the reality is that you have to know how to program. the degrees looked at are usually math. engineering, cs. the better the school name the better it is. most of the math involved is not even close to phd work, its closer to high school work. and the strategies are more street smarts ("street" meaning you can take advantage of markets from a programming point of view) it all comes down to programming. if you cannot program the guy that can will do it and you will be useless. i dont believe you can hire a programmer to do the work and you do something else. programming is the prerequisite, without it you just sit there.
But the fact is you never made a dime from trading. We all thought you had taken the high road and left ET because you were proven to have nothing left but your moth-holed underwear. Don't come back now with memoirs of past fantasies. Just enjoy your Iterative Retirement.
A lot of people say it's high school math, but I find myself at odds with traders who only understand the math at a high school level. The fact of the matter is that you need someone with a real statistics (maybe MA Math-Finance or MFE) to do your risk calculations correctly. This isn't to say you can't learn and iteratively refine your models, but it's the crisp reports from statisticians that make the job go smoother. Not to plug my profession or anything.
And don't forget the importance of a good grounding in astronomy. The moon and stars have a lot to do with cycles on the earth. Also learning to compose music and play tennis are helpful. Stosh
Here's an eighth grade Earth Science question for example. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2483950#post2483950 Lets see how Lo does, either the MIT Lo or lolatency will do....Lo l....