[howzit]

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Does your son want to be a stock broker or does he want to be a trader? Does he know the difference?

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this is to the point. . .fwiw, I'm not a trader, I work for them on a trading desk.

The traders here all are very, very good at math and quantitative analysis. Traders interpret external events, market movements, trends, etc., to decide which positions they should be putting on to make money. They also have to decide how much risk they are willing to put on a position. They don't need social skills, management skills, and not too much macro econ knowledge (the caveat being is if he will be a macro trader) For the most part, the traders I've dealt with don't care about their position in a company and job title. They mostly care about how much $ they are given to trade, and how much risk they are allowed by the desk and how much money they will be keeping in a positive year.



Brokers are order takers and create a market for the traders. These guys have to make sure that the trader's orders are executed at or very close to the market. They sit around and take trade orders from a fund/bank/client and execute in the market. They can make judgment calls on the market and voice their opinion but they do not make the final decision.

You can make an analogy that traders are chefs. Brokers are the markets where the chef can get his ingredients.


I assume your son wants to trade cuz a lot of inexperienced people enterting finance want to trade. (i was one of them) For him to get a job out of school, he'll have to have strong math skills and some sort of experience in finance (internships). Having a college pedigree helps tremendously.