<p>Coming out of Columbia undergrad how hard is it to get a ibanking job at a top firm? Is there any rough percentage of people getting jobs from Columbia or an equivalent school? I just want to get an idea of what I will be facing should I go this route.</p>
<p>Won't it depend on how you do in Columbia?</p>
<p>You would need to do well in Columbia first. Get high GPAs good internship ECs etc. Then you get the call for the interview. After that your school wont matter much and everything will depend upon your interview. IBanking is ridiculously hard to break into. If you though Harvard was hard wait till you see Goldman and Lazard. And if you think Goldman and Lazard was hard then wait till you see Citadel and AQP Capital ;). And if you though Citadesl and AQR was hard wait till SAC Capital and the Goldman Prop Desk. Its a never ending set of challenges. Dont over plan.</p>
<p>Mahras, can you post the websites for SAC Capital and AQR Capital. I can't find them through google and I want to see which schools they recruit at.</p>
<p>There is none for SAC. They are too secretive. Also they do not recruit guys out of college usually. You need a track record for them. </p>
<p>AQR Capital: <a href="http://www.aqrcapital.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.aqrcapital.com/</a></p>
<p>Wharton has I think 2-3 going there. Its a pretty good shot. Although DE Shaw and Renaissance are more powerful quantitative hedge fund.</p>
<p>Goldman Prop Desk???</p>
<p>The best traders at Goldman are allowed to trade on the Goldman Prop Desk. A prop desk is pretty much an in house hedge fund betting the company's money on trades for a profit. Ridiculously hard to get into. Difficulty level is as high as getting a position at the best hedge funds.</p>
<p>what's the work schedule like at those i-banks for young recruits?</p>
<p>M&A: Whats a workschedule? You work until you die (well at least until you make Managing Director). Expect 90 hour work days occassionally 100 hour. Times are all over the place so dont try to predict.</p>
<p>S&T: Depends on markets. For AMerican FI and Equities usually you get there at 7 stay there till 4 and then home. For Japanese you come in evenings and stay till Japan close. </p>
<p>Research: Pretty much same as S&T only start a little later in the day and end a little later also due to earnings reports and CCs being given after closing bell by some companies.</p>
<p>M&A is where the ballers are at ;)</p>
<p>mahras, you must mean 90-100 hour work WEEKS, unless you are exaggerating the work of course. lol</p>
<p>Well, it's true. M&A works you to death.</p>
<p>Oh yea work weeks. Hehe. </p>
<p>LoL. Ballers are never in M&A. Otherwise you would have 26 year old M&A guys making seven figs. But you have traders making that ;).</p>
<p>Which one is easier to get into?</p>
<p>"you would have 26 year old M&A guys making seven figs. But you have traders makinng that"
dont ppl usually get their mbas around that age?
wait 26 year olds already with mbas get 7 figs or they didnt go to grad school yet and just got lucky trading?
btw what do you start out in to get into trading?
i thought it was like a junior analyst</p>
<p>You dont need MBAs to trade. Trading is a merit based job. What you learn in books and what you learn on the floor are greatly different. Unless you are a quant trader for FI or equity derivatives you really dont need an advanced degree. And most quant do not get MBAs and get either Masters or PhDs in Quantitative Finance, economics, econometrics or hard sciences. Most college grads dont like trading because you basically eat what you kill and if you dont earn money after a certain amount of time you are given the boot. Thus you have star traders making seven figs by 26. All those guys you read about in your Liar's Pokers and all those of you who worship Soros, Robertson etc well they were traders not M&A bankers. </p>
<p>Hollaratme, both are equally hard to get in but in trading you also get divided into groups or desks specialising in a certain product. However, in trading you better be earning money after a while for the firm or you are useless.</p>
<p>The 26 year-olds making seven figures is greatly exaggerated. There are a few out there, but the notion that it is somehow easy to get up that high is false. First of all, you have to be at the right bank; second, you have to be in the right group; and third you have to be trading with the right clients.</p>
<p>Case in point: The "ballers" in Liar's Poker were at Saloman in mortgage-backed securities trading with very vulnerable clients. No other mortgage-backed securities departments in other banks were even remotely profitable. </p>
<p>Miliken was at Drexel in junk bonds also trading with very vulnerable clients. </p>
<p>Soros was incredibly lucky that the Bank of England was ran by fools. </p>
<p>The point is that you must have the right combination to be a "baller."</p>
<p>Yes I do know that they are few but to my knowledge there are no M&A guys making seven figs by 26. </p>
<p>Secondly Soros was not lucky. It was a calculated attack at the currency. The trend following turtle traders (Dennis, Marcus, John Henry) and Tudor were all in the trade and the catalyst was the trade Soros made that made it go overboard. No luck is involved in that.
Mike Milkien was basically considered the PRO, and yes he indeed was, of the revived junk bond industry. It did not matter that the clients were vulnerable as a financing vacuum existed in the industry which was filled by junk bonds. It was comparable to the MBS trading desks at Salomon in Liar's Poker.</p>
<p>I'm not saying he was lucky for actually getting all the money. He was lucky that the opportunity actually arose. From the Bank of England's perspective, he should have NEVER been able to execute those trades. It's no coincidence that they changed from fixed to floating currency.</p>
<p>And don't try to tell me Miliken and Salomon didn't take advantage of vulnerable clients. I would say upwards of 80% of the clients didn't know what they were getting into. Most of the sales people were very untruthful about the mortgage-backed securities and junk bonds. For the most part, money is a constant; therefore, in order for someone to gain, one must lose. Drexel and Salomon gained while their clients lost...big time.</p>
<p>Yep thast correct about the pound. Its all about being at the right place at the right time. You really cant call that luck. Most of these guys are great because of certain important incident in history. Keep in mind even before the billion dollar bet Soros was VERY VERY successful. In Europe his fame was much greater than in the US at that time. The billion dollar bet increased his prominence among the American publics. </p>
<p>About the MBS and junk bonds I didnt understand your statement on post #16. And yes trading is indeed a game where one must lose for another to win. The technical term is a "zero sum game". But hey you can say that the clients are "vulnerable" in the hedge fund business. Many dont understand the derivatives that the hedge funds trade but still dump there money in them. </p>
<p>Also there is a difference between flow and prop trading. In flow trading your job is to earn the spread and provide liquidity. Thus technically this is not a zero sum game. However, prop trading is. </p>
<p>Ballers are all over the place. People just know about only a few of them. Consider Jim Simmons from Renaissance. He has a BETTER record than even Soros but how many have heard of him? Same with DE Shaw, Bruce Kovner and John Henry (yea the Red Sox guy). But I would say that there are more ballers in trading than in M&A ;).</p>
<p>I just bought Liars Poker.</p>
<p>lol</p>