Deciding between prop trading offers: PEAK6 vs Gelber vs TMG vs Spot

Hi guys,

I am very lucky to have received a few offers from some pretty good prop shops. I recently interviewed and got offers from peak6, gelber, tmg and Spot Trading in Chicago.

I was wondering which offer I should go for and why. Also, if you could also tell me more about the reputation of these prop trading firms that would be great. I honestly don't know too much about how good or bad these firms are or how they are relative to each other so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Personally, I liked PEAK6 the most. The office space seemed the best and the salary is also really good. All of the prop shops had great culture from what I saw and people seemed to love it. I was however hoping for an outside opinion.

Any thoughts and opinions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

Congrats on the offers. TMG, Peak6, and Spot are all great. I don't know anything about Gelber, they seem pretty different from the first three.

TMG is good and growing in the algo space. They are bigger in different products than Spot and Peak6 so go to TMG if you have a hard-on for futures.

I heard that Spot had/is having a really good year. Smaller than Peak6. Peak6 is great too. I would pick the one where you like the people more.

 

Pretty torn between Peak6 and TMG. Loved the people at both. TMG seemed pretty chill and a bit too quantitative for my liking. (Seemed I would have to write a lot of code there and thats not something I want to do). Peak6 seemed more interesting and I loved the people and the trading strategy. They seemed really passionate about their work and I just got a more ambitious vibe from them.

 
Best Response

Judging from your background (your resume critique post has your resume) I'm not certain that Peak6 is going to be a great fit for you. I'm generalizing a fair bit but I see that you have an engineering background and I assume that you're a relatively quantitative individual. Their approach is much more old school and I don't know many quantitative guys who have had a good experience there. They do have a nice office and supposedly great annual parties though if you're into that kind of thing.

Spot's trading style is similar to Peak6 except that they trade in groups instead of individually. This should be a major consideration if you're going to choose between the two. You can generally expect to be silo'd much more at peak6.

TMG potentially has the widest possible career paths if you're less certain you specifically want to trade only volatility arbitrage in the listed equity options space.

I can't give much information on Gelber except that I know a few guys who moved there in the last few years and seem to be happy about it.

 

Hey GammaMonkey, thanks for you response. Thats a really great answer and yes I was looking to chose between Peak6 and TMG. I know from my resume it seems like I am very quantitative but i don't really want to do something too quant heavy. I actually really liked Peak6's rrading strategy when I was at the desk with a couple of the traders. I prefer trading on my own as opposed to trading in a group. Im not entirely sure but I think Peak6's way of trading is something that I would really enjoy. But yeah Im torn between TMG and Peak6. But I have no problem in doing something not so quantitative. Do you know of any specific experiences people have had at peak6 that make you think I won't enjoy it there? Because everyone who interviewed with me was either CS engineering or some natural science

 

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