Just wondering exactly what was taught. I've always been interested in knowing what goes on in their classroom.
Play a lot of poker. A lot. Other than that: Options theory Game theory Mock options trading You don't go to class right away. You start as a clerk, then go to trading class in Bala.
Do you think what they teach would give a huge advantage to somebody who went through the program if they decided to trade for themselves? Would that make them a good trader off that bat?
Not necessarily. Plenty of people went through the training program, ended up sucking and were eventually fired. A good training program won't make a good trader out of someone who doesn't have the ability to be a good trader in the first place. But if you have what it takes to become a trader, the program really makes a difference. It's like anything. A person with no athletic ability will not become an olympic athlete even he trains in an olympic caliber training program but a person with athletic ability will benefit much more. The typical process with SIG is that you go through a very grueling, math heavy interview process. You're hired as a clerk. If you're good at clerking and the traders you clerk for like you, you eventually get to go to class - after about a year of clerking. You can't just go through the class and then leave. You are forced to sign an iron-clad three year contract that doesn't allow you to work for a competitor if you leave for a long period of time (can't remember how long that is now - 6 months to a year at least). It's rigorous and SIG invests heavily in its traders, so they won't just let you go until it gets some return on its investment. That was the old days. Now, SIG is moving off-floor (closed down its NY office completely) and centralizing in Bala, where they're moving more toward a black box model. Traders are becoming less important to SIG's business model. The company has grown a lot over the years, so I don't know if most of the younger traders even know the partners now, but they SIG partners are some of the best people you could ever hope to meet. The one thing they lack is hubris. They admit to NOT knowing a lot more than they know. Great guys, great traders, great company.
Traders are going to become a LOT less important in most trading establishments. Algorithmic trading is eventuallly going to do to prop or company traders, what electronic trading did to the pits... I worked at 2 investment banks. At one, which had a giant electronic trading floor, the empty chairs that used to hold traders were being taken over by non-trading departments, such as trading-industry savvy IT folks.