Agreed, it's a no brainer. You can go from Goldman to a prop shop, but prop to Goldman is much much more difficult.
You should realize a very important fact that most here don't know: the real money in trading doesn't exist in stocks, vanilla options, or equity futures. The real money is in debt, swaps, commodities and exotic derivatives. And you can really only learn about these contracts at the investment bank trading desks or at top hedge funds. All the straight equity desks on wall street are downsizing, getting replaced by computers and vwap algorithms. At the same time, goldman FICC division is making billions hand-over fist. If you are truly talented, get yourself onto one of these desks, prove yourself and you'll be managing your own book in a year or two, with the potential to be a managing director by your late twenties. Personally, I turned down a trading desk offer from a top ibank, to start trading equities on my own after college. I had been daytrading for several years already so I knew what I was doing. I've made tons of money, but still I sometimes wonder if I made the right choice. The top trading superstars at goldman can make 20-30mil in compensation, and I doubt I could ever reach that on my own.
I just want to remind everyone that they are different career paths. At Goldman, I would be doing investment banking, not trading. While I am interested in trading, I do not know if I would be good at it. I have a top undergrad degree (or will when I graduate in may) and I have a top gpa there. I did a summer internship at goldman sachs, and thus have never done trading before.
The offer is from a firm comparable to DRW or Group One trading. It is a market-taking firm, however.
a "market-taking" firm? what is the name? there arent many firms comparable to the quality of DRW. group one is nothing special. i have suspicions about your honesty.
Market making is a dying industry. If you have no trading experience at all, its much safer to take the goldman offer, since it'll open so many doors. Yeah, the 100+ hr/week will suck, but after you do the analyst program you'll have so many options available to you.
You are right that there are few market-taking firms out there, and you probably have not heard this one but it is definitely a quality firm similar to DRW Trading Group. Why would I come here to lie to people about my job opportunities?
i have no idea why you would lie. i dont know why people say half the things they do on this site. its hard to give good advice when you only divulge one of the choices. you might think this company is a real heavyweight but your equating of group one to DRW proves you dont really have a firm grasp of who the players are.
That's a fair statement, but if I gave away the name of the actual firm I would be outted, and I do not want to do that. What do you think of places like Peak6 or Ronin Capital? I would consider these firms peers, but I believe my firm's pay scale is more similar to DRW.