It's called "Upstairs" because the trading floors usually occupy the lower floors of the building and when you need to visit your clearing house you are actually going upstairs from the trading floor.
Letco has been bought out by TD. It is going through a "transition" time and is not hiring. It is firing.
That is news to me... seems like everyone is consolidating and laying off people. Resumes are a waste of paper these days. New financial world motto... "Save the trees... quit applying!" Here is the worst part. There are so many middle managers that were hired when there was a shortage of qualified people (.com time), that could be fired and replaced with much better people for less pay. But, that doesn't happen. What happens is that all those lousy middle-managers are laying off the lowest level employee to reduce expenses. So now you have firms reducing departments like customer support, back office, payroll, etc. down to bare bones, and leaving a bunch of self-serving, underqualified, over-paid middle managers, spouting off things like "All the managers have forgone their bonuses this quarter. We are all feeling it in these tough times." Meanwhile, the overqualied, unemployed professional and the hardworking lower ranks are sitting at home hoping the economy makes a turn around before their unemployment runs out. So they can keep feeding the families and paying their mortgages. I heard some companies are making everyone re-apply for their jobs that they have. That is grasping the true use of this powerful wealth of hiring opportunity. It is an employer's job market. take advantage. Does anyone need to use this soap-box? I am done with it now...
Letco has laid off 10 percent (!) of its workforce. I am assuming traders were part of this purge as well. I tried to sound smart and said, "Well if volatility returns to the market, would you commence hiring?" I was told to send in my resume "in case there's another bull market." These cuts are industry wide apparently. As a soon to graduate student, this really sucks! Somebody please contradict me. Tell me I'm a liar and there are tons of trading jobs out there!
Tough time for graduating students. Might want to consider corporate finance. Can always come back to trading after the bull returns.
The financial business has always been very cyclical with respect to its labor market. Layoffs on Wall Street during downturns in business should be expected. The only way I have found to avoid being a victim of layoffs was to start businesses. While it is true that currently employers have the edge, it is also true that exploitative behaviour on the part of companies during these times only serves to undermine reputations. That is, when hiring picks up again people tend to remember who was quickest to fire or to play fire/rehire games to reduce expenses. Whatever loyalty these companies had from their employees is largely erased by these behaviours IMHO
Hedge fund managers don't come from business schools. In fact no good traders go to business school unless they burn out. I question your motivation towards trading, and therefore your ultimate success, if you are merely using it as a stepping stone for a B-school degree (dime a dozen).
To elaborate on the previous post, you could start out as a broker and end managing a hedge fund. It is as easy as consistently making your customers money.