Day trading

Hey
I'm a senior in high school looking to make some more money for my upcoming trip.
I've been researching day trading, going through simulations, etc. But was wondering if anyone could give me solid advice on how to start and be successful

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What are you trying to day trade?
If the answer is Cryptocurrencies you might as well kill yourself now. It will be faster

Just hold a good crypto and wait. That's how I got money for my trip

You dont daytrade crypto sweetheart. Buy and hold.

Crypto along with Penny stocks are literally the most day-trade-able things in existence.

penny stocks aren't - the spreads are too wide, they're more for taking a punt over a longer period than a day

you're more likely to lose money than make it short term - if you're trying to make money for an upcoming trip then daytrading is a bad idea

best way to get good at intraday trading is to get some experience of some form of intraday trading professionally - with someone invested in you, paying you a salary and bonus.... these days the majority of firms in this area are completely systematic as far as stocks and futures are concerned and semi-automated as far as options are concerned.

So basically if you want to get some real experience away from the massive amounts of bullshit you'll find online then go study at the best university you can ideally in some quantitative subject (but do pick one you enjoy the most) and then try for a job at an options market maker.

As far as screen based intraday trading goes these days that is literally the best training you'll get: Optiver, Jane St, IMC etc.. the banks are unable to compete with them and they pay very well if you're good.

If you pick up good coding skills and/or stats/machine learning then other systematic firms are worth a shot too - roles where the system trades not a human - these are also available at the firms mentioned previously and firms like KCG, DRW, XTX etc..

You may also find *some* day trading at quant hedge funds - RenTech (if you get an amazing PhD and are incredibly lucky) for example. Though intraday trading lends itself more to proprietary capital than client funds - thus RenTech's fund is closed, XTX exists as a result of being spun out of GSA.

so TL:DR - the best training for day trading is getting a role at one of a few option market making firms or HFT/prop firms if you're interested in systematic trading. Note that even though the option MM firms are delta neutral you'll still gain far more experience there than elsewhere and it is a better shot even if you later want to be self funded and trade in a different way independently later.

choices beyond these are less good

banks also make markets but as pointed out can't compete with the prop firms so make money from client flow and/or make markets in instruments that are less liquid and don't trade on exchanges etc... prop firms are increasingly eating the bank's lunch in these areas too though - XTX for example has taken a big chunk of the market share in FX

you'll still find, if you look, some prop firms where people trade futures manually/screen based

lastly you'll get the shit tier day trading firms where you put up your own cash and it doesn't really matter much to the firm if you burn through it so long as you generate commission for them - ditto to the firms where you need to pay some sort of fee for training or whatever... in reality you're essentially, if you're allowed to trade live, you're going to end up getting backed using the funds raised from charging fees to desperate people

>t. Martin Shekeli

basically there is a lot of shite out there and a lot of people who have no clue offering advice for a fee - if they were any good then they'd be trading not selling advice/training

the best training/advice will come from someone invested in you, someone who stands to benefit from you being profitable i.e. a situation where you're paid a salary + profit split/bonus and your mentor is either backing you or partly earning his bonus as a result of you and the rest of the desk being profitable - then at least you have some interests aligned and if you've picked a profitable firm then something worthwhile to learn

I'm in an undergraduate program for physics finishing up my second year. There are always mutterings of nondescript opportunities in finance for physicists, but everyone here is very into science-for-science's-sake and isn't helpful about that side of things. Would my best course of action for using this to get a job like this be a PhD? That was my current plan anyway. If so, what kind of research should I look into?
One of my professors makes early-universe simulations and writes about them. A lot of the videos you see on cosmology documentaries or Big Bang-related museum exhibits are sold to those places by him. He got headhunted by some firm, not sure which, offering him $600k to move to New York. He declined because he just genuinely enjoys his work.

From my understanding, there's no firm in particular that these finance types like. They just like people who are good at science. In other words, if you can do science at the highest level they'll think fondly of you.

First word of advice, stop thinking like a wagecuck. Your mindset should be whether you can take over an industry or not. Stop thinking of making money in terms of what your employer pays you per year. Jeff Bezos got paid a $80K salary and his net worth shot up 20B+. His company barely makes a profit too, but he has taken over a massive industry and is positioned to profit immensely in the future.

