How To Go From Retail To Institutional Trader

wrbtrader said:
There are a lot of Universities in Europe that specifically offer trading classes, internships, networking with those in the business you seek and even a trading room.

Seriously, there's no short cuts to what you seek...a cutter response is what most have done to get to where you seek to go.

You're almost there with being a Finance & Economics student...why not go all the way and be at one of those Universities ?

I posted an incomplete list of many Universities in Europe that offers the above...most located in England but others are located elsewhere in other countries in Europe. You can do what I did for a friend who's 21 year old daughter that wanted to go to transfer from her University that didn't offer such so that she can transfer to one of those Universities that does offer such...I just Google the info. :D

Anyways, she finish graduate school and few years ago and now works as an institutional trader for Deutsche Bank...handling very large accounts.

P.S. I'm not a professional trader...I'm retail.
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I dont think transferring universities is really an option as I dropped out of a university before and I don't want to rock the boat.
 
Fundlord said:
I have a meaningless trading record that would not appeal to any hedge fund/prop firm since I took obnoxious amounts of risk due to little capital. Even though I was profitable, explaining 100x leverage would be difficult.
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My experience is that they would be interested. They luv stuff like this. Send off your resume to all the big hedge funds...some of them have intern programmes and graduate schemes.
 
Fundlord said:
As for prop firms how would I market myself to them without scaring them away ?
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In general prop firm will take you regardless what is your academic qualifications, as far as you can trade profitable. However, there are two type of prop firm :

1) Those that try to squeeze money from YOU. This type of firm will normally charge you the "training fees", bogus " proprietary firm platform", desk fees, rebate fees that they obtain from exchange. Stay away from this type of firm.

2) Those that try to squeeze money from MARKET through profitable trader. They normally will share profit with you. This is the good one to start with. Send them your CV.

This day you won't find much firm that will let you risk their money, you normally have to put some money in the front line, e.g. You contribute 10k and the firm contribute 190k, 60/40 sharing. The caveat is if you loss 10k, your personal money will be on the front line and get burned, and most likely you will be "fired". This is why I say bucket shop somethlime is even better than prop firm as they provide similar leverage, and less BS.

Note : Institutions normally won't consider prop firm working experience as relevant to their trader position.
 
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Fundlord said:
As far as relationships go my parents would only know private bankers/wealth managers and a broker who is always trying to sell us funds etc Wouldn't know anyone in investment banks/hedge funds.
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I know those type of people (unfortunately) , most of them have no clue what kind of products they are selling. I recalled one of them call me several times with their hard sales. I respond to him with a few questions and mentioned to him who I had worked with before, that guy can't even answer one of my questions, and he said he will get the fund manager and their traders to respond to my questions, I never heard anything back from him anymore.
 
I noticed you are 21. Get your education. Likely you would need a master's. Try to look it from an instutuion point of view. If you are not commited enough to get your degree why would they trust you to be committed working for them. Seriously, especially in europe where higher education is free for everyone!
 
Fundlord said:
The thing is I have no interest in becoming a quant trader just so I can get hired by an institution. Econometrics is one of my modules during my final year so theres that.

I am looking for a discretionary role in a specific market I see ads for:

"oil trader" "US equities trader" "FX trader" etc none are entry level, they usually require 2-5 years experience. Although there was one that said $5m personal pnl for a nat gas trader position :eek:

I feel all the guys who manage large funds today got similar starts:

1.Carl Icahn (Options trader made equivalent of $10m per year then quit to buy businesses)
2.Steven Cohen (Equity trader who went one to making 100k per day for his firm, left with 25m
to start his fund)
3. George Soros (Arbitrage in Euro stocks, left after he saved enough to start fund)
4. John Arnold (Nat gas trader at Enron, left with $8m bonus to start his own fund)

How many I can think of who started retail trading and went on to manage billions:

1.
.............
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Those guys got their starts because of the way the industry was back in those days. The next trader archetype your going to see 20 years from now (maybe you?) would have started in the same trader jobs you see now. You can bet those current archetypes joke among themselves that they probably could not get the same entry level jobs if they had to with what they graduated with. ( This is an inside joke with successful people.)

To make a distinction between discretionary and quant is highly naive. You provide the industry what it wants. But first, you have to understand the business.
 
jinxu said:
I noticed you are 21. Get your education. Likely you would need a master's. Try to look it from an instutuion point of view. If you are not commited enough to get your degree why would they trust you to be committed working for them. Seriously, especially in europe where higher education is free for everyone!
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Yes undergrad is near free but a good masters from lets say London School Of Economics is about $80,000 and I imagine its very difficult to get in.
 
Fundlord said:
Yes undergrad is near free but a good masters from lets say London School Of Economics is about $80,000 and I imagine its very difficult to get in.
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It's not an exuse. That's the same for MBA for guys that want to be investment bankers. It doesn't sound like you are willing to work hard for it.
 
jinxu said:
It's not an exuse. That's the same for MBA for guys that want to be investment bankers. It doesn't sound like you are willing to work hard for it.
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I am willing but that is 3 years away, I want to know the steps I can take right now apart from keep my grades up in undergrad.
 
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