soliciting advice on plan

Hey everyone, I'd appreciate any advice I can get here. Thanks a lot.

I've got a passion for trading...been reading lots of Soros, Taleb, others. Right now I'm trading FOREX practice making directional trades (long USD/TRY right now). I've got some interesting ideas...for one I think that the most advanced computers will NOT be putting humans out of business. We have centuries of accumulated market wisdom, and our market microstructure relies upon humans transmitting information through markets. Existing mean-reversion algos work in the short term because they create artificial liquidity (which will quickly withdraw ala flash crash)...inferior to human supplied liquidity. Trend algos work because noise traders can make profits if they work together to drive price in mutually beneficial direction...for a period of time. Black boxes...who knows...I suspect that they are in a similar case where they are working by mutual effect upon the market, not by actually discovering information about the world. We're going to see the efficiency of markets collapse, and the flaws in automated systems exposed. Anyways, sorry for the digression.

Here's the problem, graduated from non-target school, no good network connections (a few marginal ones), right now sitting in a mid level PhD economics program learning nothing too useful.

My strategy is to blitz firms with applications. I'm fairly pessimistic about the possibilities of getting any kind of shot for a position/internship. My only hope is to get someone on the phone long enough to share my ideas/personality...and have the good luck to find the right match. Based on my current resume, I'm certainly not entitled to a shot (but then again who really is). But I feel that I have nothing to lose by seeing if someone will offer one to me

Back up plan is pursuing a masters quant finance degree. I've got enough math competency to make that work. Its probably a long road from quant assistant to trader, but if it's my only option I'll take it.

 
Best Response

Hey compson, I don't have much advice to offer except that I can tell you're very interested in breaking into this field. All I can do is share my experience. Got my BS in Comp Sci and then I came in through the software engineering route .. working as a software engineer in other sectors for a while. I now work at a prop trading firm as a software engineer. I didn't graduate from a target school and didn't have connections either. So it's very doable. If you're working on your PhD, then you should definitely try to land an internship somewhere. That's how I got started anyway. While it may be tough to get someone on the phone with you, once you do, it doesn't seem like you should have too much trouble getting them interested after that. Just be patient and keep trying.

 

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I am a proprietary Govt Bond Trader...i post my comments on the mkt intraday at twitter...and longer articles on my blog. I've accumulated a lot of educational info in these blogs..so i highly recommend checking them out http://govttrader.blogspot.com

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