Letter of reccomendation

I asked for a letter of reccomendation from management at etg and did not get a good response. Jeff Mester went on to graduate school and it was the same management who must have wrote a letter for him when he went. There might be some bias there in who management is and is not willing to write a letter for. nevertheless, I feel that it might be instrumental for people in this forum to read this essay.


It all started with my desire to be a doctor. Having multiple family members who are physicians and the cultural aspect of reverence held to the medical profession, largely, in Indian homes meant to me that it was the only thing that I could imagine doing. Unfortunately, my performance in the pre-med curriculum in college was not adequate to make me a viable candidate for medical school. However, one should take note that I did not get discouraged by early disappointment and persisted, always believing in myself that I had what it took to be a physician, a trait that would be invaluable in the field I ultimately found myself in. Finally, after my junior year and a second Organic Chemistry class I was forced to make a decision: continue on and pursue a post baccalaureate course, or find a new career direction to pursue. At the time I decided to attend law school, feeling that I was better suited to classes that were not entrenched in the hard sciences. While I still feel that I would have been a good physician, it was my difficulty in the course work that made me ultimately capitulate. I was an economics major to begin with, as I stated before – I only pursued the pre med minor in preparation for medical school, and that is what I would finish up my degree in.
What is interesting however, is that at that time when I reached the crossroads I just spoke of, my mother stopped working and was rebalancing her finances, looking for solid growth stocks to buy. I have always been interested in the stock market and at this juncture that interest peaked as my mother and I together researched companies for her to purchase. My family had not been invested in stocks since the 87’ crash, but my father – like an adult teaching his child to drive, let me make, starting small- stock picks in his account. It was still my plan to attend law school; being very difficult to have an idea of yourself as a person without an advanced degree when you come from certain educated Indian households. But I was to take a year off during which time I was to apply and work. A friend told me about proprietary trading firms that were opening up; where they trained you and provided you with risk management and capital in exchange for a portion of your profits, assuming that is that you were successful. I decided that this is what was the right direction for me to take and found a position at a company in N.Y. called E.T.G., Electronic Trading Group.
I immediately felt at home at this company and amongst the traders that were working there. It was a culture that fit me like a glove. Never have I felt more connected to individuals that worked at an organization, I felt at long last, after years of frustration – that I was at home, in an environment that I was happy in and involved with something that came natural to me. I was blessed to be mentored by two veteran traders who took an interest in me and were distinguished in their trading accomplishments and repute in trading circles. I feel that while I took a risk at working at a small company, watching many friends go to investment banks, it took guts to recognize that this was the right position for me and to stick to my instincts. And boy did it pay off, as I would have some of the most incredible experiences over the next two and one half years. This decision is characteristic of many decisions that I have made over the course of my life where the right circumstance may not be the most glamorous, prestigious or popular choice – but the right one for me. Recognition of the right opportunities, the one’s that are right for you is a personal strongpoint and a good trait to have as a trader.
The process of going from an inexperienced neophyte to profitable trader was not without its difficulties. There is much to learn in the process of becoming profitable and absorption of simple trading fundamentals is what often keeps traders from being successful, or profitable traders from being consistent. I began trading 100 shares of stock in one company. It was a humbling experience to endure a period of time when it seemed that everything that you did went wrong. You would be surprised at how much money you can lose trading a small amount of shares everyday, albeit it was a different market back then. One must learn risk management to weather the time it takes to be able to read the market and learn initiation and liquidation strategies, both on profitable and unprofitable trades. It would take me approximately three months to become stop losing money and earn back what I had lost. I have to admit I owe it to the potentially harsh negative feedback from my bosses that would be waiting for me in the instance I lost a lot of money without good reason. Personally, at that stage of my career I do not think that I would have had the personal discipline to manage my own money and I owe a great deal to the risk management at this firm, they were real professionals.
Following the period when I initially became profitable, up to the new years of 2000 I was a talented trader and showed promise slowly eclipsing personal bests for intraday profits, passing first $100, then $500, $1000, $2000 etc. A very good day for me up to that point would have been $5000. And then it happened, all of a sudden there was an evolutionary step in my development as a trader as during the first three days of the New Year I made $40,000. Shortly thereafter I relocated London where I traded in the offices of our clearing agent: Spear, Leads and Kellogg. This was a valuable opportunity due to the fact that I got to live abroad and work in a more traditionally corporate environment. It was in London that I established myself as one of the best proprietary traders, in the arena of trading that I found myself in. My profitability exploded. I made $100,000 my first month a figure that matched my trading profits for the entire previous year. My second month I doubled that making 200,000. March saw a further increase to $300,000, while during april I established myself as one of the best traders in the firm and in the nation with a month of $600,000. Ultimately that was 1.2 million dollars for the first four months of the year 2000. This was an expansion of an order of magnitude as far as my development went, and I feel strongly that there might have been a handful of 23 year olds in the country that could match my performance, to be placed in the same league as me. The insights I gained into trading made me seasoned as I was no longer a new to my field but established. The ability to make over $100,000 a day garnered me a significant amount of respect from the individuals both at my firm and at spear and it was a great experience to feel that accomplished after facing so much hardship pursuing a career in medicine. I feel that that it is worth noting that my persistence and determination did pay off and I ultimately found a level of success that I was comfortable with. I the early resilience I displayed was invaluable in my career as a trader as all traders know there are trades that are not going to work out, there are days that are not going to be good. It takes resilience to make it through the hard times.
I love to trade stocks and that is what I hope to do for the rest of my life. It is time to evolve once more, this time from someone who worked at a small trading firm to an individual who works in the upper echelons of finance. I liken the transition that I wish to make as a baseball player who makes the jump from the minors to the majors. I have likened my previous experience to trading at the AA level. It is my goal, my dream to trade in the majors – with the best. To take my game as far as it can go, to reach the peak of my potential. I imagine this to entail working at an investment bank or major hedge fund, or possibly even work as a trader on an exchange, and then make one more evolutionary step down the line to hedge fund manager. The character of the program at the GSB, it’s proximity to two major exchanges and the quantitative emphasis tells me that personally it is a good choice, maybe not the most prestigious, or glamorous choice – but a right one for me.

