Potential Trader Career Analysis
Hey all- Hopefully this career thread is a little different. I know that I'd love to get into some sort of equity/derivatives trading, but being out of college and with a strange set of skills I'm not sure of the best way to break in. Mind looking at my background/future plans and telling me if you see any potential problems?
I graduated from a not-quite top 10 school with a sub-3.0 GPA and no quant background. I did study a lot of Chinese and spent a year over there after graduation, but realize that this pedigree is unlikely to qualify me for anything right now.
I'm thinking about going back for a Masters of Chinese and MFin or MFE. My language skills are hopefully strong enough to get into a top school for the Chinese program, and then I'd spend a lot of time filling in the 6-12 math classes I'd need to do the second, year-long quantitative Masters. That seems like it'd be enough to get a decent position.
Some of the main problems would be not getting into the grad program I'd like, or the fact that I should just be getting any job on a trading desk instead of this academic mess. I'm not as worried about filling in my quantitative background- after a completely apathetic undergrad, hard work on calculus is actually paying off. Who knows, I might be missing something. What do you think?
Thanks for reading.
So, from where I'm at I'm a 3.5 at UIUC which is a local feeder for some of the prop firms. Triple major in math/stat/econ and research experience.
I'm having a really tough time even getting rejection letters. My advice to you would be to knock up connections or try and look for anything/everything you can do to make yourself look more impressive in the future even if it isn't in trading. Go to China. Get that MFE. Whatever. Because right now the market is flooded (everybody sees finance in the news and even though it is a sinking ship everyone wants on because they see how much the top guys are making) and the jobs are drying up. At my research gig that I left in June we were seeing people who were over qualified coming on board to the same position I had gotten two years before because the top boys were moving down market.
Sorry if I seem pessimistic, but that is the best advice I think I can give you. If you have any outs at all in this market take it and keep looking when you've got a stable position.
We all gotta hustle these days.
Thanks for the reply- at least it's good to know that I'm not on the wrong path.
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