Young kids love to talk about where they went to school, since that is likely their only identity. Then they ask, "Where did the manager go to school?" Followed by, "Did the boss get a 3.0 in school?" (likely 20 years ago). I have a graduate degree, and went to a top-25 school. Meaningless when it comes to trading. In fact, it shows an insecurity that will lead to massive losses in the market. You want to justify and validate your 100k school loans. gl with that. haha
I have a friend of a friend who is worth over $20,000,000, won't pay for ac. The point is everyone is different with different values. Some people have to drive a Mercedes whether they can afford it or not, others could care less. To the op you are an investor whether you end up trading for a living or not, so it can't hurt you to know as much as you can about finance.
Do you or have you played competitive sports? Are you a brawler? Do you seek confrontation and debate? If not, don't bother. Your engineering skills will be relegated to coding algos for a financial firm at 100 hours/week and you will see a relatively crappy salary cos your H1-B peers are happy to make signifincantly lower than most in management. If Yes, don't tell people you're smart. If you do, they'll put u in a cage full of coders in Jersey City and you'll never see daylight again. Join a prop try it for a year like Bright Trading. Learn as much as you can from other traders like a 22 year old NYC slut. Offer whatever you can put out and suck in as much info as you can. Network like a twitter ho.
I went through a similar sequence, with a similar mindset. I recommend you study the markets for a very long time before putting in real money. The question is - can you afford your bills while you learn? It could take several years. For me it was much easier being a programmer. I also thought trading would be exciting. It really isn't. It turns into a bunch of numbers, tables, and statistics if you like those. Discretionary trading can be fun but in order to not base it on mindless guessing you'd need some kind of a system - which again takes the excitement out of it. Maybe you're just fed up with engineering and you're the free spirited type of person who likes change and learning, and seek a temporary jolt. I'm not saying trading is unlikely to be rewarding (for me it's turning out to be at least), but it will probably take more effort and time than you think, and won't be as "exciting". If you can afford a year or two studying the markets and paper trading, and if you're not stupid, you'll stand a good chance and I recommend you go for it. Also, when i showed up on various forums and people replied like i replied to you now, i thought - "yeah right, they have no clue how high my IQ is and how i learn 10x as fast as everyone else"... Well, as it turns out, that didn't matter so much and i really DID need to work my ass off. PS being smart can sometimes slow you down - there's lots of dumb successful traders, so be open to change your mindsets.
he he he he.... things you wouldn't find in a book.... don't blame ya for wanting to become a traitor and become a trader. engineering sux.... I got one of those degrees.... fun degree but that's about it....
Could be the best rant I've ever read. Eloquent doesn't even begin to describe that. As for all you others... I want to do it because of the nature of the work... I've always liked stats and more financial math over engineering math. Yeah, I'm greedy for the money too, but I'm not just diving into some job description that I saw a 6 figure salary next to. I'm also not going to be stupid and sacrifice 90 hours a week for what comes out to $10 an hour. I'm gonna probably stick to doing it on my own, but I was legitimately curious as to how one would break into the network of traders and land a decent job. Thanks for all the help though, fellas.