What formal education does one need?

Quote from c.chugani:


What kind of training / education does one formally need to become a trader?
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none.

you can come off the street and do this. Depends on the individual.
 
Someone here once quoted Tsunemoto Yamamoto - a Japanese Samurai - as saying " There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, nothing else to pursue..."
 
IMO, the most important thing for a trader to possess in order to be successful in the long term (consistently make money) is brutal self-honesty. If you don't practice this, be assured that Mr. Market will abuse you until you do or until, for whatever reasons, you quit.

lj
 
Quote from ljyoung:

IMO, the most important thing for a trader to possess in order to be successful in the long term (consistently make money) is brutal self-honesty. If you don't practice this, be assured that Mr. Market will abuse you until you do or until, for whatever reasons, you quit.

lj
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B.A.S.E. jumping.

Why you can't kid yourself or fudge the results. You also have to figure out what matters and what doesn't quickly yet the jump started ages ago with the planning, packing, pitching, and the performance comes last but is most critical.

Look at it like this. If you base jump you'll likely die sometime but will assuredly get seriously injured as a matter of course. If you live you will have learned. If you have learned there is a chance you will make it. When you get to that stage frankly the money doesn't mean squat.

Good Luck Spanky
 
Possibly BASE jumping could be incorporated into the business school curriculum. Say a leap from El Capitan on a crisp Fall morning. This prerequisite would have the dual benefit of winnowing the number of applicants and reducing the number of crappers who managed to slip by the screening committee.

Prescient thinking Spanky.

Regards

lj
 
Quote from ljyoung:

Possibly BASE jumping could be incorporated into the business school curriculum. Say a leap from El Capitan on a crisp Fall morning. This prerequisite would have the dual benefit of winnowing the number of applicants and reducing the number of crappers who managed to slip by the screening committee.

Prescient thinking Spanky.

Regards

lj
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Thanks,

I like the El Cap jump as a venue. Make the winners, er I mean successful applicants tastefully pack and ship the remains of their less adept competitors.

Cheers.
 
Quote from Cutten:

Literacy and numeracy are all you really need. Not even that if you plan to become a floor trader :P

Other useful skills: logic, epistemology, statistics, economics.

If you plan on going to work for a trading/investment/finance company first (the most common route, and probably easiest to eventually turn into trading success), then it's more important to go to a top university and have strong extra-curricular activities on your CV than exactly which degree you do. Although some kind of quantitative degree e.g. maths/physics, or one in finance/economics, will probably give you an edge over other applicants, and obscure arts degrees will count against you.

But playing the CV/interview game is entirely different to succeeding at trading. 95% of Goldman employees who went to its prop desk ended up blowing out, and they had top educations just to be able to step in the door. Trading success (pure directional trading) has almost nothing to do with normal measures of educational achievement. It's more about a certain mentality and personality, along with high intelligence - those things can't easily be learned or taught.
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The only way to find out if one possesses the mentality and personality is to do it. But even for those who are "naturals", there is nothing about trading that comes easy. Every penny is earned.
 
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