HFT is a way market control is a way fundamental analysis long term investment is a way days/weeks time frame technical/math/computer program prediction is a way arbitrage is a way ...so many ways and all of these people can be in the same market...with winners and losers... John holds math and econ degree. I believe he fundamentally understands the market extremely well while he can also build math model to predict what will happen. Well, what I mentioned before would be still the main reason how can someone becomes godlike.
Except human mind free style trading, rule base trading can be back-tested, then we can tell if a strategy gives us edge or not. No need to back-tested market control style, because they always win
Of course this is not mentioned in popular media because they control most of the main media companies.
Paul Tudor Jones said in the annotations of Reminiscenes of a Stock Operator, that journalism was the single most important element of his development as a trader and as a businessman.
If you want to get a job then it doesn't matter what subject you do out of that list, it's more important which university you go to. To that list I'd add: computer science physics maths engineering economics But don't do an MBA. Almost uniquely on that list it is both completely useless for trading, and plenty of employers are biased against hiring MBA's for trading positions. The maths in an MBA is seen as too 'soft' for trading purposes. GAT (masters in economics, and ex trader).
As an MBA I would tend to agree, although perhaps not for the same reasons. Trading just wasn't seen as an attractive field for MBAs, at least at my school, and as a result there wasn't a lot of recruiting for trading jobs. Some people going to hedge funds, a few to i-banking (although tellingly not nearly as many as came from i-banking), and a lot to PE/VC, but to my knowledge not a single person went to a "trading" position as envisioned by posters here. The HFT firms definitely did recruit in the comp sci/math departments, as well as the business school's PhDs though. I'll also second an earlier comment to go to a top tier school if at all possible. Take a couple years to do something unique and cool that will allow you to get into one of those schools. The financial world is horrible about only hiring from the "right" schools and would be happier taking the last person in their class from a top school than the valedictorian from a mid-tier school. In fact many top schools have grade non-disclosure, so hiring companies really do have no idea where their candidates ranked in their class and don't seem to care.