Getting into prop trading: Profitable trader, no internship experience, semi target, 3.4 GPA
Hi, I am a senior UW Madison student, with a 3.4 GPA in industrial engineering (would be 3.7 if not for freshman year). I want to be a prop trader, in fact I want to be the best trader in the country. I have studied trading for 3 years, and have good stats. My expected value is about 1R per trade, or ~0.25% on a 1ish beta stock. My win rate is about 40%. I primarily trade price action, and focus on horizontals. I consider myself pretty smart, my ACT score was 34. Due to coronavirus, I was searching for spring engineering internships but all of the ones I was interviewing for were canceled.
My trading record is about 35 trades over 40 days. (pattern day trader rule slowed me down 10X literally). I have a detailed journal, and I have 1000s of practiced trades in backtesting. I have an organized trading system written down. I can trade profitably on a replay of any stock, and in real time.
My question is, can I make my way into prop trading with these stats? I know I can excel in the field--if I can get in. I can trade, I love strategy, and I love competition. Do firms today even care about prior trading experience? Can I leverage my trading record in networking (finding a mentor has proven to be a daunting task)? Is this something I can put on my trading resume? What else can I do to prepare (aside from mental math prep)? Id love to hear any feedback or advice!
You should put this on your resume
Power plays
Ok cool but can you tell me how to replicate a 12 sided die using a biased coin?
Yeah I think so, can't you just obtain the probability of the coin, and develop 12 sequences of equal probability to represent a side of the die.
given your pace (average less than 1 trade per day) you will need at least 12 months of trading activity before your "track record" will be taken seriously...so keep working at it.
Suggest you try looking into trading the micro futures (MNQ, MES, M2K, MGC, M6E, M6B, M6A) These are smaller size futures contracts that you can trade at a discount broker with very small amount of money...they have good volatility...and if you are successful, you can always graduate to the 10x larger futures contracts where larger $$ trades. Same price action, but you can participate with small dollar amounts.
You can open a futures account at a broker like AMP with just a couple thousand dollars and trade all this stuff with reasonable commissions for retail. Also, there is no pattern day trader rule in futures, so you can do 20-30 trades a day with no issues.
I STRONGLY suggest you look into trading MNQ futures. This is the Nasdaq 100 index futures contract...it is very volatile...jumps around a lot and you could easily do 10-20 trades a day.
You might want to go back over and read Natenberg and of course get familiar with dice games and prob/ & stats questions dealing with expected value and all of that. Jane Street has a pretty good guide on this.
https://www.janestreet.com/static/pdfs/trading-interview.pdf?utm_source…
Do you have any experience programming? NumPY and Pandas are probably some things to prepare for as well. Staying up to date with market news and all that is important to. Market making games are also something to brush up on as well. What are you using to practice your mental math? Zetamac? Rankyourbrain.com is also a great resource.
You might have seen this but I would check it out. Great podcast too. https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/qa-options-trader-at-top-prop-fi…
Keep hitting up traders on Linked In. There are people out there that will help you.
"Hello friends, I attend a second rate public school with a second rate gpa in a second rate engineering major. I have no relevant internships, am in my senior year during the worst economic environment of the last decade, and feel that I would be a great candidate for one of the most competitive and difficult industries to break into. Oh and by the way, I consider myself pretty smart. Thoughts?"
Dude get the fuck outta here with this bullshit. Everything you wrote in that post reeks of someone that thinks a whole lot of themselves for no apparent reason. If you're actually here to learn and not suck yourself off, here are some things you should know:
Nobody gives a fuck about your "trading experience." 90+% of the kids that get entry level spots at the top prop trading shops in NY and Chicago are CS, Math, Stats, or Physics majors that have no prior experience in finance whatsoever, and the interview process for junior traders is designed solely to test how quantitatively capable you are. I interviewed through final rounds at DRW, Five Rings, Jane Street, and other shops my senior year -- I was not asked a single behavioral question and my interviewers didn't even have my resume in front of them. Every question was a market making game or brain teaser -- a lot of shops have coding screens as well. The people that actually get these jobs are objectively some of the smartest undergrad students in the world -- you have a ton of international math olympiad caliber students from the top tech schools with prior internship experiences in SWE/ML at FAANG companies that don't make it. FYI, the median act score at MIT is a 35, and getting a 35 would put you in the bottom 25% of admitted students at Caltech. By every metric you've given us, it seems like you're not only not special, you're quite frankly not smart at all and definitely not a good student (lmao @ the whole if you take out the semesters where I was a bad student, my GPA wouldn't be ass).
If all this seems harsh or mean, it's supposed to be -- there was a point in my life where I thought a lot of myself and I needed a wakeup call. Maybe this can be that for you. Go hustle and don't give up on breaking into an industry that you're interested in, but don't bring this attitude into the interview room or you'll be sorely disappointed.
OP ordered the exxtra SPICY hot flaming Denny’s Grand Slam special by the sounds of it!!
This comment made me contemplate my life. RIP OP's confidence
What a beautiful comment
Day trading stocks isn’t even real trading, no one will be impressed by your track record. It’s fine to talk about in an interview to show interest but definitely don’t brag, you’ll be laughed at
Don't listen to these clowns OP, you can definitely break into a prop trading firm with 2-3 years of trading experience and get financial backing from some of them. You have to demonstrate your strategy to them though and have a business plan with profitability.
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