poker pro to trading

[djack]

I've been a poker pro for about a year now (I quit my post-college job for reasons not relating to poker), but I'm thinking of getting a job trading. I've been successful playing poker, but for me it's not a career. I never meant to be pro this long, but the money is good and the hours are great. Still, sitting in front of my dual monitors 8tabling shorthanded games is absolutely not what I want to do with the rest of my life.

I've spent alot of time thinking about what I want to do and what matches my skills: trading. I'm in Houston, so energy trading seems like a natural fit. I went to Rice and did pretty well, so I imagine I'll be able to find a job (though if anyone wants to offer an interview...).

Random thoughts:
1. Should I mention poker on my resume? Traders tend to like successful gamblers. Paluka mentioned in another thread that his hedge fund even requires 2+2 books. Still, poker isn't on my resume now, because I think there is still a certain stigma.

2. Should I mention poker during the interview? After a first impression, people can be more forgiving. I think if I mention poker, this is where I would do so.

3. Successful poker players who decide to get "real" jobs is probably a relatively recent phenomenon. Sure, folks have always done it (eg, Roy Cooke), but the total numbers must be much higher these days.

Sklansky has mentioned that he was offered a job in the past couple years by a trading firm. I wonder how common it is for poker players to go into trading?

4. I may be taking a pay cut to get a "real" job, but I think my long-term EV is much higher. However, because th immediate pay will probably be lower, I've procrastinated about finding a job trading. It doesn't help that I hate looking for a job.

5. I need a break from poker. In my only job out of college, I left my job after 15 hours every day and immediately logged on to play poker. It was fun. A year of 4tabling later, and it's not so fun. Even playing live bores me now (maybe more so).

So I'm moving on. Monday I start looking for a job trading energy.

[Aceshigh7]

Good luck to you. From reading your post you sound like you will be very successful.

Personally I would not mention poker on my resume. And whether I brought it up in the interview would depend on the "feel" I was getting during the interview. If you feel like it could be helpful then by all means, but if you're interviewer is a little less friendly or you can't manage to find a good segueway into the subject then I would not mention it.

Good luck!

[PokerBabe(aka)]

Eric Sidel was a trading pro before he became a poker pro and the Babe was a pro options trader before she picked up the game. If traders can become poker players, then I see no reason a poker player can't learn to trade. There are many similiar skills used in trading and in poker. I think there is a large (older) thread on this very topic in the archives. Trading is actually easier than poker in some ways, since there is not as much short term luck involved. However, you must have strong discipline to exit trades when they go against you and to manage your capital. Read the books Market Wizards and New Market Wizards for some wonderful insight into the world of trading.

LGPG

Babe [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[Paluka]

What did you major in at Rice?

[gvibes]

I'm not sure how helpful the following is, but a friend of mine was interviewing to be a prop trader. They were asking him a bunch of probability questions, and most of them involved cards ("What are the odds of getting dealt a pair of aces in hold'em?", etc.). I'm sure it would come out sometime during the interview.

[johnfromvirginia]

I think there are at least three things you ought to be thinking about. First, whether you mention poker on your resume or not is a tough call, but you cannot duck the question of what you have been doing for the last x years. If you don't mention it, they're likely to assume that you have been day-trading or something--which isn't really any better than poker in their eyes. In any event, you're probably not going to get the chance to "wait until after the first interview." I give you about a 95% chance that "So, what have you been doing for the last x years?" will be one of the first three questions they ask you in any interview. You do not want to be shooting from the hip when you answer that question.

Second, you should be aware that being a trader is not the big-balls, big-shot, super cool job that it used to be. My brother is an equities trader. My best friend is a bond trader. Two nights ago a bunch of us went out for drinks and they were all talking about how a few years ago, it was not uncommon for them to make a six-figure profit on a trade. Now, they are scrambling around and working for hours to complete a trade that will yield a profit of just a few thousand dollars. Now, you have to understand that when I say "profit," I mean profit for their employer, not for the trader. In the old days, an equities trader might get to keep 25-30% of the total amount of profit that he had made for the bank in a given year (bond traders, lower percentage, but similar dollars). In those days "bonus time" was absolutely sick. The traders were seldom unhappy and if they were, they had no one to blame but themselves because their bonuses were a percentage of the money they had made for the boys upstairs. These days, the bonuses get smaller and smaller as the methods by which the profits of a trading desk are measured become harder to decypher and bonuses aren't really tied directly to the amount of money you make anymore anyway. They are pretty much discretionary. In a nutshell, the average trader is not making what he used to and most of my friends believe that in 5 years, the banks won't really have to pay them any more than they would an accountant or a staff attorney--a decent living, but we're not talking big dollars.

Finally, I'm not sure there's a market for traders right now. I don't know anything about energy trading, but I've got a good friend who is an experienced equities trader. He had his own list with a bank for 7 years and made a profit every year and got a nice bonus. Then the bank he worked for got taken over by another bank and they closed the trading desk. (As an aside, this is happening more often than you think. Trading desks are just disappearing.) My friend decided to give day trading a try. What the hell? He was a successful trader. Why not keep 100% of the profit? In spite of all his experience, my friend was a total failure as a day trader and now after two years, he's trying to find a job on a trading desk. He can't find anything and his resume has got to be 10x more attractive than yours (no offense). The market is not good for traders right now. It may improve, but alas, if it does it will be because the current traders are washing their hands of what is becoming a much less attractive career and leaving some empty seats behind.

Sorry for the long winded rant. But this is something that I've been listening to people talk about for 10 years. So, I feel like I have a little inside information on this line of work.

[djack]

Political Science. I was two intermediate theory classes away from also having a double major in Econ. I just didn't want to take the intermediate theory classes because they were worthless. I took all of the necessary upper levels for an Econ major.

[djack]

[ QUOTE ]
I think there are at least three things you ought to be thinking about. First, whether you mention poker on your resume or not is a tough call, but you cannot duck the question of what you have been doing for the last x years.

[/ QUOTE ]
This isn't a problem -- I've had a few microbusineses that will go on the resume.

[ QUOTE ]
Second, you should be aware that being a trader is not the big-balls, big-shot, super cool job that it used to be. Two nights ago a bunch of us went out for drinks and they were all talking about how a few years ago, it was not uncommon for them to make a six-figure profit on a trade. Now, they are scrambling around and working for hours to complete a trade that will yield a profit of just a few thousand dollars.

[/ QUOTE ]
I believe this to be mostly true for equities and bonds. I do not believe this to be true for energy. That said, money isn't the motivation for me to become an energy trader.

[ QUOTE ]
Finally, I'm not sure there's a market for traders right now.

[/ QUOTE ] I snipped the part where you specify that you only know about equities traders. I think what you say is true for equities traders.

I've done my research. Your point is well taken for equities, but not for energies. Energy trading in Houston is booming right now, and has been booming for awhile (excepting the post-Enron era). Energy markets are much newer and hence usually less efficient than equities markets. For example, coal derivatives are just being traded in the past couple months for the first time ever. Merill Lynch is apparently building a coal trading desk in Houston right now.

[Masquerade]

Hi, I work in finance and it's very, very difficult to just walk in a get a job as a trader without any prior experience. Why are they going to hire you as an energy trader when they can take their pick of PhD/MBA types who might well have written theses on energy derivatives.

And most traders arent sitting there making speculative investments with their employers money! Typically you'd have to gain several years experience on a desk first.

[djack]

I have friends who were hired straight out of Rice for it.