I started by joining a community and following a mentor. If you are only reading books on your own I am sure it is very difficult to make progress. Also, by posting your trades the mentor can point to the mistakes you made... So if you are interested in indices, find a community which is focused solely on this area. In my opinion by far the better option than being "on your own" and only following this forum.
What Do Hedge Funds Think of Technical Analysis?
- Thread starter SunTrader
- Start date
I started by joining a community and following a mentor. If you are only reading books on your own I am sure it is very difficult to make progress. Also, by posting your trades the mentor can point to the mistakes you made... So if you are interested in indices, find a community which is focused solely on this area. In my opinion by far the better option than being "on your own" and only following this forum.
Well not neccessary. If he is talking about notorious investment banking, the job can be very exhausting. The very much desired exit for investment bankers are hedge funds and private equity...
Im talking trading and from my own experience...
Guys on trading desks get paid a ton without a ton of talent
Guys on trading desks get paid a ton without a ton of talent
Any mentor in the room ping me please
I can offer so many questions you'll want to run far away into deep space
Assuming that to be true, why would that be the case?
What are the criteria for getting that position?
Better breakdown is 3 years on the sell side (rates & fx focus) and 7 years on the buy side (with a focus on active risk).That's 3.3333333333 years each, assuming you've been to: (1 bank x +3y) + (1 hedge fund x +3y) + (1 asset manager x +3y)
Aah. Would love to get a foot in there to see how it all works. Though I suspect I'm too old and I would be better off to leverage my >10y of software/platform eng experience in the retail/trading-on-my-own/quant-ish-maybe space
I think the benefit of working on the sell side is that it’s a much better place to learn about markets versus school or retail experience.
Prior to my professional career, I traded stocks, options, and fx as a student and also believed in the gibberish about technical analysis, that fundamentals were useless, that the pros are using better charts, etc. It wasn’t until I sat on the trading floor that I recognized the full degree of my dunning-kruger overconfidence.
I don’t think working on the sell side, or another buy side shop, is a requirement for being a very successful portfolio manager or analyst.
However, it is extremely hard to succeed without that experience because you simply do not know how good your competition is. It’s kind of like trying to train for a marathon (to place #1) and think you’re fast because you’re hitting 8:30mi which is very fast compared to most of your sedentary friends. (You have no idea how fast top marathon runners are and the competition it takes to place even in the top 10%).
Retail traders like @SunTrader legitimately believe that the “pros” and “old hand”/“wise” traders are looking at charts and fooling with retail etc. In reality, the pros are investing significant capital in technology, have large research budgets and teams, and (lol) are not relying on technical analysis to make trading decisions.
Sales-traders yes, risk takers it depends on the product. Assuming a risk taker has survived for 5+ years, they’ve probably earned their salt.
Gotcha. Thanks for that.
Well for me I believe it's too late as I'm no longer <30 years old and if my reading about how things work in the industry, one has to start young. So from my perspective I think I'll have to try and leverage what I know to do well and sort of mould it with whatever this space offers (and I know there's endless possibilities to learn, and that's why I'm here).
Institutional buy side traders, their job is buying only?
And sell side traders, they only sell?