Hey WSO! Hosting a quick Q&A. I'm currently a QT at one of {SIG/Optiver/DRW/IMC} with 1 year on the desk
Brief background:
• Path: T20 School -> QR Intern @ HF -> QT Internship > Full Time
• Focus: OMM Index Options
• Typical work: Day Trading with extra steps
• Current priorities: N/A
I’m happy to answer questions on recruiting or processes! Probably can't do anything except simple DITL for compliance reasons lmao.
Please leave your questions below! (Yes, I'm doing this for free WSO Premium lmao)
Hey, very broad Q but curious what your day to day looks like, more specifically, what do you find challenging ? Are you wrangling your brain over say how you're going to backtest a new Strat, or more things like understanding the macro environment etc. Ppl mention QT can be very intellectually stimulating/challenging so curious to understand
No worries about the broad question!
Day-to-day definitely looks different depending on the trader. For some context, the way my firm manages the different desks is kind of similar to a pod/multi-manager setup. Within my office, all of the Equity/Index/ETF Options guys sit together.
For me, I'm still studying for my trading exams, so I'm more of an asset as a researcher & mentee. Even more so than the internship, I sit in with the more senior traders and ask questions as various events in the market happen, all while managing projects that can be beneficial to the day-to-day ops.
I also still have group sessions/meetings with some of the other Junior traders, making sure we're up to speed with the open-source (cross-team) parts of the codebase. As well as any new strategies or use cases for the tools that we have available. At this point, and for most of my first year as I understand it, I'm just making sure I'm as best equipped as possible to actually trade successfully.
As for the latter half of your Q, I think that this is where the intellectual stimulation is the most apparent. I'm essentially trying to catch up with decades of firm + team specific knowledge, all in hopes of not blowing something up the second I hit the desk. Mock trading is a huge part of that as well; however, I think for anyone who received the return offer, this is not anything revolutionary where I have impossible problems to tackle each day. (That's more QR work)
I'm more like an F1 driver in training, learning the bells and whistles of my car while suggesting improvements where I can.
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As for the full-time traders, as I understand it:
Get in before market open (7:30 - 8:00 AM)
Morning stand-up @ Desk (8:00 - 8:15)
Market Open (9:30) - Make sure the strategies open up okay, & manage any tweaks + discretionary trades
2-3 Meetings throughout the day w/ Dev & Research (Closer to Lunch Hours -> Food Catered, so eat at desk)
Market Close & Manual Inventory Management for Overnight (4:00)
Review & Project work at your discretion (4:00 - 6:00)
Also how collaborative do you feel the job is ?
Actually, very collaborative! Half of the work is education & project work, and when you have access to so many intelligent colleagues, why not make use of the asset?
Also, everyone is clearly smart, and net of some imposter syndrome, the environment is generally guaranteed to make you smarter... You can probably see from the DITL that most of a trader's actual thinking work is done outside of trading, so it naturally lends itself to a more academic approach.
How many % of junior trades get fired? Every quant firm makes it seem like quant trading is very collaborative, supportive and encouraging but to my understand it's still a trading business at the end of the day so if you aren't performing you're out. Is this true? I've heard some places like Optiver cut 50% of their graduates in the first year.... How many traders there have actually been there for over 5 years? Seems like there aren't many senior traders on Linkedin.
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