 

Hey, I enjoyed this read and hope you come out of what you're dealing with OK.

I'm looking to go into proprietary trading one day, and your experience will surely be beneficial. I have a couple questions though, if you don't mind me asking.


1. Did you run into personal problems at the clearing firm in London or back home? I ask this because if it was abroad, why not just come back home (or vice versa)

2. What strategy were you using to put up those numbers? Obviously I don't want to know specifics of your strategy (I probably couldn't trade it anyway), but it would be good to know what could payout that much and have that kind of liquidity. ie. Indicator based, breakouts, pairs, level II, etc.

3. Would you say prop trading firms are the only way for someone like me to get into a trading circle or a mentor? Like you, I also want to step up my trading and would probably get better by leaps and bounds with a mentor. Just wondering if you know anywhere that could provide me with good training, or a trading circle, or hell if you even want to mentor me yourself



Best of luck, and I hope you get back into the markets soon cause there's some good volatility all around which could possibly increase the payout of your system.

 

Moderators

Could you please move this moron's thread once again to the chit chat area. This is not the place for these posts. And maybe remind him as to why they are moved. This forum is about prop shops, not some immature boy's ramblings on why no one loves him because he has a little one.

 

only two posts from this guy. hummmmmmm. that is interesting. that is a little one: number of posts.

 

reccomendation is spelled recommendation, fyi. You are lying.

 

Chicago GSB becomes more competitive the longer you're out of school, as is the case with any competitive program. I went to Haas and it was a great experience. Too many gypsies at UC.

 

Those are impressive monthly P&L numbers. Interestingly, the period from January through April of 2000 was the height of the dot-com bubble, with NASDAQ peaking at an all-time high on March 10. I was curious what sort of typical monthly P&L numbers did you produce in the months and years after that period, and on what BP?

You mention GSB... Have you been accepted to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business? If so, congrats... when are you going to attend?

 

I could always bump up my posts by starting stupid useless threads about why no one loves me and why I can't make it as a trader


like you do.

Go ahead, add another number to your total count.


Moderator, Pls move this thread too to the chit chat section

 

1. I ran into a slew of problems after I made money as I was harassed there. Someone at etg was responsible for this.

2. I would trade internet stocks off of the s&p futures.

3. I would reccomend you to keep a journal. That helped me tremendously. Remember to trade pure, without your ego involved in the decision making process. as far as mentorship goes, I am reccomending to the readers of this board to boycott schonfeld untill they renounce their involvement with etg. I can't help you much there, but I might be interested in mentoring people for a fee. depending if they are loyal to my cause.

 

it gets me, why do people like you care. why can't you just ignore it. watch, rather than just ignore this thread by someone who this individual is a moron, I bet he replies again. People like him can't stay away. I am doing what I think is best. you have spoken your mind and done so in an inappropriate manner, and you have stayed around. your posts are suspect.