What degree/master/phd would be the best for a trader?

HFT is a way
market control is a way
fundamental analysis long term investment is a way
days/weeks time frame technical/math/computer program prediction is a way
arbitrage is a way
...so many ways and all of these people can be in the same market...with winners and losers...

John holds math and econ degree. I believe he fundamentally understands the market extremely well while he can also build math model to predict what will happen. Well, what I mentioned before would be still the main reason how can someone becomes godlike.

butterfacetrader said:
Not everyone in the industry 'works together' as you say. They are actually competition. They say if you want a friend in wall street, get a dog. So, everyone is out for themselves. While some groups clearly work together whether to short or be long stocks, mostly its everyone for themselves at all times and its convenient for them to pack together. But if someone spots an opportunity to take other side of the trade to bet against everyone else, you can bet they will do it.

Rentech is a holy grail of what 'quants' and 'techies' (STEM.. science technology engineering, mathematics majors) can achieve and what they aspire to becoming. The idea that you can use stat models, look a bunch of numbers and have computers crunching numbers and doing trades autonomously is really cool I know. Quants will try to use technical skills, analytical skills, and technology (like HFT) to solve a market problem to earn a profit. This is great and it works and they get pretty decent return. The reason John Arnold's case is so striking is that I don't think he runs fancy HFTs or have a bunch of quants in his hedge fund. Just a bunch of guys with a good knowledge of the industry. And it goes to show maybe you really don't need all that fancy technical stuff. Trading on human instincts and the market being stochastic really means that anyone can do it short of all the technical stuff. You really need to ask whether that technical stuff is giving you a real edge. And maybe you don't need it if all you're doing is trying to buy low and sell high. Hence, why some studies show even stocks picked at random can beat a benchmark index or some hedge fund returns. Its because at the end of the day its all random and non-deterministic anyway. I'd rather be more lucky than smart in a market.
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Except human mind free style trading, rule base trading can be back-tested, then we can tell if a strategy gives us edge or not.

No need to back-tested market control style, because they always win:D

butterfacetrader said:
Not everyone in the industry 'works together' as you say. They are actually competition. They say if you want a friend in wall street, get a dog. So, everyone is out for themselves. While some groups clearly work together whether to short or be long stocks, mostly its everyone for themselves at all times and its convenient for them to pack together. But if someone spots an opportunity to take other side of the trade to bet against everyone else, you can bet they will do it.

Rentech is a holy grail of what 'quants' and 'techies' (STEM.. science technology engineering, mathematics majors) can achieve and what they aspire to becoming. The idea that you can use stat models, look a bunch of numbers and have computers crunching numbers and doing trades autonomously is really cool I know. Quants will try to use technical skills, analytical skills, and technology (like HFT) to solve a market problem to earn a profit. This is great and it works and they get pretty decent return. The reason John Arnold's case is so striking is that I don't think he runs fancy HFTs or have a bunch of quants in his hedge fund. Just a bunch of guys with a good knowledge of the industry. And it goes to show maybe you really don't need all that fancy technical stuff. Trading on human instincts and the market being stochastic really means that anyone can do it short of all the technical stuff. You really need to ask whether that technical stuff is giving you a real edge. And maybe you don't need it if all you're doing is trying to buy low and sell high. Hence, why some studies show even stocks picked at random can beat a benchmark index or some hedge fund returns. Its because at the end of the day its all random and non-deterministic anyway. I'd rather be more lucky than smart in a market.
More...
 
butterfacetrader said:
BTW, I don't know about your comment of "no market control" which is probably an unfounded statement. I don't know the inside details of the fund but if they are making markets across a variety of markets and arbitraging everything, you can bet they probably have market control of some sort. Plus, they have billions and you throw leverage on top of that, then they are swinging a lot of money and can likely move markets...
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Of course this is not mentioned in popular media because they control most of the main media companies.
 
Paul Tudor Jones said in the annotations of Reminiscenes of a Stock Operator, that journalism was the single most important element of his development as a trader and as a businessman.
 
GloriaBrown said:
I am thinking of studying a master and trading is what I am interested the most. I am thinking to pick one of these:

master of finance
master of risk management
master of statistics
master of financial engineering
MBA

No matter for just improving my own trading ability or possible a professional trading related job in future, which one should I choose? I can also pick one that is not on this list as well. I live in a big city so there are any kind of master over here.
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If you want to get a job then it doesn't matter what subject you do out of that list, it's more important which university you go to. To that list I'd add:

computer science
physics
maths
engineering
economics

But don't do an MBA. Almost uniquely on that list it is both completely useless for trading, and plenty of employers are biased against hiring MBA's for trading positions. The maths in an MBA is seen as too 'soft' for trading purposes.

GAT
(masters in economics, and ex trader).
 
globalarbtrader said:
If you want to get a job then it doesn't matter what subject you do out of that list, it's more important which university you go to. To that list I'd add:

computer science
physics
maths
engineering
economics

But don't do an MBA. Almost uniquely on that list it is both completely useless for trading, and plenty of employers are biased against hiring MBA's for trading positions. The maths in an MBA is seen as too 'soft' for trading purposes.

GAT
(masters in economics, and ex trader).
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As an MBA I would tend to agree, although perhaps not for the same reasons. Trading just wasn't seen as an attractive field for MBAs, at least at my school, and as a result there wasn't a lot of recruiting for trading jobs. Some people going to hedge funds, a few to i-banking (although tellingly not nearly as many as came from i-banking), and a lot to PE/VC, but to my knowledge not a single person went to a "trading" position as envisioned by posters here. The HFT firms definitely did recruit in the comp sci/math departments, as well as the business school's PhDs though.
I'll also second an earlier comment to go to a top tier school if at all possible. Take a couple years to do something unique and cool that will allow you to get into one of those schools. The financial world is horrible about only hiring from the "right" schools and would be happier taking the last person in their class from a top school than the valedictorian from a mid-tier school. In fact many top schools have grade non-disclosure, so hiring companies really do have no idea where their candidates ranked in their class and don't seem to care.
 
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