Re: an aspiring stockbroker
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true.....finance or econ classes aint gonna teach you to sell or hold if there is a panic sell off or why TAYD takes off when there is a 9.0 earthquake in tokyo
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Heh [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Nothing will except experience and that often fails in a panic situation as well.
Trading just isn't taught. Being a brilliant well educated individual does not insure trading success. And several very successful traders have very little book learning.
Trading is more of an art than a science. That's not to say that certain areas of trading don't involve a great deal of mathematical expertise as some areas are purely mathematical. In my career I have done a lot of arbitrage type trading as well as trade research which were both very math intensive. And options type trading is more math intesive than straight futures market making. But your typical floor traders (and nowadays screen traders) rely mainly on experience and an inate ability which isn't the part of any curiculim.
There are lots of different traders. Being a bond options trader is way different than being a bond trader. NY equities are different from Houston energy traders by a wide margin and some guy banging out scalps in his basement on tradestation is a lot different from the spread scalping I do and a bean crush or crude crack spreader is way different from typical bean and crude traders. There are lots of different opportunities called "traders" but while similar many of them are very different from each other.
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