MS Finance/Masters of Financial Engineering to break into Sales & Trading.
Hey WSO,
I am looking for some guidance. I am currently a Final Year Undergraduate student at a top tier Institute in India (think top 10), and will be graduating next summer in 2024, and I am looking to break into Sales & Trading. For that, I am considering the MS Finance and MFE programs in the USA and Europe (with more inclination towards UK, since I'll be a non-EU student). My stats are 3.55 GPA, 4 internships (1 IB, 2 Asset/Portfolio Management, 1 M&A at a boutique advisory), Founder and President of Finance club in Uni. It was hard to win a s&t internship, since the field is niche in India. But I'm really interested in breaking into s&t, more in the sales side than the trading side, as I am a much more of a people's person than a sit and execute trades kind of a person, but won't mind getting into the trading gig of s&t either.
Therefore, I would greatly appreciate any insights anyone has as to how should I go about breaking into the industry, and which programs specifically should I aim to get into, both US and Europe/UK to have a good shot at s&t. I know in the US, Vandy MSF, UC Berkeley MFE, UCLA MFE, USC MSF, UT Austin MSF are some examples, while in Europe we have HEC MSF, LSE MFin, SDA Bocconi MSF, just to name a few. More so, I was thinking about starting to trade my own account, but I'm not really sure how much that will help me stand out. Plus anybody requires time and capital to be profitable in trading, and while I have the capital, mostly from my internships, I don't wanna blow it all away since I am very new to trading.
Thank you for any insights.
Based on the profiles of people in my bank in S&T:
For EU: LSE MSc Finance/Accounting and Finance, Bocconi (NOT SDA) MSc Finance, LBS MFA, HEC MSc Finance - perhaphs Imperial MSc Finance
For the US I think it's more difficult to get into S&T with a master and I suspect most recruits are from undergrads. Princeton MFin is definitely the best if you can get in, then perhaps MIT MFin, also Columbia has an MS in Financial Economics that looks good to me for S&T. And then MFEs at UCB, Columbia, NYU Cornell (?) - but would require a quite strong maths background.
Thank you for the insights, appreciate it. Princeton, MIT, Columbia are ultra selective with less that 2% acceptance rate, so I think, based on the profiles you mentioned, European programs are what I should be targeting for now.
Thank you.
Bump Anyone? Need help, so would appreciate more insights.
If you want to get into sales there is no point doing an MFE imo. MFEs focus derivatives pricing and risk management. If your goal is sales, study plain finance instead.
Thank you for the comment. So MSF is the way to go regardless of whether I want to do Sales or Trading?
Go to quantnet rather than this forum. And yes MFE or MFin will increase the chance to get you into S&T. Espcially the EQD trading/FICC quant/equities AMM they have highly technical requirement and so many MFE/MFin students end up there.
But you said ur interested in more of a sales side than trading side than MFE is unnecessary, while there are some sales ppl in the floor who have MFE from top schools. Obviously that wasn't where they wanted to be though.
Understood. Just one question, since market making in S&T in an IB is way different from traditional prop trading at Jane street, IMC, Akuna etc, will trading my own account give me any advantage while recruiting for S&T internships/jobs while I'm doing my masters? Because trading personal accounts with different strategies comes with the risk of losing a portion of capital, which I'm earning through internships. so I'm a bit skeptical whether or not I should do that. Any opinions will be appreciated.
Either you aim for OMM, or BB S&T individual trading is not compulsory. If you trade on ur own account so naturally you develop habit of keeping track of the market, think critically about ur investment strategies, managing risk -> this is good and will help you get along well with interviews and afterwards in job
Your pnl data necessary? absolutely not. No one cares about ur pnl, strategy, etc. So you don't have enough spare bucks to invest on, don't feel burdened to do so.
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