the oil traders at bp in chicago seem to all be business/finance majors nothing special. but physical oil trading is different than other types of trading. Do you think you need more math in fixed income than equities?
Math is important in both although I have a friend who trades municipal bonds and he majored in public policy at a liberal arts college. All he does is execution trading and his firm is on the sell-side. I know someone who also trades munis at PIMCO, trades spreads (they don't really exist in such a liquid markets), so I will ask him if he has a math background. He is Indian so you can stereotype whether he has an engineering or math degree lol. At the end I think math is more relevant in equities. Equity derivatives is all math and either some/a lot of programming. Most legit sell-side jobs will require strong quant skills (unless you actually do the sells which is tough). The buy-side is a little different and if you're doing anything beyond plain vanilla then expect to have strong math skills. Even if your an analyst at a value fund you will need skills to model cash flows or what not. If you want to churn your account on 90% of prop desks then you don't need any math skills whatsoever. I currently work in physical commodities and the only way to hedge is OTC (which is expensive for things such as jet fuel, diesel and so forth)... OTC transactions requires math or at least, intuition from years of experience. Fortunately our specific business doesn't really require too much hedging since we rarely take hold of the title. I'm more in the "broker" reselling side. I'm currently doing an MBA in Finance and Decision Sciences (which is somewhat quant). Honestly, unless you want to be a dinosaur on Wall Street then math skills and programming is very important. Non quant jobs are more reserved for Ivy Leagues, especially MBAs, many with very strong connections.
So an engineering undergrad with strong math focus plus an MBA would have a relatively good shot of getting into trading?