Looking to trade equities/futures after graduation, where should I go?

I'm on sophomore at GaTech and have been trading for the past year now, 3 years now in the markets. I really want to obtain a trading internship this summer, but I'm having a little trouble deciding where I actually belong. If I could trade equities/futures using a firm's capital for the rest of my life, I'd be ecstatic.

I know a lot of the big boys (GS, JPM, BAC,etc...) do trading, but do they specifically trade equities/futures? Should I instead be looking for a random prop shop? If so, who? I know a lot of firms are moving over to the quantitative side of things, but having an algorithm doing all the work for me is just no fun.

All responses are appreciated.

 
Best Response

All of those firms trade equities and futures as part of institutional client services- where hedge funds, pension managers, and mutual funds will call up the firm's dealers and do large trades where they need more liquidity than the exchanges alone can provide in a short time. Some of them also do proprietary trading where they will take bets on the direction of the market.

It is a good place to get started as a trader- those firms probably offer the widest variety of experiences in the capital markets, but they don't really specialize in proprietary trading. For that, you need to work at a hedge fund or a prop shop. That said, with three or four years of one of those firms on your resume, you can get an interview just about anywhere.

 

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