I know your question was "eventually" answered about job opportunities as a technical analysis/chartist...
Just a heads up, a lot of firms have been downsizing since the financial collapse of 2008-2009.
All departments took a hit including the TA folks but something odd has taken place in the industry lately.
I notice a lot of TA folks now have
"dual" titles as to implied they've been merged into other departments at many firms but not all.
For example, at Credit Suisse the TA titles still remain but the TA is now under the "Research" department. Thus, there's no longer a "TA Department" and the 4 world locations are now down to 2 main locations for the TA folks (London and New York). There were 8 folks that I remember but now there's only 4 of them. Actually there's 5 but one is not listed...the one not listed is their boss...same guy in charge of the quants.
Heck, something weird about London. I've notice more listings of "technical analysts" in London than other country locations...you willing to locate (sarcasm).
Another example is Maxime Viemont of BNP Paribas.
Excellent technical analyst that doesn't believe in the indicator stuff that you see commonly discussed/argued at this forum. He's one of the long time TA folks but I notice now his job title has been merged into another department. He's now the technical analyst/
quantitative research guy.
His income (wage) is 6 figure without the bonuses.
My point is that they are people that has been around a long time. They saw their departments cut in half via the 2008-2009 financial collapse while other department downsized even more.
Only departments that actually grew were the
quants but I now see some of the TA folks merged into those departments in "top level" job positions. That's a very strange thing I notice.
Not sure what to make of that considering it implies people were "re-trained" or went back to college and got a quant degree at night school while working at the same firm as a "technical analyst" but I did come across enough names to make me wonder what's going on. People that spent many years as a "technical analyst" and then they get merged into the quant department in a top level job and now called "
technical analysis/quantitative research".
Nothing against quants...great field and algos is a growing area even among the retail folks although we still don't see a lot of talk by retail folks about their algorithm trading although there's a few here at this forum.
That's why I suggested you email or call these people to find out their backgrounds and what they think about the industry future considering they have an existing paid job as a TA/chartist at a well known firm.
By the way, I did a brief search at other firms (actually someone made some calls for me) and there's more people today with the job title of
Behavior Finance. That's a 90k - 125k job position.
I mention Behavior Finance because its a growing area in the trading/investing field and university academics. Actually, its something I've been talking about a lot for the past 3 years.
Edited - Check out the link @
http://www.technicalanalyst.co.uk/research/
Just read some of what the TA folks are saying at some of the top financial firms to determine whom you want to contact about information about "job opportunities" in the industry. A lot better than listening to folks that say these positions don't exist at professional firms. I personally know several TA/chartist people in the Fixed Income departments...all have 6 figure income levels plus bonuses.
