I kind of got bored catching up on this thread, but one thing that you may want to think about is this; Maybe you should look at this thread as one big trade you had confidence in that went sour. Not everything goes as you want it to. Then, step back and examine how you have handled the bad trade (negative comments). The market will show you no mercy and BTW: My best trades when I was a teenager were always the ones I never took and kicked myself. Would have, could have, should have. It's always easy with no emotions attached. It's funny how things change in the real world when you are only used to success throughout your life. The best knowledge you can gain to become a better trader is pain through failure over and over again, not schooling or impressive backgrounds and it all comes in time. I hope you fail many times and you are young to bounce back. Good luck and I sincerely mean that. .
Don't have time to read all this thread. If this interests you, PM me and I might be able to get you an interview. This is not a trading job per se but it does involve coding trading algorithms... Applications Programmer (Greenwich, CT)(Multiple Positions) â Design, dev, & maintain complex comp progs for proprietary comp sys for trading options. Incl implementation of algorithms from detailed specs, modifications of existing sys, code design, & implementation testing & production support of applications. 40 hr/wk. 9:00am-6:00pm. Reqs: MS in CS, Math, Stats, Elec Eng, or Physics & 2yrs exp in job or 2yrs as Sâware Dev, Sâware Eng, Jr. Applications Prog, Comp/Sâware Instructor, Prog Analyst, or rel occ. Must have 6mo exp programming finan sâware or finan sys & exp with: C++, SQL, Oracle, UNIX, Windows NT, Unified Modeling Language (UML), & Purify.
The really sad thing about this thread is that some people here even tried to give good advice but it was brought to you in a way you are obviously not familiar with. And some people were just saying a lot of things you didnt really want to hear, but they were just being honest. Together with your defensive attitude this causes you to block the info. (if you think this is not true go back in this thread: several people allready have said that the kind of discipline you will learn in Oxford has no relation to the kind of discipline you need as a trader; yet you keep on repeating that you want to go to Oxford to gain discipline which you will need as a trader) Get rid of this attitude or it will kill you in trading ! My advice try to find a kind of internship on a trading floor (as close to the pit as possible) for a month (your grades might help to get you in, yes sometimes they matter), you will learn more about the way most traders interact then on any university. If you feel like you have to go to university for some reason, just do it, there are a lot of things to be said for that, they are just not very related to most forms of trading. In reply to my previous post: economics is a social science and indeed probably not very helpful for trading, although that was not my point. But if you think number crunching will just make you whole as a trader think again. If you really think you have been threated so bad i would also advice you to save this thread somewhere and read all this again in say five year or so. You will probably want to crawl under the floor because of embaressement of some of the things you wrote here yourself.
For math, Oxford is pretty crap relative to the other options in Europe... Cambridge ranks much higher for math and the Oxford math program is very inferior to Warwick's financial math... Anyways, what about all the financial math you coulda done at Wharton, Chicago, MIT etc ?... there is absolutely no need to leave the USA... the best financial math programs are at home, dude... I assume you were not good enough to get into any of the other places, so best of luck at Oxford... not the best of places for getting the subject knowledge to go into derivatives trading, but I suppose it would have to do... wasn't your GPA good enough for the superior universities? Another thing: if you wanna go into basic directional scalping, spread trading and very simple arbitrage strategies etc, you don't need a math masters degree and it'll probably work against ya, cos its pretty much irrelevant... for that kind of trading (the kind that most of us here at Elitetrader do) your personal traits such as discipline will decide whether you make it as a trader, not some obscure math masters... a math masters, assuming it contains enough stochastic calculus and assuming you can program C++, would only be appropriate for an associate position at a hedge fund or on a derivatives desk at i-bank... anyways, hedge funds and derivatives desks at i-banks will obviously prefer to take PhDs over masters, so you may need to spend a few more years at uni before you got what it takes to compete on the Street... to conclude, depending on your objectives, the Oxford math may well turn out to be a total waste of your time, from a professional perspective...
As I said to you Free, you're not likely to get very much insight from anyone here. You'd better off putting your questions to vault.com. Sure, they're just as quick to descend on you if you ask something they consider dumb (I had a fun experience there a couple of years ago, when I was in highschool), but there's also people that are actually in the industry that are willing to offer some pretty good insights. You could also try out www.wilmott.com It's the same Wilmott who's the author of those popular finance books. Some very helpful people there. Just do yourself a favor and get a bit of an idea of how a forum runs, read the faqs (if any) and the recent threads so you don't just ask something that was already discussed to death two days ago. Do that, that is, if you want to avoid repeating your ET experience. Common sense, no?
Yup sure is... between Fruity Pebble, Optional, FasterPussyCat, Mr Market (and others too) and newcomers like FreedomFighter, there is plenty of fun to be had here...