Most important skills for trading?
How would you rank the following skills in order of importance for trading success or getting hired? (add any other skills that I missed)
What makes Lewis Ranieri and Mike Milken so lengendary?
Mathematical and quantitative ability
Social skills
Being well-connected
Communication skills
Teamwork skills
Ability to control the emotions of fear and greed
Strict discipline and adherence to strategy
Snap judgements and fast reflexes
High stress tolerance
Due diligence
Ability to tolerate lack of sleep
Ability to graduate from a target school
Search function... There was one post exactly like this a week ago.
I searched before I posted this...I couldn't find what I was looking for. Link please? There were threads about skills needed in PE/HF/IB, but trading is different.
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/what-makes-a-successful-trader
Ability to control the emotions of fear and greed for sure leave emotions at the door...
You need to be a machine pretty much. Use eyes, not brain. All you need is simple mental math. What's 94000/4.28 stuff. Calculus won't help here.
Other than skills, many other factors matter as well which I feel is essential for success. There are average guys who have done well due to timing effect and so on. We always hear, 'guys who got graduated around year XYZ were lucky as banks were hiring so much.....' Another example could be EM desks. Many banks invested heavily in ramping up EM operations but when crisis hit a lot of them had to exit. The ones remaining ended up with substantial business left for them alone. People on those desks benefitted. At the same time, guys who were laid off also managed to find other jobs especially on the buy-side as demand for EM guys (research to be specific) was decent.
Luck - on the day of your interview you might get asked questions you've prepared for. A smarter guy might get rejected because it was a bad day for him.
Your seat on the desk - lot's of desks enjoy from their brand rep; similar to EM example above. You could be an average trader but occupy a position on the desk because you benefit from a lot of flow business and they just need someone to keep doing that.
My only point is, while above mentioned skills certainly matter, it may not be enough. Timing and luck plays a big role as well.
Depends on product but I'd say: social skills, ability to control emotions and be disciplined, ability to distill and analyze information and most of all, a hell lot of luck..
Excel skills for trading internship (Originally Posted: 04/17/2014)
So I managed to get a summer internship at a BB as the head of credit trading there took a shine to me during the interview. However, he stressed that my technical skills (Excel) weren't very good and that I would be mainly working on Excel during the internship.
Now, I'll be honest in saying that my Excel skills aren't good. I have worked on Excel a little and know the basic functions but nothing more. I'll have a month between finishing my finals and starting the internship and during that I want to work hard to improve my Excel skills.
What I'm looking for is any advice on specifically what I should be learning and should be able to do on Excel to impress. Also, any specific Excel resources where I can learn or any "boot camp" type deals (free or otherwise). There's many Excel resources out there, of course, but I want to know more specifically what I'd need to know for a trading internship.
Definitely make sure you're familiar with vlookup, sorting, anchoring cells, pasting special stuff, etc. It wouldn't hurt to become familiar with some basic VBA, as well, but doubt you would use it during the summer. Could be a big benefit if you could automate a daily process, though. I think Training the Street and Wall Street Prep have their own Excel courses you can buy.
Thanks HFer. Yes, I've seen a few Excel courses about but can't seem to find any specifically for S&T. Many seem to be geared more towards IB so I don't know how useful they would be.
Also, just trying to figure out if there are more specific S&T Excel skills I'd need. VBA can be useful I've heard but is it just knowing the basics/generally know Excel/VBA and then learning the specifics during the internship or should I be aware of more specific processes beforehand?
More often than not, you'll just be scrubbing and manipulating a lot of data in S&T roles. You're not going to be doing any DCF's, but they could have you look into some pricing models depending on the desk. The work isn't terribly difficult, but you need to know how things like vlookup, hlookup, sumif, countif, special pasting, etc. work beforehand to move quickly. Knowing keyboard shortcuts will also help out, just use one of the many shortcut pages you'd find on the internet. Try to use your mouse as little as possible.
Good way to practice this stuff is to do a little side project on your own. Go to the St. Louis FRED site, download a bunch of data points, manipulate the data into one sheet, and run some basic regressions. When you're not sure how to do something in excel, search the correct function to use, implement, get familiar with it, and move on to the next one.
I've had a position like that in the past. I would get familiar with the following functions: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH. Also, if you know any VBA that would definitely help. Now it is more efficient to use C# with Excel but if you are not a developer then there is a learning curve. Also, the ability to pull data from Bloomberg will be a big advantage. Lastly, learn Excel's RTD function if you will be working with real-time data.
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