How can you expect to intuitively know if a market will go up or down if you have no experience trading that market? If your intuitive system were really good - then you'd trade that and stake up on it. Fund a small micro account or do one of those funded programs you mentioned on page 1.
I have no 'intuitive' system. I have technical analysis, which I learned on an online course (Mtk Structure, Divergences, Fib Levels, etc etc), and which experience has taught me, the conventional application of which is generally pretty fkn useless, WITHOUT also having an intuitive eye for the flow of the market.......so I am far from the finished article, but Rome wasn't built in a day. I do however already know that I can run a small FX account profitably....whether I could pass one of those Online Prop evaluations and stay funded, is another matter. Running a £2K FX account where I am taking £20 risk per trade. 1%. No big deal, and the cfd broker lot sizes generally allow for any size that suits. Not so in the futures markets. Also the prop firms basically force the trader to take ~25% allowable risk on each trade. You don't need a Phd in Maths to know that sooner rather than later, everyone is going to blow up under these parameters, no matter who you are......then there are these Trailing Drawdown, where a trader can be running an account in profit, and still break the rules.....any prop firm (i.e. most of them) running these 'intraday' trailing drawdown schemes is completely and utterly beyond the pale in my view. .......all seems like a bit of a circus game tbh.......but still, could a trader hit one of these prop firms, on a good run of form like we all have from time time, and make out like a bandit? sure.... .
Nothing, including sophisticated mathematics is really "required" to be successful in this business. It helps, however, to have a good grasp on the basics like statistics, simple linear algebra etc. Most of the alpha is relatively simple, it's finding it that's hard. Everything, including non-quant strategies benefit from injecting some quantitative thoughts. Just the same, every quant strategy benefits from adding some common sense. It's hard to say what the right balance is and it's silly to deny that both are important. I would venture, however, that it's much easier to achieve success by leaning heavily on the quant side than by trying to develop intuition. PS. As for Nav and Igor, they are sufficiently quantitative to build sophisticated automated strategies and play pretty complex games around the order book. I also got a sense that both are doing a fair number of shady things (e.g. both have been sanctioned for spoofing, btw) and that a lot of their manual games have been less successful in the last 2-3 years.
these top shops are interested in maintaining and expanding their moat which comes from technology, IP, code etc etc an old school charts and intuition gunslinger adds nothing to their moat
If there was, for example, an experienced German Basis Trader with a track record whose wife was getting transferred to London - then sure, DRW would likely interview him about a job in their London office. DRW has a Houston office and I'm sure it's there for one reason: Energy. And that means Swaps and most of those physical markets are still voice broker-intensive. But their typical hire is either straight out of college or even someone without a degree who demonstrates exceptional problem solving and technical expertise. All of the young hires are pretty much expected to be proficient at programming or data mining and statistical analysis.
yeah that sounds about right last guy i know who went on to work at jane st didn’t even seem that interested in trading. he was a young kid, sharp, math background, great coding etc but i’m sure if you have years of experience trading for big oil or maybe ADM or Cargill they would love to speak to you just for the insights alone.
I would draw a distinction between a de fact technology firm like Jane Street or Hudson River and an old school prop firm like DRW or Ronin (RIP). I think you can get pay well while being purely a smart technologist in the former, but you definitely have to be comfortable with the market and risk in the latter.
one way to draw a distinction is number of firms spawned from a firm. more "trading" firms will have more children