so, econ is a good choice if you don't like long complicated equations... you gave me a good laugh... thnx. to the OP... if you're gonna go broke, do it before you're 30... that way you got plenty of time to get back on your feet.
So if the big firms won't look at me will smaller trading firms and hedge funds look at me and if they will what is the best way to get their attention and show them I am capable of trading with them?
Get the C.F.A right out of college once you graduate start studying for it this will get help to get you in. It's the equivalent of an Ivy league M.B.A. You can maybe get a trader's assistant position. That's what I recommend it's good that you found an interest early. If you start trading now and have a good track record they won't care. They want to mold young guys into traders they don't want guys that already have a trading method. I'm telling you get the C.F.A. right out of college this will help. Also try your best to maybe intern for a fund that will also help. College is a great time most importantly party hard and have a good time!!
ok, i am more or less in the same boat as you, except im a few years ahead. but my account was only 2000 when i was 16 . so heres the deal, i don't know what your finances, or acceptances to college situation is, but check out who recruits at the schools your thinking of going to. depending on how good you are, you may not need training and could just use the degree as a fallback, but i am working on getting in somewhere where ill be more or less pointed in the right direction. math and computer science are very important, i am double majoring in math & cs (one degree) and finance (the other) everyone i have talked to has said this is in demand right now. next you need something to distinguish yourself if you aren't at an ivey/mit type. i have a 3.9 and volunteer. put all that on autopilot and just have fun, hopefully this a good way to do things, since its what i am doing
but can I ask why the computer science and math degrees are more important than the economics and finance degrees. It seems to me that unless you want to be a programmer or do some sort of mathmatical analysis on a market you really have no use for these degrees. Now if you want to be a trader you can make use of the finance degrees and economics degrees. Im not really to interested in doing anything but trading and don't have much faith in an automated trading system because I don't believe a machine can calculate fear and greed.
Ok, the problem with finance and economics is that most of the stuff you'll learn there doesn't apply to trading the stock market. As far as finance, most subjects are aimed at interpreting financial statements and proyecting such statements using insider info [they're aimed at people working within the company not people picking information from outside the company] On economics, the micro stuff is really helpful and having a deep misunderstanding of micro gives you an insight as to how markets operates... problem is that most models assume a frozen moment in time, an instant where the prices are fixed... there are also several models that don't really apply to what you see in reality when watching the markets, mostly because they are build thinking of utopias and leave out important traits of the human nature... [economists sometimes forget that their job is to describe the real world not to make nice models that work better than the real world]. Im not a big fan of macro, since it will focus mostly on what central banks do, not on how the markets behave... [since markets at the macro and micro level behave in the same manner] Computer sciences have a few advantages... first, logical and structured thinking... you need to learn how to explain your ideas to a very dumb machine, that takes a lot of work... second, if you can teach a computer to trade you can explore some very interesting ideas, and as computer science evolves over the next few years they are going to get even more interesting. Sure a machine can't calculate fear or greed, but it can screen 10,000 stocks to find just the one with your perfect trading setup... or it can give you some interesting arbitrage opportunities... Theoretical math... well.... all of the above sciences are based on math. Mathematicians unlike economists don't interpret the world around them, they simply describe it. They aren't biased by the morals of the numbers or by their consequences... the numbers aren't good or bad, they just are. Having a mathematical mind implies being able to recognize complex variables and correlations in nature [or in the market]... many mathematicians have achieved Nobel prices in fields like economics and physics because they are capable of observing the laws of economics and physics in nature. We can't write laws in these particular fields, we can only observe them and describe what's already been written into nature.
But how will this make me a better trader shouldn't you leave the programming to the programmers (although I still will never be able to believe that computers can trade better than humans) and the trading and deciphering of emotions in the market to traders. I just think that wants a catastophic disaster happens to the world all of these computers will just go wacko and people will come back to their sences on the whole black box trading thing. Also does the computer trading and tA apply as well to commodities such as corn or hogs? They seem to be based more on fundamentals then on technicals. How can a computer figure the price which people are willing to buy or sell a bushel of corn or 30,000 pounds of pork? And would trading in ag products such as grains or livestock require a different degree like an ag business or ag econ degree to learn about the ins and outs or agricultural futures trading? Or would it still require a finance or economics degree?
one other thing to consider, when your trying to get a job you want to be recruited. that means they have to like what they see. 1. your trading, they like that your interested in the markets, but wont care much past that since institutional trading is going to be way different than a 5 figure account. 2. depending on what market THEY pick for you to trade, you'll be looking at different types of economics and finances that probably wouldn't be that hard to pick up. my finance degree requires 18hrs of upper level work, while the math and computer science is 45, so theres a lot more to it. do you back test right now? ie, do you use tradestation? its not quite programming, but learning how to put my "hey when this stock moves out of correlation from this index by 2 stand. devs. well thats when i want to buy" into a computer words is worth learning. and yeah curve fitting and automation arent always good, but back testing does have its uses if you are careful. sorry for rambling on, but keep your grades up, keep trading, learn excel, network......thats my advice