I was working for a prop firm for about 6 months. Did OK on the sim & had a consistent strategy trading Bund/Bobl - started trying to look at different edges - had adjusted the ratio I was using - found it was OK to trade as a spread in the morning + biased towards the bund after 1:30 pm - monitored this through the day made a small excel spread sheet using TT's RTD feature - disliked using autospreader & found it was often more profitable to get a better queue positions and work the legs manually. Basically I was really enjoying trading - initially going live was a bit of a change from the sim but I found it ok to start with....
...then it started to go wrong in December - had a few days where there were sudden movements in the bund & I'd get legged due to having an order working - if I then put an order in the bobl I'd end up in a spread position that was way off side & could average this position to get back for a scratch or could simply close out the bund position for a loss. I started going back to using auto spreader though found that I could also get filled at silly prices with this & most of the small edge from manually legging into a spread was gone. I tried to reduce the number of trades I was doing though I don't think they liked me doing that as it led to rather small winning days - (I basically wanted to try and survive past Christmas & then start scaling up a bit). In order to try and find more opportunities I started looking at FX (which, with hindsight, wasn't such a good idea). They let me go at the end of December
I was pretty gutted as it was a great firm & I'm still determined to make a career out of trading at some point - what I was wondering is whether many firms out there would take on someone like myself in say a mid office/trader support role. I'm very passionate about trading & have at least got some work experience within the financial markets but don't really have the qualifications to go on a grad scheme at an investment bank. My plan at the moment is to open up an account at a somewhere like IB & see what my options are for trading US products in the evening (maybe 5yr 10 yr spread or perhaps looking at the mini S&P, nasdaq etc..) & then approach a prop firm in a year or so hopefully with a consistent strategy.
In the meantime is it viable for someone like me to get a trader support type position? Do larger institutions really understand how prop firms work - or would they simply dismiss someone if they hadn't made it at a prop firm? I'm competent with excel and can program in VBA and have some trading experience so I'd have thought I've got something to offer. I've also got the SII certificates in securities & derivatives (though I'm trying to avoid taking a position as a broker).
...then it started to go wrong in December - had a few days where there were sudden movements in the bund & I'd get legged due to having an order working - if I then put an order in the bobl I'd end up in a spread position that was way off side & could average this position to get back for a scratch or could simply close out the bund position for a loss. I started going back to using auto spreader though found that I could also get filled at silly prices with this & most of the small edge from manually legging into a spread was gone. I tried to reduce the number of trades I was doing though I don't think they liked me doing that as it led to rather small winning days - (I basically wanted to try and survive past Christmas & then start scaling up a bit). In order to try and find more opportunities I started looking at FX (which, with hindsight, wasn't such a good idea). They let me go at the end of December
I was pretty gutted as it was a great firm & I'm still determined to make a career out of trading at some point - what I was wondering is whether many firms out there would take on someone like myself in say a mid office/trader support role. I'm very passionate about trading & have at least got some work experience within the financial markets but don't really have the qualifications to go on a grad scheme at an investment bank. My plan at the moment is to open up an account at a somewhere like IB & see what my options are for trading US products in the evening (maybe 5yr 10 yr spread or perhaps looking at the mini S&P, nasdaq etc..) & then approach a prop firm in a year or so hopefully with a consistent strategy.
In the meantime is it viable for someone like me to get a trader support type position? Do larger institutions really understand how prop firms work - or would they simply dismiss someone if they hadn't made it at a prop firm? I'm competent with excel and can program in VBA and have some trading experience so I'd have thought I've got something to offer. I've also got the SII certificates in securities & derivatives (though I'm trying to avoid taking a position as a broker).
