I've been prop trading for the past 5 years. Started as a market maker in equity options at the CBOE and when that died I traded S&P futures for a few years off-floor. After only moderate success scalping futures I went into spreading cash treasuries and futures. I've never made great money trading. Only enough to stay with it another year. I am thinking of getting out of trading and possibly into the mutual fund business. I've looked at quite a few posts on ET over the years and there seems to be some very knowledgable people who post in here. Can anyone give me some ideas of possible career paths in that business? Where should I look to start (meaning what type of position)? How fast can someone climb the ladder? Is there much opportunity in that business outside of NYC or Chicago? Any ideas or info is greatly appreciated.
- slightly off topic when did options market-making start to die? - most people these days think about getting into a hedge fund rather than mutual funds - why not go for a starting position in trading execution (equity derivatives, fixed income given your previous experience) at a hedge fund?
In my opinion, the equity options died somewhere around 2000. Dual listing, payment for order flow, decimilization (to some extent) and the tech bubble bursting all made it a tough environment to make money. I would love to work at a hedge fund. But from what I hear it is very selective. I have a degree in finance and accounting from a Pac 10 school, not Ivy league and I wasn't a huge success trading. Let's face it, if I was a great trader I would still be trying to trade. That's why I was looking into mutual funds. I could stay in the markets and attack it at a different angle.
The problem with mutual funds is you usually start off low of the low, either in customer service or back office accounting. If you think the pay is bad trading, take a look at these guys, basically you have old pensioners calling about their 500 dollar investment and why it went down yesterday. So to answer your question quick, there is simply no easy way. If you are more qualified quantitatively, they may stick you into a financial analyst position, one step above an accountant, where you do the books and project cash flows and quarterly distributions and client activity. That's my recommendation to ya, coz without some serious experience there's no way they're gonna hire you as an investment analyst. Now to break into investment analysis? You probably will need a CFA, MBA or the like. You also would preferrably start off on teh sell-side since it's easy to go from that end over the lazy-dazy buy-side of mutual funds.