Had my i-bank offer pulled. What now?

[kingray]

Hi guys,

OK, so final year of Uni and I’ve just had my offer from an i-bank pulled. Deadlines have all passed for other firms so I’m a bit stuffed. Its particularly annoying since to get the offer in the first place I had to sweet talk an HR girl and spent a fortune sending her personalised cupcakes. Doubt I’ll ever see a return on that investment now

So, what to do? I’ve got a stack of theoretical knowledge (I’m sitting the CFA in the summer, lot of finance in my degree) but other then the odd speculation on Cityindex I have no trading experience to speak of. Is it worth looking at arcades? I had never really considered them and I’m a bit sceptical since their alumni include Sezer from Big brother 7, but I’m open to ideas. Do people start often start at arcades and move up to banks prop desks or will it be difficult to break out of the arcade mould. Are the training schemes at these firms any good or is going to be a case of “sell if the news is bad, buy if it’s good”? Does anyone have any experiences of them?

And here’s the really big question, do I abandon my life long dream of being a trader and become a lawyer. I don’t want to do it but its safe and I’m worried that with flow trading getting v.automated and prop trading stigmatised, will trading as we know it even really exist in 5 years time?
Any suggestions v.much appreciated!

 

[Skill Leverage]

That sucks about your offer. It sounds like you have your heart set on working for an investment bank, so if I were you I would give them a call and see what your options were, in terms of being considered for next year's intake. In the mean time you could sit your CFA and possibly some other stuff (SII for example), and keep on top of your market knowledge.

That's the route I would go in your position; trading your own account from an arcade from scratch for a year would be fairly pointless, and you clearly have a poor opinion of proprietary trading firms - not sure this is the best place to be calling prop traders pariahs though, as there's quite a few of them that will be reading this...

SL

 

[arabianights]

Yup. If you go down the arcade route you won't be getting into a bank any time soon. But as you won't be getting into a bank any time soon anyway...

 

[slik]

Presumably, you wanted to be a flow trader in a bank- well, options wise, you can do that at market making houses like liquid capital and tibra.

 

[fifty2aces]

And here’s the really big question, do I abandon my life long dream of being a trader and become a lawyer. I don’t want to do it

I wanted to be a lawyer once, but getting the degree was enough to put me off. If you already have doubts before starting, I would seriously advise you not to bother - law is horrific.