How Lucrative Are Wall Street Jobs?

i worked for several wsf's and seldom made more than low wages, but what i gained was worth everything and more than money.
 
Quote from MarkBrown:

i worked for several wsf's and seldom made more than low wages, but what i gained was worth everything and more than money.
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like what? about human nature? how market makers would sell their mothers for a penny advantage?:D
 
Quote from zdreg:

like what? about human nature? how market makers would sell their mothers for a penny advantage?:D
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this guy http://stanfinney.com told me i should be paying him, when asked why he said your going to leave one day with your stuff and my stuff basically. he was right and i thank and think of him every moment for that opportunity.

if you want to learn to trade shine the shoes of someone who actually does it (trading) well. don't screw around with salesmen who are peddling the services of the company. set with the guy calling the shots making the money. then if you have a brain you can make it.
 
Quote from hftvol:

Not sure who made your life that miserable at your banks and I have never worked much in New York but I can tell you that life as prop trader in HK and Tokyo is/was fantastic and all the perks added to the beauty of it. Maybe it was that I never had to take delayed and dirty trains, never had to be fearful to get robbed or shot on the street, never had to deal with The ridiculously high US income taxes, never paid a penny on capital gains (in HK) , enjoyed the worlds best food at reasonable prices without standing in line to get into a restaurant and without having to make reservations 3months in advance. Never had to content much with out-of-line alpha males who where obviously either on drugs or otherwise suffering from sociopathic disorders. I guess I can only say , welcome to Wallstreet. One reason I never wanted to work in NYC or London for that matter.

Maybe you get the idea why there are lots of top traders who would love to trade out of HK or Singapore. Few hours flight to all the weekend paradises you ever dreamed of. Ad I am not talking about the filthy holes in Thailand or Philipines. Caveat about HK: the sometimes bad air pollution is a drag for some with family.
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"never paid a penny on capital gains "

what instruments can be traded in HK without paying capital gains?
 
1. A finance professor has negative income growth in real term;

2. The sharpe ratio is rather high due to job protection with tenure;

3. The hourly rate is also quite high since all teaching can be done in 30 days of work at the pace of Wall Street (5 hours of teaching per week for 30 weeks and another 5 hours for grading and preparation);

4. However it is not so easy to leverage. Remember the optimal kelly position is sharpe ratio divided by std dev. The stdev is so low, and the optimal leverage is very high. But you cannot do 10 tenured professor job at the same time to earn 2 mill a year.

5. When you consult or do other things, the sharpe ratio goes down, but still in tolerable range. The income will be much higher.

njrookie
 
Quote from njrookie1:

1. A finance professor has negative income growth in real term;

2. The sharpe ratio is rather high due to job protection with tenure;

3. The hourly rate is also quite high since all teaching can be done in 30 days of work at the pace of Wall Street (5 hours of teaching per week for 30 weeks and another 5 hours for grading and preparation);

4. However it is not so easy to leverage. Remember the optimal kelly position is sharpe ratio divided by std dev. The stdev is so low, and the optimal leverage is very high. But you cannot do 10 tenured professor job at the same time to earn 2 mill a year.

5. When you consult or do other things, the sharpe ratio goes down, but still in tolerable range. The income will be much higher.

njrookie
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Actually this is not true. At least in finance. Professors have many ways to leverage. Many of them publish research. Many write books. Hell half of them are active traders making more money trading then teaching. Many make money, lots of money, giving speeches. Honestly, the income is endless. That's not to say all of them take advantage of it, but it's there. Some of you guys are forgetting, these guys have a "lot" of free time. There is nothing really stopping them from trading as much as anyone on here does. In fact the irony is, over the years, many hedge funds tried to lure some of the smarter academics away from their ivory towers and most of them never took the bait as they were better off where they were.

Let me add one other variable here. Most of these professors, although not all, live in small college towns where they are essentially rock stocks in their communities. Where as the avg grunt in NY or London gets spit on by most of the surrounding liberals who deem them nothing more then a sycophant to society. Don't underestimate the satisfaction one gets from having their ego stroked. You can't really put a price tag on that.
 
Sorry but I do not buy your story. The very few who choose academic careers over the private sector due to their true passion and drive to research and eventually publish groundbreaking developments can be counted on one hand globally in a ten year span.

Obviously, the net worth that comes along with a career of a professional in finance, consulting, technology, anything, is a lot higher than the net worth of most any tenured professor.

This leaves me with the conclusion that most in academics are there because it leaves them with a convenient, lower stress life style while it comfortably places them in the middle to upper-middle class in terms of net worth. Nothing wrong with that at all but they are on a scale closer to the one choosing a relaxing life style on a deserted island than someone trying to bring the best out of him/herself. And it comes again down to the 90-95% of people who tried to reach the mountain top or know they cannot reach it and instead settle with less but at least the second best choice.

See, only look at the attitude of your average professor or researcher. Do most strike you as being engaged, highly passionate and motivated or do they mostly come across with an attitude of "I hope the damn office hours are over soon" or "I do not really care what you guys think of my lecture or research"? Someone who is engaged and who has a genuine love for what they do reflect their passion in anything they say and do. Just think about that for a moment and tell me how many of 100 research papers you came across most recently strike you as noteworthy of keeping or bookmarking...


Quote from gmst:

Let us compare the earnings of 2 finance PhD friends from a top tier school.

One joins academics and in 5 years becomes a fully tenured professor in a business school at a public university. Another joins an exotic desk in an investment bank and becomes a director in 5 years.

The business school professor will be making in the range of 220-280k. Whereas a director in trading at a bulge bracket bank would be making 250k(base)+350k(bonus) = 600k in current environment. Some of it would be deferred compensation.

The professor would be teaching 1 hour per day and guiding research students etc. for 1 more hour per day. Other than these 2 hours, he would spend say 3 hrs per day on his research. So, he works for a grand total of 5 hrs per day. In the months when universities have holidays, professor workload would be even lesser.

The director on the other hand would be in office for a minimum of 10 hrs per day. So, on per hour basis, their salaries would be equivalent.

However, university professor would get a pension and once he gets a tenure, he has a secure job. On the other hand, the director at WS bank could see his job being axed as recently happened across UBS or in recent history as most of the credit guys saw their jobs gone in 2008.

Most interestingly, the expenses of the guy at WS would be much higher than the expenses of the professor. A big reason is NY or London rent and living costs are much higher compared to say if you are teaching at Santa Barbara.

If professor decides to spend other 5 hrs of his job on doing consulting or writing some software that he can sell or just his own prop. trading, well he could end up making more than the trader at a bank.

Current and ex-WS traders might have a hard time believing that a professor could have a better overall life as well as risk/stress adjusted a better salary + pension, since they have always been made to believe that they are the top dogs, but I have seen this happen in real life many a times.
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i propose being an academic and being a trader is a oxymoron. yes there are some exceptions, but this board if full of idiots with phd's.
 
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