Did you get paid well as a broker? I dont mean for this to sound like a personal question, but what could I expect to earn on my first year? who were you a broker for? thanks cm69
Cash - in my position it was 100% commission based, so your pay was up to you. There were guys in my training class barely making enough to pay bills and others that were 22 making $10k+ per month regularly. There is no 'average' that is for sure. It's all sales, so if you can sell, you can make good money there. If you just want to look at charts all day, you will get flushed out of the brokerage real quick. If you are looking at this route, I would stick with the names that people know - Merrill, Morgan Stanley, AG Edwards, Edward Jones to name a few. There's pros and cons of each. I used to frequent www.rrmag.com - it has a forum just like this, but for brokers. Very different crowd there. Again, it's not a bad way to just get involved in the financial industry if nothing else. You won't learn anything about trading as most firms do not even condone that type of business as it is a compliance nightmare.
There will always be money in being a broker. I was with A.G. Edwards. I think they were the sixth largest in the country at the time...this is retail mind you. being a broker is tough...period. Not much fun or elegant about it. But i feel the same way for any profession. i think most people that slave away at law school get out and discover that being a lawyer is not all that special either...it is work. same for doctors, engineers, whatever. If it was a lots of fun they would call it sex. It is easy(er) if you work hard....hard if you work easy. I did better than most..but becuse i made 150 calls per day...and most were afraid to get on the phone. I made the mistake of trying to sell funds..rather than individual products. I grossed about 100k per year on average...which take home was around $40k+. not a lot of money. VERY few brokers make a lots of money the first few years. But I still know guys that hit it HARD...and gross $1mm+ within 5-10 years. that is around 400k+ take home. If i were to do it all over again, I would stick to older folks and selling them Bonds...Munis. It is not elegant, but it is meat and potatoes, pays the bills...and gets you access to real money from older people. Learn the fancy stuff on the side and dont experiment with clients until you know what you are doing. If you dont hack it has a broker...there are many avenues you can take afterwards...staying in brokerage if you like it enough (there is fron office, back office...whatever)...or selling other products that maybe suits you more maybe medical sales etc.. I think all in all sales is the highest paid business in the world. This is very valuable training. Now that i have a fund...I also have a sales team. i can work with them on the techniques that i used as a broker. They are amazed that i am as aggressive as i am..(like seeing a very expensive car...doing a background check on it, and finding that person and cold calling them) and the broker that sponsors my fund wants me to help train their brokerage force as well. I owe that all to my first years. As time goes by your skin will get thicker, and you will get better. good luck, Dan
Being a broker is not the right path to get on if my goal was to be a professional trader for these firms?..well damn, because I thought about self-training for my Series 7 -- Please clear this up. Ok, so most of your job is sales..does that mean you open the phone book and just call random people and hope to get new clients?, or do you somehow try to network through existing clients and get new money from their friends? thanks cm69 ps. As you're reading this, I'm doing a google search on "stock brokers".
Cash - you are not going to become a trader at these firms if you start as a broker. Once you are a salesman there, they will always see you as a salesman. At least in my experience. Plus, to my knowledge, very few firms actually 'trade'. They have guys that place the trades of their clients, but that's it. Yes, your Morgan Stanleys and Merrills of the world may have a trading desk, but that is completely separate from the retail brokerage side. Selling as a broker consists of cold calls (grab a phone book and call, buy a list, etc.), working with your existing clients (but you have to get some first), seminars, etc. The firm you go with will educate you on how THEY want you to sell. As Dan said it is not easy, but for those that make it (just like trading) the payoff can be very nice.
My opinion is this. . . If he cant get any other job in the industry, why not start off as a broker or financial advisor? Of course, it may not have much to do with the actual trading part, but if thats the only starting out job he can get then I say go for it. To get into one of the Wall Street firms, i.e. Goldman, UBS, etc, you need to be golden. If Dan doesnt have the golden resume, he stands a hard chance at joining the club. I suggest working as a trading assistant first though...I dont believe its a glamorous job, but it would get yourself in the door and in front of the right people. If you do your job well, then they will elevate you to a higher status. As a trading assistant you can either prove or disprove yourself. Go to monster.com and type in trading assistant.
Hey, uhm, what do you think they hire the college kids fresh out of school for? No place hires you as a "trader" right away, everyone starts as trading assistants. And those jobs are VERY hard to get and getting harder. No, it does not depend on your actual skill, does heavily depend on your school. Resume strength is important so are grades although from my college days the kid that the internship then position at Lehman certainly did not have nowhere near great grades. Now of course if you got family or very close friends up in there, you're in. That really is the best way to go, networking. No not really. Unless you simply suck at working with people, have bad personality, zero work ethic or start drama, you gonna stay on board. Those jobs are CAKE, you have to be a retard to screw it up. I think we need to differentiate between REAL trading desks at the banks and the sales trading desks. The former have few people but are very esoteric and require long trustworthy track records and reputation to get hired on. The latter are the more plentiful ones but still very hard to get into. The sales traders do not know how to trade, their job is more client relations (the funds) and sales. It's really more about relationships. The trading that they do is just order flow. My advice is similiar to eagle's but do not look for trader assitants. Look for everything in the Financial industry and try to pick out trading related jobs at hedge funds, mutual funds and banks. But don't bother with top tier unless you are Ivy league. You gonna have to work it the hard way. Look for smaller places, where you actually have a chance to get into. Start that way. It may not be trading assistant, it may be some research related or quant assitant job. But it's something. Don't constrict yourself to only one type of trading vechile either. Try Fannie May and Freddie Mac. You would be surprised, I got a buddy who got a job there after quitting prop trading, trading or helping manage those crazy tranchees.