I want to interview female traders
I am a senior in the Princeton University department of Sociology, and I am writing my senior thesis on the culture of the trading floor and how it is experienced by the women who work there.
My research involves interviewing women who work on the trading floor, or who have worked there in the past 5 years. Participation would involve one twenty-minute interview, in person or by phone, during the month of January or February.
Your privacy will be completely assured by Princeton University’s strict research confidentiality rules.
Please email me at [email protected] if you would like to participate.
no1 wants to participate in this, please leave, thank you....god i hate dumb femnists........ i'm not doing trading, but is for MEN .... every1 here hates dumb femist bitches....they are ugly, like a 2 or a 3 (and I am like 7 so i am better looking) and they have hairy armpits. there are lots of femnists in my country too and EVERYBODY hate them.
OH NO PLEAZE DONT COME AFTER ME WITH YOUR SUPER FEMNISITM POWERS!! jajajajajajajjajajajaa.
(sorry for angry post guys who are nice to me and give me helpful advices, because i hate femist bitches more than anything!)
blumie, I think that was harsh. She asked to speak with some female traders, I suspect she may put a feminist slant on the story but that's an assumption you shouldn't jump to, and besides, she's just an undergrad, her getting a decent grade on her term paper isn't going to do any harm to you
learn to spell.
Blumie, that was among the most ignorant posts ever on this site. You should be banned for the stupidity and immaturity of your response. What is the problem with a student from a top-tier university like Princeton looking to do research for a senior thesis? And your knowledge of the English language (or lack thereof) is simply pathetic. Chloe... if I was a Trader, and a woman, I would gladly take the 20 minutes to speak with you. I apologize on behalf of the entire WSO community for Blumie's naive and shallow response.
NEVER lose your BlackBerry www.conveniencesoftware.com
Good luck finding her. We just sent her on a Starbucks run. LOL.
On a serious note, I've known 3 female traders in my career, and I'll be happy to give you a few details on them if you want to PM me. I'll warn you in advance, though, they're not pretty stories and they don't have happy endings.
Care to elaborate on the unhappy endings?
The trading floor I interned at last summer didn't have a single female trader... It was a small desk though, only 20 people or so. Not sure about the other floors.
that's because trading is about brains, not boobs and butts.
blumie - you're stupid. SmallTalk - the absence of women in finance today is very similar to their absence is so many other fields throughout history. I get your joke and I personally laughed... but in all honesty, that too will change with time.
Its like race car driving, women can do it, but there aren't many that do
I can't answer many of your questions as I have limited experience, but here's a few tidbits for you.
I interned in S&T my junior summer, rotating through HY Sales, MBS trading, and FX trading. The women both on the S&T side alike were pretty aggressive but I liked the atmosphere of working with all men (less drama). I think you need to delineate between the older generation of women (those graduating in the 80s and early 90s) and the ones who graduated in the late 90s and early 00s. I absolutely hated the older women on the floor because they felt like they were out to prove more especially with respect to their male counterparts. Younger generation sales/traders were much more normal and down to earth without being overly pro-women and such.
Not all trading desks are about yelling, being obnoxious and being in a frat house. Some of the desks are actually pretty quant driven and even before a trade is made, there's work that goes into it (CMOs, FX exotics, options, etc.). It's not all about buying low and selling high, trying to take advantage of split second spreads in the market. Basically, the more complicated the product is, the desk tends to be less douchey/fratastic.
I remember when I was at the bank for the Sell Day, one of the head traders on a desk asked me if I was an idealist and if I was out to save the world. I laughed and told him I really just wanted to make a lot of money. He became my mentor that summer.
I'd say that you shouldn't overly try and be a guy. No one wants that. There's a way to maintain your girly charms and still hang out with the guys.
Blumie - return to your burnt garage. Take some ESL classes before trying to spew knowledge on these boards and stop talking out of your ass.
LMAO.
We have a female BSD on our floor. she's pretty hardcore, first couple months she scared the sht out of me. I agree with HS when she talks about the old generation vs the new. I know a female trader who started a couple years ago and she is one of the chillest girls I know.
likewise, she knows her stuff and is on one of the best desks (also more quantitative so in line w/HS's assessment) at her bank without any of that us-against-the-world-obligated-to-act-ultra-tough mentality. i think the new version of the female trader is one that will be quiety confident and can get what she wants without trying to hard. they are still far and few between
Will you share this paper with us?
If you want to speak with females in S&T I suggest you look at commodities desks. When I first joined my desk literally 1/2 the salespeople were female, and 1/2 the structurers were female. Trading was maybe 1/4 female.
Global heads of commodities at both JPMorgan and Goldman are female.
Once you find a desk that is quite quant, and ideally connected with a non-US bank (sorry, but I think there are fewer remaining pockets of "frat-house bs" and old-school S&T mentality anywhere these days, but where they do remain it's much more likely to be at a Citi or BofA than at a Deutsche or Barclays), you'll see the side of S&T where white American males are the minority, everyone has advanced degrees, and people are very intellectual and quite polished.
Personally, during my time in S&T I have rarely been exposed to the "frat-house bs" atmosphere....on my desk analysts aren't hazed by getting sent for coffee or lunch every hour, but by building models until midnight every day. Still sucks, but a very different mentality.
Blythe Masters is one of the scariest women I've ever met in person. I don't know if its just her mannerisms , or the kind of extremely intense way in which she has even a casual conversation with the interns , but couple that with her incredibly frightening eye-contact and its like looking into the eye of Sauron.
(This includes Condoleeza Rice , who is actually very nice and good natured in person)
GS, this post is over 3 years old!
Yes, Condi is very nice.
man i miss blumie. his trolling was pure gold.
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