a math masters, assuming it contains enough stochastic calculus and assuming you can program C++, would only be appropriate for an associate position at a hedge fund or on a derivatives desk at i-bank... anyways, hedge funds and derivatives desks at i-banks will obviously prefer to take PhDs over masters, so you may need to spend a few more years at uni before you got what it takes to compete on the Street... to conclude, depending on your objectives, the Oxford math may well turn out to be a total waste of your time, from a professional perspective...
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If you knew anything about graduate school in mathematics you would know that US schools generally accept students only for PhD programs and I wasn't sure of whether I wanted to do a full PhD. Oxford is one of the few elite institutions which offers Masters degrees in mathematics. Oxford competes with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in the mathematical sciences. Look at these rankings:

Pure Math Ranking: http://education.guardian.co.uk/researchratings/table/0,11229,-4319466,00.html

Comp Sci Ranking: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/unitable/0,11985,-4421102,00.html

Overall Math Ranking: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/unitable/0,,-4664363,00.html

Graduates of Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale go to Oxford for advanced degrees or second BA's (a lot of you are probably thinking out there "second BA? Damn...I don't even have a first BA"...LOL). The general contention in academia with regard to Oxford Mathematics is that the school provides a strong mathematical background but, as is the case with nearly all european universities, the training is highly focussed. I may decide to apply to MIT or Princeton for a PhD in mathematics but I may prefer to just do a degree in financial mathematics at a school which has the best math-finance program in the world: NYU. The Oxford experience will most definitely not be a waste of time for me since I will gain a very good (and quite rare) education in mathematics. Clearly, Oxford would be in at least the top 10 list for mathematics programs if US news had an international ranking.

Thanks

Respectfully,
 
Quote from alfonso:

As I said to you Free, you're not likely to get very much insight from anyone here.

You'd better off putting your questions to vault.com. Sure, they're just as quick to descend on you if you ask something they consider dumb (I had a fun experience there a couple of years ago, when I was in highschool), but there's also people that are actually in the industry that are willing to offer some pretty good insights.

You could also try out www.wilmott.com It's the same Wilmott who's the author of those popular finance books. Some very helpful people there.

Just do yourself a favor and get a bit of an idea of how a forum runs, read the faqs (if any) and the recent threads so you don't just ask something that was already discussed to death two days ago. Do that, that is, if you want to avoid repeating your ET experience. Common sense, no?
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thanks a lot. I will check out those other two forums.
 
Quote from Kap:

oooh - I emplyed one of these guys over the summer last year, it was his turn to get the bacon sandwiches, in fact it was his turn everytime to get those bacon butties in, but this time he refused. "I didn't spend 4 years at Oxford gettin a masters to do this" was his reply, we wouldn't have asked him if he was any better at doing anything else - having employed him over the summer I assumed he could price basic vanilla options, dividend yield or price a basic bond, but no, he had trouble with excel spreadsheets!! indeed - never again.

I'd suggest taking your Computer skills (C++, VB) and learnin the game for a couple of years, thats the best way in in my opinion - via a semi quant/ programmer role, my floor is full of them and the ones that survived always got the bacon sarnies in.
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Some people are not suited to ass kissing. I thought trading was an escape from the ass kissing corporate world I have read so much about. If you have the poor bastard running errands for you, why would you expect him to become an expert in anything? Hire an intern for your errands and maybe you'd get more out of your assistant traders.
 
Quote from FreedomPhighter:



Would you stake your trading career on me being completely full of crap? Say it now: if FreedomPhighter is telling the truth and actually was admitted to Oxford then I will never again have a winning trade......

Go ahead, post it on here. Call me superstitious but I believe there is a higher force that is willing to oblige your vow....

think about it....

Respectfully,
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Someone in my family is going to Oxford this fall. What's the name of the school you plan to attend and name six of the specific requirements for acceptance not found on the web.
 
Quote from CalTrader:



Go work for IB's parent company doing this stuff for a few years and once you have some professional background you might be able to come work for us ........ Like the rest of the thread has said, and I also stated earlier, the degree is less important than the experience. If you must go study for a few more years then do it: get it out of your system and come back to the table ready to go to work ....
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Yes. I will probably need some experience to be considered for trading jobs (unless I get lucky as I did a couple of months ago).

Thanks
 
Quote from candletrader:



This is what we are debating (at least what I am)... there are better options than Oxford... and as for your assertion that none of us have Ivy-league credentials, I know for a fact that you are wrong... my points related to the usefulness of an Oxford math masters... this freedomfighter guy has an attitude problem, and has elevated himself to lofty heights on the basis of mere hot air and an acceptance slip to an Oxford math masters... this is what nags us here at ET... if he truly was that remarkable, he should have gone somewhere better than Oxford... I aint anti-elitist by any stretch of the imagination...

Go back and read Kap's contributions... he kinda summed it up well, in practical terms...
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Academia begs to differ with your assertion.

Did you know that an Oxford mathematician, Wiles, proved Fermat's last theorem? The guy actually attended Merton College, Oxford University.
 
Quote from TG:

Your background will get you interviews, after that I'm told by a few people I called you will be battling it out with a lousy market in terms of many graduates for few jobs. But I've seen that before and good people succeeded. Good luck to you.
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Thanks
 
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