Honest Advice for a Graduate

[Goldmember21]

that should help commuting to the office every day

Haha, I missed this reply, cheers for that..

To Goldmember:

How have things been on the LME?

Three months aren't much, but they are a little bit of experience.

If possible please give us some feedback as to how your internship has been going. what you have been doing? what you have learned? what you think of the industry? and most importantly what do you think of the original posts now that you have tried it yourself?

Baostini,

Sorry if I didnt specify, the internship was only short term summer thing so its over now, however seemed to make an impression, was referred to the boss by a couple traders there.

Mainly I was clerking on the exchange, communicating trade/price action from the ring to our brokers behind, obviously had to learn the way futures are priced first which took a day or 2, then had to pick up the open outcry techniques when trading periods got hectic. I was told most interns dont start clerking until a few weeks in, however im a quick learner and managed to get clerking on Day 4!

I also spent some time with precious metals traders (Screen traders), was especially quiet on those days so exposure wasn't great.

Have learnt so much though, from the first day I knew this was what i wanted to do for a living, getting home after work completely wired and waking up at 5:15am each morning looking forward to work cant be a bad thing.

Someone said something about its not a good exchange for small speculators, well thats true because there are only a small number of companies who can trade on the exchange. Although it looks chaotic, i found it a very efficient way of trading. I think the rise of screen trading is the rise of speculation..

Anyway, I loved it and hope to get back there in the near future.

I'll post about my time in FX trading at the bank soon.

 

[baostini]

Haha, I missed this reply, cheers for that..



Baostini,

Sorry if I didnt specify, the internship was only short term summer thing so its over now, however seemed to make an impression, was referred to the boss by a couple traders there.

Mainly I was clerking on the exchange, communicating trade/price action from the ring to our brokers behind, obviously had to learn the way futures are priced first which took a day or 2, then had to pick up the open outcry techniques when trading periods got hectic. I was told most interns dont start clerking until a few weeks in, however im a quick learner and managed to get clerking on Day 4!

I also spent some time with precious metals traders (Screen traders), was especially quiet on those days so exposure wasn't great.

Have learnt so much though, from the first day I knew this was what i wanted to do for a living, getting home after work completely wired and waking up at 5:15am each morning looking forward to work cant be a bad thing.

Someone said something about its not a good exchange for small speculators, well thats true because there are only a small number of companies who can trade on the exchange. Although it looks chaotic, i found it a very efficient way of trading. I think the rise of screen trading is the rise of speculation..

Anyway, I loved it and hope to get back there in the near future.

I'll post about my time in FX trading at the bank soon.

Thank You for the update.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I'll be honest with you, give it time and the being psyched about going to work every day washes off, but that is normal (it will happen no matter what you do in life or how much you enjoy it). I love my job, always have, wouldn't give it up for any other job, yet the weekends are always over too quickly.

So have you gotten a new internship at a bank, now? is that it? or are you still searching?

 

[Goldmember21]

Thank You for the update.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I'll be honest with you, give it time and the being psyched about going to work every day washes off, but that is normal (it will happen no matter what you do in life or how much you enjoy it). I love my job, always have, wouldn't give it up for any other job, yet the weekends are always over too quickly.

So have you gotten a new internship at a bank, now? is that it? or are you still searching?

Ye I'm sure you're right, also I wasn't the trader actually holding positions so I didn't have that kind of stress, I think what I mean is I love the way I could start work, and then the next time I check my watch its the end of the day.

The bank internship started straight after the LME one, I was on one of the FX trading desks throughout the LIBOR 'scandal' which was quite interesting, learned a lot about how LIBOR is constructed and from what I can tell, the banks have been used as a bit of a scapegoat for the government and media. (Obviously I was only hearing one side of the story though.)

My time there was spent constructing a statistical model for a systematic trader, basically used Reuters to get pages and pages of data and built a model in Excel to rank currencies based on economic data and indicators. Over the long run should direct the trader toward profitable trades. Was very interesting to see the complete polar opposite way of trading compared to the LME.

Also sitting on my otherside was an MD who traded only off of fundamentals, so again, learnt some of the economics of it all.

That internship was also short term summer thing, now I'm back at University working through my dissertation (kill me) and applying for grad schemes and any entry level jobs I can find. Meeting a guy soon in the City who is fairly high up in a good trading firm, (friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing) also he's going to introduce me to some brokers he knows. Top guy helping me out

And thats pretty much the update on my life!
PB