Best Coding languages to learn to move from Sales to Trading?
I am interning this summer in S&T at a non-BB bank in NYC. I will be rotating through 2 desks, but I'm assuming they'll place me in sales since I don't have much technical experience. What coding languages should I learn if I want to be a trader at a bank? I've read C++ and Java are the best for sell side banks and Python for buyside firms. I know a little bit of Python and Java and was planning on learning Python, but should I focus on C++ and Java instead?
Just learn python. Can't think of a single trader that uses java or c++ (only exception being the few funds where trader/quant/tech are the same). Heck, most of the traders at my BB can't code at all despite all the training that the bank tries to give.
vba is probably most useful. Some people would debate if it's even a programming language but chances are you won't even use any c++ or python on the trading job
I think it would be a good idea to start with VBA and then learn pandas and requests. I used VBA more often then Python.
As an intern, my go-to would be Python. If you are proficient enough with Python, you can do most things that Excel can do, even manipulating the data with-in excel and saving it (that you’d do with VBA). However as people mentioned above, knowing VBA might also be good because it is vastly used on the trading floor.
Had a similar experience last summer. As an intern only one I made use of was VBA. I have some knowledge of Java and Python but didn’t feel super comfortable with either. I used VBA quite a bit and so did others on my desk.
Could you talk more about the vba. Like what level of vba knowledge is required for the s&t job. I learned python at school and it is my major programming language. I could do the simple macro stuff and understand what the vba script is doing but I probably couldnt write the entire vba script by myself.
Is that any materials, books or online courses, that are helpful for me to learn the necessary vba knowledge for s&t position?
Honestly, very basic. My extent was running macros and then some code on top of that but was mostly replicating or very basic. I did one of those Codecademy courses before but only the last module or 2 were helpful at all, everything else was super basic. I was on a USD Bond IG desk so maybe used less coding than friends in rates, fx etc. but honestly probably could make it through with knowledge of macros.
Will highly recommend being familiar with BBG and especially the API for Excel. Those formulas can be a little tricky and used this a lot.
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