Prop Trading Pay at Different Firms?
I don't mean a top tier place like JS/Optiver/Citadel, but a slightly less prestigious place (think Akuna/CTC/Group One). I know that base around 100-150k is common at the top places, with a bonus nearing 100% of base first year in, but what about other places?
How much should I expect to be making my first year in and how much of a difference in pay will there be between a tier 1 and tier 2 place a few years down the line (if any)? What are people out there making?
Also at big shop what is salary projection? Can you point to anyone who got a big pay package, other than Adam Guren?
Bump
bump
Some mid-tier prop shops in chicago give you 30-40% of your book if I am not mistaken... but low base
30-40% of P&L? do you have to contribute any capital?
does peak6 have discretionairy traders?
Just options market-making I believe
almost all their desks are discretionary.
No capital contribution
side question for anyone who knows the answer: how good is Athena capital research and Valkyrie trading?
What’s the general Capital Allocation when you start out?
Thoughts on Jane Street or D. E. Shaw?
Can't speak on comp but, DE Shaw just instituted life time non-competes so be wary of that.
Is anyone going to answer the question or just piggyback off of the thread to ask other questions?
i get paid 0 base salary, and 100% of P&L
So you're a day trader at Myself and Looming Bankruptcy LLC?
akuna should be much closer to top-tier comp than the others. at the very least their intern pay is just as good if not better than the shops you mentioned. once you're working full-time, it's heavily individual and desk-dependent.
My experience is opposite. In almost all their offices they pay significantly below other prop shops for base and 1st year bonus. Also on their research desks they start you off as a 'junior' which is just an excuse to pay you less for the first year while trying you out. Do you have first hand experience / data points?
How much money are we talking, exactly?
the intern pay at akuna is top tier (~$11k-13k/month two years ago) but they also do ask for other offers so the higher end likely only comes on a matching basis. as for full-time pay, standard offer is about 200k all-in for juniors (base + signing + expected 1st year bonus) but this is without negotiation.
the top tier that OP mentions is slightly misleading because there's some stratification there as well. citadel comprises citadel securities (the market maker) and the hedge fund. pay for citsec and JS are comparable and can be anywhere from 300k to 400k+ (depending on negotiation and location). the HF side is completely group-dependent. meanwhile optiver pays between 225k-275k (1st year bonus is not a guaranteed figure).
sources: went to HYPSM and many friends recruited within the past 2-3 years. in my samples, akuna offer is without leverage while optiver offer is with leverage so i consider them essentially comparable.
to address other parts of OP, a few years down the line is too difficult to project. you may not have a job after a few years, or you could be killing it and making high 6 to low 7 figures. all of this depends on your desk and your individual performance so it's useless to speak about in generalities. i will say that some people express dissatisfaction with the marble system at optiver which limits both the upside and downside of your bonus. obviously this is a personal preference thing though.
edit: just remembered there were other shops mentioned like CTC/group one--honestly none of my network ever recruited at these places so i sort of write them off a bit, but perhaps someone else can shed some light on the quality of these shops
I've heard from someone who works for a shop on the floor of the CBOE that one of his coworkers brought his pay stub in to work one day and made around $1.6 mil pre taxes & allegedly someone else at the firm made close to $5 mil about a year or so ago.
I worked for an options market maker and have some knowledge on this subject. Although I have no idea for firms like JSC/Jump/Virtu who don't trade options or are bad at it. Firms tend to pay higher if you actually trade your first year. You'll find much higher first year pay at places like CitSec, Optiver, Akuna as opposed to SIG, DRW, CTC.
At a tier one place, bonuses normally aren't very transparent anywhere except for Optiver where your bonus is based off of the marble system. Each marble is around 1-1.5k and the marble tiers are 100, 200, 400, 800, 1500. You start off at 100 and get promoted every 2 years or so. From what I've heard, their pay is comparable to almost every other tier one place so you could use these numbers as a baseline for what to expect. Also, first year numbers tend to be overinflated because of the signing bonus: I think citadel pays 150k signing.
I have a slightly better idea of what tier 2 places or places that don't let you trade immediately pay. In exchange for lower pay and starting to trade later, you have much much better job security. In addition, bonus numbers tend to be more dependent on group while at a tier one place, they are more stable across the company. This is for places like DRW, SIG, CTC, Belvedere, TMG.
1st year -> 100-150k
2nd year -> 150k-250k
3rd year -> 200k-400k
4th year -> 250k-600k
I don't have that much information about tier 3 places such as Group One, Peak6, Valkyrie. There are places where you get paid a percentage of your pnl scaled with other factors like your sharpe. The firms I've listed tend to pay on par with tier 2 firms although low performers get significantly less than the bottom part of the range I've listed and there isn't as much upside for above average performers who aren't superstar tier. At these places, job security tends to go down significantly since there is a very real chance that the firm could blow out or suffer significant losses that requires them to cut personnel.
Since when did Jane street not trade options or was bad at it? When I was Barclays back 2018. they picked up doug schadewald... big swinging dick.
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