Am I stuck here? Would you move?

Long time lurker, first time poster.

Background: went to a top top school, standard internships at BB equities, started at BB equity trading floor doing mostly agency type of trading. 4 years in, I'm bored out of my mind mostly because it's so damn easy and also because everyone I work with is pretty stupid, imo. But all the things I don't like about it also makes it easy to earn about 500k a year just by waking up and rolling out of bed to go to work.

It's pretty good money.. But it's not amazeball money. I feel like I'm wasting my talents because its so easy here but am a bit too scared cuz what if I don't have any talents compared to the big fish?

What would you guys do if you were me? Shut up and keep collecting easy money? Try to apply to prop shop/market making junior positions? No suggestions of moving to a prop book within the bank... Not with all the regulations in place/on their way.

 
Macro <span class=keyword_link><a href=/resources/skills/trading-investing/arbitrage target=_blank>Arbitrage</a></span>:
If you're doing agency trading I'm not quite sure if your 'skills' are transferable to prop.

Exactly what I'm worried about... So would you give up the easy paycheck to try your hand at being a junior noob again in prop?

 

Damn. .$500K 4 years out, I took the wrong path.

That being said, do you have free time. In the age of the internet you can do some crazy shit with a few hundred k of expendable income. Would doing your own thing on the side while collecting an easy paycheck be a good enough outlet?

 
dazedmonk:
Damn. .$500K 4 years out, I took the wrong path.

That being said, do you have free time. In the age of the internet you can do some crazy shit with a few hundred k of expendable income. Would doing your own thing on the side while collecting an easy paycheck be a good enough outlet?

What ideas do you have? Can't trade on the side myself as rules, regs, etc etc make it quite a pain.

 
PIGS:
I'd cup your balls everynight for 50k. How about that?

Hahah. Something tells me you're not joking given your slap post.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 

Fair enough... Let's look at it from a non bitching question.

For the jobseekers out there.. Would you rather pick a job in a bb that would be stable and safe with 500k a year after four or would you start off at a SIG, first NY, Optiver, etc with the chance to make huge bucks or be without a job in four years.

 

Your problem is that youre bored. You probably wouldnt be complaining if you were in an interesting job that paid you $500k.

So get a job that you find interesting. If you add more money to your situation, you'll find yourself in the same predicament that youre currently in... only with more money, but same probelm.

 

I don't think so.. Thr was a thread here on market makers making a bar a year with senior traders making 8figs. I'm never going to hit eight figures here.

And no, it's not about boredom. It's just about money. Why else do we trade?

 

Find shit to make you unbored outside of work. I'm sure with decent cash lying around you can figure out someway to spend it that isn't boring.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

What portion of your agency trading is algo/non-algo? How familiar are you with the algo side of things?

If you're an expert on execution/market microstructure, you'll have more exit ops than if you can only execute block trades/tweak parameters on the algo. Learning more about the algos might also cure some of your boredom. (It would for me at least, ymmv.)

 

think about the amount of people out of finance who are bored out of their mind making 50k a year. or the people in ops who are bored out of their mind making 60k a year with no upside.

just put it in perspective man. this is, of course, as long as you're not a troll.

if you really are someone who needs to be challenged, go to your MD and see if he will allow you to up your risk limits...we all know market makers aren't pure flow traders...take on some more risk.

 

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