Jobs for Successful Retail Traders after IB
I am an incoming first year in IB at GS/MS/JPM. Honestly, I am not 100% sure why I decided to go through with banking because I am expecting that I will hate it and I don't really think I need a lot of money to be happy.
I first got interested in finance when I started trading freshman year of high school. I traded on and off and lost money most of the time. Stopped trading seriously when I had to go through the college/IB recruiting grind. Started trading again about a year and a half ago. From November to end of March I made trading my full time job (while also taking time off to travel). Over 366 trades and 75 trading days I generated 178% with a max 11% drawdown and a Sharpe over 6 and a Sortino of 14.
Given that I expect to hate banking and I love trading, what should I look to do after 6-12 months of banking? Is prop firm a viable route? What about trading at a hedge fund? I've also considered just working a chill 9-5 that gives me time to just trade for the first hour and a half after the open. That's basically where all the money is made. Would appreciate any advice.
We got another Ken Griffin on hand. God help.
Lol sorry should clarify but I have a systematic quantifiable edge. Talked to a guy at citadel who was actually very very impressed with the strategy I was running. A Sharpe ratio over 6 and a win rate at 70% over 366 trades during the period of late November to late March is very impressive IMO. What I do works because it's too shallow of a market for sophisticated investors to care about. Can make 20k a month max doing this. I actually had a hedge fund solicit me to explore some ideas for them after I told them what I had been up to.
I understand that most people think of retail traders as dumb money so I get your reaction. I do know that what I do could stop working any day, but I think these numbers speak for themselves. Very few retail traders can develop an algorithmic trading strategy with a systematic edge that puts up numbers like this in a difficult market environment. I think that combined with a pedigreed background (summa cum laude from a T20 and top group at GS/MS/JPM) should at least get me a couple looks from firms.
Edit: Rereading this and realize how arrogant and douchey this comes off lol. My point is to prove I'm not a dumb retail trader who got lucky on AMC/GME. I'm methodical about what I do and am capitalizing on a market inefficiency. I think this shows a genuine interest and a little bit of skill that should make me standout enough to get some interest from different firms. I just don't know anything about this industry or which firms I should try for.
Just go work at Citadel today.
Hey I can kind of speak to this a little bit.
First off, great job! Retail traders get a bad rep but if you actually know how to trade there’s a lot of money to be made. Personally I’ve been trading consistently since 2019. Trade everyday and have built out my own strategy over the years, that have produced very good results. Being consistent is hard enough. If I were you though, get out of banking if you don’t truly enjoy it.
In addition, this summer I’m going to a BB think (GS/JPM/MS) and through my superday I got grilled about trading derivatives since I trade options and focus on short term gamma. Not to get into it too much but that how I landed it and honestly I’m a pretty personable guy. So if you want to go to a prop or hedge fund. My best advice is to get placed onto a desk at a BB where there is a lot of flow and room to place trades on your views of the market. It really becomes desk dependent once you’re in. People say it’s hard to jump over from S&T to buy-side nowadays but from my inner circle literally all getting prop/hedge fund offers I can say that is not the case.
Of course there are many ways to enter the buy-side but like I said this is a route that I know many people have taken. Find a desk that has a shit ton of flow and allows you to place trades with your own view of the market and keep your own book/data on your trades at the firm. Hope this helps.
Any ideas of any firms/desks that still do this ?
Things like equity derivatives and FICC
Isn't that basically prop trading?
So I'll say this it depends on your desk, if you have your own book, if a PnL is attached to your name and if you take on more principal risk rather than flow. You track your trades in your own data entry (via excel is what I’ve heard most). Every trader has their own views, own clients, and own ideas. You can take a trade based on your views. I cannot speak to this from my own experience since I am only intern and have not physically had my own book. I'm simply transferring the information I have been told/taught by my own network at BB's, prop shops, and HFs.
Correct me if I'm wrong but do hedge funds actually trade this often?
I always thought they would go through a more lengthy research process and execute trades every few days - every couple of weeks per PM
What I wrote above this is for sell-side investment banks. Not for HF. Every HF has their own strategy, so I can’t speak to how often they execute new trades.
Depends on the investment philosophy. A lot of funds like to size up and down the same position over time based on every incremental data point, that's considered trading, so weights of each position in the book change every day.
If you're truly having success on your own then why would you even want to go into finance??? Both your time and your trading will be limited (your account will be monitored) and both of those are counterproductive to your (profitable) investing interests, right?
Serious suggestion: why not just go teach public school for a few years, trade on your own time to build a record and then start your own fund or ETF or whatever?
Because what I do doesn't really scale. I can make probably max 20k a month doing this which is a good sum of money but not fuck you money. This could also stop working one day and then I have no backstop. I have nothing on my resume and I'm just another unemployed person struggling to find a job. I also think there's a lot I could learn from working at a prop firm or hedge fund right?
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