Which firms are most quantitative: DRW, IMC, Virtu, Flow Traders, Optiver?
Currently graduating from school, looking to break into prop trading without much finance background (but strong quantitative skills stats, math, cs).
Got offers from a few or all of these firms, but I'm not sure which would be best for me. I'm hoping to use my background to its fullest potential. Which of these would be considered the most quantitative in nature (i.e., coding and a good amount of statistical research potential)?
If there are any employees at these firms, would I be able to PM you directly to get some sense of the skill-sets that people find important at each company? I appreciate any and all responses, thank you!
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None of these are ultra-mathy, but the I would guess math caliber is something like Optiver > IMC > DRW > Virtu > Flow? FYI Optiver isn't shy about culling juniors so something to think about if you don't have even internship experience in prop.
My friend just got an intern offer from Optiver. Not a single probability question. He said Virtu asked quite a few. Optiver was more market-making exercises and mental math.
I don't think IMC is math-y. Their trading strategies are very infrastructure and latency driven.
Isn't the nature of latency driven trading very data-analysis oriented? I'm not at IMC but worked for a competitor.
You can get HFT firms are their research teams
It depends on your mindset. The shorter the timeframe, the more real data there is and the more stationary the data is per unit of trading time. Thus there would be more value in various forms of data analysis such as machine learning. So someone who likes more of a data-driven and engineering challenge should look at HFT and especially UHF shops. Someone with a more of an experimental scientists mindset (i.e. world is a dirty and vague place), should look into a more markets-driven voodoo done by people like myself at lower frequency places.
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