Those were two very impressive firms your recommended. The Transmarketgroup emphasizes mathematics which is so critical. If you don't like numbers, this is the wrong business. Most wanna-be traders are lacking in mathematical skills. Trading is a dead end street without maths.
And most mathematicians are lacking in trading skills. I don't think you need advanced math to succeed in trading, but I do agree that math, logic, a rational mindset and analytical skills are important.
Maths? Maths is an exact science. Trading is Alchemy, and any mathematician who tries to make trading into an exact science is going to be in for a very hard time. Granted, various degrees of advanced mathematics may have been used in producing any one of the thousands of utterly useless indicators out there, whose main purpose is to lure novices into shit trades, creating nice big fat liquidity pools for the market makers........but beyond that, maths, beyond being able to count, probably isn't so necessary in order to trade.
That's what mathematics is, isn't it? Logic and analytical skills. You don't need to construct complex partial differential equations. But you do need to understand statistics and probability because you need to test your hypothesis. Mathematics is the foundation of testing - i.e. numbers. That's the point.
In real life, of course, numerous mathematicians/physicists and other "exact science" types have been wildly successful in various forms of trading. Plenty of the top prop firms and hedge funds have been founded by ex-academics and plenty of top portfolio managers come from a science background. Many of the prop firms named in this thread by @bone almost exclusively hire PhDs in math or science and avoid 'em "gut feel" traders.
@Same Lazy Element true but garachen (someone who has a masters in mathematical finance) and owns a real trading company (not trading arcade) that does a lot of algorithmic trading laid out a process for how he teaches manual trading based off of intuition in a thread here: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/a-path-towards-profitability.236208/ He also said: “That's right. This method of manual trading I presented purposefully has nothing to do with math. That's why I said math is not required to be successful. That doesn't mean that modeling intensive approaches don't work. Of corse they do but from my experience the edge captured by a manual trader is quite a bit larger than what most algorithms are capable of. Yeah. I can price a Bermudan swaption off the Mexican yield curve which was a great skill for when I was a quant but not so useful for manual trading.” -grach 2012 considering he mentions that he expects his manual traders to average 7 figures a year and he said his strategies as a whole (automated and manual) have a sharpie ratio of 7-9 that’s pretty good for just “guessing”, no? But garachen does say that a high degree of “mathematical intuition” is necessary for all trading even the method he lays out which isn’t math based. I just wouldn’t be so quick to knock an approach that involves watching the book/charts/correlations/news and trying to sense out momentum and mean reversion. That’s how Nav Sarao traded and he did 8 figures a year for many years (and recently) and averaged around 100,000 contracts a day in the ES. I BELIEVE (maybe you know someone that actually knows) that this is how Igor oystacher traded/trades and he was one of the biggest traders in the ES (but he also owns 3red which does a lot of quant/algo stuff from what I understand) but garachen did say “I don't hire people to teach them to manually trade anymore because generally there's a better use of everyone's time, but I'm not opposed to them picking it up.” -in 2014 other posts show him being a bit more bearish on manual trading, that it’s gotten harder but it could still be done at a high level. I asked him some stuff about intuitive manual trading a few months ago and he didn’t say anything along the lines of “that can’t be done anymore”. I’d bet that DRW still has people trading in the old school manner at a high level but they probably don’t hire people to trade like that anymore. From what I understand the top places don’t pay out that much (I’ve heard 25-50 percent for jump, drw, and the like) so I don’t think it would be easy to retain the best manual traders. I don’t think that’s the primary reason for so much algorithmic trading among the top prop shops just that it could be a small contributing factor. Algorithmic traders benefit from their infrastructure, tech and teamwork so it makes sense that you could still retain some of the best quants with a lower pay out. Plus if they decide to jump ship they get to keep their IP. Just think that those could be some reasons for the quant/algo revolution among prop shops (I’m an outsider but that’s what is happening from what I can gather) outside of quantitative approaches just being vastly superior to discretionary manual. but yes it’s a bit silly when you see the quant naysayers. I like the “they’re just hired to impress potential investors” line, when top prop firms have so many PhDs (from what I’ve heard and seen on LinkedIn) or people with a masters in mathematical finance and zero investors. They’re there because they generate alpha!
I can only say what I know.... ......I KNOW, that when my I am tuned into my intuitive sense, my trades rarely lose, and when they do, I will still be correct about the general flow of the market, although a poor job with my trade entry levels. Check this trade chart out, across three time frames..... https://www.tradingview.com/x/0R6qDXiS/ ......bet you most traders would say that it looks likely to correct a bit more. That would be the first thesis that came into my head at least anyhow, but this was one of the days when I was microdosing with pscilocybin mushrooms, and instead of going with what was rational, I went with what I 'felt', and like so many times before when I have done the same thing, I hit the trade entry right on the nose and took a 2.5:1........it woulda, shoulda, coulda, been a 10:1 as well. ......the human subconscious mind is infinitely more powerful than any algorithmic model built on a computer. Of course, turning that shit on and off as though it were a tap, is another matter entirely......if I had the capital to make position trading worth my while however, I am very confident in my ability to only pick and stick with winners......for short term trading, I am now experimenting with microdosing with hallucinogens...... .....any prop firms out there want to offer me a job? (lol)
You pretty much acknowledge your weaknesses here. In trading, you're not paid if you're almost right. Sounds like your results are inconsistent. Which is the problem most traders face... No firm is going to hire you because of an intuitive sense which is a hit or miss. I only believe in 'intuitive' trading if it's backed by extensive experience and screen time. If not - it's more likely to be random. When I check my statistical, mathematical model - the outcome is often different than what I might intuitively believe and also what most others would believe. One example was at the end of last Tuesday. Everyone was bearish and thought the world was ending, but my model said Up the next day was more likely than down. So, my experience is more often than not that I'm fooled by my own guesses. That's why I like to have an objective model and framework to give me guidance on how to approach any given trading day. The interesting thing is that my intuition is improving from all this and I know that often the most likely outcome is not as most people might think.
I take a different view. If your intuition was wrong, then it wasn't genuine intuition. Genuine intuition is never wrong. Problem is that we don't live our lives intuitively. Most of the time, our minds exist in a vortex of emotion and egoistic posturing. That is why when it comes to any complex matter, most people, are wrong about most things, most of the time. My most successful trades are taken at night time, which is a bit of a bummer, as living in the UK, means I have to be at my screens until around 3am-4am if I want to put on an overnight trade. but when I do, I usually know whether the trade(s) have been losers, winners, or if undecided, what their fate will be, just from my dreams, and before I turn my screens back on. That is intuition.