Why trading?

I do trading within FX Options. It’s funny actually. I traded equity derivatives throughout college and always thought that’s what I wanted to do. Then you get an internship and you get exposed to a plethora of products that you didn’t even know about.

So first thing I’d say is keep an open mind. Once I got on the FX desk I kind of knew I wanted to do it. For one, I love options so I knew I wanted to do something with that and then the macro aspect is really intriguing. For one, I get to get a view on the whole world and what’s going on in almost every country. It’s also pretty cool to see how currency pairs move and what drives them. The importance of currency circulation and how companies use it to hedge against their risk overseas. We are seeing it now on earnings calls and how a lot of companies are losing money because of the strong dollar and FX related events. FX also trades 24/5.5 it legitimately never stops and I personally love the thrill of it. I know for some it would stress people out I absolutely love it though.

For example, when the EUR went below parity it was stupidly cheap to go to Europe and travel. I know so many people that took advantage of that opportunity. Also, FXO is considered a pretty technical desk lots of math, probability, statistics and I enjoy that stuff. It’s also like never ending (kind of ties into what I said earlier). In equities you focus on what happens in the US and then the micro factors of the equity itself. For us if you have the JPY book for example. You don’t just have JPY you have USD,EUR,NZD,CAD,etc and every day you have to monitor what’s going in each country and what data they release and how that then impacts your book. It’s constant and it’s always something new. So, for me, that’s why I like FXO.

instead of asking for the interview question answer yourself, you should know your own answer. if you dont have passion for trading geniunely, which i sense you dont, you wont last 

Make sure to touch upon your passion in markets and flows 

Trading because I find corporate finance boring. Commodities because of the people aspect and not so much maths.

On the mathier side of commodities, unlike above posters, but what sets the field apart even there is the tangibility of it to real world events.  Your product has a real supply chain, which can run into all sorts of issues whether it be a cold freeze that shuts down production to pipelines that leak to refineries that catch fire.  It is truly changing everyday, and those changes impact prices at each point of contact.  This to me is much more intuitive than other asset classes.

And while there is a good point raised above about data availability, this is an opportunity just as much as a curse.  The data is almost always incomplete or imperfect, and whoever can make sense of it the best has an edge over those who take it at face value.  And human intel from relationships  will always be useful to supplement data.  Furthermore, historical data is inherently backwards looking, so whoever has the best grasp on first principles drivers and how they impact the future will still succeed, and the data is a useful tool to help validate and backtest ideas for these people, not an impediment. 

Make sure to have a few good stock picks ready