Slyfoxed,
Reading your post brings back memories. Although in a different time (early 1980's) I along with many other fellow EE's, looked around my cubicle and saw little in the way of a financial future. I saw brilliant people, 15 years my senior, making 10k more than I was. Scary! I wanted to make serious money and it wasn't going to happen designing missile guidance systems! After 2 years I abandoned my electrical engineering career and went on to do other things.
Fast forward 20+ years. For the last 16 of those years I have been an executive recruiter working with the top tier investment banks and commercial banks in NYC. I have placed traders, quants, structurers, and marketing people across all asset classes , both cash and derivatives. Some of the people who work for me specialize in recruiting for hedge funds, energy derivatives, equity derivatives, etc. My job now is more in managing and growing my firm so I try to personally limit the searches that I will take on. But I feel I am qualified to give you the following advice:
Wall street firms look for young, ambitious people with advanced degrees form Top brand-name schools. I would suggest, if possible, that you go back immediately and get your masters degree. My suggestions would be math, statistics, or physics. You could also do an MBA but that would put you on a different path. Either way, you must shoot for a top 10 school in the discipline that you choose. We are talking about the most competitive job market on the planet -- people from all countries jockeying to get into the sales and trading training programs and land positions on a desk.
At that point you will have the raw material that these firms are seeking to develop their trading models. That is the way the game is played now and you are still young enough to take advantage of it.
When you look at the market wizards and the people who run the most successful hedge funds, you will see that they came from the trading desks of the major investment banks, or they started on the floor of an exchange. The future big swinging dicks will come from the major firms (investment banks or established hedge funds) which provide a "sophisticated environment" with sophisticated resources and tools that most prop traders can't touch, never mind understand. Keep in mind when I use the term "prop traders" I am referring to the firms that you read about in this forum. But let's not forget that Lehman, Morgan Stanley, GS, UBS, etc, all have proprietary trading areas and the backbone of those areas are the quants/scientists - and that will only continue.
When we are hired to conduct a search, the prerequisites are very specific. Its the square peg in the square hole with no room for flexibility.
People have asked, in this forum, why, if I know so many people can't I land one of these trading jobs myself. First of all, I am in my 40's - so forget abotit. In their world I would be ready for the nursing home. Secondly, while I am an EE, I do not have a masters and my technical skills are not current. C++, VBA, etc, were not around when I was programming (anybody remember Fortran?). I think you get the idea. For business people like myself who have accumulated some assets and would consider a mid-life career change to do something challenging, prop trading can make sense. But for you, I don't think so. Time is a depleting asset and it gets more difficult every year to go back to school. So if you can do it, do it now.
I hope that helps.
Venturerider2
