Getting Started With A Prop Firm

Sinbin said:
I went to University of Pittsburgh. Studied Economics (concentration of Corporate Finance, Monetary Policy, and Labor Econ) while also studies in Statistics and Political Science.

What do you mean by test scores?
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What some serious advice from someone who's been on the Buy-side, Corporate, Pension, Hedge, Prop, Hedge...and now EV.P. & Partner of $1B+ RIA with Advisors in 19 states?

It's not what you want to hear but it's the best advice I would give anyone in your spot. You're too young for Prop right now, especially Deposit-Prop. You go Prop this early and you will find that Prop is a resume killer.

Take your enthusiasm & your youth & your CorpFin, Stats, Econ Edu into this tight labor market where it's very easy to get a great job and build up your experiences in a perceived legit organization and build some kind of real expertise outside of (in addition to) trading. Count yourself very lucky that we're still in a tight labor market and go take advantage of it. Business cycles oscillate, wait too long and you might find that it's much harder to break into steady-paycheck land.

Go to work for the Federal Reserve, one of the Big 4 in Accounting/Consulting, catch on with Hedge/Pension/RE/PE/VC-type Fund and learn Business from the inside while you're getting a paycheck. Save, build up your reserves, get your personal house in order with your own personal Financial Plan/Retirement Plan.
Build relationships along the way. Opportunities will open up once you can show that you're actually a valuable resource to someone.

Right now regardless of what you may think of your trading skills people see you as cost-center. Costs decrease operating margins. Don't be perceived as a Cost. After you build some kind of expertise it won't matter what kind of school you went to, or if you even went to any school at all. Expertise trumps all.

Prop trading is not going anywhere. You can always come back to it. In the meantime keep learning, write code, learn to test, build up your market memory, keep building systems. Go build yourself. Let it come to you. You'll be fine.

Good Luck.
 
KevMo said:
It's not what you want to hear but it's the best advice I would give anyone in your spot. You're too young for Prop right now, especially Deposit-Prop. You go Prop this early and you will find that Prop is a resume killer.
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Why would you say that? A job at a first-tier prop firm it's not any different from a multi-manger fund (I am talking about places like Jump/Wolverine/TowerResearch or DRW). If anything, it's better to have such a prop firm on your CV as opposed to a third-tier hedge fund or some corporate development gig.
 
traider said:
Think different, go to a place with true alpha like SEC or Congress where you can have access to lots of insider info.
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Also CIA, NSA etc. True that!

PS. I'd venture a guess that expected net worth of any of the jobs above is way better than anything you can get via trading
 
KevMo said:
What some serious advice from someone who's been on the Buy-side, Corporate, Pension, Hedge, Prop, Hedge...and now EV.P. & Partner of $1B+ RIA with Advisors in 19 states?

It's not what you want to hear but it's the best advice I would give anyone in your spot. You're too young for Prop right now, especially Deposit-Prop. You go Prop this early and you will find that Prop is a resume killer.

Take your enthusiasm & your youth & your CorpFin, Stats, Econ Edu into this tight labor market where it's very easy to get a great job and build up your experiences in a perceived legit organization and build some kind of real expertise outside of (in addition to) trading. Count yourself very lucky that we're still in a tight labor market and go take advantage of it. Business cycles oscillate, wait too long and you might find that it's much harder to break into steady-paycheck land.

Go to work for the Federal Reserve, one of the Big 4 in Accounting/Consulting, catch on with Hedge/Pension/RE/PE/VC-type Fund and learn Business from the inside while you're getting a paycheck. Save, build up your reserves, get your personal house in order with your own personal Financial Plan/Retirement Plan.
Build relationships along the way. Opportunities will open up once you can show that you're actually a valuable resource to someone.

Right now regardless of what you may think of your trading skills people see you as cost-center. Costs decrease operating margins. Don't be perceived as a Cost. After you build some kind of expertise it won't matter what kind of school you went to, or if you even went to any school at all. Expertise trumps all.

Prop trading is not going anywhere. You can always come back to it. In the meantime keep learning, write code, learn to test, build up your market memory, keep building systems. Go build yourself. Let it come to you. You'll be fine.

Good Luck.
More...

Thank you @KevMo I appreciate the advice!

traider said:
Think different, go to a place with true alpha like SEC or Congress where you can have access to lots of insider info.
More...
Lol- try and intern with some black market tech firm to trade while working.
 
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