Its funny cause a close friend of mine is just this guy. The guy graduated from University with degrees in accounting and finance then played semi pro football for 5 years. He gave up trying to get a prop job because nobody would return his calls. He said fuck it and just focused on building his account organically and now trades from a water front local in NY with no handcuffs or contract. There you have it: I know a perfect example of the "golden boy type", with years of trading sheets to prove it...and he couldnt land the job. Guess he wasnt perfect enough for them...lol.
I agree - but I think the mythical ideas are sometimes reinforced by (non-deposit) prop firms themselves and it exposes how it's not easy to know who is going to work out for the firm - so they've got to set interesting criteria. Like Optiver and the speed math tests - seems relatively meritocratic - fact is they have to do _something_ to significantly thin the herd before actual interviews. I have the criteria you outlined (including good related academic pedigree) - but I'm also 35, work as a programmer, and am married with a kid and a mortgage. I'll keep networking and trying for a 'real' job in the industry - but in the meantime I'm continuing moonlighting projects that will get me where I want to be sooner or later. If anyone who works at a non-deposit prop firm can offer to do a resume review and share some thoughts, please send me a PM.. To the question at hand: how the ideal prop firm would find those who can effectively use capital. There are a couple of interesting crowd-sourcing attempts, and I hope that more ideas in this space come to market: - AlgoDeal.com let you develop/test models on their hardware and would supposedly back the good ones. Neat idea. They aren't in business anymore. I think basically because not many garage-quants exist or showed up. Has to solve the trust problem. - TopStepTrader.com - you trade sim, they evaluate performance, fund good performers with a small live account. This might be good for practice, but the performance eval is necessarily simplistic. Theoretically, someone could grow there - but I'm not sure it's likely. Some great guys there, though. To me, the ideal firm is meritocratic and casts a wide net. The fact is, though, they probably don't need to in order to survive. Only when what they're currently doing doesn't work anymore would they have an incentive to find new ways. It's an interesting problem to solve.
Mav, you mentioned earlier that 98% prop traders lose in ACD thread ? forget it, 90 or 98 - not much of a difference anyways