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

Grandluxe said:
PhD in statistics/mathematics or physics w/programming capabilities.

I had a pal who did his PhD in physics, decided academia was not for him and got snapped up by a a bulge bracket bank straight away on the Delta One trading desk. From what he told me, the majority of his colleagues have PhD in a hard science or maths subject. He also critically emphasized learning programming in C++, Python and VBA.
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really need phd level of math or phtsics to be hft kind of strategy developer?
 
Handle123 said:
That's depends, if you a guy that wants to work for others, then any of those are good. If you want to work for yourself, learn to program and understand psychology, that people are going to do the most logic thing and 95% of the time it is the wrong thing to do. There I saved you four years and thousands of dollars. All you need to trade well is High School, the dumber you are the better when it comes to trading, but you have to be smart enough to program. You have to understand that less is better, you have to take other side of trades that those who trade by emotions, markets are traded heaviest by going against what your emotions are saying. I scalp the markets and I am good at catching a falling boulder, I have become a Monkey that hits buttons, and that's it. You devise a well back tested trading plan, then the hardest part is sticking to it.

I wish instead of getting two degrees in what I did, would have spent two years at programming. But I prefer to work alone and for myself.
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psychology is not important because market is not control by random crowd.
 
newwurldmn said:
You need to be a student of life to succeed in the finance world.

But if you pursue a masters or PhD in any of those fields, it will help you a lot. PhD's are required to do original research, which demonstrates the ability to think beyond the text book. That's why so many banks hire PhDs.

Financial Engineering degrees as good as they expose you to the theoretical world of finance as well as give you some tools.

If your goal is to get into an investment bank or top tier hedgefund, you have to either go a top school for financial engineering/MBA, or have a phd from a decent school.

If your goal is to trade from home, then I would probably skip the degrees and take selective courses where you are lacking understanding.
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Can a single person wins big while those phd in ibanks are using extreme math and stats which that single person has no idea at all?
 
GloriaBrown said:
psychology is not important because market is not control by random crowd.
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I would have to strongly disagree, I would say 90% of my trades are psychology based, I am the trader who sells highs/buy lows whether in scalping or long term commodity trading. If you look at volume on Market profile or even the volume on Minute charts, you can tell where the heaviest of traders are either accumulating or distributing time and time again. In Market Profile the least volume is at the extremes. Now I know the ones who are getting in on wrong side of extremes of the bell curve are those who most of the time do not have a clear cut method otherwise. Do you think the Pros one day just said hey lot's start selling less as market goes higher at some point? Or Buying more near the lows? I have journals I have kept for thirty years of many things including my emotions and wanting to put on trades based on these emotions, over 95% of these trades would have lost. Our brain based on books we read are geared to rising market we should buy, falling market we sell, we feel comfortable to get in when price is moving that direction, our brain is not thinking that each tick going up is expanding our protective stops and decreasing possible profits.

You are right that "market is not control by random crowd", BUT traders take advantage at any opportunity to take other side of uneducated and emotional traders' position.

Almost every time there is a failure of a price pattern it is based on emotions of the uneducated trader, they can't expand their stops or move to breakeven too fast.

I believe big brokerage figured out long ago what emotions small traders get when price does some type of move and force the market to constantly do certain moves. And I am waiting all day long for these patterns to make easy profits. Only NOW I understand much better what and why moves happen.
 
Handle123 said:
I would have to strongly disagree, I would say 90% of my trades are psychology based, I am the trader who sells highs/buy lows whether in scalping or long term commodity trading. If you look at volume on Market profile or even the volume on Minute charts, you can tell where the heaviest of traders are either accumulating or distributing time and time again. In Market Profile the least volume is at the extremes. Now I know the ones who are getting in on wrong side of extremes of the bell curve are those who most of the time do not have a clear cut method otherwise. Do you think the Pros one day just said hey lot's start selling less as market goes higher at some point? Or Buying more near the lows? I have journals I have kept for thirty years of many things including my emotions and wanting to put on trades based on these emotions, over 95% of these trades would have lost. Our brain based on books we read are geared to rising market we should buy, falling market we sell, we feel comfortable to get in when price is moving that direction, our brain is not thinking that each tick going up is expanding our protective stops and decreasing possible profits.

You are right that "market is not control by random crowd", BUT traders take advantage at any opportunity to take other side of uneducated and emotional traders' position.

Almost every time there is a failure of a price pattern it is based on emotions of the uneducated trader, they can't expand their stops or move to breakeven too fast.

I believe big brokerage figured out long ago what emotions small traders get when price does some type of move and force the market to constantly do certain moves. And I am waiting all day long for these patterns to make easy profits. Only NOW I understand much better what and why moves happen.
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Base on the stats that I know, most of the market volume like at least 80% or more are created by less than 10 main players or less in the market. Those are like goldman sachs and other main financial power in the world. Assume 20% or actually 10% of random people cannot pay the other 90% win, which means the game is actually about main players fight with each other. I don't see how can psychology be used to predicted those main players' action when they have so many ways to hide their actions. These days they mainly use computers to do all the actions, so there isn't even a human mind there to apply the psychology part.
 
Handle123 said:
I would have to strongly disagree, I would say 90% of my trades are psychology based, I am the trader who sells highs/buy lows whether in scalping or long term commodity trading. If you look at volume on Market profile or even the volume on Minute charts, you can tell where the heaviest of traders are either accumulating or distributing time and time again. In Market Profile the least volume is at the extremes. Now I know the ones who are getting in on wrong side of extremes of the bell curve are those who most of the time do not have a clear cut method otherwise. Do you think the Pros one day just said hey lot's start selling less as market goes higher at some point? Or Buying more near the lows? I have journals I have kept for thirty years of many things including my emotions and wanting to put on trades based on these emotions, over 95% of these trades would have lost. Our brain based on books we read are geared to rising market we should buy, falling market we sell, we feel comfortable to get in when price is moving that direction, our brain is not thinking that each tick going up is expanding our protective stops and decreasing possible profits.

You are right that "market is not control by random crowd", BUT traders take advantage at any opportunity to take other side of uneducated and emotional traders' position.

Almost every time there is a failure of a price pattern it is based on emotions of the uneducated trader, they can't expand their stops or move to breakeven too fast.

I believe big brokerage figured out long ago what emotions small traders get when price does some type of move and force the market to constantly do certain moves. And I am waiting all day long for these patterns to make easy profits. Only NOW I understand much better what and why moves happen.
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It sounds like you use price and volume to make prediction, these are stats analysis but not psychology.
 
“Psychology” being a factor in price movement is a rubbish notion that is carried over from the times when classical technical analysis was introduced and was seen as a justification for the patterns. Nowdays that relation has somewhat been reversed with price being moved against common expectations.
The only other relevance of “psychology” is in connection to traders crapping in their pants when overextended but it is doubtful this has much impact on price dynamics normally.

At the same time price movement is arguably not the consequence of some super advanced mathematics. The math in trading decisions algos is arguably not that complex and it is not the reason why science overachievers are employed.

ras72
 
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