Trading can be taught and can be mastered. I see no reason why a Ph.D. could not master it if he or she wanted to. ::shrugs:: I didn't say it couldn't be taught and I wasn't talking in absolutes. Sure, a Ph. D. can trade. My Dad has a Ph. D. and he daytraded for a year, making money too. I do think one gets conditioned. I've certain been conditioned to the long term buy and hold mentality. I'm only just able to view stocks as short term, ie: not getting attached to them. I've read about and spoke to traders and coaches who work with many varied people, these lead to my comments on educated people and how they often need to be right, which in leads to an incompatibilty to making money actively trading. I'll dig up some sources if you like. André
I Almost agree on everything you said exception made to having a Ph.D. does not help you trading. Having a Ph.D. (or any college degree by the way) helps you a lot in becoming a good trader. The silliest thing however, would be to say that you can take a street kid and teach him to trade and he will become a good trader. A street kid that could grasp trading technics, would never be a "street" kid, this is just common sense (which, I agree, is not common ...). Let's just ask one question: any street kids on this forum? Amomo.
I guess money can not buy you a Ph.D Whatever successful trader you are, you can not put that in your business card Why can't you be happy that you are successful traders and let poor Ph.D's alone?
what proportion of market makers in NYSE or CBOT floors hold Ph.D., Masters, Bachelors,High School degrees, or high school drop outs! just curious. ....
Most of my Ph. D. schoolmates, who have worked at Wall Street, have become mutual fund managers or traders of hedge funds. None of them is market maker.
This thread is silly. I'm in the last semester of my PhD and am running a hedge fund based on the reseach I'm working on. the latter is a direct product of the former. If PhDs decide not to trade it's not b/c they don't have guts. It's b/c they are smart enough to realize how hard it is and that unless you do have some trading strategy that can be traded on, it's best to stay out. Many "street kids" will not have the same approach and will at best concoct some "strategy" that seems to have positive returns without the skills to do rigorous tests you learn in a PhD program that would show the strategy is gonna reallocate your capital to others As for the question above, I think a better question would be "what proportion of those who formulate the strategies and techniques used by MMs etc hold PhDs. You don't have to have the best education to execute something. But to come up with it, it is vital. Yes, a high school drop out can trade, b/c he can click and punch keys. Provided someone told him when and why to do it. A PhD is the best investment one can make. But then again, my opinings are certainly not unbiased
If you go to an investment bank most economics/finance phd's are either in "research" or sales. Few of them actually trade. They generally have good sales skills thanks to their training, they can invent a reason to virtually anything while sounding convincing, keeping a straight face and kissing your a#$, all at the same time. Not anyone can pull that off believe me. Quantitative phd's on the other hand generally lack people skills and couldn't sell a superbowl ticket for a couple of bucks on ebay. So they are basically programmers and number crunchers. Very very few phds end up as *successful* traders or hedge fund managers even among those who try. I've seen lots of phds even college professors, in mutual/hedge funds doing nothing but embellishing the fund's brochure presumably to make it respectable and therefore, more marketable. The fund doesn't actually trade following the phds research (they know they would go broke if they did it). Some of those phds do just "big picture" research, not directly usable for trading, but gives the traders/managers confidence in the "general" composition of the portfolio. But, I've also seen many phd's working in funds actually producing valuable and profitable trading strategies, but they are unable to trade themselves, some of them because they have no guts, but others because they don't have enough money, did they spend it all in graduate school?. But anyway, you need a LOT of money to trade OTC fixed income, for example. Profitable, long-lived, self-reliant, non-wage earners, phd traders are very very few.