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Nsentra
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Best School for Trading? 06 Mar 2007, 07:05
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3underscore
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I think you've hit a nail on the head. I believe I've read a small print somewhere about the Parker Center that the price quotes are delayed by 15min - real state of the art. Even during the tour of GSB the students showed us a lonely and dusty Bloomberg workstation hiding somewhere in the corner of the general computer lab.

meh. I left this alone for a while, but I can't resist. The worm is just too attractive.

    *Bloomberg terminals are typically also 15min delayed.
    *The cost between 15min delay and live is HUGE. As in top financial institutions don't pay it unless necessary huge. As in holy-god huge. 15min timelag bloomberg is pretty pricey itself, and they would have that in place because learning all your BTMM and other codes are, like, pretty good. And its historical data feed into excel is the killer app.
    *It is an Investment Fund. Live rates don't matter cr@p to an investment fund as you are talking about a hold or why if you decide to sell. These funds aren't doing arb. The point is in the principles of why you invest in x over y

Right, that will do for now. But lets just leave it said that your chances of seeing live rates at all when actually on your MBA and not on an intern are if you take a day trip to the exchange.

Sure, they are a gimmick, but they are the kind of skills learning in a group, in that setting, that will definitely not do you harm.
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I don't know what worm you're trying to bite on... but First, the school advertises to have state of the art trading floor. 2nd, trader needs experience not only with Bloomberg but with atleast a mock execution management system, because these skills have to exists without a 2nd thought to the trader when decisions have to be made on the fly. I know about the investment fund, we're not talking about portfolio manager position but trader position. I am also well aware of data feed costs, in fact most of the delayed feeds on Bloomberg are of no additional cost. The Bloomberg terminal is in the $2500/mo range, though that might vary from client to client I suppose. Reuters is just as popular on many trading desks, so IMO those should also exist in programs that prepare students for top notch trader position. Your statement about only large fund needing live feeds is not entirely true, it all depends on the strategy the investment fund is running. A fund can have 20 mil. and if it's strategy is intraday stat-arb strategy it will require a low latency live level I and Level II feeds possibly even from multiple providers.

I do stand corrected, Cornell's website says it features real-time stock quotes, although in my marketing brochure at home it says the pricing is delayed - that might be for international feeds.
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3underscore
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Best School for Trading? 06 Mar 2007, 07:13
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But where in gods earth are you going to get a fully trained trader straight from school?

And which crazy place will employ them?

They are trying to provide a facility to enable people a little, and get them slightly up on skills they will need, and things that will help them in interviews. MBAs aren't trading school by anyone's imagination. Why would they have live trading systems? Why would a club formed at an MBA college be trying to do intra-day stat arb? That is for a your programmers and your MFEs and all. It just isn't appropriate for a management school (and would blow up seriously quickly in the hands of their students).
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Best School for Trading? 06 Mar 2007, 07:29
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3underscore
But where in gods earth are you going to get a fully trained trader straight from school?

And which crazy place will employ them?

They are trying to provide a facility to enable people a little, and get them slightly up on skills they will need, and things that will help them in interviews. MBAs aren't trading school by anyone's imagination. Why would they have live trading systems? Why would a club formed at an MBA college be trying to do intra-day stat arb? That is for a your programmers and your MFEs and all. It just isn't appropriate for a management school (and would blow up seriously quickly in the hands of their students).
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Ok I agree with this statement: MBAs aren't trading school by anyone's imagination, and my point is that the schools shouldn't position themselves as such.
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Best School for Trading? 06 Mar 2007, 07:38
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Sure - I think we are talking a little at cross purposes. They shouldn't say it is state of the art, because - in reality - it shouldn't be. They are screwing with some people's realities a little by selling themselves as such.

I think that what they offer does sound interesting, and it would be a good thing to be involved in if you wanted to follow that career path. By no means a complete education, but a nice feature.
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Best School for Trading? 06 Mar 2007, 07:52
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I used to work in a pit once. Open outcry is pretty wild, but seems to be dying via the route of electronic everything. but anyway.... I have some questions:

* Is S&T what it sounds like? Literally, being a trader in the traditional sense of the word? That is, market maker?

* Whats the sales side of things?

* If its being a trader, whats the big draw? As an undergrad, going into trading was what you did if you couldnt find a normal job. It meant a year plus as a 'runner' - basically doing nothing but being someone else's b***. It wasn't a glamorous job, nor was it a well paying job, nor was it a low stress job, and on top of that, there were no guarantee's you'd actually get to become a trader. In fact, pretty much the only thing you could count on was a high probability of becoming a cocaine addict, since that stuff flows like water in the pits. In fact, I know a friend who quit and got his MBA from Columbia (or is doing so now) precisely because he couldn't deal with all the blow anymore. In any case.... With an MBA, do you actually start trading from when you join or do you go through a similar multi-year good luck getting-of-the-desk-and-onto-the-floor role?

It just seems like trading, as I know it - being in a pit at some options exchange or something - is the one job you basically don't need anything but guts and some quant skills for. No one I know at the firms I know would give a flying !(@# if you had an MBA.
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From what I've gathered and please correct me if I'm wrong: yes, traders are the market makers. Salesmen interact directly with clients to persuade to buy at the trader quoted prices, maybe less and pocket some $$ for their own.

I believe a fresh MBA enters a bank's trading program and can either be a trader at completion, or assistant trader who if he learns quickly enough becomes a trader. The difference between this scenario and the dreaded "can't find a job so I'll take a stock broker job" position is that you'll be working for a bank with huge assets which means you'll have support and you don't have to put in any of your own money.

I think the trading floors have been cleaned up a bit, albeit not entirely, and behavior is tamer compared with the past. I guess the allure is that trading is the closest thing to a true meritocracy in any industry. Also, the hours are more bearable and at most banks trading is the top earning branch.

Here's an excerpt from a NYMag article:
In the third quarter of this year, the company’s trading and principal investments (both equities and FICC) pulled in $5.1 billion in revenue, 69.5 percent of the firm’s total; asset management and securities services, $1.2 billion (16.6 percent); and investment banking, $1.02 billion (13.9 percent).

I think this Princeton M.Fin. is best geared for future traders. Take a look at curriculum, it's highly quantitative and the program is very tough to get into. Their placement record is excellent, but taking a look at student resumes, students probably wouldn't have a hard time finding a job w/o the M.Fin.
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Best School for Trading? 14 Jan 2014, 08:47
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7 years later there has been a significant shift in trading towards HFT and Program trading. I'm sure there has to be a few lists out there of top schools that traders hail from, right?
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dave785
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Best School for Trading? 14 Jan 2014, 13:28
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Cmoss
7 years later there has been a significant shift in trading towards HFT and Program trading. I'm sure there has to be a few lists out there of top schools that traders hail from, right?
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Yes, but they're coming from MFE programs, not MBA programs. Columbia has a great one, as does Berkeley, MIT, and Chicago.

MFE is a masters of financial engineering, and it has some pretty heavy math prereqs (a calculus based statistics course is bare minimum) and some programming prequirements too. It's really designed for programmers to get an understanding of finance and then to program algorithms for banks.

I don't think any MBAs are getting hired as traders unless they already had existing trading experience. Maybe a few might get placed in energy trading in texas.. but not on wallstreet.
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