You don't need a PHD. They just look for guys fresh out of college from a top 10 school. Most firms don't care if you have a masters or not. My guess is a 3.5 from a top 10 or 20 school will get you an interview. Or if you played college sports. The other solution is to produce sheets. I doubt they want to see anything spectacular, they just want to see that you have the aptitude for this. As I've said before, this business is insanely competitive. You have no idea how many resumes the "good" firms go through. I'm just trying to be honest and not sell anyone a pipe dream here. BTW, most of the market wizards from Schwager's books started out with next to nothing and jumped in the pool. It can be done.
How do you produce sheets if you just graduated college and have no money, but really want to trade. But didn't go to a top school???
I robbed an ATM when I first started day trading. Maybe a drug dealer will back you? They've got lots of cash. Prostitution maybe? Ask a stupid question...
There is only one employee listed on linkedin that I can find. He's a senior at pennstate and this is what he claims to do.... Commodity Futures Trader Patak Trading Partners, LLC Public Company; 11-50 employees; Financial Services industry June 2010 â Present (5 months) Commodity Futures Trader Summer 2010 Managed personal trading account daily Traded Dow Jones, S&P, and Gold future contracts Analyzed morning reports and market moving events Executed trades using fundamental and technical analysis Traded with T4 real time market desktop
Here is my experience with them . I tried them out for several months . I did the 4 week combine 3 or 4 times . I was unsuccessful in making money with those regular combines . OK , no surprise there . It's not easy . In the chat room you see about 120 users logged in and 4 or 5 of those are Live traders . Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention if those Live traders were constantly the same ones or were they different every time . As you may know , many Live traders don't last long and are sent back to the combine . Anyway , as you can see , the percentage of traders who make it live is very small . The odds are not good . And probably even those that are live , the percentage of them that stay live is low . During the 4-5 months i was there , the number of Live traders did not change much, if at all , so you can conclude that either no new Live traders were coming on board or the ones there were being swapped out . Either way odds don't look good . Another thing is unknown what are the criteria for staying Live . If they are require that you meet the profit objective every month , then no way , can't be done . The chat room itself is completely useless . There is no market opinion or advice coming from the moderators at all . It is just a lot of chit chat about the weather and stuff . The traders in the room try to make predictions etc. and to show off but if you have been watching the market for a long time like me , you would know that is best not to listen to anyones opinion ; it just ruins your own system and judgment and they are only right 50%. But you are required to log into the chat when trading . The way they explain it , it is because they need their equity partners to see how many people are there . I found the chat room annoying because it was of no use to me whatsoever . They were constantly trying to sell stuff in the chat room like psychology of trading classes etc. OK , so the 4 week combines have a daily $1000 loss limit . For me , I felt this was the obstacle to profit . If you buy 5 contacts , all it takes is 3 points move to knock you out . And I was looking to catch some good moves when I am sure of the trade ; i am not a scalper by any means . I can't find a trade i like every day . They happen 2 times in 2 weeks if I am lucky . Then after I failed 3 or 4 times , they introduced custom combines with $3000 daily loss limit and 15 contract limit . On my second attempt on this combine , I was able to achieve the profit objective on just one trade . Their website says they WILL give you a live account if you achieve the objective . However , at the end of my combine , they said that even though I met all the requirements and objective , they need to see more consistency and that meeting the objective only gets you reviewed . The next combine , I wasn't able to find a trade . In conclusion , I would say that it is impossible to make the profits they are talking about every single month . Not with my trading style for sure ; I am looking to catch a few good moves a year . If you look at the number of traders they have every month , they are making around $200,000 a month . They don't need you to trade live for them ; they make 99.9% of their money from the combines . This is fact for sure . So sorry if I sound like a sore loser but this is the way I see it . Of course you are going to try it out no matter what I think anyway . I did learn a few things about the market by practicing with them and I think I can bring something from that to my trading ; so that part was worth it . But I didn't learn anything from them directly . If you are already experienced and can make $18,000 every month with 15 contracts limit and $3000 daily loss limit in your practice account , then by all means join topsteptrader , pass the combine and start trading their $150,000 live account !
Started the program about 1.5 months ago, experienced trader, have been away for 2 years.In the combine at the moment, I trade ES, just haven't seen too many setups for my system. Find it difficult to trade for profit with a gun to my head to meet the requirements.