Thats jdeezero05. That is the kind of response I was looking for. I have no prob. working my way up from the bottom over time. I thought execution trading was the bottom. Is a settlement position that much lower? Does anyone have any suggestions on getting a Masters in Financial Engineering? I was thinking of doing that instead of a MBA. I see quants are in high demand. I do have the academic qualifications to get into a MFE program.
You might not be cut out for a trading desk if you can not take the positive alongside the negative criticism. I noticed you only like the responses that you want to hear! My post was reality, I worked my way up from the NYSE floor to Institutional Sales Trader, I am not talking out of my ass. Good luck!
I noticed this thread and wanted to comment I got a job executing at a small private group in UK. I found the job through a friend who told me that the manager was looking for a young guy they could train who could speak several languages. Apparently they did business with specific counterparties and needed those skills. I got some excellent training along the way and never regretted the work at all. Unfortunately I don't know about the US job market but I suggest you look for a way in similar to what I did. Maybe you can find an employer who needs specific skills that you can acquire with a little bit of work. Best of luck Stevesbg
I would recommend it. I got my MFE way back in 1996 when those programs were still in their infancy. It certainly opened doors for me as a quant and I learned a lot over the early years of my career.
Exactly! I was going to say the same thing. Just want to add that being an execution trader requires having the ability to listen & execute without doubting the superior. You're not paid to be a prop trader, you're paid to be reliable, trustworthy & competent. I have not seen these signs in the thread starter. In fact, I think he should be thanking lady luck for his current white collar job.
I do appreciate the positive and the negative. Sorry I have not said thank you to the negative ones. I was really commenting back at the negative comments which were sarcastic and overly deterring. I appreciate the comments which say it will be difficult and almost improbable, but not the ones which suggest that I not even try. I am also very thankful for my current job, but no harm in wanting something better in the future.
To staff bankrupt hospitals? There are nurses & general physicians being laid off, something I personally thought would never happen. So while staffing physicians would be doing OK, saying it's GREAT is a serious exaggeration, if not a lie.
I am little bit late to this party, but perhaps I can offer some advice. Execution jobs dont really exist anymore (ok a few do, but those people are hanging on by a thread, and the future looks even dimmer. I was a Nasdaq market maker back in the day, and like 95% of us, we ended up unemployed, with no other places to get a similar job. decimalization along with ECN's replaced the need outsource order flow to have someone "excecute it." Towards the end days, even when did manage to get orders sent to us (which were purely based on friendships) we could barely make anything o the order flow, b/c ECN's could do it cheaper, and the customer didnt feel the need to allow us to profit on it.. Even salestraders are having a hard time these days getting order flow. Besides, technology allows PM's and hedge funds to simply program trade their strategies and handle multiple positions. Why do you think everyone wants a quant, computer science major, or PhD for "trading jobs" these days?? Order execution is dead. These days, anything we can do, a computer can do better and cheaper, and faster (from an execution standpoint that is.) Besides, the salary/bonuses dropped even when the jobs DID EXIST, to try to compete with firms dropping profit margins, that I would bet your bank job pays more than anything that you could find, assuming you could find an opening somewhere.