How to become an institutional trader?

Beginner Questions
1

Hi guys,

How can a guy with background in IT become an institutional trader and trade any instrument (forex, equity, options etc) for an organization rather than a retail cash market.

Thank you

2

Short answer is that you can’t. An institutional trader is not a career change, it’s a top graduate role from the top universities in the world. Either that or exceptionally deep routed internal contacts within the industry.

3

Hey Jezzode,

Thank you for the reply. Is it bit crazy that top graduates from top universities are doing it instead of doing scientific innovation and stuff :slight_smile: ? Or is it actually of good use to this ?

4

I totally agree with you, however when opening roles pay upwards of £100k with the potential to earn significantly more over time it soon becomes all about the money and life style. There is however also a high failure rate within institutional trading from graduates who are shown the door after not hitting targets from day one. These companies really want the top dogs, the salary dictates this of course.

Although they try and act ethically by stating on their website that they only take 60% of of graduate employees from the likes of Oxford and Cambridge, we can all read in between the lines.