Choosing Physics you should focus on stuff like robotics and automation, largely untapped field that can provide much value to society. Good luck user, and please don't waste your life chasing wagecuck dollars. Nobody gets rich at a 9-5.

That's good to know. I'd still like to at least get a couple years of actual research, but it's always good to have a high-paying alternative.
I don't have much interest in taking anything over and living and breathing markets. I know plenty of soulless, every-conversation-is-networking business and finance frat guys, I can't make myself live like that. If that means I'm "never gonna make it" I can come to terms with that.
>robotics and automation
Physics doesn't deal with that, you're thinking of engineering, along with some CS. Physics has plenty of untapped subjects but they're usually a lot more esoteric than that.

Electrical engineering

depends on the role - for a trader position at an options market maker you don't need a PhD, they'll recruit from a variety of STEM backgrounds and are looking for people who who are sharp/analytical and they will test this during the recruitment process. Some firms will target certain schools others will simply invite lots of candidates to sit the first part of their selection process and weed most of them out in the first round.

Systematic hedge funds do prefer PhDs but you shouldn't do a PhD just to get a job. It would be useful if you have some exposure to statistics (maybe via statistical physics) and programming. You certainly don't need much finance background for systematic funds - they mostly trade equities or futures.

You'll need to have done some background reading re: options for the market making firms.

>There are always mutterings of nondescript opportunities in finance for physicists, but everyone here is very into science-for-science's-sake and isn't helpful about that side of things.

The reason for this historically is simply because PDEs/numerical methods are used in derivatives pricing so when finding a suitable pool of applicants for quant roles (the people who model and price derivatives in banks) people with Physics PhDs were the obvious choice. These days there are specialists masters programs in Financial Engineering to fill these roles and most of the actual research has been done already it is just glorified programming work.


A quant on the buy side (i.e. in a prof firm or hedge fund) is a rather different sort of role - the focus isn't derivatives pricing buy analysing time series data - while a Physics Phd might still land you some interviews it is statistics knowledge that is important - likewise machine learning and/or say signal processing (from an EE background) are also useful

>i.e. in a prof firm or hedge fund
*prop firm

Interesting, thanks. I've already done a good bit of programming in a shitty intro CS course and a much better one specific to computational physics. Some of our work there was actually with DJIA stats. I'll get exposed to statistical mechanics my senior year as well.
I never planned on doing a PhD just for a finance job, but statistically something like 95% of physics PhDs don't successfully make it to being a professor. Having a plan b is essential.
Machine learning I'm completely ignorant on, but I do know some very basic signal processing. I'll be getting exposed to more statistics soon as well. This is all good info, might give me some topics to look for pirated textbooks on over the summer

rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/european-business-school-rankings-2016

Will a Top 5 School from these get me into Optiver etc?

should i got to an european buisness school for free and apply at these companies or is it a meme?

also do you need an mba or is a bachelors in business enough to make it in the buisness world?

>day trading

People have been coding trend following systems as far back as 70'. Just look up some fund unless you're hardcore into mathematics, then write your own script.

Look around what are the options avaliable (funds, saving accounts, etc.) and ask yourself if you'll be able to outperform them. If not, why bother with all the work if someone else can do it better?

More knoledge never hurts. I doubt it's even possible to get job in one of this firm if don't have solid degree in some renowned school. Unless you're applying for janitor.

Define "making it". You can make prosperous company with just highschool diploma, but still probably sooner or later you'll need most of the knowledge that you gain while getting MBA.

making it would atleast be 150k a year minimum

that would allow you to live with a free medium to high class lifestyle

which one are you thinking about?

Also what about age? I will be 30 when i earn my bachelors but i have 5 years of quality business experience, not finance related though

I think you'd be wasting your time if you pursue an MBA in order to become an options market maker

if you want to get into most of these firms then doing well in their interview process is the key - for somewhere like Optiver, unless it has changed in the past few years, plenty of people will have a shot at the selection process and the vast majority won't get past the basic maths test in the first round

Kek do it if your in high school. If you lose doest matter because you are young and learn from your mistakes.