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Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

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Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#181

Post by thomastjeffery »

closeparen wrote: post #145
55555 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your firm created no value for society, it would go out of business. This is silly wishful thinking. There are plenty of businesses that are sustainably built on screwing people over or simply extracting money from them. > What value are financial services? I don't think he's talking about financial services like retail banking. I think he's talking about HFT activities other than market making. Legal front-runn…

>screwing people over or simply extracting money from them. People enter these transactions because there's something in it for them, even if you think it's too little.

So you are upset they didn't say "approaches no value" instead of "no value"?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#182

Post by thomastjeffery »

golergka wrote: post #156
bousaid wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that is simply busy work and can in turn be automated. A huge bank like Goldman is essentially a middleman - and middlemen can also be trimmed down. For example, I was just talking to a friend who works at Goldman as a trader. 75% of his job is to answer the phone and deal with clients issues (eg “why is my account frozen?”). His job honestly sounded like a customer service job. He’s also the person who sign…

So, why do you think it hasn't been done yet? You make it sound like there's a ton of money to be made in this "automating Goldman Sachs out" thing.

You are equating optimization to making money.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#183

Post by closeparen »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #181
closeparen wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>screwing people over or simply extracting money from them. People enter these transactions because there's something in it for them, even if you think it's too little.

So you are upset they didn't say "approaches no value" instead of "no value"?

It’s literally incorrect that businesses can sustainably provide no value. It may be the case that they can sustainably offer deals you wouldn’t take, but how we get from there to the business being immoral, useless, or deserving of a ban is more nebulous.

If people are systematically taking deals you wouldn’t, there might be a broad societal problem (why is tht crappy situation anyone’s best option?) or an information problem (why don’t they know better?) but the business offering the deals is probably not a logical or useful target if you want to address the larger problem.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#184

Post by Chyzwar »

v64 wrote: post #69
tomrod wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash motivates plenty of people, as does the joy in solving a problem. Whether the value of that solution to society's benefit is positive or negative does not always factor into a solution architect's moral calculus. This is how I explain your observed point to myself when I see folks stoked to work for $largetechco or $adtechco.

> as does the joy in solving a problem This is it for me. Futures trading is a zero sum game (negative sum if you factor in fees), so writing a program to automatically extract value from an ever changing market is a nontrivial and ongoing project. But unlike a game, getting good at it can pay the bills in a real way. I understand that in the big picture long term, I'm not making much of a mark on society, but nevert…

Markets are not zero-sum game it is a common misconception.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-stock-market-is-not-a-zer...

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#185

Post by thomastjeffery »

closeparen wrote: post #183
thomastjeffery wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are upset they didn't say "approaches no value" instead of "no value"?

It’s literally incorrect that businesses can sustainably provide no value. It may be the case that they can sustainably offer deals you wouldn’t take, but how we get from there to the business being immoral, useless, or deserving of a ban is more nebulous. If people are systematically taking deals you wouldn’t, there might be a broad societal problem (why is tht crappy situation anyone’s best option?) or an informati…

> It’s literally incorrect that businesses can sustainably provide no value.

That depends entirely on the definition of "value".

If a business exists solely to move money/stock around, that action does not create "value", in the sense that juggling oranges does not create "value".

Trading stocks is an effort to take advantage of the fluctuating relative value each stock has, so that individuals can take home the "profit". Such "profit" is not created, but sifted out of the economy. Is that 100% worthless? No, but it's darn close.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#186

Post by golergka »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #182
golergka wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, why do you think it hasn't been done yet? You make it sound like there's a ton of money to be made in this "automating Goldman Sachs out" thing.

You are equating optimization to making money.

When it's about optimizing costs - yes, I am. That's exactly what optimizing costs is about.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#187

Post by consz »

throwaway_hft wrote: post #123
rch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen claims of $1M base salaries in NYC, and seven figure bonuses are certainly possible (in HFT). $300K+ (incl. bonus) is no problem, but ML is less of a factor than FPGA and C++ experience.

I work in prop trading and I've never seen that kind of guaranteed salary offered. Maybe as a one time signing bonus to poach someone from a competitor. Typical base salaries for traders/quants/engineers are in the low six figures. I'm head of a small team running high frequency strategies. I control parameters/portfolio/risk, design/fit predictive models, code C++ for simulation and live trading, and spec out design…

I'm in the industry. Out of curiosity, which firms do you think do a good job of not treating back-office engineers as second-class citizens?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#188

Post by noobhacker »

physguy1123 wrote: post #152
bousaid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to learn more I’d also suggest reading a book called Flash Boys. It’ll give you huge insight into what OP is talking about.

Flash boys is mostly incorrect and at points misleading, and this is coming from somebody whose entire job is trading systems to avoid hft "picking off" my institutions orders/market activity. I can write more once off mobile but there's good material online about why that's better written than what I would write.

Could you please link to the counterargument to Flash Boys?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#189

Post by blobbers »

rb808 wrote: post #34
dookahku wrote: post #18

So how does a mid-level software engineer get into trading? I do paper trading on my own for fun but I'd like to make it a career.

Depends on what you mean. If you're looking at tech trading of stocks from home, quantopian is a great place to start. wallstreetoasis forums for a traditional roles for juniors and people trying to get in. And just remember its a shrinking area. There are lots of traditional traders that have been laid off and are looking for work.

Is quantopian a viable platform or are you just going to food for the bigger fish in the pond?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#190

Post by [deleted] »

arenaninja wrote: post #180
cyberpunk wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would I be correct in guessing from your username that you work with FrontArena? It seems in-house coustomisation of those kinds of systems isn’t paid very well (although I know some murex guys who get paid quite a lot as consultants). What does the day to day look like working on these beasts? Are you in Europe? Most of the developers I know working on these platforms seem to be quite silod and not really involved w…

The username I have carried for some time since I used to play this bomberman clone called Teslatron. I am not in Europe but a large chunk of the team I'm working with is. Divulging the name of the company is frowned upon, but it's one of the large full-service investment banks Day-to-day is a lot like other jobs but projects are better managed than I have previously experienced resulting in less meetings for develop…

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