Best Major

Hello Monkeys, I am currently a freshman at the University of Minnesota. I am in between what major I should choose to become a trader. I do not know what exact product I want to trade yet. I am interested in working at a ABCD doing commodity trading but my overall goal would be a PM at a hedge fund. I love economics and with its quantitative side I believe this would be a very good major to hopefully break into a hedge fund. My school offers a major of B.S. in Economics and also a B.S. in Applied economics. If I pursue the applied economics major I will be able to also pursue a masters at the same time, the courses needed for applied economics are a lot less quantitive then the regular economics major. With me going to a non-target I know I will need to go above and beyond. I believe the applied economics major will be best because I could get a masters and then work in economic research for a few years while also pursuing a PhD and then join a macro hedge fund. Over this summer I plan on working on an economic research team through my college and learn python, VBA, and SQR. I will attach the courses I will be taking for each different major. I also want to say I know a PhD might be overkill so let me know what you think but I do believe I will want to be an economics professor once I retire and I truly do love economics. Also let me know any tips you would recommend me being from material I should learn what I should read or if my career plan is not the best path. Thank you in advance! Also money is not an issue. 

Classes required for BS Economics: https://onestop2.umn.edu/pcas/viewCatalogSamplePl…

Classes required for BS/MS Applied Economics: https://onestop2.umn.edu/pcas/viewCatalogSamplePl…

4 Comments
 

If you want to be a trader of any kind (specifically commodities), you have to take a decent amount of math.

The holy triumvirate for a career trader in my opinion would be a double major in both comp-sci and econ. Assuming you get a BS, this will cover most of your math classes that you're probably going to need too. The comp-sci is going to allow you to get into high-frequency if you learn C++ or OCAML. If you're just looking at being a normal sell side trader at a bulge bracket, you're still going to want to know python

I dont think a finance major or an accounting major are going to be of much use as a trader.

 

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