Looking to trade equities/futures after graduation, where should I go?

I'm on sophomore at GaTech and have been trading for the past year now, 3 years now in the markets. I really want to obtain a trading internship this summer, but I'm having a little trouble deciding where I actually belong. If I could trade equities/futures using a firm's capital for the rest of my life, I'd be ecstatic.

I know a lot of the big boys (GS, JPM, BAC,etc...) do trading, but do they specifically trade equities/futures? Should I instead be looking for a random prop shop? If so, who? I know a lot of firms are moving over to the quantitative side of things, but having an algorithm doing all the work for me is just no fun.

All responses are appreciated.

2 Comments
 
Best Response

All of those firms trade equities and futures as part of institutional client services- where hedge funds, pension managers, and mutual funds will call up the firm's dealers and do large trades where they need more liquidity than the exchanges alone can provide in a short time. Some of them also do proprietary trading where they will take bets on the direction of the market.

It is a good place to get started as a trader- those firms probably offer the widest variety of experiences in the capital markets, but they don't really specialize in proprietary trading. For that, you need to work at a hedge fund or a prop shop. That said, with three or four years of one of those firms on your resume, you can get an interview just about anywhere.

 

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