Its easy for anyone whose 22 to feel this is their passion. it's fast paced, competitive, and requires a lot of brains and at the same time the stuff you are learning is so new. plus who doesn't want to make a lot of money. trading on your own will show interest and desire. take some math classes and statistics. When i was interviewing my CS background was a little novel. Some guys tried to push me into IT. One guy saw my value as a quant. Once i got on the floor, i moved into trading and portfolio management. Now CS isn't an outside major. The guy who ran our exotics desk was an economics major. More important than your coursework is you show intelligence and ability to learn. Natenburg is a good book, but its only the surface of this profession.
I have a BA Math high honors, and got interested during my degree. I'll just explain what I ended up using. I've been messing with algo's and math/stats for a while, but I'm only an amateur mathematician. In my experience, the only math I really needed was random variables and estimation theory, but not up to the level of measure theoretic or probabilistic convergence proofs. That means you understand r.v.'s, transformations, compound distributions and the probability integral transform, but only intuitively understand advanced estimator theory. That's the whole bias, sufficiency, efficiency, consistency, and robustness theory of estimation; the literature related to scaling estimators and proving distributions. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, theta, rho, vega, and market making/quant models and pricing is all I have to go on without an advanced degree. It has not been easy. You should decide what kinda trader you want to be. Rates and FX? Equity vol and relative value? Commodities or portfolio optimization? When I started out, they said "learn the yield curve" but that knowledge was almost impossible to learn from anybody who isn't a prior professional—exchange locals and prop guys from Chicago. The yield curve and rate spreads are a real bitch to learn, at least in my experience. It's kinda like when you master a topic in math; only then does all the detail seem superfluous. It's kinda funny, but once you learn correlation and how it's used in different markets, both as a trading method, and as a way to regulate clearing risk throughout the financial industry, you've kind of learned every market. They just have a lot of different names and they all seem to be silo'd off from each other. What I mean is that you rarely hear algo guys with pro rates talk, or equity guys with pro bond knowledge. Sell side guys are tight lipped as well due to the NDA, non-compete, proprietary/confidential nature of the biz. Nothing easy about this.
CS is a definite plus as trading needs scripts to slice and dice market data. There is no holy grail i.e. sure profitable system or method. If possible, watch The Midas Formula by BBC Horizon documentary on LTCM. Need money in the trading account e.g. USD $50K. If no money, then get a job and save up. It has low entry barrier but extremely hard to be a profitable one.
You can stick these qualifications up your ass. i guarantee you there will be 60iq retards out-trading you by a great margin
There's alot of truth to that. Back in the 90's having prestigious education meant something magical. But now in modern era it seems like the most successful people are rather the dumbest ones, or people who breakaway from traditionalism.
IQ matters. It's the brain's processing rate. Faster processing helps; it makes life easier. Working with intelligent people and then working less intelligent people is very noticeable. And the qualifications are a form of filtering. Good schools require a high SAT or ACT (iq tests). It's legal discrimination.
but wtf is iq? some lesser intelligent yet sheepskin clad prof's idea or governments standards etc.? lol.
IQ matters in many fields , especially engineering and stuff like that, but it will work against you in trading. Unless you are a true genius but even in that case the solution is often not to become smarter but to dumb down. Take it from the Isaac Newton himself who said 'I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.'
This quote might have to do with his South Sea investment blunder. Isaac Newton and the perils of the financial South Sea | Physics Today | AIP Publishing
Trading, in my opinion, isn't a science though. Having high SAT scores and graduating from a good college doesn't necessarily equate to performing stellarly in the market. There are a ton of brainiacs out there who can't beat the S&P annual average. A great trader has to sometimes think independently, creatively. See through things. Use your own judgment. The complete opposite of a scientist always needing proof and data, and being rather conservative. Lacking guts, passion and soul.